An intrusion!

Sunday evening, after a very busy day, DH came down to the studio, saying that he was falling asleep in front of the tv, and thought a bit of puttering might help him stay awake.  He fooled around with some picture hangers, in the other end of the basement, and then came right into the studio, and started pulling down the flannel wall.  I had casually mentioned that the flannel was getting dirty and we would have to take it down and wash it. Say What!! When did I agree to that?? I was in the middle of sewing pieces for a project, so had to quickly clear that up and get involved.  

We found the flannel torn and a little rotten.  Not surprising considering that it's probably been up there for ten years.  So we've been busy since then buying new flannel, finding and buying wooden slats, as I had asked that the sides of the flannel be held in place as well as the top and bottom.

Today, the final part was mounted and the wooden slats screwed down over it.  I've been spending time arranging things to my satisfaction, and have put up the three pieces I'm currently working on.  The Moon quilt I've already talked about.  The cats are for a very different purpose, and will hopefully be sold at the yearly craft sale next December.  I've been working on it, more off than on, for the last two years, carefully beading every pearl-like part of the design.  It has been far more a piece to take along to stitching days, than any piece of "fine craft", and I'll be glad to see the end of it.  I think I've also talked about the orange and black discharged flowers, which will be put together as a long hanging or table  runner.

The Moon Quilt and table runner will benefit from the black batting I recently bought, as it was purchased for just that use.  Now maybe I can get back to that piecing that was so abruptly interrupted.

Moon Quilts

"Moon" quilts have been around for years.  I think that just about every art quilter has, or will, make one at some point. This week it was my turn.  

In my purging, I found 22 pieces of good quality black cotton, each roughly ( very roughly) 9" square.  I put a circle in the center of each, using a variety of techniques.  Then they were trimmed to size and sewn together.  I will sandwich them, machine quilt them, and then bead some of the circles, before adding a false back, and binding the piece.

The techniques used include rusting, painting fusible web and then ironing it on, machine embroidery, using programmed stitches, and finally discharging.  The one discharged square is second from the left , in the top row.

I used a stitch and wrap Shibori technique to get the piece ready for discharging, but the dense wrapping made discharging with a discharge paste unworkable, and I had to use bleach.  I don't like using bleach as it is so much more difficult to control.  The piece above turned out well, but, unfortunately the other two pieces I tried--didn't.  The bleach "wicked" into the surrounding fabric to the extent that the pieces were not usable.  But, oh my, how very pretty they are.

So pretty, that I have now done four more the same way and am waiting for them to dry, so I can see if there might be 5 usable  squares that would work into another piece entirely. Maybe a table runner??  I'll let you know how that works out in another post.

I plan to link this with Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Fridays, and The Needle and Thread Network.

Something new

Over the past little while, there have been ideas in my brain.  Not necessarily new ideas, but maybe a re-visit of older ideas.  Pleased to have ideas of my own, I've given myself permission to play a bit and explore those thoughts.

This is one of them.  I started quilting it with the idea that it might possibly be useful in the gallery show I'm exhibiting in come May.  But I soon realized that the necessary skill may not be in this, and I decided to just make it an exercise in FMQ'g.  But this gave me permission to play with it and explore options.  So that is what I'm doing.

I think it was a poor effort from the beginning. The discharging was too complex, and the first thread choice, in the quilting, that echoed the swirls of the discharging, was poor.  It would have been much better if I had done a lot more discharging, giving me extra fabric  for stitching samples, before I started on the piece. But I will persevere.  I may be able to salvage something out of it.

Latest finish

Not quilted yet, but the top is finished.  Again this was a lengthy process, and a lot of work--most of which was done improvisation-ally, using techniques described by maria Shell, in her book "Improv Patchwork".  In this case, more than half of the cutting was done with a ruler, and the improvisation came in more with accepting how the pieces went together, and accommodating for imperfections in the piecing.  All of the pieces used, with one exception, were made specifically for this piece.  I had no idea where I was going, and made decisions on the fly.  These usually resulted in a frenzy of cutting and piecing a new section to be added. 

The exception was the chevron section in the middle of the piece.  Here we are fairly early in the process.  I had the Chevron in my box of spare pieces--a very useful place for finding treasures like this. If I was more of a traditional quilter this box might be referred to as my "orphan block" box.

Here is the finished top.  I will have to add a narrow border all the way around to facilitate the long arm quilting.  

Again, a piece with no yet identified use.  Some of you may remember the last piece I made that was similar to this one.  Today my sister-in-law saw it, loved it and was allowed to take it home with her.  I'm so glad it has ended up somewhere where it is wanted and maybe loved a bit.

I plan to link this thiw Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday, and The Needle and Thread Network.

Changes

I've been browsing the internet, and find that many serious fibre artists blog about their past year, and what they've accomplished.  I wonder about the quilters who keep careful records of how many quilts they started, how many they finished, how many yards of fabric came into the house and how many are there at the end of the year, etc.  That sort of thing would take the fun out of fibre, for me.

Given the number of years I've focused on fibre, I tend to think I've seen it all-there is nothing new under the sun. Reflecting on the outgoing year, my unexpected trip into Modern and Improv work has taught me I'm wrong.  There is a whole new world in front of me.  How exciting!  What a lot to look forward to!

So, rather than talking about it, I think I'm going to re-visit my recent quilts, and include a picture.  This is first one I made this summer.  It was an exercise in creating shapes that appear to float on a background.   I've been agonizing about how to machine quilt it.  I had an idea of what motifs I wanted to use, but the vision, of how that would play out, escaped me.  It is sandwiched, ready to go, but sits folded up on a shelf until I sort things out.  Quite recently, I had the germ of an idea, and think the problem may be solved.  The next step is to do sample, and then tackle the big quilt.  It isn't that big, but is bigger than I usually  manage to deal with on my current machine.

Next came this beauty.  I certainly want to explore this technique a little more, but feel that I need to do a little more research on it, to get it more firmly established in my mind. This did not turn out as I thought it might, and I need to figure how how to create my vision better.

This was next.  I'm thrilled with it, but not really comfortable with the variety of colour within it.  As well, the red is appearing to be my "go to" colour.  I've even laughed bit over the years, that I work as though red was a neutral.  Maybe too comfortable a niche?

So I next made a real effort to not work with the red end of the spectrum.  I like this and think I know how to quilt it.  But--am I getting too comfortable with white as my background?

White has been used again with this challenge piece I recently finished.  This was an exercise in improv piecing, in response to a challenge from the LQG.  We were given 3 fat quarters with the instruction to make "something", flat, where the three fabrics provided were obvious on the front of the piece. But we could add up to 5 additional fabrics.  I added white.  The beads are hand made, and embellished.  All the finished challenge pieces are to be auctioned off at a big quilt show next April, for charity.

There is another piece in the works, but I'm not ready to show it yet.  I very much enjoy the process of taking many solid colour fabrics and combining them into a joyous riot of piecing.  But--and a big "but"--is the difficulty I had in addressing my need to control for colour.  I cannot work on a piece if the colour doesn't please me, or make sense within my knowledge of colour theory.  The techniques involved in this process scream out for a huge variety of plain coloured fabrics.  So-o-o, I need to explore the limits of my comfort level in all of this  given the restraints I'm placing on myself.  

Chasing creativity

In my last post, I mentioned that not much had been going on in the studio.  I've been fooling around with some strips, trying to create another completely pieced, improv quilt. But the creativity just isn't there.  I think I've been a bit down the last couple of weeks, and maybe haven't realized just how far down I am.  So I had decided last night to get up and down into the studio, bright and early this morning.  Haven't made it yet, and it's not looking good.

One of the things behind my feeling a little sorry for myself is the increasingly obvious deterioration in my ability to use a rotary cutter or even scissors.  Damned arthritis!!  My husband has been trying to learn to do the cutting for me, but getting his hands to understand the nebulous ideas in my mind is a bit of a stumbling block.  We're determined to beat this problem, as he enjoys being somewhat on his own, to watch what he wants to watch, while I slave away at the sewing machine.  It's really in his best interest to sort this out.

But now Christmas has caught up with us.  For the last 3-4 years he has wanted mincemeat tarts.  We've tried several purchased ones, even going to out of the way, small bakeries in the search. Yesterday was the final straw.  We bought him two lovely looking tarts, in a very popular bakery, on the other side of the city.  They turned out to be awful.  So today, we are going shopping for supplies so that we can make them-the right way- at home.  

So, what does this mean for studio work?  Well, probably not today.

Catching up.

It's been awhile, but those two weeks have been busy.  My presentation to the LQG was last Thursday evening.  One of the ladies on the Guild executive has been working with me, for the last 3 weeks , setting up my pictures as a PowerPoint presentation.  this was sort of neat, as I learned how to use the PowerPoint on my new computer ( and my old one as it turned out).  I would run through the slides on the computer, as I rehearsed the script.  I sure didn't want to mess up.  

Well, as it turned out, once we got there, they didn't have the proper connectors to use with her computer and the equipment at the hall.  A few minutes of panic, but we decided that we would have ladies to walk the actual pieces around the audience, giving the them a chance to see the embellishments closely, as that was the purpose of the whole presentation.    This meant that parts of the script were useless, ad lib became a necessity. But once disaster was averted, I was able to relax and just go for it.  the presentation was well received and there was lots of interest in the various techniques that had been used.  As a bonus, while I was packing up, I was approached with an offer to buy one of the pieces!  Of course, the offer was accepted and the deal done right there.  I've known the purchaser for years, and believe that she had a genuine interest in the piece.  It went to a good home.  And now I have a reason to use that technique again.  Otherwise not much has been done in the studio.