Blue Ice Becomes Making Waves

 I always tell my students to push beyond something that they think looks good.

Breaking apart the central medallion style of one version yielded something interesting.

The nice thing about digital photography is that you can take pictures to store an interesting variation for future review. I really liked this, but didn't want to make a lot more blocks to fully explore the idea so I cheated (improvised). 

This is not my design wall. I took pictures, then printed them on paper, made copies, cut apart the blocks and started playing.

By the time I got this far I knew it was a design I would sew together.

This arrangement is a bit too "regular" for my taste. I will have to break it up a bit more, but that shouldn't be a problem.

I'm still wrestling with how to arrange the fabrics, but I know I don't want something with this much contrast. When I feel ready, I will go in the studio and start cutting up fabric. It's been cold lately and being in there when I am cold is not much fun.

AT ANY RATE...

I can hear some of you.. "BUT LYNNE, you were thinking about long rectangles, and blue ice. This is squares and it looks like waves of water..."

And this is when I tell you to STOP BEING SO DARN LITERAL and to GO WITH THE FLOW. Just because you started with one idea, doesn't mean you're married to it. You should see what happens when you play. You find a new direction and follow that. It is called being creative. Do I know where this will lead? I do not. Do I worry I will screw up? No. What if it doesn't work? I will fix it. I will come up with another idea and try that. Does this frighten me? No. Will I waste fabric? That depends on your definition of waste. If it helps me figure out where I am going and I end up making a killer quilt, working up to that idea will not be wasteful, so my answer is no. Your fabric isn't doing you any good on the shelf.

WHAT I WILL PROBABLY DO... Is just play with these ideas, and then put them all away and start cutting fabric and making blocks and putting them up on the design wall and go from there. I don't want this to be overworked and too fussy.

Loose Ends!

1. The replacement 3' x 4' mat arrived today.

2. I will never, ever, ever use EQ to design my quilts. I can design quilts without it. Besides things look different on a design wall to scale that a computer image cannot duplicate.

3. The fabrics for the 58 Carats quilt were collected over a period of 30 years. They come from different designers, different manufacturers and many of them are in the 10 - 30 year old range. They are not available now, and most certainly do not come in "a set." There are Philip Jacobs, Kaffe Fassett and Tula Pink, along with a host of others I do not know. Most are unavailable now.

4. The Waltzing Matilda quilt will eventually live with a friend in Sydney, Australia.

Snaps

After the Petals quilt and the Diamond Jubilee, I wanted to make another stashbusting quilt. Looking at my stash, I could see WAY TOO MANY creams. So I knew the next quilt would have creams. Creams with what? I decided to use pinks and oranges.

During one of our marathon telephone conversations, my best pal Julie decided she'd like to play along with pinks, oranges and creams too. You can read about her journey here.

I pulled some fabrics and then set out looking through my books for an easy quilt to make.

I found "Snaps" from this book.

I rejiggered the block sizes so they'd be a lot easier for me to cut, and we all know I wouldn't be working in solids.

After figuring out my sizes and the number of blocks I'd need, I started cutting. It's amazing to think this fabric will make a quilt 54" x 72". It didn't make much of a dent in the stash.

The blocks are very easy. One block has five pieces, the other is just one.

So I made a few blocks and threw them up on the design wall*** and promptly decided they were boring as all get out.

Time to go to bed. I'd worry about what to do later.




*** PS, Nancy J, I haven't forgotten you. My design wall is 65" x 83" (165cm x 210cm), and it isn't bigger because that's the only place in my studio where I had a flat wall. My design wall is covered in a couple of big pieces of Homosote, or pressboard. It's often used as a bulletin board. It's 1/2" thick (1.25cm) and it's painted white. Mine is screwed into the wall. I own the house, what the hell. On top of that is white flannel, stapled tightly over the pressboard. The nice thing about this is that not only do things stick to the flannel, but I can hold something up with push pins if I need to, and once quilts get big, you need help getting big pieces to "stay". You can read more about it here.

Design Wall Done!

The design wall is done. Finally.

I had forgotten the new wall is wider than the old one, and I got it 3/4 stapled to the wall before I realized it. I decided not to take it down and sew an extra piece down one side.  To do that I'd have to not only take it all down, but find a big (clean) flat spot on the floor to lay it all out and cut and trim, etc., etc.

I decided I could live with it, especially as the seam didn't run smack dab down the middle. I also had an electrical outlet to work around.

It's done, and it's fine. It's also slightly more complicated than it looks.

Underneath it all, stapled to the wall is a 1/2" of homosote. It's pressed cardboard, and works as a bulletin board, so this design wall has the advantage of having push pins stuck into it too. This is great when you want to get something big to stay up.

On top of that is that plastic tablecloth material that has flannel on the back. (Some years ago I bought a 25 yard roll of the stuff. I can't quite remember why.) Anyway, that's stapled up there on top of the homosote. The nice thing about it is that it is white, and you can't see through it.  On top of that I stapled the white flannel of the design wall. Because two flannel surfaces are touching, they stick to each other, making my design wall very smooth and flat. And because I've got that extra layer of white back there, you can't see through the thin flannel.

Boy, am I glad THAT's done!