Doodle Squares

My little free motion quilting practice pieces now have an official name--Doodle Squares.  They are indeed my version of doodling, but they are also in honor of the large, enthusiastic free spirit in our house, a Golden Doodle named Terra.

She embodies a  lot of what I was trying for when I started this practice:  learning to loosen up and being ready to try anything.  I'm not sure how gaining control over the stitch length fits into her personality, but she would easily take control of most situations if allowed.

My original goal was to practice FMQ every day for at least fifteen minutes, an impossible goal, I know, but by going for the impossible I have gotten it done most days and feel guilty enough about it that sometimes I'm shutting everything down at 9 PM and realize I still need to do those fifteen minutes--and do them.  But guilt is not the main component of these squares--I am also doing them because they have become a time when I am just, well, doodling, following my own little mini-vision, and if it doesn't turn out, then I am still getting some FMQ practice in.

I have kept the squares small so they are easy to finish:  8 1/2" square top, 9" batting piece, and 9 1/2" backing.  Given the amount of quilting on each piece, they usually square up to 8 1/4" bound.  I was using Insul-Brite at the beginning because I envisioned selling them as hot plate pads, but everyone who has bought one has wanted to hang it on the wall so I have switched to my regular Quilter's Dream cotton batting.  The Insul-Brite also has a tendency to beard on a dark backing anyway.

With my newest crop I have, of course, been trying some new things.  One of my favorites from a couple of months ago plays with a dense stitching that makes the stones/bubbles/circles pop in the middle border.  Click on any of the photos to make them bigger.

A close-up lets you see it better.  I began by outlining the circles with a stitching line connecting them since I wasn't going to start and stop with each one, so my background stitch--basically a scribble--needed to be dense enough to cover up that connecting line.

I thought I was getting in a rut with the center square surrounded by borders--although that is still my favorite set-up--so I tried something a bit uncentered:

I must apologize for my preference for dark fabrics, which make the quilting difficult to see in a photo, but a close-up of the back (all are reversible) will give you a better view:

After marking the diagonals of the square with chalk, I created this by again using a chalk marker and ruler to draw the diamond-ish shape and then drawing the five straight lines with chalk and a ruler so I could position them where they looked right.  I began sewing at the bottom, following a straight line up and then free-handing the curves back down to the bottom so I could begin stitching the next line and so on. 

I have done several variations of vines with leaves as a quilting design but was wondering if I could make a more abstract vine with a continuous, sinuous line interrupted by ovals, and you can see the result in the center section.   I decided I liked the patterns it made.

I have always been partial to a three-bladed grassy shape and so gave a try at a free-hand version in thread for the final border.  It was obvious at the beginning that my connecting line was not going to be totally straight and so I emphasized the waviness.  As a calligrapher friend of mine told me years ago, if you make a "mistake," make it into a design element.

My last example, for this round, is another row sampler, which is becoming a favorite exercise of mine, since I just have short bursts of a pattern to complete--keeps me from getting bored.  But on this one I got the great idea of trying some machine couching, which you can see in the blue row.

Not half bad, I thought, until I turned it over. Now these squares, as I said before, are reversible, and, of course, as anyone who thinks ahead already knows, the zigzag machine stitches that hold the heavier thread down and are almost invisible on the front appear on the back as rather utilitarian zigzag machine stitches.  I was ready to just chalk this one up to experience and put it in the "no one will ever see these" pile when I wondered if another quilting stitch could  hide the zigzags.  I tried those wavy interlaced lines, and, while they don't hide them, they do distract enough from them so that don't become the focal point of the reverse side.

If you look closely, you may also see in the row above the blue that three-bladed grass shape again.

My FMQ has definitely benefited from these squares. I have learned some new techniques and patterns and gained a bit of confidence.  A couple of weeks ago an artist friend who makes glass beads was describing how she avoided a particular technique because she thought she just didn't like it, but she needed to learn it for some occasion.   So she did it every day for a week and sure enough loved the process once she got comfortable with it.  As I described my experience with the Doodle squares, we started laughing at ourselves because we had both made the remarkable discovery that practice does just what all those know-it-alls told us years ago. 

I still have much to learn about free-motion quilting--which gives me an excuse to keep making these little squares, but a bigger format is definitely in my plans as well.  Now back to the three other quilting projects I am working on.  And if you are still with me, thanks for the company.

Fall

I know it's spring and I'm certainly not trying to make time go any faster, but I just finished up a piece that I started last fall and that I titled "Fall" as well.  This piece actually began at a guild tea last September, where I was one of the lucky winners of a door prize.  Most, perhaps all, of the door prizes were fat quarters and there nestled under many tiny florals and civil war reproductions was this piece of obviously hand-dyed fabric.  I still have not figured out who donated it, but it must have been created by a guild member.  It was filled with wonderful splotches of deep reds and greens and browns.

As I was on my way home I was already planning to use it to make some kind of autumn tree.  It soon merged with an idea I had put in my sketchbook about using the Robbing Peter to Pay Paul block, otherwise known as the Drunkard's Path, to give the idea of the crown of a tree.  But I only had a fat quarter so I was not sure it would work.  I settled on three-inch blocks and hoped my rough calculations were correct enough and I would end up with enough blocks to make a suitably sized tree crown.   And sure enough I made it stretch, with just enough left over for some colorful leaf litter on the "ground."

I decided on a split background of gold and yellow from my own hand-dyes to give that golden autumn glow.  But the first big experiment on this piece was the trunk.  I set myself the task of creating some trunklike fabric with some texture to it.  So I began by ironing Mistyfuse to the back of a grey and a darker brown hand-dye, slicing them up into thin undulating strips, then weaving them loosely together and ironing them to a brown.  And you can see the result.

The other big experiment was the amount of quilting on this piece.  I had decided to do diagonal lines, but felt that straight lines would be a bit too static.  So I decided to practice my FMQ and quilt lines close together that danced a bit here and there.  The result was little puffs of fabric sprinkled over the background.

I ended up adding some pearl cotton quilting at the base of the tree:

The whole quilt measures 30" x 27".  And now, aside from the label, it is finished in the 78 degree heat of this April day.  And if you're still with me, thanks for the company.

In Praise of Wonkiness

Today is St. Patrick's Day and it is one beautiful day!  As I took my early walk with Terra, the sun was glinting off the heavy frost, making the hill magical; it was just cold enough to wake me up with a promise of warming temperatures the rest of the day; the red-winged blackbirds were making the valley echo as they proclaimed their presence; and the sky was that perfect blue that I would love to get in my hand-dyes.  A great beginning to a birthday.

As I walked along I saw a pattern in a shriveled flower that I thought might work for my ventures into free motion quilting, and it reminded me of my last practice piece.  Last night I had not gotten my full twenty minutes in so the last thing I did before I collapsed on the couch to check e-mail was a freehand flower to see if I could pull it off.  I had earlier made a frame--more about that later--and congratulated myself that I finished the flower without any major bobbles.  But as I looked at it I realized it wasn't totally symmetrical.    Have to try harder next time I thought.  Earlier that day I had happened upon the FMQ work of one of the master quilters whose feathers and swirls look flawless and like carbon copy cutouts of each other and her work was in my mind's eye as I evaluated mine.

You might be able to see the quilting better on the back:

But a good night's sleep and a walk in the woods reminded me that I liked things that were random, a little bit skewed, things that didn't match exactly (not talking about my seams here--I still have my perfectionist streak).  After all, no two oak leaves or maple leaves ever match each other--and then there are the snowflakes, of course.  I want to have the skill and control to make oak leaves that look like oak leaves, but they don't have to look exactly alike  What I am trying to discover this year is what my goals are, not to mindlessly follow someone else who may produce knock-out beautiful quilts for her, but to see what works with my kind of quilting.  And I am beginning to see that what FMQ contributes to my quilts may involve spontaneity and maybe even surprise.

All this is different from work that is slipshod . . .  And that brings us to the frame, another experiment,  done quickly before the potatoes burned for dinner.  One corner of the zigzag stitch is definitely out of place.  It is not charmingly skewed but just a mistake when I lost my focus.  But the frame itself is more uptight than the flower and probably requires exactness.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I just discovered that there is some basis to believe that Patrick wrote against slavery, which was rampant in the fifth century world. Don't know how that relates, but another reason I'm proud to be born on his day.

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