Deep Space is Finished

 

Yeah, I know this isn't a quilt. I live in New England, where we have beautiful fall foliage. What that means is that after the leaves change color they fall to the ground they have to be raked up. These six bags represent about a third of the leaves that have to be collected. 

The Deep Space quilt is finished. Because the binding was essentially black, it was tricky to do at night because the light wasn't as bright. (Hey, I'm north of 60. I need brighter light to see when I sew on dark fabrics.) I was able to do a lot of the sewing on the binding one afternoon last week. It was sunny and made a huge difference. I'll take beauty shots of the quilt later today. I kinda have to because it's supposed to rain the rest of the week.

While I have been working on the quilt I threw it over the back of the couch. MOST OF THE TIME Millie has been napping on it. But when I wanted to take a picture of her, she was elsewhere. When I finally sat on the couch she hopped up next to me and MEOWED LOUDLY! 

When I did not respond IMMEDIATELY she MEOWED again!

I lay down and she hopped on top of me, got comfy and started purring.

Good thing I could reach the remote, because she stayed there for two hours!

I Live Here & It Affects Everything.

About a year or so ago, while I was working on the Early Autumn quilt, I wrote a post about what early autumn looked like here in New Hampshire, where I live. 

I wrote: "Seeing all these trees that border the roads is one of the things that defines northern New England. To me, it means I don't know what's up ahead, around the corner. It's always a surprise. Out west, I can see for vast distances, but I don't feel as protected as I do in New England, where I am surrounded by trees."

Later, one commenter wrote "Since you like being closed in by evergreens..." and I thought that was wrong. She seemed to feel this made me feel safe, or stifled, which wasn't it at all. The whole exchange bothered me, and I couldn't quite figure out WHY.

Stuff like that stays with me and reappears and rolls around in my head until I can really make some sense of it. I felt I had explained what I liked about the roads being bordered by trees, but clearly I hadn't.

 Yesterday I drove out to Peterborough NH, and I took "the back way," which means I didn't take the highway. The route took me through New Boston and Francestown NH, and the speed limit never got over 40 MPH. The roads looked like these pictures. There were bends and dips and curves. For much of it, I couldn't see more than a quarter mile in front of me.

Yes, I like this. I like the surprises of the twists and the turns, the bends and the dips, the hills. I like the fact that it makes a difference which season it is, because in the summer the leaves hide the houses and the barns, but in the winter, when the leaves are off the trees, I can see more.

I like that things aren't right out in the open, but that you have to really LOOK to find them. I like that it is always different, and what I see is different each time. In my quilts I reward viewers who take the time to really LOOK and find the little surprises I hide there.

A lot like the roads where I live.

Early Autumn Flimsy is Complete

The tree quilt, Early Autumn, is now a flimsy. Here are some details:

It measures about 63" x 93".

There are 81 trees.
There are 20 different tree trunk fabrics.
There are 10 different "focus" tree fabrics.
There are 61 different greens.

Early Autumn Showing Off

Since the tree quilt, Early Autumn, was designed for my dining room table, I had to take pictures of it on the table. Here they are.

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I'm really happy I designed it the way I did, and it looks great

The Wrong Road

About 10 days ago, I posted this on the blog,

and pointed out the strong diagonal from the light background block on the left, to the white tree on the right. I said it was going to go.

I removed the white tree on the right. I felt it was enough. Before there was a continuous light streak. I felt removing the light tree broke it up. Starsthatblaze disagreed. It didn't bother me THAT much.

Except the more I thought about it, the more it annoyed me. So I removed that light yellow green and replaced it.

The new tree still had to be light, but I think it's better. I could have removed both trees with that light green batik-y background, but I liked the lightness they brought to the overall design.

This is all but one row. I sewed all these panels together into one big chunk, THEN removed the bright yellow tree and replaced it with the less bright fabric.

Because, you know, Starsthatblaze reminded me of a quote I have tacked up on my inspiration wall.

Close-Up

I've sewn the bottom row together into one long panel.  I thought you might like to see close ups of the trees so you could enjoy the different fabrics and how I used them.

Let's see, a batik, an oriental, a wild modern print and a couple of blenders...

The green print at the bottom is from 2009, then there are lots of blenders. See the trunk of the yellow tree? Hold that thought.

Another batik and a lot of blenders. That big leaf fabric? That's the same fabric I used for the tree trunk of the yellow tree in the photo above. Moving right along, an Oriental and more blenders (and see that batik that's the trunk of the red tree? That's the background of the Black Box quilt.) Moving over again, some fabrics sent to me by Rondi, blenders all.

I love the olive-y fabric with the waving rows of varying sized white dots. Another gift. Then a batik tree made from leftover fabric that I used in the quilt I made for Julie Sefton, No Rules for Julie in 2009.

And more blenders, a light green Grunge and some Christmas green.

Here's how this bottom row fits with the row above it. I think it's great.

When I started this quilt I had absolutely no idea it would be anything out of the ordinary.

The Final Push

I'd been burning the midnight oil working on this quilt, and I finally needed to rest so the last couple of evenings I have been reading and getting to bed a lot earlier.

I haven't done any sewing since last time, but I have been doing some rearranging. I needed some more brightness in the top section (the first rows I sewed together now seem too much the same), so I will replace some of those green trees with colored ones. Yes, I will remove the block and replace it. Yes, right in the middle of a quilt. You should all know I'll rip anything out if I don't feel it is working.***

I'm not a big fan of too much light/dark contrast at the edges or corners of a quilt, so the upper right and lower left corners have changed from light backgrounds with dark trees to something more middle ground. I know it looks dark in the pictures, but it really isn't quite that dark in real life.

I've also shifted the bottom row over to the right a bit. I didn't want two blocks of overlapping trees to be directly one on top of the other. And since I have taken this photo, I made another change. In this photo there are overlapping trees in each of the four corners.  Not anymore! I don't want this quilt to be too predictable, I want it to be balanced, but look random.

That, my friends, is a balancing act indeed!




***In my quilt The Black Box, I made every element at least twice. I made all the letters twice, I made the rays twice, and I made the box itself three times.

Close But No Cigar

I've got the right side column done, all the way to the bottom row (which isn't finished yet). Those pieces in the corners are just placeholders. I'm not at all convinced that left side row is ready to be sewn together... the four trees below the dark green tree with the busy leafy background look a bit monotonous...  OH LOOK... the top half of each of those rows contain overlapping trees, but neither bottom half does. That has to change. Maybe that will fix what bugs me.

And you know me. I can't leave well enough alone. Here I have shifted the bottom row to the floor so I can put the topmost row where it belongs so finally I can see the whole thing the way it might be.  I see a few things I may tinker with.

That should surprise nobody.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel...

Here's the last row.

Since I really wanted to see everything all together, I got the bright idea of hanging that last row from the edge of the shelf above my design wall, and then pinning the other edge to the top of the design wall.  Obviously it isn't centered, and it looks funny, but it gives me enough information to make some final design decisions.

1. I thought it would be the red trees that would lead the viewer into this quilt, but I was wrong. It is the yellow trees (not surprising, they are the brightest element in the quilt. Note I didn't say lightest, I said brightest. There is a difference. They eye is drawn to contrast.) I will have to add some yellow to that top row. No biggie, that's what seam rippers are for.

2. The idea of having tiny trees diminish in size at the corners of the quilt is just not going to work. They would look to "tricky" and "cutesy" and since trees like that aren't really shown in the quilt anywhere else, they'd look out of place. So I decided to just carry on with the trees in the top and bottom-most rows, like shown in the picture above. The blocks in the corners here aren't blocks at all, just fabric scraps thrown up on the design wall. But you get the idea.

If you think this whole thing was easy, let me enlighten you. Colors change depending on what colors are next to them. A green that looked dark suddenly looked light when I'd put it next to some tree blocks. Olive colored fabrics looked really green sometimes, and sickly yellow others.

Fabrics that looked like they had a medium texture or print suddenly looked downright "blender"-like when placed next to something busier. And don't even THINK of putting a busy background print with a busy tree print. Sometimes a print would just disappear next to the "right" (translation: wrong) fabric, and I'd never know until I tried to find a home for it. Some fabrics like to play along only in the most particular circumstances, and sometimes not at all.

Green and Red are very close to each other in "brightness" or "intensity." If you want something to look really red, put it next to something green, but they can't be the same value (lightness or darkness) or both colors will look like mud. Really. So putting the red trees in wasn't by any stretch of the imagination an easy task, particularly since I like to distribute my fabrics, scale of print, and color all around the quilt. Look at the placement of the red trees if you do not believe me.

Sometimes fabrics I was convinced would NOT work proved me a liar by working beautifully. Which was fine except I didn't have much of them, and I'd have to resort to piecing scraps together just to get a tree triangle, or background.

I pulled virtually every single piece of green fabric I owned out of my stash. When my worktable is this cluttered

and my ironing table is piled with fabric, it's hard to work.  I actually had to spend two hours cleaning on Sunday before I could work on the quilt. I just didn't have space to press and straighten the big panels once I started sewing them together.

But I'm close. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Other End

I've sewn the central panel of the tree quilt together, and here it is on my dining room table. I also have named the quilt: Early Autumn.

I've moved all the blocks so the quilt is "upside down" from the way I have been working on it until now. I've removed the bottom-most row and set it aside so I have room to design the corresponding row at the other end of the quilt. I could have moved everything lower on the design wall, but I wanted to see it "right side up" and I didn't want to be working on a step stool all the time.

I have to make a lot more trees, and since I have new fabrics, I have to be careful to make sure the new fabrics don't look new or of out of place.

Scrap Slabs Class at Quilted Threads

I love small classes. Students get so much personal attention.  These are the ladies from yesterday's Scrap Slab Triangles class at Quilted Threads.

The biggest benefit of a class is the ability for the students to see what can happen when they start arranging a large number of the blocks on a design wall. It's all we do for the last hour of the day, and it is usually the most powerful, as the ladies see the tremendous possibilities of this simple block.

The Scrap Slabs class always inspires ME too! I particularly love this layout and already have ideas in my head to make a quilt using this arrangement.

The fall foliage is really looking good, in spite of the rain. I had to pull over and take a photo on the ride to Henniker yesterday.

I shopped for some greens and reds and golds to finish the tree quilt.

If you would like to make a scrap slab triangle quilt, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.

Can You See Me Now?

This is the central part of the tree quilt. Look a bit familiar, but not quite?  It's because this is upside down from the way you usually have been looking at it.

If you have been having a hard time with this quilt, with the trees going in four directions, it helps if you look at it strictly as an abstract design of color and shape.

This is the same quilt, "right side up" and without the bottom row chopped off. I've been "fine tuning" and made a couple more yellow trees and another overlapping tree. You can find them.

The blocks on the vertical rows on either side have not been sewn together, but everything else has been. When I sew those long side chunks together, and then sewn those to the central panel, I'll flip the quilt upside down as in the first photo and design the extra row across the top (because my design wall isn't big enough).

I know I've said it before, but I am really, really, really, liking this quilt.

A Star is Born

Not  my quilt, the movie, which I went to see last night. Enjoyed it very much.

My quilt is getting to the point where I am happy enough with it to start sewing big chunks of it together.  I will be able to sew the five big sections that comprise the "top" of the table quilt together later, then the section on the far right. The vertical row on the far left still needs work, as does the yet undesigned row that will be above the top row.

I'm teaching the Scrap Slab Triangles class at Quilted Threads on Saturday, so I won't be finishing this for another couple of weeks, but I am very happy with it.

Getting Closer...

I'm getting closer. This is where the quilt was just before I went to bed last night. It still needs some tweaks, another row at the top, and the corners need trees. Overall I am very happy with this. (Yes, I see that light diagonal that moves across the center of the quilt, and I promise that will change...)

I worked on the topmost row last night.  Oh wait a minute...

This might be a bit easier for you.

And if you are wondering did I fussy cut the tree on the far right and the olive-y tree fabric with the rows of meandering dots...

Heck yeah!

Sur La Table (On the Table)

Since the tree quilt is designed for a table, I really had to put it all on the table to see if the vision I had in my head really looked that way in real life.

I'm pleased to say it did. This is the overall view of what it looks like.

Moving to the left, here is the left side of the quilt.

Rounding the corner to the left, this is the "top" of the quilt, viewed upside down, or right side up if you are sitting at that end of the table.

 This is the right side of the quilt.

 This is another view of the top area.

After I took these pictures, I put all the pieces back on the design wall and started sewing things together. 

I even added a red tree to this green one, which lives on the left side of the quilt.


I really had been wrestling with this idea. On the wall the quilt looked good from a purely abstract point of view, but it didn't necessarily make a lot of sense. I was thinking about it as I drove to work yesterday. The reason why it looked funny on the wall is because it was supposed to be on a table. OR, like on a bed! Amazing, huh? A quilt on a bed! We are so accustomed to looking at quilts flat on the wall that we forget how they look "in context."

I'll be sewing the blocks that make up the tabletop part of the quilt together, and then I'll sort out the rest. Those blocks change places so frequently you'd think they were playing musical chairs.

Back and Forth and Back

My grandmother used to decide if a quilt was big enough by laying it across the top of a bed. It's a low-tech solution that works great. I had measured this panel of free pieced trees, and I was pretty sure it would be ok, but laying it on the table tells me I am on the right track.

So this is nice, and so is the row I'll be sewing to the bottom of this panel, but  I wasn't quite sure about the rest of it.

I arranged blocks on the left side, but the lightest blocks ended up at the top because they didn't seem to belong anywhere else. At this point I knew how to sew the bottom two rows together (see yesterday's post), but I needed more information about how this might look finished, and to do that, I needed to hide the white of the design wall. 

To do that I used scraps to cover up all the white places. I stepped back and wasn't sure about it at all. It looked a little crazy, I kinda liked it, but I didn't like those two trees in the middle pointing to each other. What was I going to do on the sides? Have more trees there pointing in opposite directions?

I removed those trees in the middle and didn't like that at all. When I looked at a photo on my computer I liked it even less. 

As I've said before, when I get to a place like this I just stop and don't make any decisions. I set the problem aside and work on what I know.  That was where it was on Sunday when my Mom came over for a brief visit. She'll be going away on a two-week trip and we wanted to get together before she left. "Besides," she said on the phone before, "I want to see that quilt you're deep into."

My Mom's an artist, so her opinion is always welcome. I explained the concept of the quilt for the table. "I love that idea," she said, "and the bottom two rows are great. I really like those blocks."

I told her I thought so too, and that those two rows were already sewn together. "The light ones at the top have to go," she told me.

I sighed. Julie had said the same thing to me the day before. I knew they were both right.

I told my Mom I wasn't sure the design was working, and about my concerns about the center.

"Show me."

So we went back and forth and I moved pieces around. I moved something, and as soon as I did it I liked it, and when I stepped out of the way my Mom agreed.

"Keep going," she said. "You're on the right track and you know how to do this."

So this is where it is when I stopped working, and Mom's right, yeah, I know exactly where this is going and how to get it there.

I know this isn't for everybody, but it will work for me, and this is one of those times when I have to tell you, it looks a lot better in real life.