Growing

 

The quilt will be 60" x 72" which means eighteen rows of fifteen blocks across. So the pattern of Black-Red-Violet-Blue-Green will get repeated three times in each row. So I need 3 different prints of each color, and eighteen different lights or creams to make up each dark/light pair.

Like these.

I couldn't use scraps because I needed eighteen 2-1/2" x 4-1/2" blocks of each of 32 fabrics, so I had to use fabrics from stash. (Oh gee darn.)

I had already made some pairs and had them up on the design wall, but I wanted to know the colors and fabrics would look okay before I invested all the time in sewing up the blocks. I had already determined each pair combo had to be unique and I had had to unstitch a dozen or so blocks and I wasn't eager to have to do that again.

Once I chose my fabrics and the lights, I cut out all the pieces and then matched one pair of each color combination and lay them across the top of the design wall in the order I thought I wanted them.

That was OK, but it's time consuming to get up and down off the ladder to arrange blocks at the top of the quilt. so I arranged the cut pieces on the design where I could reach them. I set out three rows because I thought that would give me a good idea of what the design would look like.

I already knew I didn't like the way the red blocks in the long diagonal row above attracted too much attention, but I figured once I had the blocks made and the design wall covered it would be an easy enough fix to swap one red for another.

Satisfied, I cut all the pieces I needed from each fabric, and stacked them up, ready for a session of power sewing.

Stay tuned!

Oh and, yes Cherie, I might make these do some zigging and zagging, but that's another thing that's easier to do once the blocks are made.

This needs a name. Any suggestions?

Regular Rows

 I've been working on the Jewel toned Macnas quilt. The colors I am using are Red, Violet, Blue and Green. I added the Red because otherwise it would have been too dark. The Green is at the far right and it's pretty dark in the photo, but not quite as dark in real life.

I am also adding some brights on black fabric, as you can see at the left.

The pattern of colors has been established, Black, Red, Violet, Blue, Green, Black, Red, Violet, Blue, Green, etc. You can see one very bright busy light print. I shall have other bright colors on white prints in the quilt, so this won't be the only one. Also, there is no guarantee that this will be the exact arrangement of fabrics. Things may will shift.

Home Work

 We've all been there. When the house gets just a little bit messier than you can stand and you have to stop everything and clean it all up so that's what I focused on last week. 

I cleaned up the various places in the house where stuff had piled up. I tamed the paper tiger in the office and did all the shredding. I got all the paperwork together to get my taxes done, and I actually dusted all the rooms in the house!

That and I did my taxes.

After that was done, I decided to review an idea for a quilt I had that didn't work. Back in December I was making a Macnas quilt using Jewel-toned colors and grays. It just didn't work. You can see that here.

I wanted to see if I could incorporate some of those jewel-gray pairs with some of the other jewel toned blocks I had cut with some white and neutral lights. I thought it would be fun if I could arrange the blocks like the Blitzen quilt. 

I put some of the gray pairs on the wall with some the jewel toned blocks and some of the lights I had already cut. The result was underwhelming, as you can see above. I had hoped that diagonal rows of colors would work with different fabrics, but it didn't. I knew I would have to make the diagonal rows of blocks in the same fabric to get what I wanted.

In order to make the blocks the way I had wanted, I had had to take apart some of the blocks I had made previously.

Here I have removed the pieces that weren't working and I have made three diagonal rows of blocks - purple, blue and green. The photo is dark, but the idea works and I will carry on with it.

Dancing Jewels is a Flimsy

 

The Dancing Jewels quilt is now a flimsy. I am really happy with it. It's 65" x 83."

Now that the flimsy is all sewn, all the blocks fit on the design wall and you can see how the blocks play together. I really like that interplay.

Assembling Dancing Jewels

 

I've started ro assemble the blocks for the Dancing Jewels quilt. As you can see I'm pressing the seams open.

I've sewn the blocks together into half rows, because I think the longer full rows get unwieldy to work with.

As I was placing the rows on the design wall I noticed I had two edge blocks with the same fabric. Can't have that, so I removed the duplicate block.

I made a new block and put it back where it belonged.

In the photo above, the entire left side of the quilt is sewn together, and I am working on the blocks on the right side. What's nice is you can begin to see how the larger blocks on the perimeter of the quilt flow together into a really interesting pattern.  It's also nice to see it with all the blocks flat on the design wall.

The more I work on this quilt the more I like it. I've chosen a pretty terrific fabric for the backing and that's on order.

Dancing Jewels Tinkering

 

Sometimes you (well, I) make a quilt and I put blocks up on the wall and I can already tell that no matter how I arrange the blocks the quilt is going to look good. I do tinker because if I put the blocks up in an orderly fashion, then sometimes I have blocks made with the same fabrics together in one area of the quilt and I really want them distributed throughout.

So after not a lot of tinkering I had this, above, and while I liked the arrangement of the colors and fabrics, I really wanted to make the shapes "dance," so I went back and rotated many blocks.

Here is the result, and I have decided I will sew this together. 

I did not want it to be "perfect." I did not want to make the secondary shapes blend into each fabric gradually. Sometimes there is a break. This is because  I had fabrics of different values and I wanted to spread them all around. I didn't want the quilt to look forced or overworked. Part of the charm of this whole curved seam thing is that the blocks are unique and unexpected, and if you're headed down that road, you have to keep going. I wasn't going to make unique and unusual blocks and then arrange them in a traditional manner.

I make a lot of quilts with geometric shapes. It's one of the things I like best about quilts. I love the surface design, the narrow "picture space." What I mean by that is if you look at a landscape painting, you might see a foreground, a middle ground and a background. Lots of space between near and far. A narrow picture space means the design is basically two-dimensional and is "flat." This quilt is like that. 

The blue Macnas quilt also is made from essentially two colors and one alternating shape, but it doesn't feel like the purple and orange quilt. The quilts are about the same size, but you don't have a sense of a flattened picture space in the blue one. It feels like you have more space to breathe. 

I think the difference is the value. There is a big difference between white and dark blue, but a much smaller range of values between the oranges and the purples. So the purple and orange quilt seems very much "in your face."

Pretty interesting, huh?

Anyway, I love the sass and the verve of the Dancing Jewels quilt. It isn't at all what I thought it was going to be when I started, and I wasn't at all sure it was going to work, but everybody who sees pictures of it responds instantly with at "WOW" or "I love it."

Works for me.

Coincidentally, today is the Nephew's birthday!

Dancing Jewels

 I finished sewing the blocks for the purple and orange quilt, now known as DANCING JEWELS. I am very excited about this and like it very much. Now the real work begins of tinkering with this to make it better.

I love the way the shapes transform into oddly shaped diamonds. I love the way they get fatter, and then skinnier and shift from one side to the other.

Here are some details so you can see how the various fabrics play together.

I have yet to make any decisions about how I arrange the blocks.

Oddly enough, I'm not sure it will make much difference whether I tinker with this or not. We'll see, but what I love about this is the way it doesn't do anything like you think it ought to.

Get Out! See Art!

This is not a quilt. It's a painting.

This is a very close up so you can see the paint. Sometimes it's flat, sometimes it's like a blob of paint. In fact, near the (C) of the watermark, there is a small piece of mirror. When you walk past the painting, the light hits the mirrors and reflects back at you and the piece looks like it's twinkling. Truly astonishing.

Here's another by the same artist.

These were at a show called "Embellish Me" at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester NH. The pieces are part of the Pattern & Design Movement of the 1970's. I never knew that was a thing.

This was one of eight large paintings by Wendy Edwards, a New England artist, that was also on display. I love the colors in this and the colors certainly inspire me to use them in a quilt somehow.

I'm always telling people to go visit their local Art Museum, or any Art Museum in their area. There's always something very interesting to see. There were new works that have just been added to the Currier's collection that I loved, and pieces on loan from other museums I had never seen before. I was really glad I went, and I always find something exciting.

I love the way this gallery displays ceramic pieces against the window, with the neighboring buildings in the background. The juxtaposition was wonderful and very thought provoking.

So take this opportunity to get out and see Art. Don't worry about what's on exhibit, just go and walk around, look at stuff and see what strikes your fancy.

Karma

 

Life is full of coincidences. These are my water bottles. The purple one is the one I use when I go to the gym, and the orange one is the one I use for my carbonated water that I keep in my fridge. They are rarely on the counter at the same time so the connection to the Porange quilt didn't really occur to me until I saw them together.

Porange Grows

In order to get the seams to match in the hourglass bocks for the Purple and Orange quilt, I had to do some pinning. So while I watched tv, I pinned the blocks I had ready.

Then the next morning I sewed the blocks, trimmed them and threw them up on the design wall. 

I have added space for the extra row I mentioned yesterday.

I can tell you the more blocks I add, the better I like this. I think it glows like a jewel.

Porange continued

 OK, this penchant for creating a name for a couple that combines their names is kind of silly. Ben-ifer (for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez) or Polin (Penelope and Colin on Bridgerton). Yeah, I get it, but until I get a better idea for a name for the new Purple and Orange quilt, I'm just gonna call it Porange. Better suggestions welcomed.

This is the outer rows, or border as it were. Normally this quilt would have 12 row of 10 6" blocks, so that would make it 60" x 72". Works for me, I'm less than 60" tall, but my nephew is six feet tall, or 72", so this had to grow a tiny bit. I suppose I could add an additional row (not really a bad idea and I have enough fabric...) Anyway the blocks shown above are going to be 6" x 8" so now the quilt will be 64" x 76". If I add another row it will be 64" x 82". The blocks in the corner are 8" square. The blocks in the middle will be 6" square. This is based on a quilt from Sujata Shah's book Cultural Fusion Quilts, which is still in print. You want more details, you'll have to get Sujata's book. It's worth every cent.

When I cut the fabric for this on Sunday, I cut exactly enough fabric to make exactly enough blocks. So having all the pieces cut, it is pretty simple to get these blocks together. First job is to pair them up, then slice them, then sew them, then press, then slice again and then sew again and press again. Maneuvering these curved pieces through the sewing machine (without pins) means hunching over, and, as I have said, that gets tiring. I can do about 20-30 in one sitting. 

I had to buy some purple and orange fabrics, and me being me, this time I bought some fabrics that were more than just blenders. And me being me, I wanted to play with the fun fabrics first. You can figure out which ones those are.

While this is exactly what I expected it to look like, it left me a little underwhelmed.

Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing BAD about this. It just doesn't get me all jazzed up or excited. My friend The Selvage Fairy commented once "... It's interesting to me that the worst thing you can say about one of your quilts is that it's 'nice.'"

It reminds me of a lot of black and white fabrics. We all know how much I LOVE Black and White together. But sometimes fabrics that are equally black and white just look gray to me. And that to me is not BLACK and WHITE. 

I think (Lynne gets on soapbox here) that's the same problem with a lot of Red, White and Blue quilts I see. Yes, many Quilts of Valor are included in this category. The Red and Blue are often of equal value (light/dark) so from a distance they blend together into ... mush. If the Red and Blue shapes are next to each other, they lose their definition and become a blob, or mush. (Lynne steps down from soapbox.)

So when I made my Red White and Blue quilt, Fourth of July, I deliberately chose Reds that were closer to Red Orange and Blues that were cool, clear blues, and I kept the two of them apart.

Fourth of July Quilt

So the Red sings and the Blue sings. But they are separated by White, which allows them both to shine.

The purple and orange quilt, while certainly being PURPLE and ORANGE, kinda blends into something like mush to me, and mush isn't exciting no matter what you do with it. I can't really keep these colors apart, because adding white or beige would dilute the orange and besides, my nephew asked for PURPLE and ORANGE.

Normally when faced with such a conundrum, I generally LEAVE THE STUDIO, and stop looking at it. But before I went to bed I just had to go back in there and give it another look.

Then I had an idea. I mention this because SOMETIMES being tired, with all your brain cells NOT FUNCTIONING, your creative brain will allow you to see or try something your conscious brain had previously rejected.

And THIS, I like. So I am going down that road instead. 

Stay tuned.

Moving Along

 

The Yellow Macnas quilt is now a flimsy. I have turned my attention to the new purple and orange quilt for my nephew. These are the fabrics I cut into squares for his quilt.

The design will be very similar to the Orange quilt I made last year, Carnelian. It is modified hourglass blocks made with curves, from Sujata Shah's book Cultural Fusion Quilts.

The quilt will have three different blocks - a large square block eight inches square; a rectangular block six inches by eight inches, and then six inch square blocks which will make up the body of the quilt. The four large blocks will be in the corners, and the rectangular blocks will make sort of a border.

Rather like this. Bear in mind I've got to make a lot of blocks before you can see what the design will really look like and I can tell if it will really work or not.

I've made the four blocks for the corners, and here are the pieces that will form the "border."

I do them in small groups because I get hunched up over the sewing machine and my shoulders get sore.

The original quilt (above) was made with mostly blender-ish prints, but as you can tell from the first photo above I have included fabrics with larger prints and prints that have additional colors, so we'll see how it all turns out.

Incidentally, I think this is one of the best "beauty shots" of any I have ever taken. The fence the quilt is thrown over has since been painted bright white and reflectors have been added to it, so it is no longer quite the setting it used to be.

***Mary Ellen, I have never taught a bird class outside of New York and New England. Contact me directly through my email address (at right) for answers to your question.

In Two Chunks

 

The Yellow Macnas quilt is in two chunks.  I ironed the bottom half yesterday morning (and figured out an easier way to do it than the way I was doing it. I was listening to some acrobatic team skiing event at the Olympics.

We had MORE SNOW last night.

This is what it looked like outside my front window when I got up Saturday morning.

And we are supposed to get MORE SNOW Sunday night into Monday. It could be a LOT of snow. 

Sigh.

Yellow Again and Hockey

 

The top half of the yellow quilt is gone. Where did it go?

It's here. I decided to web the quilt top together. Because this is stressful for my shoulders, I do half the quilt at a time.

I worked on this Wednesday before Swim Class.

I sewed the rows together the next morning, then I pressed it and went to my Tai Chi class.

When I got back from Tai Chi, the USA Women's Hockey Team was playing Canada, and they were behind. I was so nervous I could barely watch, so I webbed the second half of the quilt together. I finished just as the US team scored, and went to sit on the couch to watch the rest. The US ladies won in overtime.

Needless to say I didn't get to ironing the second part. That will come.

Friday I did housework and meal prep. I also watched the men play hockey. It's amazing how differently the men played compared to the women

The new purple and orange fabrics arrived for my nephew's quilt and I ran them through the washer and dryer. They need to be ironed also. And yes, I knew just what I was doing when I selected that eggplant fabric.

I'll be teaching the Scrap Slab Traingle Quilt class at the Night Owl Quilting Studio in Amherst NH some Saturday in August. Haven't nailed down which one just yet.