Sandwiching

Even after all my good intentions about making my quilting a priority, I find myself in a position where I have said yes to too many good causes, along with some unexpected and unagreed-to responsibilities being dumped in my lap.  In my muddled brain that keeps spawning images, I have begun to see a quilt:  a small person holding a large bag on a sinking ship that the rats are deserting. I could make some really disgusting rats at this point.

So I have had to content myself with sandwiching my quilting in between bouts of making flyers, attending meetings, writing e-mails, and creating websites.  My quick job for the week was finishing the painted leaf I created in the Playing with Paint class I took.  It was a Valentine's gift to my husband  and I was worried about quilting it--that the leaf would no longer float quite so nicely on top of the bark, but all is well.

In a 2D photo you can hardly see the quilting, but it does add another layer of texture to this little quilt, and binding ultimately seemed more appropriate than quilting.  I will add a small sleeve and a label in between other tasks next week.  It's only 7 1/2 x 10 1/2" so it was a quick project.

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

My Version of a Valentine

For a good number of years, probably since I realized how important quilting is in my life, I have given Tom a little quilt for Valentine's Day.  Well, usually it is a quilt-in-progress, a.k.a. a quilt top, that many times adds to the height of my quilts-in-progress pile.  Last year I did manage to finish the quilt

This year, instead of hand-dyes, his quilt top was hand painted:

This is one of the pieces that began life as an exercise in the fabric painting class I talked about in my last post.   Our instructions were to try printing with string on a brayer and that technique produced the original blue lines that looked like bark to me.  I did a brown color wash over that and finished it off with the leaf print.  

At first I thought the print had not worked because the house was dry as the furnace fought the arctic temperatures we were having, and any paint on my palette or on the leaf itself dried almost immediately so the print was not as clear or "complete" as others I had done.   But when I looked at it the next day I realized  I liked it--and that it would make the perfect gift for my tree-loving husband.  

I have not quilted it yet and that may change its look a bit so I thought I'd share it with you now.  And, if you are still with me, thanks for the company.

Tree

Every Valentine's Day for a number of years I have made my husband a little quilt.  Well, actually I give him a little quilt top with a promise to finish it at some point.  And let's just say that more of Tom's quilt tops are unfinished than finished.  But this year I actually kept up the momentum and sandwiched, quilted, and faced the top.  

A few months ago when I was thinking about how to make tree trunks I came up with the image of creating one with loops of raw-edged fused fabric.  I thought Tom's quilt would be a perfect place to try this on a small scale so I played around with the trunk, liked it, and then thought this technique might suggest the essence of a tree canopy as well, particularly if I made the loops intertwine, capturing the deep interconnectedness within this complicated living system and then extending it to the ground below.  I know, I know. I have always said that I don't like raw-edged applique, but this is a year of  experiment. . . .

So I moved from paper to my hand-dyes, ironed Misty-fuse to the back of some gradated greens as well as a brown and gray, and started playing.  I thought the bit of red (a commercial fabric) would give it some zing.  For a while I contemplated doing a blanket or satin stitch around the edges of each piece, and even tried it on one, but it changed the look of the tree so I settled for outlining each piece with a straight quilting stitch, which will mean a bit of fraying, but I think I can live with that.  

In the quilting phase I also added the pearl cotton fly stitches, thanks to Laura Wasilowski, who had just given a mini-lesson on her blog about the stitch.

As I was finishing up the quilting and was contemplating a title, I was listening to Mark O'Connor's amazing fiddling where the melody lines and rhythms twine into each other, reminding me of the patterns in the tree.  So, it has officially become "Mark O'Connor's Tree."