Sometimes you're so busy you forget to really look at the things right in front of you. This is "Life is Tweet," my attempt at a row quilt I made almost ten years ago. It lives in my master bathroom and I walk past it several times a day. I sometimes forget it's there. What a shame!
It has my fun liberated birds (tutorial here), my butterflies, (tutorial here), and my asterisk flowers (tutorial here), and some wonky hearts.
I meant to have all the elements lined up in a row, but the birds refused to cooperate. The hearts seemed to bounce around with love and excitement, and just couldn't be contained. The butterflies wanted to fly (duh), and the asterisks simply lifted up into the air above.
Well.
What was I to do? I let them, because sometimes that's the way an idea works. You have a plan and what happens on the design wall changes and you have to change with it. Had I made the quilt I had originally intended to make, this quilt would have been boring and stuffy.
The quilt is enhanced with Chris Ballard's spectacular free motion hand guided quilting. It's a smallish quilt, 38" x 45". Just goes to show you can get a lot of bang for your buck out of 29 blocks.
I tell my students all the time that at some point the quilt they are making is going to start making demands. "What the quilt wants," I tell them, "the quilt should get."
I have a lot of non-quilt related stuff going on and since I haven't been in the studio for a few days, I thought you'd enjoy this little blast from the past.
7 comments:
Absolutely fabulous! Thanks for the blast from the past eye candy. The photo is perfect, shows the quilting well but also lets the quilt as a whole shine.
I do like to see quilts, but enjoy hearing about "non-quilt related stuff" too, since we all have that going on around us all the time as well. Take care!
Imagine how sad all those elements would be if you made them line up in neat little rows. If you had shown it to us that way, we'd have asked "What's wrong? Has something awful happened?"
It makes me happy! I love the “free spiritedness” of your work. Thank you for sharing.
If it had worked out in nice straight rows as planned, IMHO the quilt would have been... what's the word you hate to hear about your quilts...Nice. This version is much more interesting. Even more so when I look at it close, and see all those seam lines that show how you fit it all together. And those bits of color in the binding...very cool!
I have always liked this one - and every time I see CB's quilting now, I am amazed all over again. (love the comments so far about these NOT being lined up in a row . . . )
So, this is great. When is retirement coming to you?
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