Fifty-Eight Carats

 

The Fifty-Eight Carats quilt is finished. It is named because there are 58 unique prints in the quilt. Each is used only once. It is not meant to be a colorwash quilt. I do not want the colors to blend into one another. I want you to see the edges of the diamonds that appear and disappear. One of the fabrics is from 1984. Most are from 2007-2019. I took me about ten days to design. It wasn't easy. There was a lot of grumbling. There are 58 fabrics in this, but I'm pretty sure I went through at least 100 to find the ones that worked.

Thought you'd enjoy seeing the quilt in real space, so you can get a good idea of how big it really is.

The Quiet Room

 It's my birth month, and that means I have to register my car and get it inspected. So on Saturday I brought my car to the dealership. I prefer to wait in their "Quiet Room."

I brought the Fifty-Eight Carats quilt so I could finish sewing the hanging sleeve.

I brought my little mending kit with me. It has everything I need.

It's a chocolate tin. Pretty sure I bought it because I thought the tin was cool, not just for the chocolates inside.

Setting the quilt on the dark gray carpet really shows off the multicolor binding.

58 Carats, Bound!

 

This is my quilt, 58 carats, so named because there are 58 unique fabrics in this quilt. Each diamond is different. There are a few prints that are represented with multiple colorways, and 80% of the fabrics came from my stash. One is over 30 years old. Many are a dozen years old. This quilt was not intended to be a colorwash style quilt, where the colors blend into each other. I wanted the edges here. I wanted to colors to look like layers or steps. What's really special about these fabrics is that they are "Giants." The vast majority of them are REALLY BIG PRINTS, what I call DIVAS. These are not necessarily designed to work with other big prints, they are designed to be the star of their own show.

In the movie Amadeus, Mozart talks about the final song in the third act of The Marriage of Figaro, where he has 11 people singing their own songs at the same time, "and it isn't noise." This quilt aims to do that kind of thing.

The binding is sewn, but now I have to sew the hanging sleeve on the back. I have discovered "The Repair Shop" on Netflix, so I have been watching that (along with the tennis in Oz) as I sew this up.

 

I'm truly sorry if you don't like opera, because The Marriage of Figaro is four hours of the most beautiful music ever written. Have you seen The Shawshank Redemption? Do you remember the scene where "the two Italian ladies sing?" That's from The Marriage of Figaro. Magic at its finest. If you are interested in opera, start with The Magic Flute, also by Mozart, and see if you can get a copy of the libretto (the "book") so you can follow along and understand what's happening. It's a comedy and quite wonderful. If you can't stand opera, don't bother leaving me a comment to say so.

Fantastic Voyage

 

I've got the binding all sewn onto the 58 Carats quilt, now I just have to hand sew it down. I got it all ready the other night and then I saw Millie letting me know in no uncertain terms that SHE ruled the roost. She didn't care if this was an "Art" Quilt, she was going to fur it up.  

Um no.

I like the fabric I'm using for the binding. For the most part it blends in with the dark navy background, but there is just enough color to make it interesting.

But that's not what I wanted to write about. 

You all know of my love of blue painter's tape and how it is useful for so many things. I keep a roll in my kitchen to label the plastic bins I put in the fridge. HUMMUS, CHICKEN STOCK, VEG STOCK, COCONUT MILK, BBQ SAUCE, PESTO, etc. etc. 

Well. The kitchen wastebasket is big and plastic and the last time I emptied it I noticed the bottom had a big crack in it. It's not a huge deal as I use the big plastic bags that can stretch and stretch and are pierce resistant. But I was at the big box hardware store last week and I decided to get a new one, since I was out and about. (A rare thing nowadays, as you all know.)

So I've replaced it, and now I have to throw the bad one out. I'm thinking that if I just put it out at the curb the trash guys are going to empty the stuff in their truck and then dump it back on my lawn. So the other night when I was putting the trash and recycling to the curb, I decided I should make a sign for the cracked wastebasket. I grabbed a couple of pieces of paper and wrote, "TAKE ME, I'M BROKEN" and grabbed the blue painter's tape and went outside and did all my stuff. The trash and recycle bins live under my carport, so I put the tape on the hood of the car while I got everything ready. I taped the signs to the wastebasket and put all the stuff out at the curb.

Yesterday morning, I looked outside and sure enough, it had worked. The guys had taken my cracked wastebasket away.

Once a week because of work I have to drive into the center of town to bring stuff to the Post Office. I did that yesterday afternoon. It's about a five mile ride to the PO through a winding road that follows the river and then winds through town. On the way home I stopped at the mail house and picked up my mail, then drove back home. As I am gathering up my things I happen to look out the windshield and I see something funny on the hood of my car.

Yeah.

Finishing up Fifty-Eight Carats

 

You remember this. It's my Fifty-Eight Carats quilt. (Fifty-Eight or 58, I can't remember.) Now that the Asterisk flower flimsy is done, I am finishing up this one.

I used the leftover backing fabric to make the hanging sleeve.

I finally found a use for these binding clips.

This is the binding. 

I have a lot of hand sewing in my future over the next few days.

Backing for 58 Carats

I always like to lay out my quilts on the backing I have chosen so I can be sure it is big enough before I hand it off to my long arm quilter.

Over the long weekend I ironed the backing I chose for the big diamond quilt, 58 Carats.

And because I hadn't trimmed it down, I thought I had better fold the edges over to make sure.

Am I glad I did! Look at this hole in the corner! Each of the four corners looked like this. I had to add fabric! I didn't need much, but from where? I didn't have more.           

Well, if the edge of the quilt was the point of the big printed diamonds, then I could trim these dark blue shapes smaller and use them to fill in those corners.

So that is what I did. This was one of those times when I could either do it or take pictures, and I just did it, and didn't take pictures. As you can see, it worked out fine. Thank goodness!

Here it is, ready to go. It was hard to find the right backing for this, so I ended up choosing a batikish backing with lots of colors all over it. You won't see any of that on the front of the quilt.

I'm So Charming!

Charm quilt:  A charm quilt is typically a one patch quilt where no fabric is used more than once.

THEREFORE:

This is a Charm Quilt. (Magic Carpet)
I feel charming...

This is a Charm Quilt. (Fifty-Eight Carats)
Oh so charming...

This is a Charm Quilt. (Geode)
It's alarming how charming I feel...

All three of these quilts are made with one block (in this case a large diamond) and in each of them, each fabric is used only once.

I love nothing more than strictly adhering to a rule and blasting it to smithereens at the same time.

Sadly, I have been asked if there are patterns for each of these quilts. (Cut large diamonds from 58-65 large prints and then arrange them as desired.)

Yeah, no pattern. Sorry folks.

Sorry, not sorry.



lyrics from "I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story.

58 Carats Sewn Up!

This is the Fifty-Eight Carats quilt all sewn up. It's amazing how much the fabrics and colors "blend" so much better when it's sewn up.

I sent a picture to my son and his reply was immediate. "Tell me about the solid black parts." This is where photographs don't work so well. This is not a solid black fabric. It's actually a dark blue batik with gold squares printed on it. I am using the wrong side. It is DARK, which I wanted, but not SOLID BLACK, which I did not want. You can see better in the photo above.

Years ago I read a story and in the story was an art teacher from the late 1800's who wanted to make a quilt. The quilt "looked like it fell out of a kaleidoscope" and that description reminds me of this quilt. I didn't set out to make a quilt that looked like it fell out of a kaleidoscope, but that's the kind of stuff that happens when you let a design develop on it's own and respond to what's happening in front of you.

Fifty-Eight Carats

This is what I'll be sewing together. There are 58 unique fabrics, so I am going to call this quilt Fifty-Eight Carats, because carats is how you measure a gemstone, and a diamond is a gemstone.

For all of you who really want to see differences, here is the first quilt, Magic Carpet, which will be flying to my son and his family later this year.

One of Those Days

You know how you have a day filled with errands and at the end you think you didn't get anything done? So here's what I did on Saturday.

1. Picked up my Mom

2. Drove to the Portsmouth Fabric Company where I bought lots of fabric.

3. Had lunch at the Pink Bamboo right down the street.

4. I drove to Hampton Falls past the barn I love so much.

5. I picked up a couple of quilts from Janet-Lee.

6. Walked around Portsmouth stopping in a couple of shops... The Elephantine Bakery, Corks &  Curds (wine and cheese).

7. Stopped in at the Flower Kiosk and bought flowers for my house and a wreath for my Mom's door.

8. Stopped in at the Lindt store in Exeter and bought an assortment of their truffles for the bowl in my living room. 

9. Went to Staples and then to the grocery store for a few things I needed.
10. Got home and made dinner.
11. Washed all my fabric.

12. Went into the studio and cut blocks and did some rearranging. This isn't the final final final, but it's damned close. I decided to use the same dark fabric around the colored blocks. It's actually a batik with little gold squares, but I am using the wrong side.

So it was actually a pretty good day.

Getting Closer...

(Remember that line from the very first "Star Wars"? If you saw it in a movie theater, like I did, after waiting in the longest line for a movie you ever saw, in the first two weeks after it came out... yeah.)

This is getting a lot closer. Ignore the diamonds that rest on the floor, they are merely placeholders for some dark fabric to be added later. I have been working on the lower corners, getting them to blend better and show off the rings. The upper left area of pinkish tones is still muddy and mushy. Hopefully my shopping excursion will yield good results.

I left these pictures VERY LARGE so you can click on them and see all the details of the fabrics.

Here is a cropped version so you can see that the finished quilt may look like.

Diamond Merry Go Round

You're probably looking at this and thinking I am crazy, that I didn't do anything. BUT I DID! I moved some of the stuff from the lower left to the lower right, and I moved stuff from the lower right to the upper right.

I felt all those areas were too dark and I wanted to make more color variation at the bottom and upper right. It may not be a hit-you-over-the-head difference, but it's there. I think some of the diagonal rows created by the diamonds are more visible and you can see them overlapping (sorta) and going around each other.

I may have to go shopping. This is getting to be too good to just "settle."


Jano Mom, see this post about what I use to cut the diamonds.

Diamonds Dancing Like Demons!

I'm going to vent in a bit, so bear with me. I really do love being an artist and making quilts and making weird stuff, and pushing the edge of every design envelope I can find, but the going is rarely smooth.

I designed this, the first diamond quilt in one day. I was feeling pretty proud of myself. Well, we all know where THAT leads. I knew there were some things that were not working in yesterday's version, and I thought it would be an easy fix.

 After dinner last night I went into the studio and started "tinkering."

At some point I figured out I was NOT making a colorwash quilt with giant prints. I was making a quilt of diamonds, that were part of bigger, overlapping diamonds, that blended in and out of each other, and to make that happen, I had to make you see their edges, so I did NOT want them to blend. So I had to move them. After a couple of hours I had this, and I thought it was pretty much IT.

Then I looked again. SH*T, I had that bright pink at the top left edge that stuck out. Had to fix that.

Rummage through stash. Curse.

OK! Ta-da! GOT IT! Then I looked at the picture above and I saw IT! The fly in the ointment. The block that JUST WOULD NOT sit back and relax. You can find it. It's the pretty one in the lower left, with the pink flowers. CRAP! I tried moving it to a couple of places, but it just would not play nicely with me.

A bit more swearing and fabric shuffling and I have this. YES, I know I have to fill that triangular space at the bottom, but that's not all that hard to do, and it can wait. The corner is now darker than I would like it to be, but I really am running out of unique big prints. Rather I should say I have run out. I don't really want to go shopping, because I can't take my design wall with me, and you never really know what will fit until you try it.

Now I can hear some of you already. "Um, Lynne. There's more dark space on the right. Your quilt looks a little off balanced."

Um, no. That vertical row of diamonds at the far right are the edge pieces. Those will be cut in half. Here's a "camera crop" to show you. And yes, I know the two pinkish ones at the upper left don't necessarily read as "diamond" shapes, but hey, there are at least 74 unique fabrics in this thing, and though I have a really good stash, it does have it's limits and I've pretty much pushed it to the limit.

So here are 74 Diamonds Dancing Like Demons.

Here's another funny thought. This quilt is made from scraps (really) and is made from one shape. So it fits the definition of a "Charm Quilt."

ROFLMAO!!!

Dancing Diamonds

While I was at work yesterday I thought about this quilt, and how the first one reminded everybody of overlapping diamonds. Well, I wondered, I hadn't done that on purpose, but how could I do it to THIS one? Idly I wondered if making kind of concentric rings of color might do it. I was pretty sure I didn't have enough different prints to make that happen, and I don't plan to go shopping for more fabric, but I figured I'd try. I had nothing to lose, since I had a good photo of the previous layout.

So I started in the middle. Or more or less the middle, and tried to work outward. I did not move four or five diamonds, or the triangles across the top or most of the ones at the very bottom (those will be triangles, not diamonds), but I moved all the others. Many times.

I kept moving things around, and around, and around. I rummaged through my stash to find prints that were BIG so I could try them in the quilt. In this design, a fabric that is NOT A BIG BUSY PRINT just becomes a wallflower and doesn't do the design any favors. So I kept plugging.

At the end of the night I had this, and I was so brain dead I just couldn't see whether it was an improvement over yesterday or not. I think it might be.

What I found very interesting though, was looking at the thumbnail images of all the pictures of the process I had uploaded to my computer. I could see how the colors and values had moved around, and in the latest version, they actually seem more closely packed.

But even the pictures don't help. The edges get lost because you don't know where the quilt will really end, so I did a camera crop, and this is a lot closer to what the finished quilt will be.

OK, now that I see it this way, I think I'm good. There are a couple of things I want to tinker with (I mean, like, duh!), but you get the drift.

Better, but Worse

It's funny, but in the world of "Art" it isn't the most perfectly executed stuff that gets all the attention. Actually it isn't "funny" at all. You have all heard me say more than once that I prefer my quilts to have some "verve" and a touch of real life in them. The "perfect" quilts that win awards shows generally have me groaning in boredom. Just because it's more complex doesn't mean it's better. Google Rodin's drawings to see what I mean. An effortless looking line drawing can be very spectacular, and let me tell you, it takes real work to make it look "effortless."

The more I worked on getting these blocks to flow into one another, the less I liked it. I kept looking at the first one and wondered if I had lost my mind. It just looked mushy.

After watching the last "Poldark" (gosh, can you remember when I gushed in anticipation about watching the first one?) I had been texting Julie and one of the things we both liked about the first quilt was that it looked like it was made from big overlapping diamond shapes. Part of what gave you that feeling was seeing the points of the diamonds at the top and bottom. I went into the studio and tinkered. What is in the photo above is the result, and I liked it better already.

 Yesterday I got home from work and before I made dinner I went into the studio to take a look at what I had on the wall. I moved one piece, then another, and another. Two hours later (!!!) I think I had moved all but four or five pieces (and some that don't look like they moved went on extended tours around the quilt and ended up where they started). I like this better. I decided not to worry about using a print more than once.

It's also kind of funny because although I thought I knew where I was going when I started this, I really didn't, but I do now. It will probably change a lot before I am finished, but so what!!!

For Hubblebird, who asked, I use the Hex'N'More template to cut my big diamonds. I cut around one end, the flip the template over, align my edges, and finish cutting the diamond. And yes, I fussy cut the hell out of each and every one, then handle them very carefully to avoid stretching them out of shape.





I visited my dad in the hospital yesterday. I sat with him while he had dinner. "So what do you want for Christmas," he asked me as I kissed him goodbye. "Dinner with you," I replied. "And not here!" He grinned. Still no answers. He'll have more tests today.