Busy

It's been a busy time here, both quilt-related and in other ways. The "other" category includes the twins' birthday and a church fish fry where I helped. Quilt related was the Niles, Michigan guild show this weekend.

I'll post a few pictures. The space was cramped, without great lighting, making it hard to take good photographs. The quality of the quilts was impressive though, and many excellent quilts didn't receive a ribbon. Tough competition. The ribbons were viewers' choice,

Here's Best of Show and first in bed-size quilts. It's wool applique, done by hand and hand quilted by Gale Polk. You can see from this shot what I mean about the difficulty of taking a good picture.

This landscape, made by Julie Koch, won first prize in wall hangings. Unlike most quilts of this type, it's appliqued and quilted by hand.

I didn't crop the photo so the striking Storm at Sea in the background and the Ricki Timms kaleidoscope type quilt to the side would still be visible.

And this will be familiar--the red ribbon's mine, but the yellow ribbon for Best Machine Quilting really belongs to Deb Geyer. All I did was find the right long arm quilter!

Check It off the List

Refraction 60" x 48"


I just finished the official portrait of this piece for entry in Road to California, and so I promise that this is its final appearance. Yesterday I forced myself to sit down and sew on the sleeve while watching Duplicity with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. The movie sweetened the deal considerably, even if it's actually a movie that requires a bit more attention than the ideal handwork flick. (Handwork flick--a new genre maybe? I know we've all got our favorites.)

I thought I'd have to go out and buy a rod and rig up some sort of temporary hanging deal for photographing this quilt since it's bigger than usual, but the wonderful "No See 'Ums" hanger from the Hangup Company that I use for a quilt above my bed expanded to sixty inches, and there was enough room to clear the bed. Good lighting in that room too, so all went well. Isn't it great when things are easier than you expect? Road to California even has on-line entry now, so you can upload photos and pay the fee in minutes, slick as a button.

I'm so glad to have this done!

A Little More Productive

Finished some things! The witch is about 9 inches square. (Yes, Bob, this time it is a hot pad!) I actually had done the strip piecing around this image several years ago, but decided not to finish it, so all I had to do was trim, quilt minimally, and bind. This is an old Alexander Henry fabric that I absolutely love. I have used every scrap of it now, and am so sad. The witches are wonderful; there's one pushing a baby carriage with a pumpkin in it, handbag over her arm, and raven perched on the front of the carriage. That's my favorite, I think.


This is just one of several postcards of various styles I made. This is another Alexander Henry fabric, and I've exhausted the good images from it also, but the whole fabric was beautiful, with pumpkins on an indigo and black background. Alexander Henry is a wonderful line of fabric. The designs are a bit edgy, not usually cutesy or saccharine sweet like some novelty fabrics are. The color are unexpected too, like the red on the witch fabric and the deep blue on the pumpkin one. These fabrics are hard to find around here, unfortunately. I guess they're not everyone's cup of tea.



Usually I couch yarn around postcards using the method Nellie wrote about in this wonderful tutorial. But yesterday I decided to use the couching/cording foot on the Janome. It worked beautifully. There are three slots for cords on the foot, and I put the cord in the right hand one, lining the edge of the card up with the center one. The zig-zag pulled the cord up against the card very neatly.

SAQA Online Auction

Take a little time to look at these beautiful art quilts being auctioned by SAQA now. They're a feast for the eyes, and an education also. And of course, it's a chance to acquire a piece of wonderful quilt art.

Unproductive!

What have I done in the last week? I've messed around with some Halloween stuff to make some postcards for a swap. I'm trying to use some old fabric creatively.


I printed some more wild flower scans for postcards since I sent the first two to the Alzheimer's Quilt Initative. This took about ten minutes, total, since the scanning and editing had already been done. So there's no explanation for why the whole process took so long.


I made a computer image from a Dover drawing, also for Halloween. I'd be embarrassed to say how long this took, especially since there's so little to show for the time. Why isn't Photoshop more intuitive, and why isn't the book I bought any good?

I put the binding on another version of my failed lilacs piece. Still not good, and I'm thinking about doing some ripping.

And what do I still have to do that isn't done? Blocking a finished piece, quilting a service quilt, finishing the postcards. Maybe I can be less scattered today. We can hope.

Free Motion Quilting Blog

Look at this wonderful blog! Many great free motion quilting designs, some with videos.

Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend everyone. I'm off to a football weekend picnic, a concert, and then my son, daughter-in-law, and the twins are coming for the weekend. Since we don't usually do much on holidays, this is a real social whirl.

The J Word

That would be "judges"--quilt judges that is. My second guild is having a show in a couple of weeks, and in the planning stage, there was apparently some discussion of having a judge, instead of viewers' choice awards. This didn't happen because quite a few members refused to participate if their work was to be judged.

I wonder how many people share this attitude? I can understand the arguments: I quilt to please myself, judges are subjective, judges focus on technique and not design, judges only make negative comments. I would agree that these criticisms are true some of the time about some judges. I would add the point that judges' comments can be so generic and vague as to be useless.

Even so, I like to have my work judged, and not because I get glowing comments either. I've had plenty "needs improvement" comments about various aspects of the work. I'm not sure why I like to be judged. I don't exactly buy the argument that "you can learn something" from judges' comments. I've seldom had a negative comment I hadn't seen for myself already, and then there is the vagueness, which can make it hard to understand exactly what might be done to "improve."

I think what can be gained from having a judge evaluate one's work is a sense of context: you know you're not in a vacuum, quilting for yourself, judging yourself, or being praised (and criticized) by friends. There's a bigger world out there, and there's something to be gained by risking exposure to it. You may not learn specifically what to do about a weakness, but you can't just ignore it, and maybe you'll try something different next time.

One woman in the guild, an excellent quilter, was apparently so burned by a judge's negative comments that she never enters her work in judged shows. That's a loss for her, and for the quilting world. It's also a loss when someone is afraid to try even once.

I'd be interested in hearing from others, including anyone who's judged, about this topic. What's the benefit of having a judge evaluate your work?

*Image above is from Embroodles.com

Results

Everyone who was interested in the mailing label fabric backing for printing: I did pretreat the fabric first with Bubble Jet Set (available at JoAnn's) used according to directions. I increased the saturation of the image on Photoshop by about 50% to compensate for the way the fabric soaks up ink. I think I may have overdone the brightening a bit.

Here are the two postcards made by quilting and embroidering the images. The butterfly weed image is the same one I used before. It's neat to be able to recreate something so easily. No butterfly this time though.

The piece with the butterfly weed and Debra's butterfly as well as another one of mine are up for auction in September. There are some lovely little quilts this time. Go visit the Alzheimer's Quilt Auction site, admire, and bid if you can.

A Discovery

Actually it's not my discovery. I don't remember who blogged about using peel and stick shipping labels to back treated fabric so you can run it through the printer. The blogger said it gave a much more secure stick than freezer paper. I've stuck (pun intended) to the freezer paper because I didn't know where to buy the labels. Then in Kinko's yesterday, I saw them and bought some. I was doubtful: wouldn't it be hard to make them stick smoothly to the fabric, and wouldn't it be hard to peel them off? It's not. The Avery people provide a big scored section so that the label peels beautifully, it sticks securely and runs through the printer perfectly, and peels off the fabric later. I think you could actually reuse the sticky label. I haven't tried that, but even if it's a one use, at fifty cents a label, plus the cost of Bubble Jet Set, it's cheaper than the premade sheets. I got a brighter image too. That's interesting and surprising.

Not-So-Free Motion

The top of the French fabric quilt is done. As for the quilting, that remains to be seen. I just discovered Diane Gaudynski's blog, and that reminded me how much I like her encouraging, down-to-earth, extremely helpful book and all her suggestions for free motion quilting. So, inspired by that, I pull out another uncompleted guild thing, this one a Round Robin. My thought was: practice on the RR, and by then I'll be good enough to try the other one. This would be a first. I only free motion small things, or service quilts with an all over pattern.


So how's it going?

I did improve on the continuous curves. The last set isn't terrible, or rather less terrible.

Well actually, it is pretty terrible.

I was doing fine with the light, relaxed grip too, until I moved to the center of the quilt, and found that the big lever on the Janome that attaches the Accufeed foot catches on the quilt when you bunch it up to create the little "nest" to quilt on. Even worse, it catches on the safety pins.


GRRR. Bad design, Janome engineers! But I'm pushing on. I'm using very fine thread, so quilting stitches don't show on print fabric of the top, and wouldn't show on the back if hadn't used muslin; this piece will lie on a table, so it's perfect for practice anyway. I'm actually doing better at relaxing and following marks. But I'm not going to put the long arm quilters out of business, for sure! The jury is out on how that French throw will be quilted.

Routine Stuff and a Prize.

My to-do list has some very basic projects at the moment. Two guild service quilts are finished, and now I'm sewing together the quilt with the French fabric, binding Refraction, and have two display sleeves to sew on. None of these seem anything to blog about until finished. But I did find out at guild last week that the red stars quilt that Deb Geyer quilted for me won the prize (viewers' choice) for large quilts at the guild's library show. I'm so delighted about this! It was a surprise too, because when I was working at the show, my quilt was not one that the visitors commented on. Please forgive me for showing the quilt one more time; I can't resist because it shows up better in this picture than any other. In fact, I actually had never had such a view myself since it's bigger than my design wall. I'm pretty pleased!

So now back to the dull stuff. I need a new recorded book to listen to, I think.

Closet of Shame, French Division

Oh, the fabric you buy and don't use! When we were in Paris in 2005, I found this quilt shop, LeRouvray. It's apparently well known, because I've seen quilt tours of France that promise a stop here. By American standards the fabric selection isn't very exciting, but there's loads of French charm.


Many of their fabrics are American, at a much higher price. I did find this beautiful blue fabric, very French looking, and two packages of 15-centimeter squares to go with it. (The selvedge reads "By LeRouvray for Free Spirit," whatever that means in terms of authentic Frenchness.) They had apparently offered a class using the fabric in a strippy quilt with rows of flying geese in the coordinating fabrics, and the woman in the shop kindly gave me a picture of the sample on display, and told me how much of the focus fabric to buy. The other fabrics look to me very much like Civil War reproductions, and they may be. All beautiful quality though.

The whole thing stayed in a plastic tub, in the original bag, until about a year ago. I signed up for a friendship group swap in one guild. It's the kind of swap where every month one member asks for a block of a certain kind, and the other group members make it. In this group people actually handed out little kits for the others to make. (A group like this could be the subject for another post.) So thinking this might be as good a chance as any to use the fabric, I asked for flying geese units from everyone, providing the fabric. After a bit of delay, I have them all, and am making the additional ones I need.

It should be simple to put together, right? Everyone is supposed to have their group project ready for show and tell in October. Deadlines are good.

Been and Back

My husband and I just came back from a mini-vacation to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We spent two nights at this wonderful place on the top of a mountain in western Pennsylvania, a huge old inn built in 1907 and still delightful. We toured Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water and Kentuck Knob, and came back through the Ohio Amish Country, staying at a pleasant B&B. A fun trip altogether.

There was even some quilty stuff.

Look at this beauty on a bed at the Washington Inn, an historic inn built for the stagecoaches during the heyday of the National Road (now US 40). The inn is maintained by the park service and furnished with period pieces. But I bet the stagecoach passengers never slept under a quilt as nice as that!

And of course, if you're in Amish Country, you have to look for fabric, right? This was a great store, in Charm, Ohio. I bought a little bit to build my stash of green.

And finally, my quilt was chosen for the Hoffman Challenge traveling exhibit, and best of all it will be in Chicago this spring so I can see it. Since I had no expectation of a prize, I'm happy.

Scrappy Sawtooth Star by Fern Hamlin

Joseph's Coat by Kay Furfaro

Our guild is having its annual quilt show. We keep it simple, with no vendors, or multiple prizes and categories. We hang the quilts in the main section of the Mishawaka library and both casual library users and quilt lovers who read about the show in the paper can look at the quilts. All are given a program describing the quilts and a ballot so they can vote for their favorite. Everybody likes this: the library for the added crowds, the guild, and the quilt viewers too. It's fun to sit and talk to the visitors. I'm always amazed at how seriously people take the voting idea. I usually don't even vote for Viewers' Choice at shows, but everyone here ponders the whole thing for a long time!

The quilts were varied and lovely this year. I can't post them all, so I chose these two as beautiful representatives of the "true" scrap quilt: pieces of left-over fabric, not a collection of new fabrics purchased to look "scrappy."

Scrappier than It Oughta Be

I'm still using my Paddington fabric for charity quilts. This is all of it, the amount of fabric came out perfectly, as though I'd planned it. My guild uses this pattern a lot: six inch squares, all the same or scrappy, and three inch wide sashing and cornerstones. If you have scrappy squares the wide sashing pulls them together, or, as you can see from this example, scrappy wide sashing can create chaos from matching squares. Oh, well. Live and learn.

Thank you everyone, for the kind comments about my elephant. As I said, I'm fond of him, and of the handsome guys riding!

I've also finished and sent off these four little pieces to Alz quilts. Binding that many things in a row should be good practice for improving the binding, wouldn't you think? I'm not sure, but I did learn that the quarter-inch Evenfeed foot on the Janome has a little quarter-inch bar in the front so you can stop precisely a quarter inch from the corner. Wouldn't you think I'd have figured that out sooner? Duh!



I'm now working on a guild charity quilt. Aren't the colors and images on this Paddington fabric adorable? My goal on this quilt is to improve my free motion stitching, and so far, so good. I've been able to keep the curves fairly smooth, and the way the Janome runs with the start/stop button should help with the evenness of the stitching, if I can just BE PATIENT, and move at a steady speed. This is not easy for me.


Not too bad. I hope to finish today, and then more binding!

You Can See the Elephant Now...

Time to reveal my Hoffman Challenge entry:

From this:



to this:


I Dreamed of an Elephant 29 x 35

I really did dream of an elephant: Since paisleys are originally Indian, I looked through my art books for Indian designs, seeing if that would give me an idea for this fabric, but I had no success. A week or so later, I dreamed an elephant with trappings featuring this paisley tree design. This is a rather common Indian or Moghul motif; I'd put it in the subconscious memory file, and it popped out later. Deciding on a setting for my elephant was much harder. I combined two Dover book drawings to make the elephant and rider, drew the palanquin myself based on other designs and paintings, and then I was stuck. After lots of thinking and advice, I abandoned my original idea, and planned the arch based on Persian carpets in The Grammar of Ornament.

I enjoyed this project. No matter what the outcome, it's the first challenge I've made that doesn't feel wrong to me--not my style, not what I intended, not satisfactory. I missed it when it was gone!

Great Giveaway

Michelle of With Heart and Hands is giving away a copy of Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran's new book here. Her blog is terrific to visit even without the give-away. Go visit. A recent highlight is wonderful pictures of the Sisters, Oregon show.

Scattered Progress

Working in a very random order, I've made a little progress on the pieces I posted last time. There's a brighter version of the butterfly weed as well as the original, and both are quilted, ready for applique. I will only make one, and am trying to decide which one. The brighter one looks much better in the picture, but in reality, I'm not happy with the thread color I had on hand. Then there is a partially bound piece, another ready for binding, and this one ready to finish quilting. It looks better in a close-up. The butterfly does not. How I wish I were better at free motion quilting!

New Beginnings

Isn't it a good feeling to finish a big project? After I mailed the Hoffman and got the question of what to do with Refractions resolved, I felt as though shackles had come off my ankles. In a creative spurt, I sun painted fabric (without much success), and then I put together the beginnings of several little projects I hope to send to Alz Quilts. The wonky log cabin blocks are an attempt to re-create something I did once before but no longer have, and the others are beginnings of pieces that may be interesting or may not be.

But this is my favorite.


I picked a piece of butterfly weed from the wild area beside the house, scanned it using the back of my streaky sun dyes as a background, and printed it on fabric. My idea was to use this as the home for one of Debra's butterflies, but I'm not sure it's bright enough. I can increase the color saturation and try again, or I can see what stitching does to this one. I haven't decided yet. For now, I love it the way it is.