Dancing Jewels Complete!

 

The Dancing Jewels quilt is finished. 

Quilts look so different outside. In the shade or sun this quilt really sparkles.

My nephew is happy with it.

As you can see, there's a bit of ham in this kid. (Type "nephew" in the search box at the right to see more posts about him.)

I made the new quilt because my nephew said his old one was wearing out. This is the "old one" I made him in 2015. I had asked if I could see it because I was interested in just how worn out it was. When he held it up I was stunned! Several fabrics had worn out completely, and the binding had come apart from the quilt in at least two places. I'm pretty sure the quilt got washed once a week. (That's 624 washings.) I'm surprised he didn't ask me to make him a new quilt sooner!

Given the wear of the original quilt, I stopped hand sewing the binding and ran it through the machine. I figured that hard use necessitated a very sturdy binding.

According to him, "It's perfect. I don't need a sheet or even a blanket. I just wrap myself up in my quilt at night and I'm just fine." You can see pictures of the quilt when it was new, and a photo of him wrapped up as he sleeps in his quilt here. 

I told him that the biggest compliment a quilter could get is evidence of a quilt worn out because it is so well loved.

Binding Dancing Jewels

I've made and adding the binding to the Dancing Jewels quilt for my nephew. I have been staying up late to watch the tennis in New York and it has been going on VERY LATE, so I was so tired I didn't finish pinning the binding over to the front. That will happen next, and then I'll finish it.

This is the back of the quilt. I used the leftover backing as binding for it.
 
 

A Collection of Riches

 

I picked up three quilts from my longer quilter, Janet-Lee Santeusanio, the other day. This is Dancing Jewels, for my nephew. I'm happy with it, and will be working to finish it up for him ASAP.

I also picked up another quilt that doesn't have a name yet. I've been referring to is as the Jewel-toned Macnas quilt.

Here's another photo. This quilt has a home, so I'll be working on this one after I finish the one for my nephew.

The third quilt I picked up is the third Nightingale*** quilt. The first two of these flew out of my studio pretty quickly so it's nice to have this one to myself.

This photo of a small section of the back of the quilt may show the quilting better.

I have always loved brightly patterned fabrics on a black background, and since I believe if you are going to "go for it" you should really GO, I have picked equally vibrant prints for the back of this quilt. I also like to use panels on the backs of my quilts.

I was giving a talk to a quilt guild once and a lady came up to me afterwards and said, "You like busy backs." I looked at her and said, "Mostly, I hate boring ones." 

This reminds me of something some art critic or historian (I can't remember which) said of the artist and illustrator Alphonse Mucha: "...he doesn't like empty space." 

Apparently, neither do I.

***This quilt is really easy to make, and you can get the tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. While I think it is pretty spectacular made with bright colors on a black background, you can of course make it any color or colors you want. You can see it in green here, And made from bright prints on a white background here.

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.

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.