Quilts

Jazz, Light, Montreal, a Four-in-Art Quilt, November 2014

November 1, 2014November 1, 2014 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

Jazz, Light, Montreal
#5 in the Urban Series

When the challenge theme was announced, of Light, I started looking and noticing urban light–both that which sheds or projects the light, and that which receives the light. Multi-hued lights intrigued me, as well as light fixtures (as you saw before). I was also interested in reflections of city lights on windows and in rain puddles. But in the end, I went with a memory–the graceful arching lights of Montreal, swirling over the Jazz Festival that was in its final days.

Montreal City Lights

Yet the artistry in that photograph comes partly because of the different widths of the light poles, changing from thicker to more slender as they were sited in the field of view.

I fiddled and widgeted my stuff, moving and trying to get that look but with my bias tape, I could not really manipulate the widths easily, although I tried. So mine resembles a spider the day AFTER Halloween, squished beyond recognition. How appropriate that today’s reveal date is November 1st. Since this little foray into representation is not one of my favorite art quilts I’m not going to do a deconstruction post. I tried out multiple brown fabrics and thought about trying to mimic the interesting placement of windows as shown in the photo above, but in the end, went with one that conveyed the pane-pierced facade. Okay, maybe not so much, but I gave it a try. I fused it on, satin-stitched around it. Sewed down the light posts, then used a zig-zag stitch to quilt clouds into the sky.

In fact, the more I write about this, the more I realize that not every art quilt will challenge me to learn a new technique, which is what I want to do. Sometimes you come to the project tired and worn out and your brain cells look more and more like the spotted building in my art quilt, or perhaps that splayed spider thingie and pulling out the stops means Getting It Done and Moving On.

I do like the back quite well. No complaint about that Anna Maria Horner fabric from eons ago. And ever since Betty started putting labels on hers, I’ve copied her example and now have a lovely collection of art quilts, properly provenanced. The quilt is 12″ square, and I used a fancy little bit for the binding (hoping it would redeem the front?).

But the best thing is the memory of that horribly hot night, sitting on the steps listening to jazz, getting photo-bombed by a tourist behind me who turned out to be a quilter, and we spent a long time showing each other quilt photos from our phones. I look somewhat different now, but it was a great night watching people bee-bop to the doo-wap (try and find them!), sitting under that graceful swirling street light.

Normally we only have four challenges a year (hence, the name: Four-in-Art), but this year we decided to jive up to the calendar year, and so added in this last challenge, making it a #5. In the next cycle we’ll be back to four, and we’re trying something different. Our overall theme will be Literature, but each quilter will think up her own quarterly challenge, instead of having a group challenge. We’ll still reveal on the first days of February, May, August and November. We have also had some subtractions and additions in the last few weeks, so won’t have a full compliment of eight quilters until next February.

Come see what other quilters in our Four-in-Art Group have done!
Amanda at www.whatthebobbin.com
Betty at Flickr//www.flickr.com/photos/toot2/with/12251011196
Nancy at patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com
Rachel at rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com
Simone at quiltalicious.blogspot.com
Anne at SpringLeaf Studio

and please head *here* to vote for Anne’s Cascade quilt, a finalist in the Craftsy Pattern Design Awards!!

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Coming in a couple of days. . .

Circles Block #6!

Quilts

Sew Together Bag, et al.

September 17, 2014 Elizabeth E.18 Comments

I present to you: THE SEW-TOGETHER BAG!! If you are from my quilt guild and are looking for the link to buy the pattern, it is *here.* Yes, you have to sign into Craftsy and make up a name and a pin number. But there are a lot of great things on Craftsy. Then open up your computer and link to The Quilt Barn Sew-A-Long for the pattern. They go together.

I have seen about eight million of these online and on Instagram and get putting it off because, my-gosh-oh-golly, it has four zippers. And binding!

And all those pockets! Okay, I’m here to tell you that you will survive to sew another day. And that Michelle, of Sew Demented, has figured out easy ways to construct pockets.

The binding was No Big Deal–easy if you’ve done quilt binding, and if you follow The Quilt Barn’s directions.

So, jump in! The water’s fine.

And now I have to talk about the weather. We’ve been having a heat wave. This is after the crazy rain storm that took out lots of trees in my neighborhood, and ruined concrete drainage ditches in my park.

Tuesday, coming home, I saw these beautiful clouds, a rarity in our area. Then it got all dark and my phone had this screen:

The power went out…no sewing. So I did non-electrical quilting things. And when the power came back on, all the little machines in our house started beeping and whirring and clicking, like they were all talking to each other.

And because this heat wave has broken records, we are glad that they carry my father’s favorite gelato in our local grocery store. I can vouch for the deliciousness of Tahitian Vanilla Bean, and the jars are very cool for storing stuff once they are emptied.

Then I tried out the pattern for Circles Block #5. Fail. Total fail. Not the pattern, just what I had chosen. Back to the cutting table.

And then some of my favorite books arrived: the BLOCK magazine from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. Simple and easy and not complicated reading.

Almost finished with this post of trivia, hang in there with me. I chose a few colors to go with my incoming stack of Couture Cottons, which is part of a QuiltCon challenge. I hope this heat wave lifts soon, as it’s killing my productivity.

But Lisa has been productive, finishing up her French fabrics quilt for her daughter who has been on a church mission for 18 months and comes home in November. Lisa will tell you this with a giant smile on her face. Here the quilt is being shown at the Raincross Quilt Guild last night–a great event. We both had fun!

And last. . .

Yes, this is a tractor at sunset. Actually it’s parked in my front yard, and yes, the demolition on our front yard is going nicely.

Keep quilting: I wish you many happy sunsets too.

SHINE: Circles Block 4, EPP

September 1, 2014March 2, 2021 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Circle #4: Pravoslavni Park

Here is the fourth circle in our EPP Sew-A-Long, another circle taken from Ljubljana, Slovenia in an ornately painted church. I chose not to make the outer arcs in a different color in order to let the star points pop out of this eight-point star. (If I were doing this one again, I’d make the arcs in a different color. I just like the look of that circle shape.)

Here they are all together, all different, but they play nicely together, I think. I was asked about color selection for my blocks. I have to admit I just have chosen my favorite fabrics from my stash. I do keep in mind that they need to coordinate, but I also know that the repetition of this circular shape would also tie the blocks together.

RWB Shine_Block Four

The free patterns are now returning (Red, White & Blue version is above). I request that you not distribute them, but send people here to this website to get them. Click to download a PDF file:

SHINE Block 4 pattern_opquilt

Please remember to set your printer settings to 100% and check the little scale square included on the pattern. It should measure 1″ in size. Illustrations below are with the OLD version of the pattern, so it may vary from what’s included now.

As before, print out enough copies so you can make your eight-pointed star, then staple them all together heavily so you can cut them out without them shifting.

Again, if the pieces have no direction (are the same shape if folded along an axis line), lay them with the printing either up or down. If they are specific, like the point-pieces, lay them out on your fabric with the printed side facing the wrong side of the fabric, and then cut them out. Sometimes if I whack off too big of a seam allowance, I’ll trim it later as I’m basting around it. It’s all very forgiving, so don’t stress. There are more tips and instructions on Circles #3, Ljubljana.

The inspiration for this block came from a combination of the two above blocks. I wanted fewer points than are shown in the church paintings but I did like the division or the “layers” of points. Again, these circles are high above floor level, so they are a bit hard to capture in a photograph.

Here’s some “making” shots:

All three sections joined together, the left side and the right side done separately.

I put pins in the joining seams to keep them aligned as I sew.

I located the tip of the paper inside my basted piece and started sewing them together from the bottom, matching that teensy end first.

This is when I had one done. I laid out all the pieces to see if I liked it. I didn’t.

I had started in the usual way,with the fabrics like this, trying to lay them out as I think they will work in the design.

It looked okay as laid out, but after I finished one, I didn’t like it at all. I brought out more fabrics.

I liked this better, but I kept trying. As usual, I try not to obsess too much about perfection in design and color and pattern and all those other things we quilters worry about. Scrap quilts can sometimes boggle our minds as they don’t fit together as easily as those ones we make from one line of fabric, that line of fabrics perfectly keyed to work together. These kinds of quilts can stretch us as quilters, as well as teach us patience and confidence. But it’s good practice to make up one point of your star to see if you like it, knowing that with a few snips, you can change it out. I kept doing this until I was happy with my choices, and again, made one more star point to check.

I liked it a lot better. Carry on!

This is the photo I took this morning before I starched and ironed it, and you can see how it looks, all soft from the handwork.

Back.

I used the same technique I used in Circles #3, of appliquéing the large pointed circle onto a 14.5″ square of background. Then I appliqué that smaller center circle on, cut out the underneath, snipping away the yellow points. Before I’d done that, it was a bit lumpy there, but it all flattened out once I cut away the points.

I love that color of blue against that tangeriney orange in the second division.

A couple of quilters have written to me, showing me their circle projects. Here are a couple:

Missie Carpenter of Traditional Primitives

Dittany Matthews of Blue Moth

And I found this post from Quilt Inspiration about another quilter’s journey in circles.

I’ll post the next circles block sometime around the first part of November. Have fun sewing!

Quilts

Straighten Up and Sew Right

August 21, 2014 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

(from *here*)

It had been nearly a month since I’d threaded the needle of my sewing machine and sent it to humming, and I felt like the sad seamstress in the photo, above, pining away. I wanted to get to the machine and have a good sewing session and have something to show for it. As one Instagrammer said, “My sewjo is missing.” But I wasn’t idle. First, I had a root canal, which ought to occupy anyone for a few days. And I also cleaned out the stash a bit, filling two large mall shopping bags with swatches of fabric to let my quilting group, the Good Heart Quilters, rummage through before donating the rest to our quilt guild. And here’s some photos to prove I have tidy cupboards, before I start messing it up again:

I like to organize mine by color and value (light-to-dark).

The lower half of the cabinet. Inside the pull-out box are browns and blacks–easier on the back this way. I keep the Kaffe Fassets in another place, and I also have a stack of cream/tans and a stack of “low volumes” (neutrals or pastels), and stack of predominantly white/light background fabrics.

Here’s a close-up of my Molly Qee collection (the characters with the crowns). They are hard to find in the States. I started my collection when my sister Christine and I happened into a collectibles shop in Lyon, France.

And on the other shelf are other doodads. My husband gives me the little Japanese dolls (ningyō). And those fabric-covered binders are all my journals, began when I was a young woman of twenty-one years old. Since the advent of email and cheap phone calls, I’ve stopped writing them, but I love having them around (they hold all my secrets!).

So after a busy month, I pulled out the machine and got started. I decided to ease my way in slowly, making a selvage block.

When I begin, I use my standby translucent paper, cutting, then pasting a strip on one side so it measures 10 1/2″ square. Then I draw lines on it to keep the selvages on straight. Do I cut all my selvages off when I buy fabric? No. I like having them on to keep track of the newer stuff in case I need more. Most of these selvages happen when I’m going through older fabrics that are in my stash (like those to be donated), of which I know I’ll never need the information again. Then I slice it off, leaving about one-inch to 1-1/2″ of the fabric on top of the selvage so I have Lots of Options.

I get started by cutting two 4 1/2″ blocks, then slice them on the diagonal to make up the four triangles you see in the center above. I pin them down, then start sewing on the selvages, placing the selvage edge 1/4″ in from the raw edge of the triangle, as shown. Sew closely along the edge. I like it best when the first selvage next to the color is the same, or nearly all the same, so I look for a longish piece. I think it just helps set the stage. Sometimes I piece selvages to get the printed symbols and the words closer together (above) and other times I just let it be. Then it’s random, random, random after that, some thinner strips, some thicker strips. Some people like to trim the fringey pieces, but I just leave it that way. Sometimes after I sew on a strip of selvage, I’ll go in and trim down the underneath piece just to keep it tidy.

Sometimes I get things off balance, like in the pink block way above (too much deep maroony-pink in the lower left) but then I figure I’m teaching myself how to let go a bit and just enjoy the process. And I do. I now have five colors of four 10″ (finished) blocks, so the block will be twenty inches square after all four parts are sewn together. This is going to be one big quilt, but I’m in no hurry.

To close with, here’s a quote from The Rise, by Sarah Lewis (the book I wrote about in the Creativity post):

“Perhaps we have grown impatient with the incomplete. We are part of a generation that, as the African proverb goes, wants to eat dinner in the morning, that longs for the immediate, fully prepared for consumption. Yet the strength to linger over the long-left unfinished reminds us that something inexhaustible in us is empowered by striving, that we sense unnaturalness in blunt ends of journeys, of lineage. And that power comes from where we least expect to find it.”

Go tackle something incomplete, and enjoy the power of taking another look at something that in our hands, has had a long journey.