Let It Go!

 

Sometimes you're so busy you forget to really look at the things right in front of you. This is "Life is Tweet," my attempt at a row quilt I made almost ten years ago. It lives in my master bathroom and I walk past it several times a day. I sometimes forget it's there. What a shame!

It has my fun liberated birds (tutorial here), my butterflies, (tutorial here), and my asterisk flowers (tutorial here), and some wonky hearts.

I meant to have all the elements lined up in a row, but the birds refused to cooperate. The hearts seemed to bounce around with love and excitement, and just couldn't be contained. The butterflies wanted to fly (duh), and the asterisks simply lifted up into the air above.

Well.

What was I to do? I let them, because sometimes that's the way an idea works. You have a plan and what happens on the design wall changes and you have to change with it. Had I made the quilt I had originally intended to make, this quilt would have been boring and stuffy.

The quilt is enhanced with Chris Ballard's spectacular free motion hand guided quilting. It's a smallish quilt, 38" x 45". Just goes to show you can get a lot of bang for your buck out of 29 blocks.

I tell my students all the time that at some point the quilt they are making is going to start making demands. "What the quilt wants," I tell them, "the quilt should get." 

I have a lot of non-quilt related stuff going on and since I haven't been in the studio for a few days, I thought you'd enjoy this little blast from the past.

Asterisk Tutorial Is Live!

 

My asterisk tutorial is live. You can get it here at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download, so you can get started adding nifty asterisks and asterisk flowers to your quilts right away.

It!

 

I'll spare you the eleven other permutations this went through before it got here, but this is it. Well, it is IT before I start sewing it together. These asterisk blocks have been trimmed down to 6" squares.

When one of my students, Kerrin, saw this she texted, " That quilt looks GREAT! It looks like one of those blow away dandelions..."

And that was when I knew I had the layout right, because that is EXACTLY what I was going for.

So how am I going to sew it together, since these aren't arranged in anything like a row?

First, I modified the photo so I could see all the individual blocks. Then I will print this photo and figure out how I will group them so I can sew them into big chunks, and then sew those together. In other words, I am going to do it the same way I sewed the Flight of Fancy flimsy together. Go click that link and you will understand.

This is the back of the Life is Tweet quilt, and you can see how the process looks.

This is the upper right section of that quilt before I put it all together.

So what I am going to be doing over the next few days is extremely fiddly and fussy and complicated. Some things might not go exactly where I want them to. I am not going to cut any asterisks apart, but they may get trimmed a bit, like the bottom corner of the light pink one in the photo directly above.

Happy Valentine's Day

This is a picture of Life is Tweet, on display at Quilted Threads.

Life is 'Tweet: Complete!

Wouldn't you know that on the day I finish this quilt it's raining outside, so this inside photo will have to do! Still, this photo shows off Chris's quilting nicely.

Studio and Sewing Update!

On Sunday my dad and I hung the homosote pieces to the walls in my studio. This is where my design wall will be, and what's really nice about it is that no only will it be a flannel design wall, but I'll be able to attach things to it with push pins as well. You all know how sometimes it can be tricky to get large pieces to stay up on a design wall by themselves.

It was a messy day, bringing the pieces outside to be cut to size, then carrying them back inside and attaching them to the walls. It was messy because I had to move everything around, and then move it back in place.  More on that later, but look, I sewed the binding on two sides of the Life is 'Tweet quilt!  Woo hoo!  I did that while sitting on the couch "watching" tv with Millie purring beside me. Life doesn't get much better than that.


* update: Pat, the design wall is 64" wide by about 84" tall.

A Little Distraction

I've got the binding for Life is 'Tweet sewn on, folded over and pinned. Now I can do the hand sewing while I "watch" TV. 

But then I got distracted. My son and his wife sent me the link to their wedding photographs. So, I, um, got nothing else done the rest of the evening and went to bed late.

(It also means I went to bed happy.)

Binding for Life Is 'Tweet!

 I worked all Sunday afternoon on the pieced binding for Life is 'Tweet.

This is kinda, sorta what it's going to look like. I wanted the pieces of color to be of varying sizes and irregularly placed.

Only to realize that I couldn't sew it to the quilt until I made the hanging sleeve.

I pulled this greenish teal paisley from my stash and made the sleeve last night.

I stitched the binding to one side, then it was time for bed.

*Regular readers know that I do my final hand-stitching on the front of my quilts. You can read the story about how this came to be, here.

Life is 'Tweet, almost complete

Life is 'Tweet arrived in New Hampshire yesterday. Because I'll be moving in a week I won't be able to work on finishing it any time soon, but I am excited to do so.  I have to figure out what I want to do with the binding. I don't really want it to be a color, and I don't want it to be white (been there, done that), so I am thinking of mostly white with little color accents every so often, all around the quilt.  I'll try it out and decide, but in the meantime I can think about it.  Sometimes I think it's a good idea to NOT be able to work on something. It forces you to give more thought to it, and also provides the opportunity to come up with more, different, and better ideas. The first idea is generally pretty standard, and we all know I don't do "normal."  If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

It's getting to be crunch time for the big move. I've got all the big stuff packed. I've got the contents of all cabinets, bookcases, bureaus, desks and drawers packed. I've got a travel bag ready, and have plans for what to do in each of the last days leading up to the move itself.  I don't know if I'll be posting much, but I'm not going far and I will be back soon. I promise to give you all a full report of the process! The sewing room will be one of the FIRST things I set up in the new place. I can't wait. I've been away from the sewing machine for far too long.


The Black Box quilt will be traveling to the Des Moines AQS show. If you go to the show I'd love it if you could send me a picture of yourself with the quilt.

Life Is Tweet Sneak Peek

Chris sent me this photo of my Life is Tweet quilt, which she just finished quilting. I didn't want the usual, and I don't like quilting that looks like a machine did it. I told her to let herself go and just have some fun with it. You can see that she did, and I am thrilled.

It's funny. Folks around here (New Hampshire) can't understand why I send my quilts 1,200 miles away to Tennessee to have Chris quilt them. When I was showing off some of my quilts at my class in July, one of my students exclaimed, "Well all they have to do is LOOK at your quilts to get the answer.

Well, yes!

Backing for Life is 'Tweet

I'm sewing the backing for my Life is 'Tweet quilt. When you have fabric as pretty as this,

 and you plan to use it as a backing for a quilt, and it needs to be pieced, it just isn't right to sew pieces together so the pattern doesn't match.

 So I take the extra time to piece it together so the pattern appears to continue uninterrupted.  I never get a seam like this absolutely perfect, but I don't need "perfect". I only need the viewer to not notice it is pieced. I am happy with the way it came out.

So where is the seam?

(The most annoying thing about this is that I couldn't get the text to run absolutely parallel to the seam! I guess I really am a perfectionist.)

Life Is 'Tweet!

It's officially a flimsy! And it has a name, "Life is 'Tweet!"

It is 40-1/2" x 47-1/2" (102.8 cm x 120.6 cm)

I'll take a picture of it outside tomorrow.