Fields

The work I just finished is a quiet one.  It doesn't have that visual impact that draws you from across a room.  First of all, it is small--just 9 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches.  The fabric is some of my less dramatic snow dyes and the pattern depends mainly on machine quilting and hand stitched pearl cotton.

I got the idea for this piece from one of my Doodle Squares.  I was just playing with filling the center groups of curved parallel lines and liked the final pattern--looked like hills or perhaps plowed fields or a contour map.

So I pieced the background and quilted three slightly different-sized squares and filled them with the curved parallel lines using a different variegated thread in each.  Using three different skeins of Laura Wasilowski's beautiful hand-dyed pearl cotton, I added V-shaped stitches to the top, little French knots with tails to the second, and then  random short straight stitches to the bottom square.

Obviously there is change going on in this work.  Seasonal?  Low to high elevation? My daughter said it reminded her of cherry blossoms.

This little wall hanging looks better up close and personal in real life.  Hmm.  And what does that mean?   I like looking at this piece, but is it of lesser value because it is not as photogenic as other works?  My immediate answer would be:  of course not! but perhaps the question is something I should keep in mind for a while as I look at other quilts. 

Anyway, 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.

Shadows again

Surprise! This is a post that is not about snow dyeing, although I am beginning work on a piece using some fabric from my first batch of snow dyes and right now I am excited about it.  We'll see if I continue to like it.  But I need to get back to the real reason for this blog--tracking my trials-and-errors in my year of figuring out who I am as a quilter.

Remember my little leaf quilt that was one of a series of journal-sized quilts that used shadows in some way and tried out a new technique?  I did finally finish another in that series a few weeks ago:

This is a small piece  8 1/4 x 11" but I got to play with the curved background, with pearl cotton for the quilting stitching again, and with perspective.  All the fabric, except the black, is my own hand-dyed.  

This is also the first time I tried facing a quilt, a finishing I have used several times since.  I found a facing method I like better now, but this convinced me it was not a difficult process, and I really like the look.  

And now it is snowing again . . .

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.