The Replacements

Before I start telling you about the replacement four patch diamonds I've been making, I need to remind you of something.

The quilt I am making - the PINK one - my idea for it was that it would be overwhelmingly PINK. I wanted it to "read" as PINK, not Pink With Other Colors, but MOSTLY PINK. And for this particular quilt, I really don't want the individual fabrics to stand out and sing on their own. I want the fabrics to sing in a chorus. After that sinks in, I want the quilt to slowly reveal its true fabrics, and the underlying design.

That IDEA, is my IDEA, and my interpretation of that IDEA is the thing I have been comparing the quilt that is ACTUALLY in development on my design wall against.

These pink on creams "read" as a light pink and I like the way they look.

What happens on my design wall has not necessarily been BAD or even MEDIOCRE. Many of the iterations of the quilt I have been working on are perfectly FINE, but they do not match the IDEA I have in my head so that's why I have been pushing things around.

I say this because I don't want any of you to think there is only ONE way out of a particular problem or puzzle you set for yourself. Very often there are NO Wrong Answers, and you simply have to choose the one that sings for you.

I live for problems like this. Oscar Wilde said once about creativity, "Oh, the anxiety. I hope it lasts forever."  That's just it. I just LOVE cracking the nut. I LOVE pushing an idea around to reveal that extra something that was hidden. I LOVE finding the way something can be JUST THAT MUCH BETTER. My friend Julie says, "You play for keeps."  Hell yeah.

What I didn't like about the cream fabrics in the little four patch diamonds was the way they commanded your attention. They were the lightest light in the whole quilt, so they popped forward (Light areas pop forward, dark areas sink back. That's not just me blabbering. That is a Design Rule.)

I didn't want them to be so prominent, so I had to do something to them to tone them down and push them back visually. So they had to be a darker value. Since this quilt was to be PINK, they should "read" as pink. We had a snowstorm the other day, so I stayed home to sew. Couldn't go fabric shopping so I had to shop in my stash.

I found two pink on creams, and three other pinky fabrics that were pale enough for me, and got to work.

The colors here are pretty much the same ones I selected in this post, except where I ran out of fabric and had to substitute something else or if I thought there wasn't enough contrast between the pink "background" fabric of the four patches and the pink of the colored diamonds.

This is sorta what I am looking for. The light isn't great and only the giant diamonds will stay where they are, but I think this photo gives you an idea where I am headed, and now the background little diamonds do not look like six million white butterflies arranged like a marching band on top of my quilt. (and hey, if I WANTED it to look like white butterflies in a marching band, guess what? I know how to do that! LOL)

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Thanks for all comments, all the time, everyone. You always make me think, and that's good, but I did want to respond to the comments in yesterday's post.


1. Elaine, I have family in LA. Hell yeah I'd love to give a class when I visit. Email me privately and we can work it out. I like to visit twice a year.

2. Melody, like I said above, there is more than one correct answer. I have a requirement, so I want this quilt to meet it. Hey, I could be dead wrong. If so, I'll change it up.

3. Swooze, hell no, I won't dye them. Not only is dyeing NOT my forte, but one of my core beliefs is to use fabric the way I find it. I actually prefer to work within that big limitation. It makes things more interesting, more challenging, and allows me to feel much more virtuous satisfied when I pull it off.

4. Karen, yeah, making quilts on the fly results in a lot of orphans, but sometimes great stuff happens with those leftover bits. The quilt that lives on my bed (and has since 2011) was made by my best friend Julie out of a box of my leftover odds and ends. It's called "Magic Happens." Read about that quilt here.

5. Julie (the best friend I talked about in # 4) Yes! Yes! Yes! Read about Magic Happens here too.

6. Glen, THANKS! It's always fun to write about something I am working on and have somebody tell me they get it too!

7. Sharon, it's actually better with the visual effect of somebody slapping their foreHEAD, which is how I finally "got it".

8. Audrey, thank you. Being a little loose with an idea creatively leads to many more options, and as far as I am concerned, much more interesting and lively quilts.

9. Robby, thank you and welcome. How did I get the eye to put fabrics together? Sorry, I have absolutely no clue. HOWEVER... I have written a tutorial that may help you. It is called "Making Your Fabric Work For You," and you can get it here, in my Etsy shop. It's an instant download, so you can get it right away.

10. And to Sewgirl, from Wednesday's post, who thanked me for sharing the ups and downs of my process, you are most welcome. I really don't think seeing only the end result is much help to quilters who are struggling to find their own voice. We all learn more from our mistakes than our successes, and my strongest reason to blog is to SHARE my process with everyone.


I'm going to be teaching a Barns class at Quilted Threads on Saturday and won't get back into the sewing studio until Sunday, if then, so this blog will be quiet for a few days. I still have six more strip pairs to sew up into four patch diamonds before I can design the quilt in earnest, but don't worry, I'll bring you along every step of the way. Enjoy your weekend.

Magic Happens

Magic Happens is here! These are my friends, Daniela and Maryann, holding the quilt up. They both loved it.
Everybody loves the back - it's all black and white fabrics. How perfect!
The quilt was a real show-stopper as it hung on the dividing wall on my "office." Even the guys stopped by to comment and ask questions. ("Who are Julie and Chris?")
Chris quilted it in a variegated black-and-white thread. It makes me think of my tuxedo cat, Millie! I love it!
Can you tell?

Julie, Chris, our collaboration has been fabulous! Thank you both so much!

Special Friends!

Regular readers know about my quilting friends Julie (of Me & My Quilts ~ Exploring the Possibilities)

and Chris (who quilts my quilts, her blog is Quilting4U)
They live in Tennessee, about 1250 miles away from me. They are the "Fairy Godmothers" of my alphabet sampler quilt, Letters From Home.

They've done so much for me, I wanted to send them each a special gift. When I saw the "Just Bobbin Along" necklace from Pieceful Designs, I knew I had found it! I ordered one for Chris, and one for Julie. Once they arrived, I had to figure out how to present them in a way that would be special, fun and memorable

In the serendipitous way things happen, an idea came to me while I was thinking about something else. I knew that Chris and Julie were planning to meet at their lqs to exchange quilts. Chris had finished quilting my quilt Nine x Nine, and Julie wanted to give her the Hidden Potential and Magic Happens flimsies.

So I packed each gift with a note, and then sent the box containing Chris's gift to Julie, and the box with Julie's quilt to Chris. I emailed each of them and wrote I had a special gift for the other one, and would they be willing to deliver it for me when they met next, but not to say anything... that it was a surprise!

The boxes shipped out on Tuesday, and I've been waiting on pins and needles ever since. Both Chris and Julie emailed me during the week to say they had received the boxes, and would deliver them to the other on Saturday.

Neither one knew about the other's package until the two boxes landed side by side!!To see what happens next, you have to visit Julie's blog!

All I can tell you is that what I thought would happen, did happen!

Duds, Glorious Duds!

Every word quilt I make generates lots of duds or "misfit" letters.

These are from Nine x Nine.

The letters in the lower half of this photo are the "duds" from my quilt Daft Zebras.

The only letters worth keeping in this photo were the "out of the box" ones that formed an arc above the box in The Black Box quilt.

The BOX letters on the bottom of this photo are all duds.

Now, duds aren't BAD letters, they just don't "work" with the rest of what I've made. So I set them aside. I might use them in another project, and I might even raid them for bits of fabric.

But most of my dud letters have made their way to my friend Julie.

 Back at the end of 2010 she told me I should send her my dud letters "because students need to see that the first letters they make aren't BAD and can still be used to make a beautiful quilt."

 She made this quilt, Hidden Potential, for me. I love it.  I then sent her another box of my leftover bits including some houses, stars, butterflies and other stuff.

The result was this quilt, Magic Happens, a collaboration between Julie, Chris (our fabulous long arm quilter) and me. I love this one so much it lives on my bed.

Julie and I have talked about how she takes what I consider a dud and makes magic out of it. "When I get your castoff letters, they don't have any negative associations for me," she says. "So it's easy for me to use them in something new."

Good point!  Check out what Julie made with my castoff letters from the Black Box, Red Letter Alphabet and Mashed Potato Crayons.

The letters may be mine, but the rest, Create With Abandon, is all Julie's.

The lesson, Rebecca, is that it's all in how you look at it; that inspiration, and (hidden) potential, is everywhere.

Even in the castoff bin!

Lynne & Julie: Swapping Duds and Making Magic

In late 2010 I was planning a class on free pieced letters, and I wanted a sampler that showed different kinds of letters.

The quilt Nine x Nine was the result.

As usual, making the quilt generated a lot of dud letters.

 "Send them to me!" Julie wrote, "I'll make a quilt out of them. They are duds to YOU, but your students need to know it's still possible to make a great quilt!" I sent her all my dud letters, and then I prepared another box full of ALL the leftover bits I had squirreled away - mini trees, asterisks, butterflies, some free pieced houses and anything else I could find.

Julie had no negative associations with my box of duds, and she made this quilt. There were so many pieces Julie would make a second quilt. She said it would be the back. While she worked on that, I had an idea.

 I had been making a Rules quilt for myself, and made this black and white RULES word, which wouldn't work in the quilt. I looked at it and saw "jULiE" and "chRiS". OH HELL! Chris would quilt the quilt Julie was planning... so I went into the studio...

Using the letters from RULES, I made JULIE and CHRIS. I put them in the box, sealed it up to mail it to Julie the next day. Then I went to bed.

I'm lying it bed and it hits me.. SHIT!

The next day after work I went into the studio, and prepared something else for Julie and put THAT in the mail the next day.

Two days later, Julie wrote to me, "Lynne... I just got your box... I have an idea...."

"CHECK YOUR MAIL TOMORROW!" I wrote back.

We had BOTH had the same idea. Since the quilt would be made from my letters and bits and pieces, and JULIE would be putting the pieces together and CHRIS would be quilting it, it would be a three way collaboration. It only made sense to have all three of our names on the quilt.

 As soon as I saw this picture of the "back" of the quilt, I told Julie I wanted a second quilt, and that I'd pay for the quilting. This was too good to be only the back of something. Julie included three houses in the quilt, and her explanation was: "Our houses have brown on the ground because we don't have any snow here in the winter. Your house (with the red roof) has white on the ground because you have snow right now."

I didn't have the heart to tell Julie that I when I made that house I envisioned it as a house on the Mediterranean Sea in bright sunlight with a tiled roof and surrounded by flowers. Heck, I'd take that as my house! Funnily enough, years later I would buy a house surrounded by flowers with a red door.

This is the picture Julie sent me back in 2011 as she enjoyed the quilt before sending it to me.

I was thrilled when the quilt arrived.

I went home that night in 2011 and put the quilt on my bed, and it has stayed there ever since. If that isn't the highest compliment you can give a quilt, I don't know what is.

But don't feel bad for the "Hidden Potential" quilt Julie made. It comes with me to every quilt class and lecture I give. I want students to know that even things they think are "duds" (I no longer consider them "failures") have potential.

I was going to show this photo later in the story, but as Julie pointed out, it really belongs here. This is me, Julie & Chris (l to r) and the Magic Happens quilt. Julie reminded me that Chris quilted the quilt with black and white variegated thread, because my cat Millie is black and white and "her furs will be right at home."

It's a GO!

It's official! I'll be teaching a class on free pieced letters at Quilted Threads, in Henniker NH, on Saturday October 22, 2011 from 10 - 4! You can follow this link to get more information. (You'll have to scroll down a little bit.)

I'll have all my word quilts with me, Letters From Home, The Quick Brown Fox, Nine x Nine, White Cat Rules and The Black Cat's Rules along with Make It Work, Daft Zebras, Tonya's Live, Love as well as both of the quilts Julie made using my "misfit letters," Hidden Potential and Magic Happens.

I am absolutely thrilled and excited! Hope to see you all there!

The Three of Us

Dear Son, your Mom can take "selfies" too!

This is me, Julie and Chris holding one of our collaboration quilts, "Magic Happens." I made the blocks and the letters, Julie put them all together into a flimsy, and Chris did the quilting (in black and white variegated thread because Millie, my black and white cat, would be napping on the quilt).
 

 We spent my last day in Memphis at Chris's house. When we got there, Chris had my Spools quilt all ready for me. It's beautifully quilted, and I'll finish it next week, when it and all my other quilts return from their extended stay at Julie's.

Chris has always talked about making letters, so I gave her a lesson.  She picked it up right away and made some beauties. Here she is working on an upper case "C" in which the fish echo the shape of the letter.

These are the letters Chris made. As you can see, she also made an asterisk and a butterfly. 

Chris couldn't believe it when I saw this collection of threads in the bottom of her wastebasket near Iris, her long arm quilting machine. ("OH NO! She's looking at the ONE place I didn't clean!!!")

This is a great example of how colors jumbled together willy-nilly can give you ideas.

You never know where you can find inspiration, but as this shows, it's everywhere.

I had a FABULOUS time in Memphis and St Louis! It was awesome. A very deep and heartfelt "Thank you" to all the wonderful people I met, from the quilters to the folks at the hotel, and all the folks at the restaurants and stores we visited, and to the strangers we met at the Gateway Arch.

Thank you one and all!

Change of Pace

A few weeks ago I wrote about retiring my sampler quilt, "Letters From Home." What I meant was I wanted to give it a rest from hanging and being exposed to light and dirt.  So I did just that. (The quilt on the bed is "Magic Happens", made by my pal Julie from all my leftover bits, and quilted by our friend Chris.)

I rolled it up around a cardboard tube, and tied it gently with fabric scraps.

It's now resting comfortably in the closet in my "spare" room.

I've hung the Four Seasons quilt in its place to enjoy. I was working on this quilt last Thanksgiving, and this year my Holiday guests will be able to enjoy it with me.