Keagan’s Quilt

August 16, 2016April 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.20 Comments

Keagan, my first grandchild, came to visit me last month (along with her Mom–our daughter– and family. She’s crazy about Paris and France and all things French, so I collected a few fabrics before she got there and surprised her with them.

And you just can’t leave it at that in a quilter’s house.

L’Amour recoufortand de Paris, quilt #167
Pieced and quilted by Keagan Charon and Elizabeth Eastmond
July 2016

L’Amour recoufortand de Paris, the title, means Paris’ Comforting Love, because she considered how quilts give comfort and since it had all things Paris in it, she thought it up and had my husband translate it for her.

Keagan_5 We got all the pieces cut out, then I had to go and Take Care of Things, and when I came back, this was the design she’d carefully put together on the design wall. We sewed the pieces together–me on my regular machine, and she beside me on the Featherweight– and we put the top together. Her brother Riley helped iron the blocks; it was a team working together.

I stitched most of it on the Sweet Sixteen machine, but had her take a turn at the quilting, so she could say she’d help quilt it, too.

Since we were working against a deadline, we used a glue stick to tack down the binding, and then I top-stitched it into place.

And then, just like that! it was time to head on home. Here they are Sunday morning, all the kids (Keagan and Riley and Maddy) lined up for a picture before they piled in their van to drive home.

200 Quilts · Four-in-Art · Quilts

Jill in the Pulpit: Four-in-Art Challenge • Aug 2016

August 1, 2016January 14, 2017 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Jill in the Pulpit
Quilt No. 166, August 2016
#3 in the Color Series: Purple Passion

I have no serious thoughts about the color purple even though there’s a novel with that title, and even though it has so many interesting connections (which were explored in my last post and which seems like it was written about a year ago, but really it’s only been several days). Where do summer days go to? To family picnics, visiting relatives, long interstate drives, trips, ~~lounging around in hot weather~~ cleaning house. . . the usual. And then I had to ponder what I’m passionate about? Quilting, for sure, so in the end, the reality is to Get The Thing Done, diving into my passion of quilting, but hampered by. . .

. . . my shoulder going rogue, rendering me only a bit less helpless than the Black Knight in Monty Python, which is the standard by which we judged all injuries when raising the children. Yes, “tis only a flesh wound,” became our rallying cry for getting up and going, and so I did, and got the quilt done. Cause? Pretty sure it was the cheap-o yoga class I signed up for early this spring, and couldn’t finish because of the pain. I’m sticking to walking. Or sword-fighting.

All the purples in my stash (with the exception of the Kaffes) were purchased about the time of the Knights of the Round Table — all plummy and grayish and dated — so while in Utah, I visited *this* shop and *this* shop, acquiring a few new fat quarters.

Just before sleep one night, I sketched out an idea (top). The next day I proceeded to massacre my idea (the rest of the photos). Finally I decided that I should just slash it where it had problems and insert other fabrics, so I did, using *this video* for help in sewing curves.

I line up fabric underneath the slash, position it, then move it about 1/4″ back from my imaginary positioning line, then rotary cut along the shape. Stitch a 1/4″ seam. Press.

Repeat with other side.

Keeping the bag of frozen peas balanced on my “flesh wound,” I quilted this, stopping often to rest and ponder the state of the universe. . . or what I was doing. I hate that I have a new quilting machine, and haven’t really been able to use it much. “Soon,” my husband says, as he rubs my shoulder nightly and soothes my worries. “Soon.”

I whacked it here a little, there a little, turned it and whacked it again, until I got this ~~ungainly flower-like thing~~ quilt in a sort-of balance.

Now you know why I named it Jill in the Pulpit. It’s irrelevant whether you like the candidate or not, as the Big Deal is that we have come far enough to nominate a woman, and I thought that deserved some recognition.

So there you go–my Purple Passion Challenge.

Please visit the rest of our group, to see how they interpreted Color: Purple Passion. We also have a blog, Four-in-Art Quilts, where you can find us all.

Betty https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2

Camilla http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/

Catherine http://www.knottedcotton.com

Janine http://www.rainbowhare.com

Nancy http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com

Rachel http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com

Simon http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Susan http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

200 Quilts · Quilt Patterns · Quilts

Spectrum: A Colorwheel Quilt

May 10, 2016May 2, 2016 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

Spectrum: A Colorwheel Quilt
Quilt No. 153

You’ve seen this beauty before, as I’ve been working on it steadily since last summer. Since this summer is about to arrive, I thought I should finish it up and get it up in my shops at Craftsy and PayHip (for EU quilters), in case anyone wants a colorful wheel of color on their sewing studio wall.

It’s also great for quilt swaps, or special gifts. I started on mine for a swap, but soon realized I wasn’t going to finish it in time, so made for her instead another colorful creation of mine, Colorwheel Blossom. (It was a colorful Kaffe Fasset fabric swap.) But then I had two quilts, so I gifted one to someone who loves and uses Kaffe Fasset fabrics, keeping one for myself.

Before I sent my swap quilts off, I took them outside for some photos, and love this stack of fun (colorful?) quilts, a prism of quilty delights.

The pattern has templates for English Paper Piecing, if you like to do that sort of thing (I do!) and full instructions for how to put your quilt together. While the color wheel is 16″ in diameter, the quilt can measure up to 18,” depending on the size of your background. It is stunning made up in Kaffe Fassett fabrics, and I’m teaching it that way this Spring in classes at my local quilt shop. Enjoy!

Four-in-Art

Good Friday: Four-in-Art Challenge • May 2016

May 1, 2016April 28, 2016 Elizabeth E.19 Comments

Good Friday
Quilt No. 164, May 2016
#2 in the Color Series: Music

This quilt was inspired by time spent in Antonio Gaudi’s magnificent creation of La Sagrada Familia, a basilica in Barcelona, Spain. We visited there in March of 2016, on Good Friday of their Santa Semana (Holy Week). It was a fitting capstone to our visit to Spain, and to other of Gaudi’s architectural buildings, and from the moment we walked in, we were overwhelmed. Gaudi based a lot of his structures on natural elements, curves inherent in draped forms, local mountains, rock and nature. So I took my cue from the same, as well as trying to weave in a representation of my experience there with color, music and the Spirit.In most of the Catholic churches we visited on our trip, the center crucifix of Christ was based on what we perceived as physical pain: the suffering that Jesus as a mortal man endured on the cross for all those many hours of the crucifixion, his head bowed, the expression on his face, agony. Yet in Gaudi’s church, Christ was under a canopy that appeared almost like upside-down blossom of a trumpet flower, surrounded by a vine laden with clusters of grapes, the expression on his face transcendent, his eyes focused upward.And high above him, nearly 200 feet in the air, is a golden arrow or tree that points to a further high point, a representation of his ascension to heaven. The symbolism is rich and layered for those who are familiar with the story of Good Friday. I sat down in the chairs in the nave to think and to let myself fall into what I was seeing, and surprisingly, hearing. As I sat there I became aware of music, just below the level of hum of the crowd. It was hard to decide what the score was, whether it was some oratorio like the Messiah, or a choral rendition, such as Ave Maria (which was later played at noon). The beauty of the stained glass, the unique and thoughtful Christ in the unusual baldacchin, the representation of the Resurrection by this golden motif pointing upward and the music were a fitting celebration of the events of Good Friday.

On a more practical level, during our entire trip I had been puzzling what I would make for our May Four-in-Art art quilt, with its dual themes of color and music; I knew that day that I wanted to attempt to recreate some portion of what I had experienced, however puny my attempt might be.

This is my third try at this structure. I had started out with the swirly pink, yellow and blue batik, but first used a yellow solid. Then when we went to visit my son in San Diego, I found a fabric store that sold silk shantung, and a bit of the glistening crisp fabric came home with me.

I worked those diamonds multiple ways, but finally had to settle for a tepid reference to the intricacies of Gaudi’s design. I’m not too happy with the blue pieces, wishing I had instead something more grayed to bridge the swirling pastel batik to the outer gray, but again, I was aiming for a representation of the experience.
Because of the lattice shape, the dimensions of this quilt are quite different than the usual 12 inch square quilts I’ve been making in this series.

I backed it with more of the batik, quilted it up on my new quilting machine, and bound it in more batik, wishing to let the edges flow, not constrain, the design.
I was surprised when I laid it out on my flagstone for a photograph in the sun, how the sheen of the silk echoed the glinting bits in the rock underneath it. The label reads: “The intense spiritual experience of Good Friday in Barcelona, as I sat in the nave, with color, sound and Spirit blending around me, prompted this quilt: an attempt to recreate one of Gaudi’s motifs.”