adventures of a quilting diva

Here’s my latest quilt, “Magritte and Me” (17″x23″). I created it for the FFFC Challenge #46, Geology with Unexpected Color.

I really love working with the little paintbrush strokes of fabric. It’s relaxing and fun to do and I like the way it turns out. I have several more ideas for this method of fusible applique quilt that I want to try.

Here’s a detail shot of the castle. This quilt is completely in hand dyed fabric. There are 3 different hand dyed whites. Painters will tell you that there is a difference between white paints and it’s the same with white fabric. Once it’s cut up into bits, you can’t always tell which is which until you place them side by side. Then you can easily see this one is a blue white, that one is a yellow white, and the other is a pink white.

I originally painted the reproduction below  for an exercise in a painting class. My reference was one of those little color plates in a fine art book. Remember when fine art books had those sections of color plates in the middle? If you were actually reading the text you always had to flip back and forth between the pages to see what the author was talking about. You can see a print of the original Le Chateau Des Pyrenees by Rene Magritte on Amazon.

I’m not sure what Magritte’s meaning of The Castle in the Pyrenees is. I read somewhere that he made it for a friend. I liked the image well enough to stare at it for hours on end while working on it, so I chose it for my original assignment and once again for this challenge.

“To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been.” ~ René Magritte

Here’s a quick little Fast Friday Fabric Challenge quilt I made just this week, “Breaking Free” (18″ x14″). You can read the “Making Of” story here.
Letting the quilt take me where it wanted to go was like a breath of fresh air. It was relaxing to just let go of that controlling urge for a few days and enjoy making a quilt that I had only the vaguest sense of where it was headed and what it might look like in the end. Summer quilting at its best, just as captivating as a good novel and no seam rippers allowed.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy a good technical challenge. I completely understand the drive to be precise, after all I studied graphic design back in the dark ages when “cut and paste” was not cute little icons on your computer screen, but an actual X-Acto blade and wax stick. Then there are the rulers: my most precise quilter’s ruler measures to the 16th inch. In graphic design we measured by 1/72 inch. In varying degrees I carry this obsession with me into my quilter’s studio.
Now my challenge is to find a balance between instinct & freedom on one hand and precision & planning on the other. And maybe its not one perfect ratio to fit all, but knowing how much of each element is best for each individual quilt.

This month’s FFFC (Fast Friday Fabric Challenge) included creating a quilt based on a song with a color in the title. I chose It’s Not Easy Being Green by Kermit the Frog.

I’m really having fun with my black and white prints. I hadn’t realized how much I miss them.

Visit the FFFC blog for more about this quilt and to view others from the song challenge.

January’s Fast Friday Fabric Challenge was “cropped still life, with form/illusion of dimension”. You can see my quilt (9.5×9.5 inches) front and back above, as well as the original photo. Part of the challenge was to crop the image on three sides. At first I was annoyed that I had to do this, but in the end it made a much more dynamic and interesting composition. I’m definitely going to explore cropping again!

This is a two-sided quilt. I’m not sure how to display it since I don’t want a sleeve to cover the thread-painting side. I want to be able to hang it from either direction and flip it over on my wall from time to time. Any suggestions?

I haven’t added the binding yet, but I’m considering it finished enough to be on time (2007 challenges: 1 on time, 1 missed deadline/not finished yet, 1 almost finished/good chance of making the deadline, for those who are counting). I’ll add the binding when I figure out the hanging system.

Yes, I am planning to turn this into a series. Conincidentally, I’ve been planning other “A penny for a spool of thread” quilts in my head for some time now, using a variety of other techniques. I’d imagined them as larger wall hangings, but now that this one’s done small, they’d look neat hanging on the wall as a collection of mini thread-themed quilts.

Read more about this quilt and see some other great quilted still lifes at the FFFC blog.

Wow! It’s been a busy week. Here’s what I’ve been working on:

1. February 12×12x12 quilt is coming along. It’s been fused, appliquéd, beaded, and basted. I’m going to try hand quilting with YLI Jean Stitch in hot pink. Here’s a sneak peek (right).

btw: I haven’t given up on the January 12×12x12 sashiko quilt. I’m not quite ready to start that one yet, and didn’t want to be perpetually behind the whole year.

2. January FFFC quilt center panel is fused (left). The red spool looks odd in the photo. My heart sunk when I noticed that, but when I checked the real thing it looked fine. It was hanging on my design “curtain” and must not have been flat against the wall.

I’m not going to appliqué the pieces down, just machine free-motion quilt over the whole thing (any suggestions for type of thread to use?). I’m also choosing the border fabrics. I really like the way this one turned out and might make another one larger with needle-turn appliqué. This one is 8 inches square. (That’s an easy size to do when I use my computer because I can print it all out on one page.)

3. CBQ miniature challenge (no I didn’t make all of these blocks in one week, but I did do some!) is made from a UFO I started in 2004. It’s Housepitality from Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting Jan/Feb 2004 issue, except really, really small. The original house blocks are supposed to be 10 inches. I’m not sure what size mine will be (right) since they’re not finished yet. The square-in-a-square blocks you see there will finish at 1/2 inch.

4. Hand quilting practice almost every day. I’m working on making the stitches even. They’re generally about 10 stitches to the inch.

5. Bling Bling scarf is up to 27 inches long. I’ve finished one ball of yarn and am hesitant to start the new one (it’s a different dye lot and looks really different) for fear it won’t look right. Maybe I’ll go back to the store with the scarf and see if there’s some that looks more like my scarf than the one I have.

6. Studio cleaning because with this many projects going on you can’t work in a messy place!

7. New blogger is adding line breaks when I upload photos and in general is misbehaving, making this post take entirely way too long. At least there were no problems to fix when my blog migrated. I like that I can add labels.

happy quilting!

Goodnight, Moon (8 5/8″ x 8 3/4″) is my December Fast Friday Fabric Challenge piece. This time we were to choose the first or last line from a favorite book (Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown: In the great green room there was a telephone…) and use the design element, value/contrast.

The first FFFC challenge I tried is still unfinished. I’ve since learned to work small and be quick. It’s very liberating to give my seam ripper a vacation and leave small mistakes in. It’s also great to try out techniques I would never have otherwise if I had to do them in a full-size quilt. I then get inspirations for other things which I might someday try full-size.

You can read about how I made Goodnight, Moon on the FFFC blog as well as see some of the other works posted.

snowflake front

snowflake back

Here is my 3rd Fast Friday Fabric Challenge Quilt (Yahoo group). This time the challenge was to make a “non-traditional shape” quilt. You can read about how I made it on the FFFC Blog. You can also see the images from some of the other participants there.