The Selvage Fairy

This is the Selvage Fairy. She keeps an eye on Millie when I travel. She came over before I left to pick up the key and go over what I call "the care and feeding of Millie." After we went through all that stuff, we looked at quilts, because even though you see pictures, they are much different (and much better) in real life.

We looked at a lot of them, and when I unfolded Dark Majesty, the dark diamonds quilt, she said, "I think this is my favorite."

Well.

As we folded up the quilt, I handed it to her. "This should go home with you." The look on her face was priceless. She literally didn't put it down until she walked out the door, and only then to give me a hug.

Quilts should always go to where they are loved.

Back to Normal?

The Christmas decorations have been taken down and put away, the table quilt has been changed and I decided to put the Dark Majesty quilt on the back of the couch.

But first I had to wash it. I used three Color Catchers and I was surprised how dark they were when they came out of the washing machine.

Here are the dirty color catchers with a clean one on top so you can see how dirty they are. What's amazing about this is that I wash ALL my fabric in warm water before I ever let it into the studio.

The Dark Majesty quilt looks so good on the couch, and now that it is soft and wrinkly, it may have found a new permanent home.

Binding Dark Majesty

I went back and forth choosing binding fabric for the Dark Majesty diamonds quilt. Finally I selected this Kaffe fabric - it's  dark grey with colors, and I think it will tie in with the quilt nicely.

This is such a big quilt that "quilt wrangling" is an apt description of getting the binding sewn on. I'll get it sewn on all around, and then it will be relaxing to hand sew it down on the front of the quilt.

 Two things here. 1. I love the binding, and 2, yes, Millie has already been napping on the quilt.

I painted the second coat on the oil tank, and took apart that plastic shed that bugged me. I think it looks better.

Diamond Quartet

It's no secret I like to work in a series. I like to push an idea around and see where it goes. But it's rare for me to have more than two pieces in the same place at the same time, so when I do, I try to look at them all together, so I can compare them.

For that, I need a big open outside space so I can get far enough away to see them all at once, a fence to hang them on, and preferably, an overcast sky. (An overcast sky means the sun won't bleach out any colors and there will be no shadows.)

Sunday morning I had all three.

From left to right, "Dairy Cream with Sprinkles", "Glorious", "Dark Majesty", and "Tickled Pink".

I looked at them all lined up and thought, "Damn, these are cool."

You can click, and then double click the photos to see more details.

The overcast day means the colors in "Dark Majesty" (below) really show up. Although it is a dark quilt, when you can see it like this with good light, you can really see how colorful it is. Bright colors really glow when set against something dark, and that is exactly the case here.

The fence is along the parking lot of a local clubhouse in my area. While I was taking these pictures, some ladies were working in the building. One lady came out for something and called over to me, "I like the blue one best."  This photo shows why.

"Tickled Pink" really looks good in this light too. There is about 18" of this quilt folded over onto the other side of the fence.

None of these quilts are finished. The pink quilt above has binding sewn along the bottom, but none of the other quilts have been bound.

You'll have to bear with me. I took photos of the quilts hung sideways on the fence so I could get the whole thing, and this picture is rotated so you can see it vertically, which is the way it was designed. But it might be a but disconcerting. This is "Glorious", the collaboration quilt Julie Sefton and I made.

This is "Dairy Cream with Sprinkles."

This is "Tickled Pink."

This is the back of "Tickled Pink." The binding has been attached to the quilt, but only sewn down on the top edge.

It's so interesting to see the subtle variations.



Just a reminder that my diamond quilts are inspired by Pam Goecke Dinndorf's Harlequin Quilt. She sells a pattern for it here.

Think Pink!

Ideas are funny things. They come to you at the weirdest times.  Yesterday, just before I got ready to leave for work, I had an idea about the pink quilt I want to make for my July table cover.  (Remember I want all the quilts to be different.)

 

So I texted my pal Julie. 

For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, I am planning on making a quilt like this one, in pink:

 

Then last night I went shopping for the big prints for the big diamonds.

I  bought some of this, and a couple of others. I'm teaching a Birds class at Quilted Threads this coming Saturday (there is still space left in the class if you want to join us) and I will do more pink shopping then.

Somebody wrote to me once and asked if I was going to write a tutorial for this class. I'm not sure that's possible, because I design these diamond quilts one piece of fabric at a time. Anyway, first you need some big prints to fill out the big diamonds. As you can see from the picture of the quilt above, you don't need to slavishly use only one color. That quilt, which I think of in my head as a yellow quilt, has big diamonds that are blue and pink.

I am thinking pink and having fun! Can't wait to make this one.

Brassica for Dark Majesty

This is the fabric I have chosen for the backing of the Dark Majesty Quilt. I'll be wrestling that into size today. We had about three inches of snow yesterday, and today it's freezing rain and should rain and freeze all day. I'd love to do my grocery shopping, because I have to cook the big dinner on Christmas day, but it looks like I'll be stuck inside all day.

Oh gee darn.

Dark Majesty Flimsy is Complete!

I woke up early yesterday and couldn't fall back to sleep so I got up and went into the sewing studio to sew the rows of the Dark Majesty quilt together. Here I've got it in three big sections and I'm checking to make sure I like the way the pieces are arranged.

Because these blocks have at least two edges on the bias, the rows are on a diagonal. I try to keep the bigger chunks as small as I can until I sew the great big ones together. Here I am lining them up to get ready to sew them together.

Here is the finished flimsy. It will work out to be about 76 x 80 inches. (193 x 203 cm). I'm happy with the way it came out. It's dark, but not too dark or depressing. It's got more color than I originally thought it would. I'm glad I stuck with it.

Just a reminder that my diamond quilts are inspired by Pam Goecke Dinndorf's Harlequin Quilt. She sells a pattern for it here.

Dark Majesty in Pieces

I suppose every quilt starts in pieces, but when the one you're working on spans three rooms...

you kinda sorta know you're in trouble.

Actually this quilt is in eight pieces now, and I hope by this time tomorrow it will have reached flimsy status.  It was too big to design on the design wall, and I sure do hope it works out. I don't even know what it's going to look like when it's all sewn together, but I'm pretty sure it's going to work out.

I can't wait to get back to the Colorado Barn. 



I'm going to listen to HAMILTON all day today.

In Pieces

 

I've been sewing the blocks of the Dark Majesty quilt together. Since two edges of each block are on the bias, I have to be very careful, and when a row is done, I lay it on the floor until I sew it to another row. What is on the floor now is in two big sections. 

This is what is left on the wall. The lowest long diagonal row is sewn together, but the rest isn't. I will sew the big chunks together and then it will move the the floor in the living room. I want to make this quilt wider, and to do that I need to extend some of the rows, and I don't have room on the design wall.  

I hope to have this top sewn together by the Fourth of July. Wimbledon starts next week, and I have bindings to sew on two quilts, and I will be picking up two more from the longarm quilter in the next couple of weeks, so I'll be quite busy. 

Somewhere in there I will start making another bird quilt for my brother and SIL. More about that later.

Neon at Night

My son saw a photo of this quilt and thought it looked like city lights at night, and suggested I call it Night Lights, but all I could think of was the night light in the bathroom so I told him that was out.

Then he revised that thought and suggested "Neon Lights." It's apropos, I suppose, but I still like Julie's suggestion of Dark Majesty better.  Anyway, I'm sufficiently happy with it that I can begin sewing it together.

I am happy with the lower left part of this layout, so instead of starting from the corner, I decided to start sewing a long diagonal row together.

Go figure.

So, lah-di-dah. I'm sewing merrily along. I want this to be wider, and I guess I'll add to either side (or I could add a couple of diagonal rows to the right of the one I sewed in the top photo, but I haven't quite worked that out yet.

Oh well.

Good thing things like that don't freak me out much.

Progress on Dark Majesty

My pal Julie comes up with THE BEST quilt names ever. It was she who came up with "Dark Majesty" and so it will be!

I've been tinkering since I finished the four patch diamonds. I want this quilt to be wider than the others so I have been cutting extra pieces. I think I will make it bigger as I start sewing it together - which won't be for another few days as I have been very busy lately, and the house just got to Critical Mess, and I have so much fabric strewn around the studio I have to stop and clean that up so I can get my bearings and work on this beauty.

This layout of colors and fabrics is by no means final, but I am very happy I persevered with this idea.

And just so you know the genesis of this quilt, here is the first version I made in October of 2015 for my niece:

And here is the second one I did just last month:

Diamond Quartets

It took me a while but I finally figured out how to make these diamond quartets efficiently. Here they are in all their color variations. I wanted some of these to have bright fabrics, and some darker, less intense colors.

Having these little suckers put together makes designing the quilt so much easier.

Going Fishing

There's a saying.. Fish or cut bait.

I've been wrestling with these dark diamonds for a couple of weeks.
 

I got some more large prints that didn't seem quite so dark. Here I've put fussy cut large prints in the medium sized diamonds, but I wasn't sure about them. Every time I placed the small diamonds nearby I was unsure about the dark fabric on either side of the small colored ones. I tried different fabrics, dark green, silvery gray or teal. I was spending a lot of time "cutting bait," screwing around cutting fabrics and not really getting anywhere.

But every time I'd be scrolling through my photostream and I'd pass these pictures, whoever was sitting next to me would see these and say, "OH, I like that."


Well after I heard that four or five times, I stopped and thought about it. Maybe my problem with the idea of this quilt I'm being too hard on myself.

So I pulled out most of the medium sized diamonds in big prints, and decided to go back to the blenders I had been using. I'll never forget something Mary Ellen Hopkins told me when I met her at Quilt Market in 1984. "You have to have darks in your lights, and lights in your darks."

I started making the little four patch diamonds using a couple of different dark backgrounds. It's looking better, and I'm feeling good about it, even if it looks worse in photos than it does in real life.

So I'm done messing around. I'm going fishing.