The Other Side of Winter

In this post of a few days ago, I showed you my lake view reduced to winter shades of grey. When I turn from the lake and look north back towards my rental house, this is my view (not so inspiring, huh?). We'd had two days of brilliant sunshine, and this particular morning was quite cold and crisp. The mountains beyond the lake looked very much like they had on Sunday. So I was quite surprised to turn and see this swath of white against a very blue sky. We'd gotten no new snow, yet the mountains, often shrouded in clouds, obviously had. That's right, I remembered. Although the greens and riot of colors that permeate spring and summer quite disappear for the most part once winter sets in, a winter sky can still provide a spark of color in a shade seldom seen any other time of year. Set against the pure white of new-fallen snow, the effect is brilliant and one of the reason I love winter.

Zentangle

I posted this sketch to one of my on-line groups recently, and thought since I don't have much else to share at the moment, I'd post it here to. Someone had pointed us to the zentangle website with the comment that here was something she'd been doing forever and didn't realize it was a learnable, marketable technique! I'd just made this sketch, trying to capture from memory the plowed fields I'd seen driving through the Palouse on my way to Thanksgiving dinner. (Go here to see a photo of the real thing.) Gee, I thought, is THAT what I was doing? Drawing those curving lines certainly was a meditative process, I have to admit.

I was working on cards this afternoon when the sun broke through the clouds and flooded the room. Oh, I do so like quilting in natural light, and it was killing me to stay at my desk, my back to that wonderful sunshine. So I set priority aside and hand quilted on the cross piece for about an hour. Ah, sinful bliss!

Holiday Break

I've had to succumb to holiday preparations for a few days. Not much creating until the packages and cards get out, and a few decorations up - you know the drill. I'm squeezing in a little time here and there to finish the cross quilt which was auctioned on Sunday. I was right - they really didn't care that it wasn't finished yet, and I was pleased with both the final bid and the winning bidder.

So while I'm on hiatus, enjoy the above photo taken Sunday morning. The quality of light is so different in winter, and as other artists have noted, everything is reduced to shades of grey. However, this shimmered with more of a silver quality.

Quilting Coming Along

I spent some lovely time hand quilting this afternoon. As near as I can tell, the 505 Spray Baste used to hold the layers together is doing just that and is not causing any drag on the needle. The untested batting is behaving as well. I may need to buy some of this and make up a real sample, one I can test both hand and machine quilting on, then wash to see how it reacts. It appears to have good stability while maintaining a lightness and needles easily.

The book showed two ideas for quilting: crosshatching (hand quilted) and meandering (machine quilted). One of the reasons I chose handquilting was because of the difficulty of manuevering around the embroidery by machine. I wanted to outline various parts of the cross with stitching comparable to stitching in the ditch - something I felt much easier to do by hand as in the picture above

My first stitches, however, were taken in the ditch between the panel and first border. Everything I read when I first started quilting recommended quilting from the middle and working to the edges. I started to question the necessity of this once I purchased a full-size quilting frame. It was made by Grace and rolled the quilt from one end to the other. I just knew my quilt would be skewed in some way because I wasn't quilting from the middle out, but it was not. I questioned more when I read of women like Suzanne Marshall quilting full size quilts without benefit of any hoop or frame. I had to agree with the logic that, if I quilt were properly and thoroughly basted, shifting or bunching would not be a problem so it shouldn't matter where you started quilting. This theory was reinforced once I got into machine quilting. I was taught by Harriet Hargrave and Diane Gaudynski that my first machine stitches should be ones to stabilize the main vertical and horizontal seams of the quilt. Once done, then I could start quilting any section in any order.

And so you see, with a bit of confidence, I stitched around the border seam first, then stitched around the ouside of the cross, then went back to complete the border. It has the most "fragile" marking, and I wanted to get those areas quilted before any of the markings rubbed off - easy to do when rolling and turning the piece to get to the middle section. Having the border quilted first will also help me know how much quilting to put into the body of the cross. I could stitch along each embroidered line but I don't think that will be necessary or even desirable.

As far as what I quilt with, I am using Coats & Clark 100% cotton hand quilting thread with a Roxanne #11 between needle (very short and fairly thin). I also use a Roxanne Thimble. I'd tried several different thimbles and brands of needles, but after watching Roxanne's daughter demonstrate the thimble and her method of hand quilting, then trying the thimble myself, I was sold on the advantages. My stitch length immediately shortened and the strain on my hands and fingers nearly disappeared. Yes, I'm a convert, but unless you do a lot of hand quilting, you may not want to make the investment as those thimbles do not come cheap. And as long as I was sold on the thimble and her basting glue as well, I decided to give the needles a try. Here is the website where you can see all the products and learn more about "that perfect stitch."

Moving On

Now that the pink quilt is done and gone, I've dived into finishing out the redwork cross panel. The goal is to have complete it for the church auction on Sunday, but since I didn't get going on it until yesterday, I'm not sure that's realistic. However, I'm not letting that stop me, and even if it isn't totally finished by Sunday, it's going into the auction, and the successful bidder will have to be patient.

The book doesn't give specific directions for finishing these panels, just pictures of several ways the author has done it. Using a ruler and a good guess, I estimated that she had added a half inch inner border and a two inch outer border, proportions that looked good to me. After blocking and squaring up the panel to 9-1/2 x 11-1/2, I added the borders, butted, not mitered. Now it was time to consider the quilting design.

It was the friend I visited at Thanksgiving that gave me the idea for quilting the panel itself: lines radiating from the cross arms and circles echoing the redwork center circle. These I drew on using a silver Berol Verithin pencil, ruler and compass. Then it was time to search my files for a border pattern.

I've been collecting quilting patterns and ideas for quilting for nearly 15 years, dutifully filed away in this folder. There's no way I will ever use all the patterns in there (let's not talk about all the books I own with quilting patterns in them), yet I rarely cull the collection. That's the thing about quilting - you just never know what idea will suddenly be just the thing for your current project. I was actually looking for a Greek Key design for the border, but instead, I found the border idea cut from a Piecemakers calendar a long time ago, and this is the first time I've had an opportunity to use it. It perfectly picks up the design elements in the cross itself. (Click on the picture for a larger view - it is the strip to the left of the panel.)

It took a little figuring and fudging to come up with a dimension for the triangle that would fit evenly in both the top and side borders - cutting a strip of paper the two lengths and playing with folding them yielded the dimension that would work. I used this Omnigrid triangle ruler as my template, placing a piece of painter's tape on the back side where I needed to line the ruler up to the border seamline. Spacing of the inner lines were a guess - what looked right. The semi-circles were drawn with a compass. Simple simple simple. No templates to make, no stencils to cut. I've used my absolute favorite white marking pencil (that is, when I need more permanence than soapstone or chalk can give me). It is a Nonce pencil, inexpensive, easy to sharpen, but soft enough to mark easily. Most important of all, I've never had any trouble removing it when the quilting's done. It can be rubbed off or washed out either one. I've had the same good luck with the Berol pencil.

I'm really looking forward to quilting this piece, now that I've got the design figured out. I'm hand quilting it - something that has always been a fairly relaxing way to keep my hands busy. This time I feel like I'm taking a risk. I'm trying two thing without testing them first. I want to quilt this without a hoop, which I've done successfully before, but I didn't want to spend time thread basting it. I've had good luck spray basting smaller pieces for machine quilting, so I'm taking a chance that it will work equally well with hand quilting. But that's not the only risk. I'm using a batting I've not tried before. I've been collecting batting samples almost as long as I've been collecting quilting patterns, and for awhile I was quite diligent about making up batting samples before committing a new one to a project. No time for such a luxury today. The batting in question is a piece of Mountain Mist Gold (50 poly 50 cotton) which I snagged at a quilt show when it first came out. I'm trusting that it will be easy to hand quilt, and since this piece won't be washed, I don't have to worry about shrinkage.

The Pink Quilt

Here it is, done at last and now on its way to my grandniece. It is about 43 x 54 inches. This method produces a two-sided quilt, with this view being the "front" or the side I concentrated my design efforts on. My camera had a hard time capturing the different pinks accurately, but I think I tweaked it fairly close.

And this is the "back" or the side I paid no attention to as per pattern instructions. In many ways I like this side better. In truth, I really struggled getting a decent balance. Part of that was the method itself, part of it the limitations of the fabrics I had on hand.

At the end of my last post about this quilt, I was ready to topstitch down the binding strips that would cover the join between rows. Up until joining the rows, construction had been fairly easy to handle. But no matter how you break down the construction of a quilt, eventually you have to deal with the whole thing. Wrestling the bigger sections, and then the whole quilt through the arm of the machine to get the rows together and joins covered was not a whole lot easier than if I were tackling quilting the whole quilt. So while I very much enjoyed quilting the individual 11" squares because they were so easy to maneuver, I still ended up running the whole thing under the needle numerous times. So I'm not sure how much I gained by the "quilt as you go" method. And I cannot imagine making a full size version using this method.

There were no special instructions about applying the binding around the outside - just your typical 1/4" double fold application. I've gotten pretty good at machine stitching the edge that gets turned to the back by making my binding slightly wider and stitching in the ditch from the front. It's a more secure durable ending than hand stitching that edge to the back. I decided to try something a little different this time, in keeping with the stitching already on the other binding. I would stitch from the back, my green thread on top and my yellow thread in the bobbin which should give me the same effect as on the binding covering the cutout joins. It worked really well, except of course, the stitching showing on the front was not perfectly spaced. However, here were these wide strips acting like sashing within the body of the quilt, and then this anemic 1/4" binding around the edge. Again, I thought, thank goodness this is just a baby quilt.

Would I use this method again? I've had plenty of time to think about it. No, I don't think I would on a large quilt. But I might use a modified version of it on something smaller. If I were joining blocks together, I think I'd use the same method as the joins within the blocks (binding sewn to either side of the cutout, then folded over to cover the joins and topstitched down - see here). I really didn't like the wider flat strips that ended up being double topstitched on the front. If I did use them, I'd put those wider strips on the back - I really did like the way the narrower ones looked better. I suppose my biggest complaint about the method is I could not achieve the level of accuracy I prefer. While it's not a big deal on a baby quilt, it would be on a wall quilt or even a bed quilt. This picture shows the worst of my mismatched joins, and I've already complained about the difficulty of keeping the stitching evenly spaced on those strips.

Being a two-sided quilt, if one really did want to have the option of using either side, forget adding a sleeve or label. I was relieved not to have to add a sleeve to this (and without one, I'm hoping the recipient will actually use this rather than it being hung on a wall), but had there not been some plain, light valued fabric in it, I'd have had no way to inscribe it. I found a piece of binding to write the little girl's name and birth date, and my name and finish date.

And last but not least, I had the impression this method used a lot more fabric than the standard way might. All those bias strips always leaves you with triangles of fabric - too big to throw away but hard to find the best economical use of them. Here is one stack of leftover fabrics and bias strips of various sizes.

And here's more on the other end of the table (plus new fabric waiting to be washed, scraps from other projects, potential couplings for future projects, etc. etc. - I don't think I ever clean up 100%.)

What 80 Bucks Will Buy

I was correct in my original schedule to complete the baby quilt; I really did need 5 days to do it. If I'd been willing to push a little harder, I could have gotten the binding on Friday, but by the time I wrestled the quilt sewing on the last of the strips to cover the row joins, I was ready to do something else. It was better to leave the rest for Saturday when I was fresh. I'd post a picture of the finished quilt, except when I turned on my camera, its batteries promptly died. By the time they were recharged, I'd lost the light. So be patient - pictures and final comments coming soon.

In the meantime, check out this post about an artist postcard fundraiser and follow the link to view the 2500 cards (sample above). I've been avoiding the quilter's version of postcards...maybe I should reconsider?

Binding, Binding and More Binding

I made good progress today. First order of business was sewing down the binding strips over the joins between blocks. There are some similarities to the way the binding was applied over the cutout joins: binding used on one side is wider then on the other, the bobbin thread is visible as a sort of echo quilting line and the edges are topstitching. So my green thread is on top and the yellow in the bobbin. Instead of the wide binding being on the back side, now it is on the front, centered over the join. Here I've stitched down one side and am stitching along the other side.

Once all joins in the row have been covered, the row is flipped over and the narrower binding centered between the lines of stitching attaching the binding on the top.

Then it is topstitched just like on the front.

The bobbin thread becomes a second line of stitching on the top binding. As you can see, keeping everything lined up and even is important but difficult to do. So much depends on the accuracy of the folds in the binding and evenness of stitching along the edges.

Once all binding is applied front and back to the rows, the rows are butted together and zigzagged. It's necessary to somehow hold them in place and the painter's tape just didn't have enough stick to it. As soon as I would pick up the piece to put it in the machine, the tape would give way. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I could pin through the tape; where tape or pin alone would not work, the two together did.

If a lot of changing of thread had not been required, I probably would have applied the long pieces of binding along the row joins while the quilt was still in sections. Instead, I zigzagged all the rows together. Here you can see three rows already joined. I joined the last two rows together, then added them to the other section.

In order to run these two big sections through the machine, I had to make a neat little package by rolling both sides in towards the seam to be stitched, and then rolling up the bottom as well.

Here you can see the pinned binding over each join on top. I'm liking what the plain pink binding as sashing is doing to give unity to my disparate group of fabrics.

Once all the binding was pinned in place, I rolled the quilt into a nice package the same as when I zigzagged the last join. This is as far as I got today. I think this last step will go fairly quickly. As each piece of binding gets stitched, I'll re-roll to expose the next piece of binding waiting to be topstitched. When the top is done, I'll flipped it to the back, pin the remaining binding on, roll as before and stitch it as I did the binding between the blocks.

The Virtues of Planning Ahead

My head hurts. Things did not go to plan totally yesterday, so I spent no time on the baby quilt, and endeavored to make up for it today. I was holding my breath, crossing my fingers, doing some math to see if I actually had enough of the pink fabric for all the joining and outside binding. Since I'm making this quilt smaller than the original pattern, I have no real guideline for how much I need of anything, and didn't bother to work it out ahead of time. I've been operating on faith that I had plenty of the pink.

Math is not my strong suit and to top it off, I couldn't find my calculator. Not that it would have mattered much anyway. After much scratching with pencil, I determined I barely had enough pink for the front and outside. That's when my head started hurting. Well, nothing for it but to start cutting strips, see how far they took me, and start thinking of alternatives for the back. Little did I realize that it was one of my multiple personalities - Shirley - who had snuck out to do my math for me. Shirley is the beginner quilter in me who cannot match seam intersections and is even worse at math than I am. She'd seen me measure the doubled over width of the fabric to see if I had a full 44 inches to work with and thought that it was the figure to work with. Dividing 22 into the total number of inches needed to determine how many strips to cut gave me a figure double what I actually needed. Of course, I didn't figure this out until I'd cut all the fabric into strips and started sub-cutting. The good news is that I DO have enough pink for all the binding. The bad news is that some of the strips had to be cut narrower, so I wasted about 3-1/2 inches of fabric and have a lot of 2 inch strips left over.

But before I did all that, I needed to square up my blocks. And to be sure I didn't lose track of which way each block should be turned, I needed to devise a way to indicate each block's orientation in the quilt. I settled on placing a single flowerhead pin horizontally with the head to the right in the center of each block. I don't often use flowerhead pins, only have them on hand because of a brief flirtation with the Magic Stack-n-Whack method which requires pinning layers of fabric together before cutting. A regular round head pin will cause the ruler to rock when you try to hold it flat to cut against. But it will sit nicely without shifting if you use a flowerhead pin.

I started with 11 inch blocks but the quilting had shrunk them down about 1/4 inch, so all blocks were squared up to 10-3/4 inches. I noticed that the distortion and shrinking varied from block to block, some barely making it to the square up size and others leaving plenty to shave off. I decided this variance was due to two factors: 1. That I used several different quilting patterns that effected the blocks differently, and 2. That the different weights of the fabrics cause different shrink rates. Some were quite light weight, almost like muslin, while others were more study like a good Kona cotton.

Now it was time to sit down and study the pattern again. I thought the blocks would be joined together in the same way that the cutouts in each block had been. Now I saw that it was a different method of applying the binding which required not only more passes with the sewing machine, but also an extra fold pressed into each strip. I feared my plan for completing this by Friday was falling apart because I hadn't planned ahead. Oh, well, if it took another day, Saturday is STILL the end of the week, isn't it? That's really all I wanted.

I deviated from the pattern at this point, cutting my strips on grain instead of on the bias as instructed. I've never particularly cared for bias binding on the outside of my quilts, and couldn't see the advantage of it on the straight joins of the blocks. Bias strips require more yardage and I didn't think I had any to spare. So I cut the two widths of binding on the straight of grain and pressed the raw edges to the middle. If I was doing a lot of this double fold binding, I could see investing in one of those little guiding tools. But once I did the first one, I found I could eyeball it fairly accurately and quickly. Now it was time to join the blocks into rows.

This is done like the cutouts except that there is no binding sewn to the raw edge first. Just butt the blocks together and run a zigzag stitch to hold them together. I'd used a 4 x 4 setting on the cutouts, but I found I needed to widen it to a 5 x 5 setting now to make sure I was catching enough on each side of the join. At first I used the paint tape to hold the blocks together, but eventually I just held them in place with my hands as I guided them through the machine.

This process went much quicker than I anticipated. So maybe I'm not as far off my schedule as I thought. The next step is to topstitch binding over the join on the front, then topstitch a narrower binding over the join in the back. Here you can see the blocks joined into rows, and the bottom row with its binding pinned in place. (For some reason, the colors are very off in this picture.) I can almost believe I can finish joining and applying binding by the end of tomorrow.

Goals for the Week of December 3rd

Final tally at the end of yesterday was a whopping 16 inches of snow. (see this post) That's my car pretty much buried. Of course, shortly after the snow stopped, the rain started, quite heavy at times, and is still at it. This means the snow pack is compressing and when I started shoveling out around the car this morning, I hit 3 or 4 inches of water underneath. Yes it is a mess, and I don't get plowed out until tomorrow. Good thing I work at home...

When I was still a long ways from having the baby quilt finished at the end of last week, I decided it was time to resurrect the weekly goals. I've assessed how much I think I can do per day to have it complete by Friday, and hope I can also do the last bits and pieces on the journal quilt. Then next week my priority will be to finish out the redwork cross. If I don't complete what I have lined out for this week, that cross will never be done in time for the auction. Here's what I came up with:

1. Finish baby quilt:

• Monday - finish cutting, sewing and topstitching binding to blocks (completed)


• Tuesday - Square up blocks & finalize arrangement. Start cutting binding for joining blocks into rows (99% sure I like the arrangement I ended up with today)


• Wednesday & Thursday - Sew binding to blocks, zigzag blocks together and topstitch binding down


• Friday - Bind outside edge, ink quilt info directly on back of quilt and take pictures.

2. Wrap up journal quilt:

• Compose and print backing label


• Fuse backing label to quilt and secure binding to back


• Make written entry describing process in journal quilt journal

Judi's November Journal Quilt

I almost hesitate to post this picture of Judi's November Journal Quilt because, well, it's so dang good! There are times when she really shows me up - but I am not jealous, really. We each have our strengths, and freely share our experiences and expertise with each other. Our friendship has helped both of us grow and be better artists.

These psychedelic llamas were inspired by photos taken by a co-worker on a trip to Machu Picchu. She's already made a larger, more elaborate piece with these charming llamas, and now she's thinking she'd like to make a series of smaller ones like this.

Judi used fused applique on this piece, and chose the background fabric because of its grass-like design, then free-motion machine quilted it. At present, she's having some tension problems with her machine, which apparently made quite a mess on the back of the quilt. So she fused another piece of fabric onto the back to cover it up. A single fold binding finishes the piece. Be sure to click on the picture for a better view of the detail.

Snowed in...

This is Jesse's escape route...or not, unless I get out there with a shovel. The original forecast was for an inch or two of snow overnight with accumulations up to 6 inches by tonight, but by 11:00 p.m. the local weatherman was frantically revising those numbers way up even though officially he couldn't announce the storm watch switched over to storm warning. Supposedly, I was to drive with a couple of friends the hour and a half to Spokane today for a symphony concert. But I informed them early yesterday that I wasn't willing to take the risk. They were pooh-poohing me, saying how the last time the weatherman predicted snow for our area, we got nothing because it veered south.

So when I awoke this morning to this, I felt very vindicated! At 9:30, I shoveled a path to the paper box and was astounded that there was a good foot of snow, and it's still coming down relentlessly. Revised figures for my area have been raised to 14" but I'm guessing we're already there. My stubby little dog jumped off the front porch and found herself plowing through chest-deep snows. Suffice it to say, she didn't go far and found a return route along the eaves of the house where the snow wasn't so deep.

There ya' go, BC. Come on up!

November Journal Quilt

On the surface, there's not much about this month's journal quilt that would indicate a tie to the monthly calendar theme of Faith. However, the quotation that goes with it may shed some light: "No ray of sunlight is ever lost, but the green which it wakes into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted to the sower to live to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith..." - Albert Schweitzer. And so I hope it is with this piece - begun in faith that somewhere down the line, the seeds of ideas sewn here will grow and blossom months from now and be worth this trial.

The harvest theme seemed the perfect place to start my experimentation with the palette suggested by the dry grass and ferns along the bike trail punctuated by white berries and red rosehips (see this post). Here is where I began pulling fabrics to match those colors.

At this point I didn't have a design or pattern in mind. By the time I decided to work with it in the journal quilt, I was tired from a trip, preoccupied with my dog's health, and not in much of a mood to work up an elaborate design. Crazy piecing with my scraps seemed a simple approach to see how these colors might work together.

Here's the fabric I worked with. Notice some are leftover strip sets from other projects. Scissors and a rotary cutter would do the cutting, finger pressing the ironing.

I started by cutting a small triangle and randomly sewing fabric around it, trimming as I went.

Some got white triangle, some red. I soon realized that there wasn't enough white and started adding slices from a strip set that had white in it.

Because I wasn't foundation piecing, my blocks were coming out odd sizes. Eventually, I had to decide on a size and square them up as any other method of fitting them together would have been more work than I wanted at the moment. If I were to do this again, I'd do more placement planning and not have block divisions.

To make this fit the journal dimension, I ended up making 4 different sizes of blocks. I played a bit with arrangement, but again, was frustrated by the limitations the random placement had created.

Here's the back - lots of seams with this kind of work. At first I tried pressing seams open, but that soon became a liability; pressing seams to the outside for the most part worked best.

I was at a bit of a loss as to how to quilt it, thinking I'd mimic the plant stems and branches with wavy crossing lines in brown. I fused Decor Bond to my batting, then spray basted the top to the batting so I could quilt this with a walking foot and not worry about shifting.

Since I finished this it has grown on me, but initially, I wasn't that happy with the outcome. The red does not pop like I thought it would, and I wished there was more of it. (This could have been remedied with red garnet stitch quilting or addition of beads, but I wasn't willing to put in the extra time). That's probably why I opted for this bright red binding, which is just 1/8" wide. I also wish I'd cut the starter triangles larger - again, not enough pop for my money.

If nothing else, this was instructional: I have since thought of better designs to work with. Well, maybe not better, but ones more suited to my style and need for a little more control. I can see the potential of this color palette with the red accent. I think this is a seed worth planting and now I just have to have faith and patience about where it will grow from here. Mostly I am pleased that I didn't let my unexpected inspiration from a few weeks ago fade away or be pushed to the bottom of my priorities untried.

Work Resumes...

...on the baby quilt. If you look closely at the photo, you can see snow outside my window - 6 inches that arrived Monday night. Today was brilliant with sunshine, making the studio a warm and inviting place to be, Robert Palmer the artist of choice blaring from the CD player. It's been nearly two weeks since I worked on this quilt what with the holiday preparations, trip and pet health issues. Oh, yes, and some journal quilting (results to be posted next).

Actually, I think the break was good, allowing me to approach this with fresh eyes. I'm becoming more creative in scrounging more binding, seeing how it doesn't have to be different fabric from what's in the blocks. There's still plenty of work to do, and this is not the final arrangement, but at least I can start to see the beginnings of some interesting lines. As I mentioned before, I knew this wouldn't be a quick quilt to make, but I do think this construction technique is making an exceedingly sturdy quilt, one that will be able to take the wear and tear and washing that a baby quilt will be subjected to.

Judi's October Journal Quilt

It's journal quilt time again, but before I show you what I've been working on for November, I wanted to share my journal partner's journal quilt from October. It's another recreation in fabric of a photo (see below) - one Judi took while hiking near her new home in Oregon. I didn't get a lot of details about her process, but she mentioned that the new technique she tried was using a water soluble stabilizer laid over the top of the finished top with no hooping. She drew her quilting lines right on it, quilted away, then soaked the piece to remove the stabilizer. Her only disappointment was a slight bit of color bleeding from the green hand dyed fabric. So if you decide to use water soluble anything, you really need to be sure all your fabrics are colorfast.

She's thinking she'll probably frame this rather than finish it out like a traditional quilt. I think both the original photo and the quilt are fabulous!

Home Again

This piece of redwork started life as a sample for one of the last classes I taught over two years ago. I fell in love with patterns in the book "The Quilted Cross" and developed a multi-technique learning class using it as the text. I'm not that keen on redwork, but I liked the four designs, everyone was buzzing about redwork at the time, and I'd done enough embroidery in the past for me to feel competent to include it as one component of the class.

At one time, I planned to work the various demo blocks from the class into a sampler quilt and donate it for raffle. More blocks needed to be made and a plan devised for making their various sizes work together. Too many other things had higher priority and so the blocks and fabric were relegated to the "when I have time" bin. All except this piece of redwork. It is small enough to carry around for odd moments, and since I almost always bring along some handwork when I travel, I didn't think it would take very long for it to get completed.

Unfortunately, I didn't find that I enjoyed working on it very much. I found the use of one stitch and one color thread to be tedious and boring (and yet I don't find hand quilting the same stitch with the same color thread boring). I also found that when I traveled, I wasn't quite so apt to pull out handwork in free moments. I guess I was learning at last to relax, and the redwork went in and out of luggage with nary a stitch being added for quite a while. In the meantime, it would sit on the end table by the couch and irritate me every time I spotted it.

So although my trip to spend a few days with friends was brief, I was determined to finish this while we sat talking. I was quite pleased to get something "productive" done while away from home. My new plan is to finish out the various blocks in smaller projects over time and NOT make the other three redwork crosses. This one will get a border and some quilting, hopefully before December 16 so that it can be included in an auction fundraiser. Those deadlines are sure helpful motivation.

I was also pleased to happen upon a calendar store while we were out shopping. The kind of calendar I'm inclined to hang in the studio changes each year, and has been getting harder and harder to decide upon. It was much easier when I could just pick up a quilting calendar, but these don't fit what I'm doing these days. I was delighted to find this one on fractal designs. Several quilt artists have been playing with these (check here and here for starters), and although they fascinate me, I don't think it is something I'll be pursuing. They sure provide inspiration though.

Oh, and thank you for the comments about my poor puppy. The trip was a little rough on her but she perked right up once home. The harness confuses her a bit - she can't tell when she's hooked up to the lead so just stands there patiently waiting even though I'm ready to go! If you have a dog of your own, you might be interested in this quiz (which my lovely did quite well on):

http://www.parade.com/features/pet-quiz/dog-quiz.html

If Looks Could Kill

What I thought was a lingering inner ear problem with my dog turned out to be a neck problem instead. I was sternly instructed to go buy a harness for her to wear when I walk her on a lead, and so I did. I couldn't believe it when I spotted the one in my signature teal color. Sorry Jesse, but I couldn't resist. As you can see, she is less than thrilled with my choice. Look, dog, you're not the only long suffering one here...

Happy Thanksgiving to my U.S. readers. I'll be back in a few days.

Being Domestic...

...and getting ready for a brief trip. And dealing with additional canine health issues. Sheesh. So have had to neglect the studio. I'm not happy with taking this break. On the other hand, I've been enjoying some time in the kitchen to make jam of the raspberries patiently waiting in the freezer, chutney from apples picked weeks ago, banana bread for a church open house. Dog hair has been vacuumed up, bathrooms cleaned, some laundry done, this and that taken care of inside and out. Tomorrow I make pie to take as my contribution to Thanksgiving dinner with friends, and figure out what I have to pack.

We're experiencing another cold snap, but missed getting the predicted snow. The slough is iced over so you won't be seeing any scenes like the one above for awhile. I couldn't figure out what I was seeing at first, then realized the ducks were upending themselves to feed. I am easily amused, as you already know.

Slow going...

...but I persevere. I knew this wasn't going to be a "quick" quilt but I did think I'd be farther along by now. In fact, I was quite disappointed at the end of yesterday, thinking I'd at least have all the binding sewn on and be ready to do joins and top stitching today.

I found that I really can't effectively "assembly line sew" because I'm making design decisions as I go, arranging blocks as I did cut-outs and choosing binding accordingly. Couldn't grab a stack and sew one after the other. Consequently, there was a lot of "aerobic quilting" going on yesterday and today, getting up and down, up and down as I sewed a piece, got up to return it to its place and grab the next. The legs sure felt it today! I also caught myself getting tired of doing the same type of sewing, so switched to joining the bound cut-outs to the other side of their block. Today I began by top-stitching the top binding down over the join. Then it was back to cutting and sewing on binding.

I also thought I'd have all the binding cut out yesterday, but this is a bit like the fishes and the loaves in reverse. The more I cut, the more I seemed to need. The more I sewed on, the more cut-outs I felt I needed to make, (and subsequently, the more binding I needed). I'm scrounging again, and by this afternoon, caught myself pulling short discards out of a pile and piecing them to make lengths long enough. Of course, this would all be easier (and faster) if I weren't trying to make do, trying to use up what's on hand. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. But I have to admit to feeling virtuous when I work this way instead of running out and buying exactly what I might need in fabric.

I still like this method, by the way, but am glad I'm not making a big quilt. The actual sewing goes quite easily without much concentration, and I found myself wishing I had some company while I sewed. This is the perfect sort of sewing project to do with others around. Cindy, LeAnn, Judi...where are you when I need you??? In lieu of that, I loaded up the CD player with motivational music. Yesterday was a mix of some older ones I haven't listened to for awhile. Today was really quite fun listening to all five of my Leon Redbone discs, one after another. It was hard to restrain myself from getting up and dancing around the room!

Quilting Marathon

I've been working diligently to get my 20 blocks quilted. I was able to quilt half yesterday and the rest today after scrounging a bit more batting. I've used 4 different channel quilting variations, two of which you see above: the wavy vertical one and arcs or fans echoing the fan shape of the cut-outs I'll be making. Not shown is wide straight channels with a zigzagging line through the center of each based on the design in one of the fabrics, and wavy channels running diagonally across the block.

I tried that last one in sort of a "what if" mode, afraid that sewing across the stretchy direction would distort the block or cause puckers. It didn't. Best of all, I found I really liked the undulating pattern it created, something that I think may be the answer to finishing out an idea with a painted piece of fabric. I'd folded the fabric and applied paint, but it didn't seep into the fabric like I thought it would. A faint grid is visible but all in all, it's pretty boring without the right quilting to bring it alive. So I'd set it aside, unhappy that my only quilting ideas were for more straight grid lines. This, I think, is what I'm looking for to jazz it up.

Would I have come up with this if I hadn't been playing around with this pattern for a baby quilt? Something tells me I would not have. This is why I try not to discount using patterns entirely, or to think a non-quiltart project like this is taking me away from the "real" work I should be doing. I try to learn something from everything I do or try, and sometimes not having to fiddle with measurements and basic design can free up the mind to discover wonderful things.

I'm trying hard not to over-think this project, by the way, but the control freak in me finds it hard to be totally random. I've included fabric that at first made me wince to see it against the others, but which I hope in the end will make the quilt more interesting. I tried not to over-match when pairing up my squares, but I couldn't totally allow any old one to end up with any other. It has been somewhat the same with the quilting. Some fabrics don't matter much whether the yellow or the green thread shows up on it. Where I used a fabric more than once, I tried to make sure it wasn't always quilted with the same color. Other fabrics seemed to call out for one color or the other. So I controlled that just a bit.

Next step is doing the cut-outs which surely will challenge me since there are many decisions to be made here: 3 sizes of quarter circles to choose from, the option of making more than one cut-out in a block, and then choosing the binding that will cover the joins. Stay loose, I'm telling myself.