Blessings everyone!
Happy Easter!
Month: March 2016
Waiting…2: Quilting Plans
I have made big progress on my Waiting…2 quilt (I really need to get a new name for this quilt). The top is complete, I have sandwiched it and begun the quilting. A friend of mine asked me if I have a plan for quilting it. Well, I didn’t then, but I do now. Here is a drawing of them. I think I am better with the sewing needle than I am at drawing them out, but I think you can get the idea.
quilting designs for this landscape quilt are meant to highlight the natural look of the cliffs, the sky, and the ocean.
Sew happy everyone! I have to get back to quilting, because this quilt has a deadline, so this is a very short blog post. Have a wonderful week!
“Waiting…” 2: Finally Moving Along
Have you ever had a quilt that struggled with you to the point you nearly abandoned it? Well, that was the second in my “Waiting…” series, but I picked it up and did some substantial fixing, and now I am at the point of coming close to finishing the top and I love it at this point.
First of all, I pieced a storm at sea section to become part of the ocean. The piecing was challenging, but enjoyable and I liked the way it came out. Here are the first two blocks of that section.
When I put it together with the fabric piece had for the rest of the ocean, and added the sky, the whole background piece seemed disjointed and the colors simply didn’t play well. So I took the ocean off the sky and overdyed the ocean (both pieces joined together) with a more sea-like color and they blended beautifully together. The only negative result is that, even though I hand dyed it, the pieced storm-at-sea blocks’ seams tended to fray together, so I no longer had the nice flat open pressed seams I started with. But really, by the time I spent several hours re-flattening and spray starching the sea, it looks wonderful.
But the sky…oh the sky. It was just too dull and gray and lifeless. I wanted a sky with an obviously approaching storm at sunset, just as the clipper ship can be seen on the horizon. This is to add the drama to the story…can the ship make it into port safely, and will the family be reunited and get into shelter before the storm hits?
I had tried painting that sky three times already, and I didn’t like any of them. So I took the one I liked the best and added clouds, lightening, sunset colors, and yes, I think it now has the drama (and color) I was hoping to add. So I put the sky and the ocean back together.
Here is a quick pic of the ocean after I dyed it and got it back together with the sky.
Then I added the cliffs to the left of the picture and it began to look right. I just put in a lighthouse on the top of the farthest away visible cliff, added the rocky steps and the stone platform in the nearest stony area for the woman and her daughter to stand on and surrounded it with stones as it would be. It has made all the difference. I now finally like the quilt top.
But I was not happy with the original clipper ship I had chosen to use. I am using a Dover high-definition painted ship and I have the collection. They are much more beautiful than I could have made from scratch, and I don’t mind using commercially printed fabrics, so why should I mind using a fabric I print myself from a collection of great nautical paintings. Using this still requires considerable advanced techniques in applique, thread work, and quilting.
The ship I decided not to use.
The ship I’m using.
So I hunted through the collection and found another one, which I printed out about five different sizes, and finally got it about right. I like this one. It has life, the sails are billowing and are a better color. I’m slightly leaning it on the quilt to add to the look of speed. I printed it out both on the EQ regular cotton fabric and the EQ lawn. I am appliqueing the whole ship down from the cotton fabric, and have added wool batting to the back of the front sails and will applique those in place to give it a bit of 3D billowing sales. I am also adding a layer of wool batting behind the ship and trapuntoing it all in place. Then I will stitch the rigging. That will probably take me a couple of days to applique and another stretch of time to do the quilting and stitch the rigging. Here is my machine stitching around the stones and stone steps up to the platform where the woman and her daughter will stand.
Then there will be the stirring up of the sea with some Angelina fibers and some thread work. That will be fun.
Sew happy everyone! Wishing you all a wonderful National Quilting weekend, and a happy Palm Sunday on the morrow.
An Extrordinary Present
This year for my birthday (Mar 3) my oldest son Ken and his wife Beth gave me a most extraordinarily delightful present…a set of fabrics, a box of fabulous Superior threads, a stack of reference books, and some digital design elements that all related to a quilt he designed for me to make in one of my main quilt series.
I am not going to share the design or the making of this quilt with you all until it is completed and has made its debut on the show scene, but trust me when I say it is a most wonderful design.
He knew I was casting around trying to find my next design in this series, and I have discovered in recent years that he is a really good artist. This design is well throught out with Beth’s excellent consultation, extremely beautiful and challenging. I hope I will be able to do it justice, but I will certainly do my best effort. I am most decidedly touched that he thinks I can make such a quilt and that they made the effort to pull this whole package together for me.
I felt like a little girl when I saw the extent and nature of this present…I opened the box and listened to his explanations, and found a magical treasure. It came with a digital to-scale design with some of the details pulled out and prepared in scale for me to use in digitizing small elements of the quilt in my Bernina v7 software. Extraordinary!
Sew when I get this quilt finished and it has had a debut, sometime later this year, I will share the making of it with you on this blog. I plan on taking lots of pictures, and keeping extensive notes as I construct it, so I can later put it together into a series of blogposts.
My tentative target date for this is sometime in August (his birth month), but that is likely to be too early, so we will have to see.
In the meantime, sew happy everyone.
Progress on Several Projects
I have three projects currently underway and I’m having fun trying to clear my work flow of these three projects in order to attack two intense show quilt projects I’m also really looking forward to making. My current projects include:
- Hoffman Challenge 2016…I’m currently constructing the top. It’s a happy little quilt, just a little bit fantasy-like and I’m currently placing and stitching down all the appliques. I am planning on adding lots of bead work to this quilt, so a good part of the work will be after the sandwich is quilted and done by hand in the evenings.
The background was constructed using applipiece/piecelique technique.
Stitching the appliques down. I will also add some machine embroidered animals to this fanciful forest.
- The second quilt in my “Waiting…” series (name to be determined) is finally moving along. I had a very hard time with the sky and the sea. The woman and her daughter appliques were really hard to get right. They still require a lot of details that will be added with stitching. I also have to make the clipper ship applique, which will probably take me a lot of time. But it’s finally looking like it is going to become a quilt. I had my doubts when I didn’t like the sky (I repainted it), didn’t like the sea (I over-dyed both the pieced section and the non-pieced section together to bring them together), and I didn’t like the planned clipper ship design (I found a new one in Dover that has lots of motion). I still have many rocks to add, and the more I look at it the more I think it needs a border…not very wide. Long ways to go on this one.
It’s a start…long ways to go, but it seems to finally be cooperating. This pic is not square on to the quilt, I see…a little at an angle. 😀
- And I’m working on my applique book, trying to draw up all the patterns. This is a book showing several techniques of machine applique and the project related to it is a soft fabric book with applique samplers in it…ending with both an art project and a reference aid to the sewist for the future. I got a package of 10 inch precuts to see if I can make the whole book using one layer cake and some white fabric for the pages.
Sew I have been having lots of fun in my studio, but it is getting a bit messy. I am trying to clean it using a little bit of work at that every day, but I seem to be taking one step forward and two backwards…LOL.
Sew happy everyone! Go have some fun in your studio and don’t worry about the mess. Oh, and I haven’t forgotten the step of the month project…I am afraid though that it will have to wait a few more months before I can get to that one.
While I was at the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival…
…I had a lot of fun at the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival (MAQF). I had several items on my agenda.
- One of the things I did was to go around and try out almost every machine on the floor designed for quilting. Now there is no way I can put a long arm on a 10 or 12 foot frame in my townhome and I am not in the market for a new machine at the moment, but I still like to keep up with developments in the industry. Besides, I might win the HGTV dreamhome one day or something. 😀 😀 😀
I found some of the longarms heavy and difficult to move in smooth curves, and some moved smoothly and easily but had a feeling of flimsiness about them. The floor did not have Innovas or Gammills. My DIL has a Gammill and I have tried them during previous shows and found them quite wonderful But of the machines on the floor I really liked the Bernina longarm on a frame the best. It was smooth, the stitch is beautiful, and it seemed solid.
Bernina’s long arm (taken in G Street Fabrics). I really want one, but as you see it’s enormous.
- I also tried sit down longarms. The most interesting thing about this that I discovered almost no advantage from any of them over my Bernina 830 in its custom made cabinet that I have in my studio. I also like to use decorative stitches from time to time for my quilting as well as straight stitch. So I’m hoping that Bernina will continue to make the 8 series sized machines. I may need to invest in a longarm in a few years for one reason or another, but right now I am quite happy with quilting on my 830.
Quilting on my 830 in my studio
- I hunted for hand dyed fabrics for landscape quilts, but was unsuccessful. I only found some intriguingly beautiful hand dyed wools. I don’t have a wool project in my plans for this coming year, so I passed them by.
- I walked through the entire vendors sections and concluded that the things I might call “secondary items” to quilters and sewists are growing and make up nearly half of the vendors. These would include such things as jewelry, glasses, shoes, vibrating pillows, and so on. There really weren’t as many fabrics, threads, and notions that directly relate to our craft as I would have liked to see. I did buy some threads at Superior Threads, and a few other notions.
My loot from MAQF 2016
- Of course I looked at every quilt in the show. I was extremely impressed with how well MAQF had displayed the quilts. Each quilt was well shown and you could get close to them (without touching, of course) and see them really well. They weren’t roped off. I like that. I’ve been to shows (Quilt Odyssey comes to mind, especially) where you could hardly see any quilts in the cubicles other than the one directly ahead because the ones on the sides were roped off and you couldn’t get directly in front of them. There were white glovers there to keep an eye on things for the most part. I really don’t object to roping as long as it isn’t at the cost of really seeing the quilts well, but it’s especially nice to get close.
- I hung around my own quilts observing reactions and answering questions. That was really fun one moment in particular when Stevii Graves showed up with Karen Sievert. Stevii was the judge who awarded my Canterbury Knight her Judge’s Choice ribbon.
Stevii Graves and me in front of Canterbury Knight. Stevii awarded the quilt her Judge’s Choice Ribbon.. I was so honored by this.
Sew happy everyone. Have a wonderful week.
Note: Once again my blog is being constantly attacked by hackers and bots. I have removed the subscribe button which was attracting hundreds of hacker subscriber attempts. I only can leave the comment section open about a week for this reason. I did improve the overall security of this blog by subscribing to Wordfence, so they aren’t getting through. I apologize to my readers and am looking for further measures I can take to prevent these attacks.
Famous Quotes 3 of 3: Impossible Things
Finishing up with the three days of famous quotes challenge from my friend Marla (thanks again, Marla), I thought I would continue with some words about impossible things. This one comes from Walt Disney’s Cinderella, when the fairy godmother is getting everything ready for Cinderella. I have always loved this particular scene in the old version movie. She sings a lot in this scene, but the part I love the most is when she sings:
“…Such fol-der-ol and fid-dle-dy dee of course, is— Impossible!
But the world is full of zanies and fools
Who don’t believe in sensible rules
And won’t believe what sensible people say.
And because these daft and dewey-eyed dopes keep building up impossible
Hopes,
Impossible things are happening every day.”From Rogers and Hammerstein’s music for the movie
I also loved the book and movie The Martian where he takes all of his seemingly impossible challenges and conquers them one by one even when things happen that set him back again and again. I don’t know whether it would be possible in real life to have conquered the situation like that, but real life does have seemingly impossible challenges for each of us from time to time.
Sew happy everyone! Do you ever look back at something you have done or made and wonder how in the world you did that or look forward to a project you really want to do and wonder if it is even possible? Impossible (good) things are happening every day because “daft and dewey-eyed dopes keep building up impossible hopes” and don’t give up. It also helps a lot to have faith in God who probably gave you that dream in the first place.
Famous Quotes 2 of 3: Impossible?
If you read my post from yesterday you will see that I have accepted the challenge from my friend Marla (thank you again, Marla). If you haven’t, I’ll wait a bit while you go back and read it………………..So, you see the challenge. 😀
Today I pass the challenge to my friend Jenny Lyon, a very busy quilter who writes a delightful blog about her work: Quilt Skipper I would be pleased if she can accept this challenge (see last post for “rules”).
I love working in fabric, threads, and fabric paints for my medium for creating art. I also enjoy making simple quilts for use around the home and giving away that are not in the art quilt category.
Recently, I have divided my professional quilt making into wall quilts that are simply fun to make and MAY end up as a show quilt but I won’t be unhappy if they don’t, and the more complex and challenging art show quilts that are specifically FOR show quilts. I needed to do this because some of my show quilts are really really challenging and I need some less so for psychological purposes. 😀
In thinking about the quilts I have planned for 2016 these two quotes from Walt Disney come to mind:
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. and
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
There I go again, bending the rules a bit…2 quotes instead of one today. 😀
Sew happy everyone…let’s go make some magic and do the impossible, or simply get started.