Then Again, I Could Be an Idiot...

As you all know I'm planning my class at QT on Saturday. Yesterday I received one of QT's emails announcing upcoming events and classes. I read it and there was my class... "Houses and Trees, Oh My!" by Lynne Tyler on Saturday June 22...

WHAT???

I scrolled down... my letters class isn't scheduled at QT until Saturday August 3rd!

WHOOPS!!!

I started laughing. It's not a problem because my classes are all prepared well in advance. I'll bring different quilts of course, and I needed to print the handouts, but changing gears requires very little effort.

I'll be ready for Saturday, teaching free pieced houses, and now I'll have a great story to tell my students.

A Door Change

An architect always thinks she gets it right. She designs and builds a house, and then turns it over to the homeowner.

Sometimes, though, the homeowner doesn't like the designs of the architect, and makes some changes.  This particular homeowner didn't like the front door. 

This homeowner ordered the door removed and replaced.

She is much happier with this new door.

The architect/designer is a bit humbled.  The execution of the original door wasn't quite according to her concept, but she's learned to adapt.

(Ahem!)

What Makes a House Wonky?

 To me, two signature elements of a free pieced house are the triangular roof and an off-kilter chimney.

 Obviously not all real houses have that kind of roof, and in the real world, chimneys have to be straight. (and that's not a chimney on the right.. that's the steeple of a nearby church...)

Wonky houses are often brightly patterned,

Real houses... not so much.

 

  

Wonky houses and real houses often display asymmetry.

 Even while trying to be symmetrical at the same time.

When I make free pieced houses, I am not interested in making them "real." I want to use fun colors and prints. I want to make the roofs asymmetrical, rather like a hat sitting on a head.

I want the colors to be fun and happy, or whatever I want the house to feel like.  Use "real" houses as inspiration if you want, but don't get all worked up about making your free pieced house look "real."  

P.S. Each of these "real" houses is located within a mile of my house.

More trees

I think I overdid it. These two overlapping trees on the far right are too close in value, and the one on the left leans too far over to the left.

And the house needs a cat.

Autumn Trees

I'm getting the hang of making these trees overlap. It's a little bit tricky.  You have to think of the tree as a big triangle (including the trunk and the ground below it) as one unit, and handle it very carefully because the edges are generally on the bias.

I started making trees overlap by making complete tree units and then chopping off what I didn't need, but now I'm getting a bit smarter -- see that green tree over on the right? It never started out as a complete tree!

I'll have the complete "House and Tree Along" after the beginning of the year. In the meantime, be thinking of what you want to do with your own private forest!

Thoughts on the Rules

Not those rules. The rules I mentioned in yesterday's post. They were the rules of real houses.

Obviously fabric houses are different, but as Julie observed, it's really a conscious effort to do something deliberately askew.  ("Can you ever," she asked me recently, "make your letters really wonky? Uneven, irregular, symmetrical?")  The answer was... not without conscious, deliberate, effort.

One of the lessons in learning to draw is the ability to measure visually; to relate.  It's always asking, is this thing I am trying to reproduce higher, lower, lighter, darker, bigger, smaller, thinner, thicker.. whatever... and then putting it down that way.

It isn't simply the ability to draw the "thing" that makes it appear real on the page. It's the ability to draw accurately the spaces and objects around the thing. That requires the ability to measure and compare visually. (You know how you've seen artists hold a pencil out at arm's length?  They're measuring something.)

It's the ability to look at an object and tell whether I want to make it exactly the way it looks or if I want to make it more significant, or less so. If I want you to really see it, I'll pump up the contrast.  If I want it to disappear, I'll make it blend in with whatever else is nearby. 

It's the ability to look at a series of (for example) blue fabrics and tell at a glance which are lighter, bluer, cooler, warmer, more yellow (greener) warmer, brighter, less intense, more intense, more "true blue", etc. In short, I can tell instantly whether they will "work" together or not. More importantly, though, I know why they would or wouldn't work.

I have to restrain myself at the quilt shop from commenting on the fabric selections of other customers.  Frequently I have to walk away from a selection of colors I think is monotonous, dull, lacking in contrast or verve, or just plain predictable. (On the other hand, it makes watching their reactions to my color choices all the more amusing.)

I do it all without thinking, and because I've done it for so many years, I do it very, very quickly.  I'm rarely aware I'm doing it. It's so intuitive, and so much of a habit, I'll be sewing merrily along, and then look at what I'm working on and think, "oh hell, it's too damn perfect" when I wanted it wonky.  To make it wonky, I have to concentrate on NOT sewing on auto-pilot.

So what does this all have to do with making wonky houses and trees?  A lot, actually.  If you want to make a house look like it's in the middle of a cold landscape, you have to follow some rules. Where I live, in New England, it gets cold in winter (for my pals in Oz, that means 0 degrees C, or the temperature at which water freezes.)  In that weather, the trees lose their leaves and we get snow on the ground.  Your breath freezes the air, the cold wind hurts your face, and your car doesn't always start on command!

Putting colorful flowers near a winter house wouldn't make it look cold, even though that would be a good example of wonkiness, or rule-breaking.

I made my little winter cabin the way I did because I wanted it to look cold.  I wanted you to feel the cold. So the house is shorter, the body of the house is timber, like a log cabin. The fabric I used for the roof looks like the asphalt roofing material used around here (and it's black to hold in the heat and help the snow melt).  I made the doors and windows blue - cool blues. I wanted the house to look like it was huddled against the cold. I made the ground black and white, to look like the snow.  The only warm element in the house is the red chimney.

It's all a juggling act.  More tomorrow.

New England House

This is a good example of a traditional New England farmhouse with attached outbuildings and barn.

This is the main house. This traditional style was built on symmetry.  The windows and front door are all lined up just so.  Note also the placement of the two chimneys, and the solid granite block foundation. This is a large house, and the family that built it was prosperous. My guess is it's almost 200 years old. It's been very well taken care of.

This looks like a simple house to free-piece, but to get the feel of it just right, it would have to be big! Still, though, isn't it great?

Winter Plan

My back was hurting a lot last night, so after dinner I lay on the couch and drew up this plan for the winter panel of the Four Seasons quilt.It's not perfect - the two groups of trees should be ever so slightly closer together, and I don't want the two biggest trees to be exactly the same height. I may push the house back a little, and even make it smaller, but overall I'm pretty pleased with it.  It's a start, and will give me something to think about.

Like, how am I going to make those trees overlap? Last night I wasn't so sure. This morning, I think I have it figured out.

Thinking of Spring

Here are the fabrics I pulled for my Spring Wonky House and Tree panel. In Spring (at least here in New England) the leaves aren't fully out until late May, and they are not yet bright green. There are flowering trees (which are the ones with pink).  The grass isn't quite green but there are flowers popping up.  Often the weather is rainy, so the sky in my spring panel is creamy, with a pattern indicating the spring breezes.

When I selected the fabric for the house, I was thinking "what color reminds me of Spring, but isn't necessarily something I see out the window?" Easter  and Easter eggs came to my mind, so I chose this  lavender striped fabric.  For the windows, I needed something dark for contrast. The darker purple was an obvious choice.  Then to find a couple of little cats to give the little sense of home.

And here is the overall layout of how I planned to use them.  I did make a few changes in the finished panel, but that's what happens.

BTW, I called these large blocks "panels" instead of blocks because they are comprised of different elements.  Each tree is a block, (like this cat under the tree), the house is a block, and then when all the blocks are put together, I have a big collection of blocks, and I refer to it as a "panel." This quilt will be comprised of four panels, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

For the birds

One of my quilting friends told me once, "You always find the BEST fabrics."

I disagreed. I don't think my fabrics are better than anybody else's. In fact, some of my most "inspired" fabric choices were from fabrics that were given to me. (The border of the quilt for DQS8; the lazy dog in The Quick Brown Fox; the spiderwebs on the W in Nine x Nine; the orange roof of the house in Magic Happens.)


I would certainly never have bought this fabric with the pink birds on the green background. I kept it because I thought it might have potential.

It did.

With a little careful trimming, it's perfect as the "ground" in my Spring panel for the Four Seasons Quilt-Along.

I know I keep harping on you to look at your fabrics to see what they can BE.  This is what I mean.


What?  Oh, you can't see the whole thing? Well, oh, of course not...

House Planning

I don't want the houses in my Four Seasons quilt to be identical. I want them to appear to be the same house at first glance, but I do want each of them to be slightly unique.  Look for the placement of chimneys and doors to be different.  The placement of the house will be different in each panel also. These little drawings from my sketchbook will get me going.

Wonky House Sneak Peek

Here are some of the fabrics I have selected for the Four Seasons houses.

 I am really getting excited about this project.

When I select fabrics, I don't just lay them out in a row. I arrange them as closely as possible in their positions in the finished block, like this one:

This house isn't part of my Four Seasons plan, but it gives you an idea of how I plan my houses.  This is also a great example of how collaborating with a child can make a great house.  When I was making a quilt for my godson a couple of years ago, I drew some simple houses on copy paper and asked his older brother and sister to color them and send them back to me.  I then interpreted their drawings in fabric.

Sometimes it's so hard to think of something if you can do anything that it's a good idea to limit your options.  In this case I had to stick with the colors from the drawing. It forced me to be creative about using my fabrics. What if I told you that you had to make your Four Seasons houses with only fabrics that are in your stash right now? Would that help you to think more creatively?

House Planning

 I've been thinking a lot about my wonky house and trees. I've decided to go with the four seasons idea, and have pulled all my fabrics. I've also been thinking about how I'd arrange them in a quilt.

First, in more traditional rows, like this.

Then I thought of the cyclical nature of the four seasons, and thought about arranging them a bit like this, with the houses in the center, surrounded by trees.  The trees in the border would blend seasons into one another, as they do in real life..

These are tiny little drawings from my sketchbook.  You may have to click each photo to enlarge.

While I hate being too "cutesy" I thought of some additional elements that would help identify the seasons in each house - a porch in summer, a mini quilt on a clothesline in the spring, a pumpkin for autumn, perhaps a Christmas wreath on the door in winter... I don't know if I'll actually include these in the finished quilt, but it's better to have too many ideas than too few.

How are your ideas coming along?

It's That Time

It's THAT time again.

 Time to clean the sewing studio because it's just to messy to work in.

I've set out my fabrics for three of the four seasons house panels.  What are you doing this lovely sunny weekend?

Four Seasons

I think it would be fun to have a Wonky-Along, but it's gonna have to wait until things settle down a bit. I do like the idea of making the same sort of house in all four seasons.

 That reminded me of this little quilt for Doll Quilt Swap 8. I had been playing with making wonky trees, but I didn't really have a concrete idea of how I would arrange them. 

The whole thing clicked for me one cold January morning as I was driving to work.  I looked at the bare trees by the side of the road and wondered how I'd make them wonky style. The tree to the right of the little house was the result. 

One thing led to another... how could I show the difference in the four seasons? What would the trees look like? How would I represent the ground?  How about the sky? Thinking, going through my stash and experimenting eventually led to this little quilt. I've always loved it, and the recipient loved it as well.


So The next wonky along will feature houses and trees.... Quilters, put on your thinking caps!

After three VERY stressful weeks, I needed to get into the sewing studio and do some sewing, so I decided to make a wonky house.

As I was taking a picture of it, I thought it almost looked like it did when it started snowing on Saturday (green grass, snow falling out of the sky).  I thought about the four seasons, and wondered if could make the same wonky house in four seasons...

I think that's a distinct possibility!

I Got A New Bag!

Here's my new bag! This is a big bag, 18" wide by 23" tall and 2" deep. (46 cm x 58 x 5) The straps are long enough to go over my shoulder even if I am wearing a coat (translation: it has to be carried over my shoulder because I'm only 5 feet(152.4 cm) tall! )
I made it big because I will use it to carry quilts around. I am glad Sue "challenged" me to make a new one. This one is much more "Me" than the brown one.

The word "QUILTER" is probably the most conservatively pieced word I have ever made. It is 2-1/2" tall.

Devon Town

This is Devon's quilt, Devon Town. Ten of the house blocks were inspired by drawings by his siblings, the other eight are mine. This picture was taken in bright sunlight, so the colors look a bit bleached out, but in real life they are very vibrant.

Owner Approved!

This is Devon, and as you can see, he approves his quilt. He's a real cutie!His brother and sister immediately recognized the houses they colored, and were very happy to see their houses in the quilt. His Mom has renamed the Rocket House. Now it's called "The Dream Ship."

The entire quilt will be unveiled here tomorrow.

Oh My Aching Back!

Crawling around on the floor tying a quilt is rough on my knees, but that's nothing to the back pain I've had after finishing the binding. I've been taking pain killers for the last two days.
I add the binding on the biggest flat table I have - my dining room table. It's the standard height, so I have to half bend over to work. Ouch. Won't be doing that for a long time!

My work table in my sewing studio is higher, and set at an angle so I don't have this type of pain when I work piecing a quilt together. In fact, except for sitting down to sew, I do most of my work standing up.

The quilt, by the way, is about 64" wide by 96" tall.