Finding Time When There Is None

In the midst of all my busyness during April I made the mistake of looking at the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. The focus was on the work of Andy Goldsworthy, who may be at the top of my all time favorite artists.  The challenge was to use, as he does, natural elements to create rhythm and pattern against a background that is "exciting and different." I had to do something in honor of Goldsworthy.

For a long time I had had in my mind to try creating a quilt using sticks or twigs of some kind to see, first of all, how I could do it, and then how it held up. As I walked through our fields in the late fall last year, I poked about in the stands of dead goldenrod (and no, it doesn't cause allergies; it's the ragweed that blooms about the same time as the goldenrod that is the culprit. Ragweed flowers are green and low to the ground and hardly visible, but goldenrod is a showoff so it gets blamed even though its pollen is so sticky it doesn't travel much at all)  and was surprised at how sturdy the stems seemed. So I harvested an armload and put it on the back porch. As the weeks passed and I didn't find time to follow my inspiration, the pile was moved to the basement and shifted from spot to spot and forgotten.

The challenge reminded me of that goldenrod, certainly nicely dried now, unlike other twigs that would be oozing spring sap. Much to my surprise I found it, neatly stored on top of a cabinet, and so I began to think about a background.

I decided to try to capture the feeling of frosted leaf litter on the woods floor in late fall so I began to piece a background. I could have fused the pieces and would have been done much more quickly. I could have machine appliqued the pieces, but I decided to machine piece these pointed shapes, which meant set-in seams. The first couple went fast and looked good, so I was encouraged and once I started with this method I was stuck. As time got tighter, the seams seemed to take longer.  Stress changes perspective. But finally it was finished.

I cut the goldenrod and began working out a pattern. Wanting to add a color variation, I rescued some last year's hosta flower stems from my attempts to straighten up the garden and those became the short light pieces. I attached them to the already quilted background with several loops of thin thread near each end, and there it was. Even though it was not yet faced, I posted it on the challenge site before the deadline!  I liked it but somehow felt it wasn't integrated enough.

I left it on my working wall and decided one evening to couch some gold pearl cotton in meandering pattern between the patterns of twigs.

And I like it quite a bit more.  

And if you are still reading, thanks for the company.

A Challenge

For each show the Mountain Laurel Quilt Guild exhibit committee comes up with a challenge for the members and this time they chose a great one:  create a quilt that is less than 36" in any direction and is "Out of the Box," i.e., it cannot be a rectangle or a square.  The result was a lively potpourri of styles and shapes, with several members using the challenge to try a technique totally new to them or to just design their own free form wall hanging.  Pictures are no substitute for seeing these works in person, but pictures will give you an idea of what the challenge section looks like:

I was one of those members who chose to do something entirely new--a quilt that moves and changes as the air currents spin the individual pieces and as the viewer changes his or her perspective.

I call this Turn, Turn, Turn, for obvious reasons and it measures about 30" x 32".  I had wanted to make a kinetic quilt for years and had been sitting in a Thai restaurant over a year ago, waiting for Tom to park the car and staring at a chandelier made of off white disks hung on strings that moved when the air conditioning came on.  --Ah--I thought--I could perhaps use the same concept to create a quilt with different parts of a pattern on long strips--  When I began to think about the guild challenge, it seemed the perfect opportunity to see if I could actually create such a quilt.

The project began with my drafting a variety of designs that would create a new design when flipped from one side to the other and deciding which ones created some kind of harmonious pattern.  Of course, the process of selecting colors was the same as in any quilt, but here my procrastination paid off as I had some beautiful fabrics that I had bought at the Lancaster quilt show that had been sitting on my buffet for a few weeks because I loved looking at them.  One was a hand-dyed fabric from Ghana that complemented a deep emerald green and a deep teal that had been hand woven in Bali and had the sheen of silk even though they were cotton.  I added a couple of  other batiks and I was on to solving the batting problem, since my usual cotton batting would not supply enough shape.  Luckily I had made fabric bowls a few years ago and so decided to try Peltex, a perfect choice, since it provided some stiffening but I could still stitch through it.  

After some trial and error, I managed to successfully sew the back and front onto the Peltex and the designs even matched up.  As I finished my fifth strip, however, I began to worry about the next step.  How would I mount these to make them turn.  Would they turn?  Would they line up enough to make patterns?  Before I invested more hours and more of that wonderful fabric, I had to find out.  After running heavy quilting thread through the top of each, I taped the thread to top of a doorway and stood back to see what happened:

They lined up beautifully and turned now and then in the breeze from a ceiling fan!  This was getting exciting. I now had the energy to finish the other fourteen strips.

Of course, when they were done and I had added some beads to the bottom of each, I had to jump the final hurdle:  how to mount all of them so that they could hang on a wall.  I finally decided on a piece of wood about 1 1/2" square with two small hook and eyes screwed into the top to which fish line would be attached. On that I stapled more Peltex that would be sturdy enough to hold the thread.

To cover the wood and Peltex I quilted another piece of the Ghana fabric and then confronted another moment of truth:  Would it hang on the wall?

Indeed it did!

And here is one last alternative view at the exhibit, since this quilt does look different every time you see it:

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

A February Challenge

Somewhere I read about a quilter who challenged herself to make a small quilt everyday during the month of February and ended up making a striking large quilt out of all those little ones.  Ah, I thought, February is approaching and maybe I could do a quilt with some sort of new technique every other day for a total of 14, a significant number for the Valentine month.  I decided to begin with an idea I had for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge, my online source of inspiration and frustration.  So on Feb. 1 I began, and today I finished it--well, the facing has to be sewn down and some knots tied, but it's presentable enough to be photographed.  And today, you may notice, is Feb. 4.  Not an auspicious beginning for my fourteen quilts.  

But here is the quilt, measuring all of about thirteen inches square:

The challenge this month was to fracture the image in some way, to use three colors chosen from the three primary colors and three secondary colors, and to include something with wings.  I was going to skip the challenge and focus on other projects this month, but for a long time I had wanted to make a quilt that looked at the ground, field, whatever, through the wings of one of the many dragonflies that flit around my head as I walk with Terra around our pond.

When I read the challenge, the dragonfly image popped into my head but I was not sure how I would create the wings.  Then, as I was looking for some fabric one day, I noticed the pile of organzas from my most recent sortie to Joann's  and on top was the fanciest organza that was crying out to be made into dragonfly wings.  So I knew I had to give a try at this challenge.

I had chosen as my three colors red, green, and yellow, and fractured the background, the first time I had tried that technique.  But then I forgot about the color restriction as I was planning the background.   I felt I had to include some blue for the pond the dragonflies love so much and so a fourth color sneaked in.  I was debating how to attach the organza wings to the background when American Quilter arrived with Carol Taylor's articles about using transparencies.   She recommended satin stitching the edges and so I tried it, although I did not fuse them first, as she does.

I hand appliqued the body and stitched the tail with heavy thread on the machine.  I machine quilted most of it, but added some of the pearl cotton I have come to love.  I also faced it again, using the method I tried out on "Pause."

So I learned a lot on this little quilt that I named "Viewpoint."  And I think the organza worked well.  Now we'll see how many of the other thirteen quilts get done by the end of February.

Good Way to Start the New Year

As part of my attempt to try new techniques, I joined an online challenge group a couple of months ago.  This group posts a challenge the third Thursday of each month and finished projects are supposedly due in a week.  Some people actually make the deadline, but there are usually stragglers. I had not had time to fully participate in one yet, but just reading the explanation of the challenges and looking at the websites sited for further information has been well worth my time.

The December challenge (right before Christmas, for Pete's sake) was intriguing:  look at the colors used in  product packaging (food, cosmetics, toys, anything) and make a quilt using those colors.  But there is more: create a still life composition that contains a plant (nature is the theme for the year).  In between wrapping packages and planning meals, I began noticing the boxes and cans on my kitchen shelves.  One morning as I looked at the box of Numi tea (one of my favorites) I was pulling a bag out of, I realized that the rich warm brown that bordered the front panel was just the color I had been trying for when I was dyeing this summer and I thought I still had some left.  Soon I was pawing through my other hand-dyes looking for other matches.  I had assumed, for example, that the lettering was white, but it was not; it was a very pale yellow.  I came up with reasonable matches and decided that I could cheat a little and use the teal from the teacup on the top panel as well.  The color combination, very different from my usual strong reds and purples, was enticing--but it was Christmas . . .

After New Year's, when the last of the family units were on their way home, I treated myself to some quilting time, and the pile of challenge fabric caught my eye.  But what to do with it?  My quilts tend to be abstract rather than representational so the still life/plant requirement slowed me down a bit until I decided on abstract simple shapes--a trapezoid for a pot, rectangles for what it's sitting on, and some ovalish shapes in yellow to pull the eye into the piece--with perhaps leaves as contrast.  I played with the composition a bit  and came up with what to me is a very restful piece--like sitting down for a cup of tea.

Deciding on the quilting probably took the most time of the whole project.  Every quilting pattern I tried complicated it, made it busy, or distracted from the composition until I came round to where I had begun--simple shapes with little quilting.  I have started to face more of my quilts instead of bind them and I tried a slightly different method of facing on this quilt, which turned out so well that it has become my preferred method.

I posted a picture of my piece--it's about 17" x 22"-- and the box of tea on the challenge blog, where other members of the group may critique it.  I saw four comments--and then I left for a visit to Massachusetts, and when I came back three days later there were more, all quite positive--and  an e-mail message from one of the members, who wanted to buy my quilt!

I was very pleased with this little quilt, and so it took me a while to decide to sell it, but it will soon be on its way to its new owner.