Creating · Something to Think About

Struggle

Elizabeth E.3 Comments

Three quotes for tonight, as I work on my quilt:

When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling… But it happens very rarely; usually it’s agony… I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It’s the invisible enemy. (Richard Diebenkorn)

You should see me when they [the paintings] don’t work out. I won’t leave until I can get them to a point. Sometimes it’s a struggle, and I’m sweating, I break out in sweat. This whole idea of the euphoric artist in the studio… painting can be that, but it sometimes isn’t, it’s a lot of work. (Ross Penhall)

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock. (Orson Welles)

Creating · Sewing

Half-Square Triangle Trick

Elizabeth E.3 Comments

So, I’m pinning along on Pinterest, chasing down Crossed Canoes, checking out boards (it’s the after-lunch slump) and found this tutorial for a new way to make half-square triangles.

The drawback:  all the outside edges are on the bias.  Like the video says, squirt them with some sort of spray starch.

The benefits: about the easiest way to make half-square triangles I’ve even seen.  I found this on WhipUp.net, and she included a chart (WhipUp is no longer available):

Now I’m going to go and dig up about a hundred HST (Half Square Triangle) type quilts and make them all tonight, just like I usually do (cough, cough).  I love the one below, found on QuiltBarn’s website (and titled Rainbow Zig-Zag).

I”m making progress on my now-in-its-fourth-incarnation Scrappy Star.  Yes, I am.  Stay tuned.

Creating · WIP

WIP–Still Those Scrappy Stars

Elizabeth E.7 Comments

They’re going to drive me crazy.

Like Leila, who left me a comment, I could see that the greens read like a solid, which is what these stars needed.

But after a visit here, I am rethinking this.  I guess I should reveal at this point that I am a Charter Member of the Thinking-About-Quilts-Obsessively Club.  By the way, self-help groups are forming.  Check back for dates and times.

Which led to this.

And another couple of stars.  I decided that I just couldn’t live with two of them.  Call them my Stars-with-Training-Wheels Stars. And I’m not going to tell you what I’ve decided to do.  Check back for the reveal.

I graded all the students’ papers today during their test, as I wanted to give them immediate feedback on how their research essay is going.  (And I didn’t want any grading this weekend.)  But even though I don’t have to grade, I do have to evaluate nine different textbooks for the new class I’m teaching in fall, as book orders are due May 1st.  Yes, you read that right.  Because of cutbacks to the budget, our community college has cancelled all summer school courses, and it’s very likely that no staff will be working.  So I have to set the direction within two weeks for the course I will teach in four months.

You can see why I’ve been fixated on getting this quilt off the wall.  I have a life to live that doesn’t involve cutting up diamonds out of cloth.  The bright side of this upcoming switch is that I can now make a quilt completely out of diamonds.  I felt so peaceful when I wrote that last post, and fairly floated to bed, Zen-like.  Smugness goeth before a fall.  And that fall came after I’d cut up all my precious Japanese fabric and placed it on the wall.  It was at this point that my husband walked in and said “Gee, you really can’t see those stars, can you?”  I just looked at him, because as a scientist, he tells it like he sees it (and yes,  I’ve learned never to ask him “Does this dress make me look fat?”).  Of course, he was right.  After he left, I turned my back on the quilt and graded my brains out on Tuesday, among other things.

Today after school I went to Ginger’s Quilt Shop (I’ll blog about them later).  I just needed to talk to someone about what was going on.  This is where a brick-and-mortar shop is so valuable over online shopping (although I do both).  The woman there laid out several bolts, talked to me about what I was seeing, and then disappeared down an aisle and came back bearing The One.  The stars sang.  I sang (inside).  We all smiled and grinned, as by now we’d pulled in another quilter or two in the shop for their input.  I pulled out my credit card, and yes, at this point, I’ve cut out more diamonds.

Thanks to Lee, of Freshly Pieced Fabrics, you are getting this long tale of woe. . . and triumph!  Check over there for more lovely quilts in progress.

Creating

Journey to Japan

Elizabeth E.5 Comments

I appreciate all your comments and I like what you taught me.  I learned that if I wanted something rich and visually multi-layered, the black background was the one to lean towards.  And while I don’t like the acid yellow/green, it struck many of you as the way to go.  I started thinking about why green worked and realized that I don’t sew with a lot of greens, that is, I don’t lean to the greens as a dominant color.  So it makes the stars stand out.

Just after 9/11, my husband and I traveled to Japan and to Shanghai, China as he had been asked to speak at a conference.  Since it was right after the horrors of the twin towers falling, nearly half of the American contingent of scientists cancelled their trip.  We went, flying out of a nearly empty Los Angeles airport.  Yes, it was very eery.  But I loved the trip.

Ireland is known for being green, and it may be, but Japan is saturated with greens.  Maybe they’re noticed because they are smacked up against the painted vermillion temples.

And one rainy day in Tokyo we ducked into this shopping arcade.  Two soggy Americans who spoke NO Japanese.  But I could recognize fabric when I saw it, and one little shop had rolls of  yukata fabric, 13″ wide and in rich colors. Of course I bought some, ironed it after the trip home and hung it in the closet, too precious to use.

Until now, some eleven years later.

I had gone to the fabric shop on the way home from school on Friday, and yes–the hot pink with the purple dots didn’t work as well as the Kaffe Fassett Stencil fabric, in two-tones of green.  I liked it . . . but I didn’t love it.  And remembering what Elinor and Bert and others had said, I knew it had to sing to me.  I didn’t touch the quilt all weekend.  I would walk in and out of the studio, did a day’s work on grading and lesson prep, ignored it, studied it.  I unfolded the half-stars, arranged them all neatly and went to bed Saturday night.

I awoke Sunday morning, and I remembered that deep in one of my closets were these pieces of yukata, so I pulled them out.  They were “flat” visually, and I had four small pieces in various shades of green.  I slapped them up on the wall, just before we went to church, snapping a picture to show Tracy at church (another quilter).

Yukata slapped up on wall, underneath scrappy stars

When I got home, I looked at it again.  I’ll have to fussy cut, so as to avoid the big blotch of white, and to strategically position the other parts, but it just might be the fabric that works.  I can fill in with the other domestic pieces of fabric, for this is, at heart, a quilt based on scraps.  And the lesson from this is–trust your stash, and your heart.  Buy when you can, and don’t hesitate to save fabric bought on a rainy day for eleven years.