Lillies!

Last post, I wrote of a line drawing I had created to use as a pattern. I've posted the drawing here. So far, I have created the flower applique, and am in the process of figuring out the background.

The original photo I'm using for inspiration has some dirt and some leaves, so I'm thinking I'll use some browns and greens to piece together the background. In my mind they'll be curvy pieces, which means I'll be learning a new technique: piecing curvy lines! More on this later!

Quilter's ADHD

I will try to keep my self-chastising to a minimum.

It has been too long since I have written here. Bad Megan!

There.

I’ve been suffering from a case of Quilter’s ADHD. I have grand designs and plans for half a dozen or more quilts. But, when it comes to carrying these out to completion, I find my mind wandering in its enthusiasm. All those little details that would enable me to carry out my design hound me with the possibilities. Self-doubt plagues me, and I hesitate.

For example. I picked up a quilt I began last year with the intent of entering it in the Quilters Treasure challenge. Last year, I changed course and submitted the Illuminated Grove quilt instead. This year, I picked it up with the intent of finishing it, now that I have some embroidery knowledge in hand. Still, I’m stuck on how best to represent the irises. I have some instruction on how to create them in the background and middle ground. But, there are some honkin irises that I want to put in the foreground and have yet to figure out the best way to do so.

In the meantime, I’ve been contemplating this year’s competition with Quilters Treasure, especially since I have the fabric for the challenge. I found a picture that inspired me greatly last week, and have since created a line drawing to make into a pattern. Last Friday, I found a blueprint shop nearby that was able to enlarge this drawing into a 30”X36” pattern. I feel like a whole new world has opened up for me, beyond the capabilities of the local Office Max.

Flying high off the ease with which I created this pattern, I cast aside last year’s quilt in favor of starting on this new quilt. Now, however, I have reached a snag with this quilt, and my mind is beginning to wander again.

Last week I found myself ordering a pattern for a whole other quilt online. Because I need to add more work to the queue! This isn’t just another project, either. Completing the project will involve learning a new quilting process all together.

I need a quilter’s intervention.

I need to focus on one project, weather the ups and downs, and finish it before moving on to the next. Otherwise, I will continue accumulating unfinished projects, which is something I have managed to avoid until now. So, for now, my goal is to finish the quilt for this year’s challenge competition. Then I can circle back and work on the one I began last year.

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...

The Tara Quilt

Finally! A quilt is finished! A quilt is finished!

I made this quilt as a birthday present for a friend. (Tara, as I'm sure you could deduce from my oh-so-subtle pattern of naming quilts.) I could have finished it almost two weeks ago, if it weren't for my indecisiveness. I had the design completed and the sandwich quilted and still couldn't decide which way was "up." Was this a vertical composition or horizontal? Which side should be on top? There were, of course, four possibilities, and I couldn't choose. It didn't help that the options I was leaning towards were in direct opposition to the options Charles liked. What to do? The answer: let the future owner decide.

So, I bundled the quilt up and tied it a bow to present it to Tara on the day of celebration. She could then make a definitive ruling on up-edness, and I could bring it back home and add the hanging sleeve, binding, and my signature.


So, for the quilt construction itself. I experimented with fabric collage, which is a technique I have been wanting to try for AGES. Originally, I was going to create my own piece of fabric with this technique, then cut it into smaller circles and use to make an overarching design. I would then create a small quilt from this design and quilt the layers together. From there, I would cut the quilt up into small "inchies," or 1"-1.5" squares. My idea was that these could be hung somewhere together to show the overall design, but be individual units as well.

Clearly, this is not what actually happened. Here's what did: I created the large piece of fabric by collaging together bits of fabric, the strings I've cut off other bits of fabric, pieces of yarn, and angelina fibers. I sandwiched these bits between two layers of Solvy, and went to town stitching them together. This proved much more difficult than I had been led to believe. To start with, the Solvy was thin and didn't lend a ton of support; contents tended to shift during stitching, as the basting spray I used was useless in these circumstances.

Then, the moment of truth. I washed the finished product under some water, and presto! I had this delicious piece of fabric that was purply blue with sparkles. I couldn't imagine cutting this up into smaller bits. I wanted to keep it just like it was! That's when the project changed and I decided to layer it on top of a black background (the perfect color to set off the hues and sparkles in the collage) and quilt it. It would look like a piece of art that had been matted and framed. I was liking this idea more and more.


Again, it was easier said than done. If I would have planned this, I could have created the collage on the background fabric in the first place, rather than having to stich it onto the black fabric and quilt it at the same time. The fringe around the edge of the collage really caused problems all the way throughout the quilting process. It kept getting wrapped around my sewing machine foot, which meant I would have to stop sewing and CUT this beautiful fringe in order to free my machine.

In the end, of course, I am very pleased with how this turned out. I found myself, once again, wishing I could keep it. I'm beginning to wonder if this is the mark of a job well done.

Roots and Wings

...aka Project from Hell.

It all started many, many moons ago, when I awoke with a vision in my head. It involved the picture of a tree with many leaves. Somehow, these leaves would involve pictures of family members (or possibly these pictures would appear somewhere else). There would be birds or butterflies in the sky, and possibly pictures embedded in the bark of the tree itself. The lines of quilting would include the words "roots and wings." I don't mean to hit you over the head with this message...

The vision of this project came to me before I had any real clue as to how to acheive this goal. Until that point, I had only sewn straight lines. Would I have to learn to (gasp) applique? Would I have to learn to free-motion quilt? What was up with image transfers, anyway? When I saw a class being taught on creating landscape quilts, I jumped at the chance to see what I could do. It was a Snippet Sensations class taught by Walters, and was extremely fun. The class gave me the means I needed to create the tree design, as well as the courage to try free-motion quilting.

In choosing the picture that I would use as a guide, the design ended up changing. I stumbled across a photo of a tree from underneath the branches, with the sun shining through. The composition intrigued me, and I loved the focus on moving upwards and out into the sky. Now, the idea of including pictures in the design itself was unthinkable. Surely, then, I could include pictures in the border. I would quilt family members' handprints around them!



But then, as the design took shape, I knew that I didn't want to interrupt the color of the border around the main design. So, the photo-transferred images went by the wayside pretty quickly. I ended up quilting the handprints in the border, and then quilting heavily around them to make them stand out. Before I assembled the quilt sandwich, though, I machine embroidered the names of all the family members in the border where the corresponding handprints would appear.

The end result is what you see here. I didn't get a chance to get too many photos of the quilt, as I normally would, because my camera ended up running out of battery juice. I'll have get more pictures later that showcase the machine quilting I did, which was more complex than I had previously done.

And now, friends, it's time to rest for a bit before tackling the next quilt on the list.