Happy Birthday Valerie!

This is one of my best pals, Valerie. She is a blogger from Nova Scotia Canada and is a charter member of the SSOBB (Secret Society of Barn Builders). It's her birthday today.

Happy Birthday pal! Hope you have a great day!

Valerie Has Questions... I Have Answers

The internet can be a wonderful place. I met three of my best friends over the internet, from all over the country and the world.  It's also where I meet quilters I have inspired. This is the most wondrous.

One of them is Valerie from Purple Boots and Pigtails. She wrote me a letter about a year ago saying I had reawakened her love of quilting. You can read it here. Someday I gotta meet this girl.  Valerie is the quilter I made the Kona solid word JUNGLE for.

Anyway.

 
On yesterday's post, Valerie asked a few questions and they made me think. Although I showed you how I designed the quilt, I didn't show you how I made it.  So here are Valerie's questions.

 "...are you planning to have a straight edge for binding or leave all those delicious diamonds as they are?"
 I'm planning on having a straight edge. I plan to cut it outside the vertical rows of small diamonds.

"Which leads me to ... if you square it off, will you cut it before or after Chris works her magic?"
I'll cut it off after Chris quilts it. I find that it helps to not make a decision to trim a quilt before it's quilted. Chris often makes magic happen where I didn't see it earlier, so I don't rush. I can always trim a quilt down, I can't add.

"This top will be super stretchy with all those bias cuts, so I wonder if trimming after might be helpful?"
Absolutely. In fact Valerie's most recent post talked about a quilt with mitered corners that got stretched out.  My quilt is made with a few hundred diamonds and each piece has two bias edges. I don't want it to stretch, so I haven't showed it off to anybody because I don't want to stretch those edges. Right now the quilt is folded up so it can't stretch. I won't be holding it up until it's quilted.

"I like the back, it reinforces that my eye is drawn first to all the littlest diamonds that act like stripes. Those are the colours in your backing fabric."
It's funny, but that's what good design does. It makes you see connections. The colors of my tiny diamonds are actually all colors - yellow, orange, red, hot pink, purple, blue, green and teal.

"Glad you steered away from the predictable creams, yellows and golds...much too matchy matchy."
 Me too. As I've said before, the quilt usually tells you what it wants, and if you're smart, you'll listen. This quilt did not want yellow or anything tiny.



 "Lastly, did you have a 60° diamond ruler or did you cut with a straight ruler?"

 I used this ruler, which is the one you used to make your Gravity quilt. I used blue tape to outline the 4" diamonds and the 2" diamonds. I ordered a 4" diamond template from another company online, and it never arrived until after the quilt was finished, so I cut all my pieces - one by one - with this template. It was a royal pain in the patootie. For the small four patch diamonds, I sewed together a pair of 2-1/2" strips and then used the template to cut pairs which I then sewed together.

I only had a yard of this fabric, and couldn't get as many perfect diamonds as I needed, so for a couple of them, I pieced them together, matching the pattern.

You all watched as I designed the quilt on the wall, putting something up, stepping back (with my glasses OFF so the fine details wouldn't distract me, but so I could still see the masses of color. I tried to avoid "blobs" of  dark areas and "holes" of too many light ones. I tried to distribute the colors and not make things too repetitious. I inverted some of the fussy cut blocks so they all wouldn't point in the same direction.

I literally cut one piece, put it up on the wall, stepped back, decided if it was OK or not, and then cut another. When the fabrics I had pulled looked too dark, I went through my stash to find something better. Piece by piece the quilt grew. I didn't get too bogged down with details, and tried to keep it fresh and vibrant. It didn't need to be perfect, and yet I think it is.

I am really, really happy with it, and am looking forward to making my next quilt, and hope I can keep it as loosey-goosey as this one.

And Pat, I find if I know I'm making a quilt to give away, I don't get attached to it.

Valerie, thanks for the questions. I enjoyed answering them. Anybody else?

Backing and a Gift

These three fabrics make up the scrappy backing of the petals quilt.

Now the quilt and the backing are folded up and ready to go. I'm also working on the backing the the Blue Boy Rail Fence.


Charlotte asked me a while ago why I blog. It's a long story, but mostly I do it to share what I do. Quilters are all over the world, and blogging helps me find other quilters like me, and gives me ideas and inspiration. I always knew I was an oddball, that I look at the world differently, that my work, and my quilts were different from anybody else's. Blogging gave me an opportunity to explain how I got here, to show how my worldview affects my work. How I get from point A to point B. Because most people look at my work and can't figure out how or why I did it. 

It's like talking to yourself in the dark. You never know if anybody else is out there, or really listening, or if anybody even cares. Or would notice if I stopped.

But there are folks out there listening. Caring. Reading. Thinking. Experimenting. I've made my best friends through blogland, and I am not joking. Blogging has changed, and in many ways, saved my life.

Go read Valerie Levy's post today. It's here: http://purplebootsandpigtails.blogspot.com/2015/08/its-jungle-out-there.html

That pretty much sums up why I do what I do, and why I have tears in my eyes right now.

The Mighty Jungle

When I sent a stack of my "dud" letters to Julie a few years ago, Julie was surprised at how big they were.

Oh well. I couldn't see the point in making a letter so small as to be bulky and awkward to handle. So I made my letters bigger.  This J is about 8 inches or so tall.

This is the J for Valerie's Kona Nerd challenge. I had to make one of Kona's color words out of Kona fabric.  I found a jelly roll of Kona solids in my stash, so I used that. I don't have any other solids.

The problem was the background. No one strip was big enough, but the jelly roll had so many wonderful tones, using multiple color strips was the only answer.

The other problem was one strip was not big enough for all the letters in the word JUNGLE, and the fabric I thought I would use was the wrong color.  Again, the answer was to use many colors, which is generally the way I like to make my letters anyway.

It was a big risk, and there was always the chance it would fall flat, but hey, you never know till you try, and like I always say, "It's only fabric, it isn't gold."

 Here is the finished word panel, and I sure hope Valerie likes it, because I am thrilled.  So how big is it?

It's 36" wide by 9.5" tall.

OH! A little bird told me it is Valerie's birthday today!!  Happy Birthday Valerie!!!


You know the best part? My birthday is tomorrow. Gee Valerie, I knew we were connected somehow!

In The Jungle

I am most definitely NOT a Kona nerd. In fact I am not even a solids fan, but I found a Jelly Roll of Kona solids in my stash.  I didn't know what I would do with them until my pal Valerie asked this question...

"Since you are the letter master is there any chance you've got a few Kona scraps kicking around in that bin and want to play along?  Love to have a block from my mentor if you've got the energy to make one."

Well, heck, I don't need much motivation to make a word out of fabric.

Except that the play along involved making a word out of Kona solids, and it couldn't just be ANY word, it has to be one of Kona's 303 color names. So I had to find a list of the names (easy, just go to the Kona website) and then find a matching color in my tiny solid stash.

I found a color - JUNGLE, no problem. But what to do about a background, since I don't have a lot of anything that is big enough for a background. (Letters don't take much fabric, but the background takes a lot.)

As usual, the little grey cells provided me with an answer.

Nobody said the background had to be ONE fabric!!!


Do you approve, dear Valerie?

Of course you do. (Heh.)

The Power of One

When I first started blogging I didn't think anybody would read what I wrote. I didn't think anybody would care. 

Boy, was I wrong. 

Blogging has brought me a new life, and some of the best friends a person could ever ask for. It's easy to forget though, as I write my posts, that although I have a regular "readership" who leave comments, there are a lot of other readers I never know about. Earlier this week I got this email from Valerie whose beautiful email reminded me of the power of One.

Her letter left me awed, humbled and speechless.  Here it is.

Hello Lynne,

Greetings from Nova Scotia. 

I wanted to take a quick moment to thank you. I have been following your blog for a while now and enjoy it so much!!

You see...

Because you blog I have daily inspiration. I am never alone. Your blog has taken me to other blogs and my view has expanded enormously. Links are wonderful things!

 

 

Because you blog I have permission to play. I can make whatever I want. I can cut off points and allow myself to embrace my own imperfection. The process has become so exciting. I have photos of pieces during construction that are more exciting to me than the finishes.

 

Because you blog I am challenged to try new things. I can make letters and can build cows, dogs and even motorcycles.

Because you blog the new things I try are fresh, fun and exciting. I had long ago gotten bored with traditional patchwork but now once again have a fire within in me to push beyond what ever I did last time. I am excited and motivated.

 

 

Because you blog I am creating things that inspire others to create things. Physical objects exist in my home and in the homes of people I care about because of you.

Because you blog the circle continues and we all grow.

Thank you for your blog. 

Valerie

~~~

Inspiration

I did not make this quilt. Valerie from Nova Scotia did. She has been reading my blog for a while and wrote me the most wonderful letter telling me how much I inspire her.

It made my day, week, month, let me tell you. I blog in the privacy of my own home, and often forget there are lots of readers out there who read every word.

I'll include more of Valerie's letter tomorrow, but one of the things she wrote was "Because you blog I am challenged to try new things. I can make letters and can build cows, dogs and even motorcycles."

This quilt is wonderful, happy and fun. I love what Valerie did with the off center borders, love the dog, the houses, the placement of the hearts... I love the whole thing. Well done!

Thank YOU Valerie, for letting me know the hours I spend in front of the computer sharing everything really matters.