Getting There

It took me a while to figure out that this (above)

Pretty much is a long rectangle version of this, above.

Here those shapes are rearranged so I get this dark diamond-ish shape in the middle, which I like very much. Now watch this...

ALL I DID was add two cream arc blocks to each side. This shape (if you turn it on its side) is called an Ogee. It's a very old very traditional shape. Now watch this...

ALL I DID here was replace the two round cream blocks at the top and bottom with the arc cream blocks. Pretty interesting, huh?

Here I went back to the sideways Ogee shape, added brown quarter round blocks to the four corners, and then added the brown arcs to make points. (I didn't have enough blocks for the bottom.) This is interesting, but to me the brown is TOO HEAVY.

Here I removed the brown quarter round blocks at the top, and replaced the with the brown arc blocks. Quite a difference, isn't it, compared to the bottom half? Watch this...

This is the same as above, but I replaced the top and bottom (you know) with the rounded blocks instead of the pointy ones. The big arc on the top has a kind of a graceful swoop from one side to the other, but the bottom one is kinda heavy.

This is the stuff I do when you all think I'm doing nothing when I skip a day of blogging. So where is this all going? I thought you'd never ask, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow. It's past my bedtime. :-) 

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.

One Hundred Fourteen

These are the leftover giant diamonds from all the diamond quilts I have made. There are 114 of them. There may be duplicates.

I can tell you all have an idea where this is going. Let me tell you how the idea got started.

AS USUAL, it started with a conversation with my best pal, Julie. She had remarked that I should make a quilt of all my leftover zebra blocks. I replied that I hadn't kept any of them from the first one, Parade of Zebras, (the scrappy version.) Why not? I couldn't remember. But I had a ton of big diamonds, I told Julie. So one thing led to another.

THE QUESTION IS... Can I make a quilt (a decent one, not just a bunch of scraps sewn willy-nilly) using ONLY the 114 diamond blocks in the photograph above.

I already know that you guys are thinking, "Well if anybody can do it, Lynne can..." which is a very nice thought, and certainly a challenge, and the answer is, I dunno, we'll have to see.

So after I finish sewing the Firebird quilt top together (I have 3/4 of the top sewn. I didn't sew all day yesterday. I was reading The Children Return, Bruno Chief of Police #7 from Martin Walker and I wanted to finish it.) I am going to spread the diamonds around and see what happens.

Since I don't like to make two quilts that are the same, this ought to be interesting. My Number One Rule will be to use THOSE DIAMONDS and ONLY those diamonds. I am not going to allow myself to cut one piece of fabric.

We'll see how long that lasts.

Yeah, I know. (Rules are made to be broken and all that crap.)

The Three of Us

Dear Son, your Mom can take "selfies" too!

This is me, Julie and Chris holding one of our collaboration quilts, "Magic Happens." I made the blocks and the letters, Julie put them all together into a flimsy, and Chris did the quilting (in black and white variegated thread because Millie, my black and white cat, would be napping on the quilt).
 

 We spent my last day in Memphis at Chris's house. When we got there, Chris had my Spools quilt all ready for me. It's beautifully quilted, and I'll finish it next week, when it and all my other quilts return from their extended stay at Julie's.

Chris has always talked about making letters, so I gave her a lesson.  She picked it up right away and made some beauties. Here she is working on an upper case "C" in which the fish echo the shape of the letter.

These are the letters Chris made. As you can see, she also made an asterisk and a butterfly. 

Chris couldn't believe it when I saw this collection of threads in the bottom of her wastebasket near Iris, her long arm quilting machine. ("OH NO! She's looking at the ONE place I didn't clean!!!")

This is a great example of how colors jumbled together willy-nilly can give you ideas.

You never know where you can find inspiration, but as this shows, it's everywhere.

I had a FABULOUS time in Memphis and St Louis! It was awesome. A very deep and heartfelt "Thank you" to all the wonderful people I met, from the quilters to the folks at the hotel, and all the folks at the restaurants and stores we visited, and to the strangers we met at the Gateway Arch.

Thank you one and all!

More Ideas

We visited Annmarie Gardens last week, and in the Art Room was this mosaic.

If you look closely you'll see it was made from recycled materials.

Yes, bottle caps, jar caps, yogurt covers and tin can lids.

Here's another view.

I liked the use of old paint cans as storage bins too.

It wasn't the only use of recycled materials that attracted my attention. I love these table parts.  These are definitely examples of out-of-the-box thinking.

Want Ideas? Get Input.

I am always rather befuddled when folks tell me they don't get any ideas.  Frankly, I have a hard time believing it.  Really? I mean REALLY?  Not even ONE? Maybe the idea-less are expecting ideas to be BIG, AMAZING, COMPLETELY ORIGINAL and GIFT-WRAPPED, ready for immediate use.

In that case, my friends, you are going to be bitterly disappointed.  Ideas come from all around you, and they never come fully formed. It is said humor is the juxtaposition of incongruous things.  In other words, it's the unexpected. Ideas are like that.

The spark that generates the idea is the AHA! moment when something clicks because you've just made a connection.  But you can't get that AHA! moment unless you have things to connect. That's where INPUT comes in.  You have to collect it.  Sometimes it can be a box of pictures, or clippings from magazines, or it's a sketchbook.

I collect quotes. I keep them in a box.  When I search for a phrase for a word quilt, this is the first place I look.

But it's also important to keep an eye out for things that catch your attention, and RECOGNIZE they've caught your attention.  You don't need to know WHY!  Everybody has a phone that has a camera nowadays. When you see something that catches your fancy, take a photo.

Will I ever make a quilt inspired by the colors of these tiny little birds?

I don't know, but I would NEVER have been able to remember the astounding color combination had I not taken a few photos.  The black under the beak, that intense light blue next to the purple of the breast, with a RED head and brilliant green back and yellow stomach... it's fabulous. I'd have never thought of that on my own.  But these little birds were fluttering around when I visited a Butterfly "zoo."  So I took a picture, to remember.

To be creative, to be imaginative, to hope to be either, you must open yourself up to the world around you. Read, look, be aware.  Go see some art, even if it isn't what you "do." Is there an Art Museum in your town? GO! Most public museums have free admission some time. At the Currier, in my town, it's Saturday between 10 AM and 2 PM. Look around.  Don't slavishly read every label. Just wander and look at whatever catches your fancy. Don't look only at the stuff you think you like, look at everything. 

Walk through the galleries in your city.  Get out.  Look around.

You have an imagination. It's hungry.  Feed it!


  

The Best Ideas...

A spiral bound book will stay open and lie flat. Julie told me I could have a book spiral bound at Staples or Kinko's.I had bought an extra copy of Tonya's book to use in a classroom setting, and thought having it lie flat would be useful.So I brought it to Staples last night and they did it while I waited.

The cost? $2.99.

The best ideas can often be very inexpensive. This is a keeper!