In 2021 I made a quilt inspired by water on the road that reflected the sky in it. I called the quilt Deep Space. It was based on the Slide Show quilt from Colorful Quilts for Fabric Lovers. I am making another one in soft greens and teals.
The last thing I do before I give a quilt away or use it is run it though the washing machine, in warm water, with a couple of Color Catchers. (I also include a box of Color Catchers with every quilt I gift.) For this quilt, since it was so dark, I used Woolite detergent for dark fabrics. I use it for my black jeans and slacks. It is reputed to keep your darks dark, so I used it for the very dark Deep Space quilt.
This post is about Beauty Shots. Megan, my friend from Sydney Australia, would say the photo above is the perfect beauty shot. But Megan is biased. She loves Millie. (The feeling is mutual. Millie loves Megan too). I think a beauty shot should be a beautiful picture of the quilt in question in a setting that shows of the quilt to its best advantage. Outside in natural light is best. The point is to see the quilt in all its glory. Like most things, it is harder than it looks.
First, you need a good location. You want something big enough to hold up the quilt. This gate to the community garden meets that requirement.The photo above show that you need a bit more than that.
Secondly, you need good light. Good light will show off the colors of the quilt (yet not be too bright so light colors get lost) and the quilting, but not so extreme that all you can see is the quilting and not the patchwork. This photo shows you need something else though.
The third thing you need (aside from clamps, a step stool, a camera and/or an assistant) is a calm day. Wind is the enemy of beauty shots. A quilt of any size, displayed outside is nothing more than a potential sail. Clamps or weights can hold a quilt in place, but Mother Nature is unpredictable and stronger than anything or anybody.
The last thing you need is patience. Once I figured out the garden door OPENED, I re-positioned the quilt and then kept taking pictures. That's the most important thing. KEEP TAKING PICTURES. Sometimes you don't know until later that you took a perfect photo. Wayne Gretzky said "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
Sometimes you know as soon as you take it.
(I kept the last photo full size, so you can click, and then click again to see all the details of the fabrics and the quilting.)
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!
In other news...
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I visited Janet-Lee the other day and picked up two quilts, the Holiday Boxes,
which is quilted in a ribbons pattern called "Celebrate!"
and the newly renamed "Deep Space"
which is quilted in a pattern called "Champagne Bubbles."
I left the Lady Snaps quilt with Janet Lee, and came home to make the backing for the Pink Panther quilt.
This cute little bird is less than four inches tall.
Mari, from Maryland, sent me this "Professor Bird."
Kathy, from Vermont (the next state over from me) made this lovely bird with the bright green legs. She said she didn't have the heart to cut them shorter. Frankly, neither do I!
If you want to join the fun email me at PatcheryMenagerie AT Gmail DOT com and I will send you my mailing address. All birds are welcome, tall ones, short ones, skinny ones, fat ones, baby birds and big birds. Fancy birds and simple birds are all welcome. If you want simply to make your own birds (no patterns, no templates and NO PAPER PIECING... get my tutorial here at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download, so you can get started right away.
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Here is the finished flimsy on top of the fabric I have selected for the backing. This quilt is going to be gorgeous. Or maybe "handsome" isn't a better term.
This isn't the quilt I had expected to make, but that is what making art is all about. It's about following an idea where it takes you, and if it's a dead end, then you have to switch gears and figure something else out. You can't judge your end result against the first IDEA you had. Because an idea is only an idea. It doesn't exist until you make it real. If I had not brought you all along on the road of this quilt from first inspiration to the final quilt, you would never know that I had stalled.
However, I do think the color story of the quilt matches the original color story I had in my head, and that works for me.
On to the next thing.
Gosh, it is so nice to work in a super clean studio. Nothing to shove over... I should do it more often (LOL).
By ten PM on Friday I had this. The top was all sewn together. The last step was to sew the blocks in the bottom two rows together. I wanted to get the top finished before I went to bed.
Mission Accomplished. Now I want to add a small border of the deep space fabric all around.
I love questions. Somebody asked me once, "Where do you start?" Where do you start WHAT? I asked back. "Where do start when you sew your quilts together? When you sew the blocks and the rows together. Do you start at the top left?"
I laughed. "Well, you gotta remember, if the quilt is on the design wall, I can't REACH the top. I'm five feet tall. So I start with what I can reach. That's somewhere in the middle. I usually work my way down, and save getting up and down the ladder until later."
That's what I am doing with Blue Ice (or Ice Blue as I have been calling it lately.) I start somewhere in the middle with something that interests me, and go from there. There is no scientific, right or wrong way to do it. SOMETIMES I'll even grab two blocks, sew them together, put them back on the design wall, then grab two more. It is an extremely inefficient way to work, but sometimes I'm not in the mood to figure out how to sew a whole bunch of blocks together and make sure they are oriented correctly. Sometimes I just want to take my time, and work my way through it slowly.
By the way, the rows with the big blocks missing at the ends are those that are waiting for more deep space fabric to arrive.
This is going together so quick I am very soon going to have to start thinking about what I will do next.
oh dear.
It was the first quilt I ever made with sashing and cornerstones, and it taught me something. If one fabric is used for the sashing, and if it is used well, the blocks appear to be floating above them.
I decided to use only that fabric for the spacers, but I didn't have enough. So I have placed an order for more of that fabric. As long as I was at it, I ordered the backing fabric, and something I might use for the binding.
I got up on Saturday morning, and went into the studio where I worked for three hours. Gail is right, the big light green block went. It was a warm green, closer to yellow-green than blue, and this is a predominantly blue quilt, that if anything, leans closer to a cool blue, and the light warm green was also a temperature contrast that just didn't fit in with the rest of the quilt.
The cream and whites work because they have a lot of blue in them. There IS a lot of green in the quilt, but a greenish blue is a cool color, so all those blue greens fit right in. There is also a bit of blue-purple in the quilt, which is shown in the purplish fabrics - even the blueberries. So this quilt features blues that are in the green-blue, blue, blue-violet range. There are also some fabrics that fall closer to violet.
The photographs in this post are full-sized, so the resolution when you click, and then click them again allows you to see all the details of the fabrics. There are 44 unique fabrics in this "blue" quilt.
You don't know this, but when I was cruising through my books looking for an easy pattern to play with, I wondered if I would make another version of Ola Pola, a quilt I made five years ago. Ola Pola has some unexpected fabrics in it, so that idea was in my head before I picked this pattern.
Ola Pola (named for a Ukrainian candy, the quilt lives with my friend Daniela, who is Polish and loves sweets) is a quilt that is predominantly orange, pink and cream. Some of the pinkish fabrics had bits of blue in them, so that is why I have some blue center blocks. But they also have some green, so I decided to include a green block. But the OTHER surprise in this quilt is that I added a light green center fabric to the center of an Orange block. The RULE for this quilt was the colored blocks had cream centers, the creamish blocks had colored centers. The light green in the middle of the orange block was chosen because I wanted it to look like a light color.
One final note about the purplish brownish fabric on the right - I KNOW it doesn't LOOK blue. I don't care that it doesn't. I don't want you to think it is. I want you to SEE it is different. My point in this quilt is that it is close enough in VALUE that it can WORK even though it is DIFFERENT. It does fall into the color range I decided to use in this quilt, but it is just enough outside the range to catch your attention and make you say, "Wha..?"
My Number One Goal when I make my quilts is to draw the attention of my viewer and to Make. You. Look.
Gotcha!
I made another set of blocks and put them up on the design wall.
So I straightened everything out, and then filled in the sides with the dark fabrics. I need two rows at the bottom to get this the size I want. And I am 90% sure that green box in the lower left is going to go, but when I got this far, and stepped back, I thought it was looking rather good.
I picked out some of my favorite of these fabrics, and then chose center fabrics for them and made about fourteen blocks, the set them up on the design wall and started tinkering. An hour or so later, I had this, and felt I was making progress.
After another hour, I had this. It isn't perfect, and I want to look at it in the computer before I start sewing it up, but I am getting closer. This is a LOT harder than it looks.
Also... It is so interesting to work on something like this and NOT get any comments. I can practically hear you all thinking, "I'm not sure about this." Or, "I'm going to have to wait and see what Lynne does." Or, "Gee, it's kinda dark." Naturally it is a lot prettier in real life, and I know I will have to make some changes. I can see blocks that don't really work, and I know I have to make more. I will talk about the fabric "spacers" in my next post, and which fabric works, which doesn't, and why.
