bookworms and such....

I have not completely given up on this blog, but it does seem as the time in between posting is further and further apart... I have been working along in the studio quilts have been finished another almost there... and in between the sewing there has been a great deal of gardening and enjoying the summer. Something about summer naturally makes for a slower pace, the long days must have something to do with that. I am off to the beach next week and am really looking forward to some time away by the water. Eventually the quilts will be photographed and posted as for now... some book talk! 

I was anticipating both of these books being released. They ended up coming a week apart and I really read both of them. With quilting books sometimes it is easy to flip through them and just look, but both of these ladies did an amazing job writing about the art of sewing quilts, and their passion came through the books. The first is Carolyn Friedlander's Savor Each Stitch, she was able to write about sewing from a fine art perspective. I think that is something that needs to be done more! I was so pleased with the writing, the quilts!!!! her work is brilliant! her fabric is brilliant! and hopefully one day I will meet her! the photography in the book was also lovely, all done locally to where she is from. I love that she is so passionate about her home, it makes me think of how I feel for Richmond. 

The second book is Make and Love Quilts, by Mary Fons, I began following her through her magazine Quilty, and have since started reading her blog. As a writer she is wonderful, it is really more what she began doing, and as a quilter I love her use of tradition in a modern way. 

These two books different as far as the quilts and projects go, but both ladies are a giant inspiration to me, and they help define the modern quilt world in the art world in my opinion. I will keep these two handy and refer to them often, they are must reads for modern quilting, sewists!

collage

Another finished quilt, that was finally photographed outside is my "collage" quilt. I call this "collage" because my goal was to make fabric appear as if it were paper that was pieced together to make a pattern, that flowed through itself. Or in short... I wanted to mimic the look of old letters and ledgers and papers with the peeks of color coming through them. I am pleased with how the final project ended up. I love that it doesn't really have a beginning or an end, this pattern and play on color could go on forever, the viewer is left to decide. 

The photo above is of the back of the top, before I quilted the layers together. I was fascinated by the back on this quilt and did not want to finish it for a while longer than necessary because I wanted to admire it for a bit. I might one day do a series simply based on the backs of the pieced tops. 

The top of "collage" is all paper-pieced, and then pieced together. I did all of the top stitching on this quilt in addition to the piecing. 

The back is made of some leftover prints and larger piece of fabric. Improv style. 

Nice drape. 

camping?

I finally took photographs of this camping quilt, which was finished sometime back in the fall. The colors that I used for this are a bit out of my normal routine, but I did enjoy making this and having fun really just playing with it, with no real idea where it was going to end up. I started by paper-piecing each of the animals, or camp related objects, and then worked the rows around them. This is definitely a project that I made solely for the fun of making it. 

The back was made using leftovers and a large chunk of brown with tiny dot print fabric. I am pleased with this final outcome, and did learn to just let go and make in the process of doing it. 

January

I have decided that for this year, I want to continue using this writing platform as a way to showcase what I am making and how I bounce ideas around.... along with the things that I do in my life that I gain inspiration from, traveling, reading, exploring... I am going to use mostly instagram and photos from my phone, so that I can update more frequently. Over the past year of studio time, and part-time work I have learned that to have time to post, the editing process from my camera is very time consuming, and in the end I can convey a similar image quickly and in real-time, that is important to me. I will still photograph the finished works and other things with a real camera, I am not giving up on it completely. I am trying to get back to posting more regularly though, I hope that the more filtered photographs are still interesting to anyone that is reading. 

It has been a bitter cold start to the year with snow every week. I am not a fan of winter weather, I much prefer the regular 50-60 degree winter here in Richmond. It has definitely kept me inside sewing though, and I hope to take some quilt photos outside before the snow completely melts away. I have been working on this quilt for longer than I would have liked, with some medical stuff that came up and the holidays it was just one of those projects that has taken longer than expected. I am pleased with the way the top of the quilt turned out. I wanted a paper-collage feel to this project and I think that I have accomplished that. This week I am going to work on the back and the binding. I have decided that I want to hand tie this piece. Something about the traditional fabrics, which some are, mixed with the

un-conventional layout and the then traditional hand tying just sounds like a good mix to me. 

I love how the pieces are all meeting. 

Quilt top... I love how it keeps the eye moving around like a paper collage does. 

Also on my mind lately, the underside of textiles... how they show the structure and the shape of the piece.  

Especially loving the back of this quilt top... almost makes me not want to cover it... 

fast output.

I had the whole weekend off last week, and even extended it to Thursday and Monday... and the most amazing part is that I mostly stayed close to home. I love to travel but when I do that means that the studio work gets put on hold... well being around home a lot got done and I still had time to take a couple of day trips. On Thursday I went to the quilt expo in Fredericksburg with my mom, which was lovely,  and then on Sunday some friends, Sandra and I went to Charlottesville to see the autumn colors beginning to turn, it was a really nice time. I had some time to rest my brain as well as gather inspiration. 

The view from Blue Mountain Brewery is always one of my favorites in the Blue Ridge mountains. One of the perks of living in Richmond, is that we are an hour away from this, and two from the beach, and if I ever start to feel that I am becoming to soft from living in the south, I can fight the traffic and go home to D.C. where I am reminded of city living... anyhow I digress.. 

So with my long weekend I had finished my camp quilt, and started working on this... It is a log cabin pattern, and I made it for a little boy baby shower. I never really stick to blue for boys, pink for girls, and I have been wanting to make a black, white, grey, and minty color quilt for a while. I used the animal eyes fabric for the middle and then used dark on one side and pale on the other. I guess technically this is really a courthouse steps pattern. It came together much faster than I planned, so instead of quilting it myself I took it in to be quilted with the camping quilt. I will post better photos when they both come back home and are bound. 

I was pleased with the finished outcome, and happy that an image I had in my mind came out pretty clear once it was complete. 

how did this happen.

For her birthday, Sandra asked me to go camping, that was the only thing on the list. Camping is not something I really want to do, I have never wanted to do! I did agree to it though for a weekend in the fall, which seems to be soon approaching. I figured while I am agreeing to going camping, then I might as well make a blanket to bring and to mark the event. I am not one for theme type of quilts or "cute" themes, but I must admit that a lot of the camping related imagery is fun, and I enjoy it. So there, I found one positive thing about camping. 

I am paper piecing most of the blocks for this quilt, which is good practice for a more complicated paper piecing, which sometimes still feels like math for me. It does not always make sense. I did get a bit frustrated with some of the blocks so far, to the point that I refused to take out a mistake that I did not notice until the end. Even though it bothers me every time I look at it... I will most likely fix it one of these days. 

So there is a camper, vintage and fun. I had to add a camper. 

The tent. I wish real tents looked this cool. (Notice the trees in the background are off, yep that was me giving up.)

The fire, because there will be marsh mellows! 

And of course a canoe. ( notice the oars, yep gave up there too..) 

I am actually looking forward to going to the mountains with Sandra and some Friends in the fall on the adventure. I am going to make a couple more paper-pieced blocks and the rest will be more random. Again I am using a large assortments of fabric for this project, and was partly inspired to make it because of all the camping related fabric out there at the moment. I might leave a clean patch on the backing for everyone to sign with fabric markers, to remember "that time I agreed to go camping". 

complete.

The small paper-pieced quilt that I have been working on is now complete. It is so satisfying to finish a quilt, no matter how large or small it is a very rewarding feeling. This is a small quilt about 36 inches by 36 inches. I made this little one, as a gift for a baby shower. The parents went on Safari for their honeymoon, and I know that they love animals, so it seemed fitting. Even though I know the gender of the baby, I am not fond of pink and blue being the only solutions for baby gifts... or pastels for that matter. I used mostly neutral grey, black, white and then threw in the flamingo, elephant and safari prints.
It was a fun little project to work on that moved quickly, and I loved the quilting process on this one, which usually seems like a bit of a chore to me. I also love the way the overage of patterns works with the quilt. They are excessive I probably could have pared them down, but at the moment, I am really enjoying working with many patterns and prints at once.

For the quilting I used a grey thread and outlined each of the "books", then I sewed a 1/4'' around each of the joining corners. I love the way it turned out and the drape of the finished piece is great it folds so nicely. I think I will quilt more things like this in the future with the solid lines running up and down, creating a grid. In the past I think that sometimes I swore off quilting process because I was trying to make it too complicated, this just seemed to work. 

the finish line

It has been another busy couple of weeks, between work, going out of town and life.... Somewhere in the middle of it all I did manage to finish my "cross-quilt". This project was inspired by the traditional look of the first aid kits and of course the red cross symbol. I love the look of the simple shape and thought it would a great composition with some of my favorite collections of fabric. The design is my own the piecing is my own too. This is the first quilt that I have ever sent out to be top-stitched by Kelly Woods of i-quilt . I have always been torn on sending something out to be quilted but I must admit that I love the final outcome, and I was still able to choose the quilt pattern and thread color. I feel as if I still had all of the say in the design work and just a little time saver with the quilting... It is a nice feeling, considering that is never my favorite part of making, and long arm machines have give a really nice finished look. 

I enjoy this fuzzy picture, my camera got all fuzzy from the cold house to the HOT HOT HOT outside. 

In focus. I used 26 different fabrics all together and 5 different designers. 

The back. I am pleased with this backside. 

Nice drape. 

Paper Piecing

I recently purchased this book by Ayumi Takahashi, and despite the somewhat cheesy title, love the projects and the book itself. It is a second volume of the Zakka Style book that has become one of my favorites and this one is right up there as far as well written, and beautiful projects. The main reason that I purchased this book was the very descriptive paper piecing instructions. It has been years since I have paper-pieced anything and recently I have really wanted to because of the precision and accuracy of it. I needed a re-fresher and this had the best instructions and a lot of paper templates to copy. Definitely a good buy.

I had to practice, just like riding a bike it does come back to you, but you must make a few to get into the groove again. The more blocks I made the faster I got. The first day I made one block in two hours, it kept messing up and remembering which side of the fabric to face each way became complicated. Then the second day I made 7 blocks in 3 hours so I have definitely gotten back into the process of making a paper-pieced block. 

I either have friends getting married, or friends having babies, every couple of years it happens again like a cycle. (One day this will pass, as we get older, but I enjoy it at the moment). Since there are more babies on the way, and I love making a baby-quilt I practiced my paper-piecing on the book project inside of the Patchwork book. The fabrics above are what I am using (the parents of this baby love Safari animals.)

It took a few trials, some seam ripper action, and lots of patience... 

By the end of the day yesterday I had blocks that were successfully looking like books! I need to remember my notes on color theory though, because its funny how the shape of the book shows so well against some of the fabrics and got lost with others. Good practice, and a fun project in the works.

I took my cross-quilt to be quilted on a long arm machine, I should get it back today... I am nervous, I have never sent anything out, and even debated on if it was cheating for a while. I was re-assured by many traditional quilters that it is ok to send a quilt out to be topstitched. It is easier than working with the bulk on my small machines. Hope it comes back and I love it, then I can send others out. Which will save me time and frustration!