Future Quilts?

I've been carrying my digital camera with me on my walks to the train station in the morning, and just about everywhere else. When you keep your eyes open, inspiration is everywhere. Like these locus trees on my morning walk. They're beautiful in their wildness. They don't follow the rules. Their branches grow here, there, wherever they please.

I love the moss and tiny branches sprouting out of the larger tree. This green is wild, beautiful green next to the luscious brown of the trunk. I can see this making a beautiful quilt.

Purple Coneflower

I'm still catching up on unfinished quilts. This is one I picked up last weekend and finished during the week. The top was created during the International Quilt Festival in a class by Wendy Butler Burns on machine applique. I had already finished the top and fused it to Decor Bond, which is a stabilizer. The stabilizer is needed to keep the fabric from puckering up when you machine stitch over the seams. Last weekend, I did this machine stitching and discovered it's not as easy as I thought it would be to keep a steady line with a free-motion zig zag stitch. But, I soldiered on.

In retrospect, I think this quilt would have benefited from a border or two. However, I had a few roadblocks on that front. I didn't feel I had just the right fabric, for one. Mainly, though, adding a border would mean patching in more Decor Bond, and this was a process I had not done before. To put the binding on without a border, I didn't need to add any more of the stabilizer; so I took the easy way out. In the end, it's still pretty, and that's all I need.



There's something nice about knowing that the piece you're working on is not for anyone in particular, is not for a competition, and therefore will not be judged. This quilt was something that I could learn on, and something that I wanted to finish to please myself. I took this opportunity to experiment with some variegated silk threads I bought at the festival. They were even more luscious and beautiful than I thought they would be! Many of the threads turned out to be thicker than I anticipated, but the thicker thread creates a beauty of its own. I'm very happy with the way this quilt turned out!

Embroidered Landscape!

Now that I have the baby quilts behind me for now (Stop procreating, people!), it's time to turn my attention to finishing some quilts that have been waiting patiently in line.

I turned to this task last weekend and realized that I have no fewer than half a dozen quilts in some stage of construction. They all need some love, and I'm tending to them each in turn.

Last weekend I paid some attention to this piece that I started at the International Quilt festival in April of this year. It was pretty well done. I just needed to trim it square, put a backing on it, stitch around the edges, and frame it. Done, done, done, and done!



The trees, leaves, grass, and flowers were all created using either a zig zag or straight stitch. You lower the feed dogs on the machine, put the pedal to the metal, and GO! The process is so liberating; it feels like you can do no wrong. You're not coloring inside the lines, you're making the lines. It's beautiful and freeing. Now I'm looking at thread in a whole other light; not as an accent to the picture, but as a means to create the picture. I think a new addiction has been born!

Moving On

Here I am again--on the flip side of a project, with no deadlines in sight.

Almost.

In the mail this weekend, I received my prize booty from the Quilters Treasure challenge. It was some cotton batting and a yard of the challenge fabric for this year. The theme for the contest is "What Memories are Made Of."



Now I'm wracking my brain to think of what kind of quilt I could make out of these ingredients. Dangit! Their marketing schemes have worked on me!

I smell trouble...

Lucy Jane's Quilt, Finished and Delivered

Another quilt down!



There's something about each quilt that touches me, and makes me feel like it's a little bit the best I've done so far.

Of course, with Lucy Jane's quilt, the first thing that I fell in love with was the monkeys.





But, there's more than just monkeys at play here. I used a thicker quilting thread than I ever had: size 20 cotton. It was trickier to work with, of course. It wanted to fray in my machine and around the needle, and it didn't work nicely with the bobbin thread I was using, which was considerably thinner. I really learned how to use my tension dial to my advantage, and worked the thread.

I gave the quilt away on Saturday, and got the chance to visit it in its new home on Sunday. Lucy's parents had washed the quilt, making it soft and supple. It was the first time that I really saw a quilt in context, and felt it as a blanket. It was beautiful. The monkeys are home.

Monkey Business!

Normally, the backing of a quilt isn't that special. In the case of a quilt that is forever etched in my memory, the quilt backing turned out to be important only in that it foiled my quilting attempts. And, in the case of my niece's purple quilt, it was a beautiful piece of fabric that I wish I could use again and again.

Come to think of it, the quilt back can be special. Now, in the case of Charles's cousin's baby quilt (for Lucy Jane), I've fallen in love with the whimsy of the fabric. It's monkeys! Girl Monkeys! Aren't they adorable, floating around there with flowers in their hair, and against a purple background to boot! This is girlie in only the best sense of the word. I'm excited to give this quilt.



I'm also very pleased with how the yellow border works with the purple monkey fabric. The two fabrics complement each other so well, I'm a little frightened that I actually planned it this way.

Here are the monkeys, only closer up.

Quilting Studios, Quilting Corners

A Case of Studio Envy

In my email inbox this morning, I found something from Quilting Arts, pushing their Summer Studios issue. Has it been a year already since I was last taunted with everyone else's abundance of space, reminded of my own inadequacy?

It's not that I begrudge everyone their space. Okay, it is exactly that. I can't help feeling flush with the green of envy when I see pictures of studios, with shelves and shelves of fabric stretching from floor to ceiling. Or the tables devoted to nothing but the sewing machine, or separate tables for nothing but cutting or ironing. It gives me pangs when I see a design wall. That's an entire wall, devoted to nothing but a large piece of felt or batting. I've never known such riches.

My husband and I live in a two-bedroom condo in the city. I don't have a studio, or even a room devoted to my quilting. I have a corner. The corner of our living room is where my quilt love is allowed to flourish. A whole corner. And I have a table that folds up or out from Ikea that serves as my sewing/cutting table and design wall. And also a dining table.

A weekend or two ago, I had the time and inclination to do something about my fabric storage issues. So I set out to reorganize my quilting corner. I reasoned that, if I only had the proper tools of organization, if I just shuffled my materials around a little more, I would have plenty of room for what I have, and room to grow on.

In the end, I made a better space for myself. I took down a shelf that previously held our DVDs and repurposed it for thread and fabric. I pulled an old set of shelves out of retirement for my quilting books, batting, scraps, and miscellaneous project bins. And, I reorganized the drawers inside my cabinet. So, I have a system of organizing fabric that makes sense by size. All in all, I think it looks better and more organized. Is it like the gorgeous studios that line the pages of Quilting Arts? No. But in the end, it's not too shabby.

Lucy Jane's Quilt

...and so it begins.

I've played with Electronic Quilt, and come up with the final design of the quilt for Charles's cousin's new baby. Here it is, according to the software. I scanned in the fabrics to my computer (love this feature!), so it's a fairly good representation of what the finished product will look like.

So, tonight I will begin the long and tedious task of ironing these fabrics so that the real fun can begin!

Virtual Quilt Festival

The task is: find your favorite quilt and post it on the Virtual Quilt Festival, on Park City Girl's blog. Click on this blog title to go see what all the fun is about.

The Wendy Quilt made it to the top of my list, simply because it's pretty, and it launched my quilting skills in so many directions. For the full story of the quilt, click here. Looking back a couple years later, I think this quilt gave me some confidence in my free-motion quilting ability that opened many, many doors. Now that's the part of the quilting process I look forward to most, regardless of the quilt. Working on the quilt also let me flex other creative muscles, and had me addicted to sun-printing. All of this discounts what could be the quilt's most significant attribute: it's purple.

Enjoy, and check out other groovy quilt blogs at the Virtual Quilt Festival.

Quilting Festival

The International Quilt Festival in Chicago is over, and I'm recuperating. So is my wallet.

I was able to take quite a few classes this time around, and took away quite a bit. The first class was a day-long class from Wendy Butler Berns on a machine applique technique. To get our feet wet, we worked with one of her patterns: Captivating Coneflower.

The fabrics were our own that we brought in and arranged to finish out the design of the piece. I was surprised at how easy this technique really was. I have been living and working in fear of the dreaded applique, but in the end, this isn't that much harder than fusible applique. One of the things that I really liked about it was that there was no flipping of the design; we worked the entire time from the front of the fabric and the design. Edges were turned under, toward the back. This made it pretty easy to see how all the pieces fit together.

I was happy that I finished enough of the design to be able to transport it safely. All that is left to do on the quilt top is to add a dragonfly in the sky above the flower. This will be done with fusible, simply because the details are a little bit finer, making the process of turning seams under bulky and difficult. Then I can run a zig-zag stitch around the edges of each piece, and then it's ready to go.

One of the other classes I took was exceedingly fun. Bonnie Langenfeld taught a class on Saturday on creating a landscape with thread painting. It felt like there was no doing wrong with the stitching; it was so relaxed. It was very freeing, and already I'm addicted to the process and buying more luscious threads. A fiend has been created!

I actually finished the piece in class, too! This was a first for me, and many of my classmates.