Larkspur

 

The pink barn quilt, LARKSPUR, is finished, and now hangs above my TV. You can read more about it here.  

I made it in the fall of 2019 before the world went to hell. Can’t remember when I brought it to Janet-Lee for quilting, but I didn’t get it back until January 2021. Click that link and you will be brought to various posts when I built the barn, and then details of the terrific quilting.  You’ll also get to see pictures of the barn that inspired it.

The Colorwash quilt in yesterday’s post was made by me. I took Wanda’s online Colorwash class in the fall of 2019.

Binding the Pink Barn - Finally

 

I felt pretty stupid last October when I cut binding for the pink barn quilt from the wrong fabric. But that wasn’t the only thing holding me back from adding the binding to this wall hanging. I knew the binding I usually use would be too big (wide, fat), so I wanted to make it slightly narrower. I had to work out just how to do that and that took some time.

After getting all the holiday stuff put away, getting the house back to “normal” and getting the office all done, I finally had time to get back into the studio. To get any serious work done I need to clean up in there, but I saw the pink barn and thought it would be the easiest thing to finish and get out of the way, so I decided to do that.

So I cut the strips out of the right fabric, joined them, folded and pressed it, and then started sewing it to the quilt. Then I folded it over and pinned it.

Now, sometimes if I get up and take a shower and make the bed, I get caught up in the usual household chores and never make it to the studio. If I just go right into the studio in my nightgown and slippers, I can bypass all that “should” stuff and get right into what it is that makes me feel good. Doing creative things feeds my soul and jumpstarts my creative juices to keep doing creative things. I’ve been out of the studio for too long, so on Saturday, I went into the studio in my nightgown, and started in on the binding. By the time I took the photo above, it was after noon and I still hadn’t gotten dressed.

After I got dressed and ran some errands, I found something to watch mindlessly on TV while I sat on the couch and got started sewing the binding down.

 I’ll keep going and finish this as soon as I can, because I want to hang it above the TV, so I’m pretty motivated.

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Sewing on Sunday

 

This is the hanging sleeve for the pink barn quilt. Or rather, it is in the  process of becoming the hanging sleeve.

Here I have pinned it to the back of the quilt.

Here is the front of the pink barn quilt, Larkspur, in case you forgot.

I think I can hear you all saying, BUT LYNNE.... WHERE IS THE BLUE AND YELLOW???"

Well, see, I was cleaning the house. Specifically I was tidying up in the living room. I have been rather lax lately and there was stuff all over hell.

These are the two chairs at the other end of my living room. You don't often see them because I tend to have them covered with stuff. The plum wing chair is usually where I stack the fabric I have washed, but not ironed. Over the last couple of months it's been the repository of kitchen organizing stuff that hasn't worked, and the pink barn quilt, which is quilted so beautifully I don't want to fold it.

I was cleaning up everything else in the living room and saw the stuff on the wing chair and basically lost it. 

And I am much happier because of it.

And Now to Choose the Binding...

The first question to ask when binding a quilt (I believe) is to decide whether a quilt needs room to breathe or whether it needs to be contained. With Larkspur, (the Pink Barn) it's hard to tell which it needs. What I do know is a light binding wouldn't work at all. 

 

This is the first option, a kind of a greyish green, is kind of blah.

This patterned pink stripe is another option, (but kind of overly fussy.)
 

This big print won't do either, although that is the print that is on the back of the quilt.

I really like this blue. It isn't the same fabric as the blue trim on the barn, but it's close enough.

Blue it is. Or rather, it will be.

 

Holy crap, it's February?

Larkspur - The Pink Barn

 

I finally picked up the Pink Barn from Janet-Lee Santeusanio, my fabulous long-arm quilter. For this I told Janet-Lee I wanted it special, and to go all out. I am a firm believer that when you are working with an artist who knows what the hell she is doing, that you let her use her skills. JL and I have a standard set of instructions: She has my permission to quilt anything I give her differently than what she and I originally chose if she thinks there is a better solution. 

JL quilted the stripes in the barn.

She outlined the trim in the windows, and she carried the vertical quilting lines in the body of the barn itself. She also quilted the diagonal lines of the barn doors. This is the way real barn doors are often made here in NH.

Such glorious details!

What I just love about it is how barn-y it is. It is quilted like a barn, not a house or a decorative building. Now JL lives down the street from the inspiration barn (shown below) so she knows what it looks like. I am like, beyond thrilled with it, and now have to figure out what to use as a binding for my barn wall hanging, which I have decided to call "Larkspur."

This is the inspiration barn.

Johnny Barn

A couple of weeks ago I showed you this picture of the barn that inspired my pink barn.

When I brought the pink barn top to Janet-Lee for quilting, I told her it was inspired by the barn at the bottom of her street. "Oh, that's John and Deb's barn. Let me take a picture and send it to them." I asked Janet-Lee what the barn was for. "I think it's just for storage." It turns out John & Deb built it themselves.

So when I drove by that day and the doors were open, I pulled over and ran up to the barn to take pictures.

The barn is post-and-beam construction (the same as my brother's barn in Colorado) and is, in fact, used for storage. I saw bicycles, tools and several surfboards. I was impressed to see a wasp's nest hanging from the second story railing, and not at all surprised to see a UNH hockey jersey hanging in the barn as well (UNH hockey is BIG in the Seacoast area).

After I took my pictures I saw a man working out in the yard, and I went over to talk. It was John. 

"Janet-Lee showed me the picture of your pink barn quilt and asked if it looked familiar. I said, 'That looks a lot like MY barn.' JL said it WAS my barn."

I told him I thought his barn was beautiful. We talked a bit about barns, and how I have had "barns on the brain" for some time, and now looked for and at barns wherever I go. He said he had looked at a lot of barns before he built his. We talked about several features of his barn were typical of New Hampshire barns but are not found in barns in neighboring states. Later I sent him pictures of my brother's Colorado barn and my interpretation of it.

He invited me to stop by on my next visit to JL and see the timber frame screened in porch he built at the back of his house. He also said he's planning to build a 10' x 14' timber frame structure for his wife, a muralist, next spring.

"It will have basically the same feel and proportions as the big barn, but just a bit smaller," John wrote to me in an email later, "The fun never stops!!! Haha!"

Too Cool!

This is my darling granddaughter, looking here like she's way too cool for something or other.

And this is her decidedly un-cool grandmother holding up the pink barn I made while at the studio of Janet-Lee Santeusiano, my longarm quilter. 

 The inspiration for the pink barn is just down the street from Janet-Lee's house and she knows the folks who own and built it. "I should take a picture and send it to them, they are going to love it!" So we did.

For my part I'm going to take it easy the next few days. After a marathon sewing session you'll find me on the couch reading one of the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels. I got a little behind in the series and am now catching up.    

Back Back Back!

Yesterday I worked on backings for some quilts.

The exceptionally feminine pink barn deserved an equally feminine backing so I picked this big print from the Kaffe Collective. It's a girly barn, and as my son says, "If you're going over the top - keep going!"

The Jealousy quilt got a greenish blue border.

 I had already selected this as the backing, and I thought the red violet would make a perfect binding,

 

It looked OK, but it just didn't sing the way I wanted it to.

 The orange, on the other hand, really stood out.

Here are closeups of the border and binding.

Last but certainly not least is this Philip Jacobs fabric I chose for the backing of my Colorwash quilt.

I bought every last inch of the fabric on the bolt. It was barely 2-1/4 yards, and it involved some really fussy cutting and sewing to get it right. Binding for this will be selected later.

This Tula Pink just hopped right into my shopping bag and DEMANDED to be included in my DGD's Dino Diamonds quilt. That gorgeous owl is SO going to be fussy cut and showed off in its own big diamond!!! The final shipment of dinosaur fabrics is due today, so after those go through the washer and dryer it will be All Dinos All The Time.

Stay tuned!

OOOH PINK!

Here's a closeup of the pink barn.You can see the detail in the sky fabric, and the trim I used around the roofline. Every part of this barn is pieced. The black windows and the grey muntins* are also pieced.

In the example above, I like that the pink stripes do not line up above the LARKSPUR panel and that they go crosswise on either side of it. If you don't know why I chose the sky fabric I did, notice how the turquoise in the sky picks up the blue details in the roof trim and the inset square, and the green in the sky fabric also picks up the green background of the butterfly block. And notice the blue roof trim is NOT the same fabric that surrounds the butterfly block. You do NOT have to be slavishly matchy-matchy.

 The blue acute angle near the roofline, shown here in the blue, is something I see in virtually every NH barn, but it took me a long time to figure out how I could include it in a barn block. Very often this angled shape is the same color as the body of the barn.

All the little colorful details in the top part of this barn read as feminine so I really wanted to use a fabric for the barn doors that would keep that feeling. I wanted it to include the colors I'd been using, and be a stripe, so I could use it at an angle, since so many barn doors around here have doors constructed this way. I've had this fabric in my stash for some time, and it is beyond perfect.

This is part of the bottom panel that includes the ramp up to the barn doors. The supports on either side of the ramp are usually stone, so I chose a fabric that looked like that.

Here is the finished barn. It is about 38" square, and uses 16 different fabrics. I'm pretty happy with it. If you need an idea about the scale, the black windows are 1" tall by 3/4" wide. I've kept this photo pretty big, so you can click it, then double click it again to see all the little details.









*muntin: the strip separating panes of glass in a sash

More Pink Barn!

I'm back working on the pink barn. I created the row of lights above the door.

Then I made the doors and the sides and put them together. Many barns in New England have doors constructed with angled strips of wood, so I wanted to find a decorative fabric that would give me that feeling. The fabric I picked for these doors is a jeweled stripe, and I cut the doors on the bias. The jewels pick up the colors of the barn as well as the blue I've used as highlights. 

Here I have trimmed the sides and added the blue trim on the corners of the barn. My inspiration barn lives in the woods, so I put some green fabric to one side to see what it looks like.

Here's my inspiration barn. As you can see, I've taken a lot of liberties.

PS: Happy Birthday to my barn-building quilting buddy, Julie Sefton.

I Went Shopping... and Another Thing.

I needed more pinks for the pink barn, so this morning I got up early and drove to my favorite quilt shop, Quilted Threads.

I really like the pink in the middle with the little bursts of color. I'll use one or more of these for the body of the barn. I haven't decided yet.

These three were in the sale room, and I may use one or more as accents.

 I know the batik I looked at the other day would be nice, but I really liked the happy feel of this fabric, which I will probably use for the sky. Remember, we don't want to be TOO LITERAL!

So now my fabrics are taking a spin in the washing machine. I'll get to work on the barn later, but first, a confession.

Last week, I needed something from the top shelf in one of the kitchen cabinets. I'm five feet tall, so I have to use a stool. Instead of getting the step stool, I grabbed a small footstool from the living room. I got what I needed, but my foot caught the edge of the stool, overbalancing it, and I fell. The upper half of my body landed on the counter, and my left wrist hit first. I couldn't grab anything to steady myself, and I fell over backwards onto the floor.

Aside from feeling stupid, I wasn't hurt. My left wrist was sore, but I could move all my fingers and hand in any direction. I took some ibuprofen and put some ice on it and then continued about my day. My wrist was swollen, but that was to be expected.

Most of the swelling went down after a day, but some remained, a funny kind of bump. My wrist only hurt when I bent it far backwards.

After several days, the swelling was still there, and I knew I'd have to get medical advice. I have osteoporosis as well as arthritis. Sigh.

So yesterday I went to the local Urgent Care facility and got it looked at and X-rayed. Blessedly, there is nothing broken. "But you have a lot of arthritis in your hand," the nurse practitioner told me, "and that interferes with the swelling going down, so it may take some time." She checked my grip and mobility and told me to go home and treat the symptoms. If the swelling doesn't go down in 2 to 3 weeks, I'm to give them a call. The radiologist will review the X-rays on Monday and will call me if something is discovered.

Yes, I know. I am lucky.

A Little Trim...

I've added a thin strip of the decorative stripe I showed you a few days ago to the edge of the barn roof. I like it a lot. It just goes to show that you have to really LOOK at your fabrics to see the possibilities. I wrote a tutorial about that, and you can get it here. It's everything you've ever heard me say about fabric all in one place.

I also like the blue batik as the sky. It's sky-ish and looks windy and cloudy, which happens here in New England.

And I still prefer this geometric print of all the fabrics I currently have for the body of the barn. It also reminds me of the siding in many barns. I know several of you liked the white stripe better, but this is going to be a PINK barn. (But there's nothing that says I can't use it for the barn doors....)

Thinking Pink

This is a garage I pass on my way to the grocery store. I like the reddish trim. This reminds me that less can be very much more.

So I decided to add a contrasting trim to the top half of my pink barn, but that leaves me a conundrum. Now that I've added so much blue, the options for the bottom half of the barn have (of course) changed.

Before I added anything blue, I had chosen this fabric which has woven elements, but now I am not sure.

So I decided to audition some other fabrics. This one is too much the same value as the pink stripe for my taste.

This stripe seems a bit busy. There's already a lot going on in this barn.

I wanted to try it with a blue door. It's too many stripes, but I wanted to see if a blue door would work.

I like this grunge pink, but I don't have enough of it. I have to decide if I want to wait while I order more.

I really like this geometric print. Pretty sure I'll use a white door, but I will definitely use a few bits of blue to tie the bottom part of the barn to the top part.

And one last thing, the blue along the top of the barn will be significantly narrower than it is right now, so it won't be QUITE as dominant as it appears right now.