Old Enough to Know Better

Today is my birthday--not just any birthday, but birthday number 65. Haven't sorted out how that makes me feel--horrified, happy, contemplative, depressed, celebratory, grateful, giddy, fearful, wise, hopelessly ignorant, daring, careful, stressed, determined, energized, lachrymose (a great word I don't get much occasion to use), experienced, carefree, . . .old? Regardless of how I feel, it seems to be a milestone that should be marked in some way in fabric and thread.                                                                              

So I have given myself a challenge (Just what I needed, another challenge!): every day for the next 65 days I will do some hand stitching with perle cotton for at least five minutes on a three-inch square of fabric (a different one each day).  Well, it is actually a four-inch square of fabric that can then be squared up, if I need or want to, into a three-inch finished square. I have even prepared for this event by dyeing some gorgeous deep and golden yellow fabric.

Each day I will choose a shade of yellow and a color of thread, depending on my mood or whim, and stitch a line or lines across the square--lines of any kind, with the only limitation being that the final design should not be a representation of anything.  I thought lines were appropriate since I have managed to acquire a nice collection of them over the years and we could get symbolic here about paths followed or some such.

But I am intrigued to see what will come of this.  I rejected several more complicated options I had thought up because there will be some days coming up when I will not have a lot of time.  But I should always be able to find at least five minutes. And I am currently in love with hand-stitching with perle cotton so I will have a little extra motivation to get started each day. And perhaps these little squares will have some aspects of a diary--reflecting something of the day on which each is made.

And if you are still with me, thanks for the company!

The Beauty of Spiders

If you think spiders are only good as the stars of horror movies,take a look at the link below. Perhaps someone will give me a trip to London as an early Christmas present. . . .  Just hope all those folks milking the spiders and doing the amazing trapunto-like stitching were paid appropriately for their work.

And I apologize for not having an eye-candy picture here. I tried several ways to paste the video in but none of them worked, and I need to get back to the project on my working wall. So I will have to figure it out another occasion.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/channel/happenings/exhibitions_and_galleries/golden_spider_silk_cape/

Leibster

I got an award! My friend Frauke, from Germany, was the source of this honor and appropriately so since the award originated in Germany, although I think it is all over the world now. Frauke writes a lively blog that is energized by her artwork as she fearlessly puts together colors and patterns that she somehow tweaks and rearranges into an integrated whole with a rhythm and a beauty all its own. And a cat or two might wander in as well.

The Leibster award is given by bloggers to exceptional blogs with fewer than 200 followers. For those who decide to accept the award, the Liebster Rules are:

1.  Post about your win on your blog.
2.  Link back to the blogger who presented you with the award.
3.  Copy and paste the award to your blog.
4.  Present the Liebster Award to 5 blogs that have less than 200 followers that you think deserve to be recognized.
5.  Let them know by leaving a comment on their blog. 

So here are my choices of blogs that deserve recognition:

Hillscreek Quilter because it's always interesting to see what Anya has come up with--sometimes it's an update on her getting-closer-to-being-finished Dear Jane quilt, sometimes a fascinating video she has discovered, sometimes just an insightful comment on the quilting life--or just life.

Hanging on by a Needle and Thread because Susan's blog, like her creations out of yarn or fabric, reflect her life, whether she is making a hat for a grandchild or an art quilt for a challenge group. Her dedication to making small quilts to be donated for Alzheimer's research is admirable.

Cotton Cellar because Kathy is a relative newcomer to the world of blogging and is an amazing font of creative ideas about how you can make something useful and beautiful out of a pile of fabric. She is also one of the most organized people I know. 

Ester Kiely because Ester has a fierce love all things Irish, particularly Irish textiles, and has worked hard to promote them and her own considerable talent as well as encourage other Irish artists and crafters.

Inside Outside Art because Regina is also somewhat new to blogging and her hand stitching just blows me away!

Whew! Those decisions were harder than I thought they would be.

And Yet Another Deadline. . .

Last summer one of my suitemates at Quilting by the Lake invited me to join a challenge group she was forming. By November we had introduced ourselves to each other--there are six of us from various points in the US as well as Germany--and had decided on a name for the group: Art 1016, which references the Golden Ratio and the dimensions of the quilts we will be making (at least 10 and not more than 16 inches). One member provided us with our challenge word on January 1--"connection"--and we had until February 29 to make our interpretation of that word into a quilt.

And here is my version:

This "everything is connected" theme keeps showing up in my quilting, particularly in the Celtic knotwork I do, and, ultimately, the colors I chose for this piece could easily suggest natural elements. 

This design began life as a series of smooth swirls:

But as I began to create these swirls in fabric, they began to look a little lifeless, a little too predictable and the more free-form edges I tried one day seemed to look more organic and interesting. I, of course, didn't take pictures of the fabrics in the smooth stage so you can't make a real comparison.

And I added other suggestions of connection to the final version when I braided the gold thread and wove the pearl cotton in the two open areas on the right and left sides. The dimensions are, of course, 10 x 16 inches. If you want to see how the other members of Art 1016 met this challenge, go to our blog. 

And now, I am not going to think about deadlines but just spend some time with some of my bigger projects. Deadlines do get me moving, focus my attention, provide a time when the quilt is done and I can't add or change just one more thing, and add a small explosion of excitement as you see what the results are.  But I need to wander my own path for a while at my own speed. Right now I am delighting in working on a project that has grown out of the Elizabeth Barton class I took. Perhaps it is because I am not following any rules except my own, but perhaps the delight is all the sweeter because of the contrast with the challenge quilts.

This will be a good test for the Zen attitude toward life that I am trying to cultivate--to see if I can focus on what I decide to focus on, be mindful of what is in front of me, when there are still more deadlines lurking in the future--one for the local challenge group (April 11) and for Art 1016 (April 30).

And if you are also still out there reading, thanks for the company!

My Favorite Color

Green, green moss after a day of warm winter rain

Meeting Yet Another Deadline

Years ago I started the tradition of giving my husband a small quilt top for Valentine's Day, and this year I almost broke the tradition. The 14th sneaked up on me, but luckily I only give him a top. So here is his gift for 2012.

I was trying to do some improvised piecing for the background, but unfortunately, I have been quilting so long, the rows turned out straighter than I wanted them to be, other than a decided downward tilt to the middle three. Even improvisation needs a bit of planning and adjustment and I was trying to work too quickly. Tom, of course, insists that he loves it so I am not sure whether to try again at the background before the quilting. But I will have plenty of time to decide since I need to finish up some other projects before I quilt this one.  The size right now is about 14" by 18".

And if you are still with me, thanks for the company.

Playing in the Snow

Back in December when our local challenge group got together, we not only got to see how everyone interpreted the first challenge, but we also learned what our next challenge would be: using curved flying geese in a composition of our own choosing. Since I have been using a more free-form approach to creating a quilt in the past couple of years, I decided to combine this more structured element with something that was very unstructured. I have also become fascinated with finding ways to create texture and so thought this was the perfect opportunity to try a totally new technique--just scrunching and folding a piece of fabric to see the patterns that all these scrunches and folds would generate. Easier thought about than done, as I found out.

Like so many of us across the US, we have had very little snow this winter, and I find myself missing that magic transformation as the familiar colors and shapes and shadows of the landscape disappear--so cliched yet still so beautiful. So I went about creating some of my own, and my early visions of this piece involved the drifts and textures of a snowy field.

I paper-pieced my flying geese in the icy blue colors of a winter creek--actually the winter color of the creek on our property is icy brown from all the mud this year, but blue is more poetic--and sewed them to a plain white piece of fabric that would be the foundation piece for the scrunches. Now, for some reason, I wanted the snow to cross the geese at one point and that made my scrunching a whole lot more difficult since I had to begin sewing down the to-be-scrunched fabric around the geese with an estimated appropriate amount left free to scrunch as the snow crossed the creek. But after that it was pure play.  And I had to keep the judgmental side of my brain tuned only to positive comments since the piece looked fairly strange for a good while.  I had thought about putting fusible web on the back side of the fabric so it would be easier to hold it in place but decided that I could easily hold too much in place at once with a permanence I would have to live with.  So I used judicious pinning and ironing of folds as I worked my way down, learning as I went how to shift the wrinkles to create little areas of pattern.  I think it's time for a photo:

The machine quilting that held the scrunches in place were tricky as well since I needed enough stitching to hold the fold in place but not so much to make it entirely flatten out.

I added a golden sky and a glittery sun of two different layers of fused organza and I'm still not sure it works, but at one point I was sure it wasn't working at all (couldn't keep that frowning judge quiet for long) so not being sure is progress. Ultimately, I did have fun Playing in the Snow (and that's the name of this quilt) as I intentionally caused those puckers quilters try to avoid.

And if you are still with me, thanks for the company!