Thirteen Quilts At the End of 2014

Still loving the new LiveOak Library Branch just across the road!  Yesterday, I picked up 

Quilting With A Modern Slant by Rachel May.  

Nothing could be more appropriate for me to read right now.  Sewing machine is still in the shop, schedule is confused and uncertain, and another calendar year ends. 

The subtitle of the book:  People, Patterns, and Techniques Inspiring the Modern Quilt Community is accurate.  I need community.  I have not found the trick yet to establishing myself in a local community.  I try, I hope, I shall!  For now, a cyber community is what I have and I have definitely been inspired and am learning from the Modern Quilting Community of the Quilternet.

To close 2014, I hope it is ok to share some of the quotes and inspirations from this book resonating with lovely tones in my head.  Rachel May's book has won awards from Amazon and other organizations.  And from me, too! Thank you!

"I'm a maker, and not only for selfish reasons; I hope that I'm contributing to a better world, in some way."  Kyoung Ae Cho

"Say where you got the inspiration for your design.  Explain whatever you can about your roots.  In doing so, you'll let others find their own."  Rossie Hutchinson

I hope I am doing a good job with this exhortation in my blogging.  My blogging began in part as acknowledgement to the joy I feel finding people who freely share their work in quilting.  

"Quilting Is My Therapy"  Angela Waters

Oh yes, the name of her blog describes my time spent quilting. 

Sherri Lynn Wood.  

I simply hope to participate in one of her Passage workshops some day!

Chawne Kimber's creativity continues to inspire ideas. 

I rather wish I had kept Quilt #7, created after seeing her techniques for loving and treasuring scraps.

Below are quilts 

44, 34, 36, 43

35, 40, 9 (yeah, I finally finished #9!), 38 & 42

39, 37, 41, 45

Starting and finishing do not necessarily happen in sequence.  Not sure why I number starts.  Not sure why I number at all.  But I do!

BTW January 1st is not the first day of a new year in my brain.  

I have been in school since I was four years old.  

My New Year starts on Labor Day.  

Celebrating, grieving and growing all continue day in and day out, no calendars necessary!

WIP Wednesday - Dizzy for Spirals

Magnolias In the Water

I'm going in circles!  Spirals!  Got so dizzy, I stopped quilting so my eyes would stop revolving and decided to blog a bit.  Thank you Jacquie Gering and Craftsy for Creative Crafting With Your Walking Foot for setting me in circular motion. 
It has been a year since I got involved with a Craftsy class. I'm glad I returned there as an early Christmas present to myself. The instruction is so clear and helpful. Spiraling is my newest skill. 

Jacquie is a joy to listen to.  Her quilts are some of the first I found in the Modern Movement that resonated and inspired my aesthetic.  

Ditched by Da Boy for his friends on our Trivia Night. Home alone yet again. Sigh. Thus prompted the start on his quilt. It became his quilt when he twice stopped me from adding more braids into the plaid and frequent queries about when I was going to finish that "nice blue one..."  It really was supposed to simply be the back of another quilt already now completed. 

Pondering the possibilities for quilting a top is always the hardest challenge for me in quilting. I never know what to attempt, am usually disappointed in my execution of what every I choose and so impatient to get done, I accept any old quilting as DONE! Jacquie and Craftsy to my rescue!

Just before he walked out the door tonight, Da Boy's smile lit up when I said 'spiral'.  Prompted from my brain as I had just watched the Crafty instruction.

"And start around the little blue box," he called over his shoulder as the door slams. Said and begun! 

So in exchange for the cilantro shrimp with rice noodles he created and prepared, he earned his second quilt.  Even if he did set it down on my fabric cutting board!!!  Sheesh, young men - no brains!  <grin> Gotta love mine!

Oh, I must not leave out the pattern credit!  In my weekly visit to the new library branch next door, I found Elizabeth Hartman on the shelf. I had to attempt at least one pattern from Modern Patchwork. There are so many lovely quilts she makes in this book for me to pick from! 

Fc = mvv/r

Midnight in the Garden of Dwellings

Quilt #35 - Fabric Envy or Victim of Advertising

So many wonderful quilters have wonderful blogs. I adore reading about and viewing the arts and crafts shared in blogs hosted by talented quilters.  Many bloggers quilt as a real life paying job. Envy!

Many of these wonderful quilters support their work with blog advertising.  I was lured, hook, line and sinker, in a quest to fit in with these talented, prolific and trending quilt bloggers...once.  Hooked by the lure set out there with advertising that I think implies: YOU MUST HAVE THIS Fabric by a BIG NAME Designer because only a quilt made with all the prints by A Designer Line is a lovely wonderful quilt. Ouch. 

Yes, I bought the whole line of something.  Once.  I've only done this once.  I didn't inhale... oh, that was someone else, that fine looking president?

On trips as Dutiful Daughter I make each six weeks, I pass far to closely to A Scarlett Thread in MacDonough, GA. I love this fabric store!  But this time...

The five hour drive I try to shorten into four turns into six.  My GPS seems to activate the turn signal and my car changes lanes at the exit without conscious effort!!!  The speeding ticket for the four hour trip would likely have been less than the shopping I did on the six hour trip.  

I walked in the door of A Scarlet Thread and there before my eyes was a fabric collection my heart loved. Not liked, LOVED.  None of the bloggers I follow told me to buy this line, this line told my heart to buy it! Dwellings by Contempo for Benartex or however they say it, it spoke to me.  It said BUY ME!  

It went so far I even tweaked a quilt pattern I found on the Benartex website in creating this quilt. I was all in on this lure!  

I binge watched Game of Thrones while making the quilt in January 2014 as my heart and brain turned over some big choices in my life. How do I feel about this quilt now? I like this quilt. I love the colors, I still love the fabric.  I had fun making it. It made itself quickly.  That no one else seems to like it does not matter.  

However, there is something slightly tawdry about falling for a fabric line simply because of a Brand Name in a lovely display. There is something slightly tawdry about the Jim Williams story and the Johnny Mercer House.  

Therefore, some pics of the tawdry quilt in front of the Mercer/Williams house seem appropriate! 

So now I've told my story of Midnight in the Garden of Blog Advertising. Perhaps I am now free in spirit to move back to my scrappy quilts where the designer lines appear in patchwork nestled adjacent to an old flannel shirt.

Quilt 34 January 2014

Southern Scrap Party Quilt


Not surprised I have generated an odd variety of quilts during 2014.  As the year closes out, any glance at my Google Calendar calls to mind the pendulum swings of emotion the Earth made me spin through. 

Swing high to the positive side = travel to new places!  Swing high to the negative recalls an important relationship falling apart due to misunderstanding and lack of nurturing.  Swing to the positive again to find that work and love does repair relationships and make them stronger.

The pendulum swung me far and wide about the earth.  I even made it onto Google Maps - Amsterdam.  That's me, waving at the tiny Google Pic Car. We spent the vast majority of the day sitting there on the canal, so it is very appropriate we are still sitting there in Street View. I'm still there in my mind some days this year.  

Swing to the negative to find other important things falling apart as I used my time and energy down to the bone.

Ekk!  Enough already. 

 I am glad my pendulum is still swinging while I piece my life back together by cutting up pretty fabric, ugly fabric, old fabric, new fabric and stitch it together in new form with new function in the way it pleases ME.  

Our local attempt to gather Modern Quilters in Savannah is one of those things that sadly fell apart this year.  I started quilting alone and I will continue alone.  Apparently, organized Modern Quilting is falling apart across the country.  With all the rules, standards and aesthetic arbitrarily being applied without consensus rocked over 1000 quilters when their work was omitted for inclusion at Quilt Con.  I'm not one of that number.  I don't dare put my work out in such a way to sit side by side with quilters who have more of something  - talent, time, skill, creativity, money, whatever it is.  This quilt is pieced with left-overs, remnant bin finds, boxer shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt! Definitely NOT THE MODERN QUILTING GENRE! 


So with those thoughts generated by the hamster spinning the wheel in my head, you see my first installment of the Year in Quilts. 


January Quilt # 34 A Gift given and received!  

A friend for life since 3rd grade gives joy to my soul. This Southern Scrap Party quilt now warms her new Charleston home. We share relationship pendulum swings, Macon Mental Health Runs and Allman Brothers music.  Then and now.  

Now for the self juried & back patting awards for this single quilt show for January 2014.  

Best Use of Scraps, Best ROYGBIV for the month, Best Quilt to Listen to Music Under while Drinking Beer with Best Friends, and best Omission of Expensive Designer Name Quilting Fabric.  Look at me go!  I now have four blue ribbons!

And an Honorable Mention for Pretending to Be A Chevron.

Finished On Friday

Quilts #31 and #46

The first Friday night of the fall without High School Football and Marching Band?  
It is time to finish things!

Quilt Number 31 has languished over a year with top complete and sandwiched with a true scrappy backing.  The colorful small boxes were quilted easily with straight lines and spirals.  Then...

Back in January I tentatively started doing some FMQ on the background squares, even though I was still in the practice stage. Horrified by my product, I bundled the lovely top with its awful quilting away, half done. 

  

Fall Boxes was inspired by a Jenny Retwig quilt pattern featured in Quilter's World back in Autumn 2013.  I cannot find a single image on the internet for the original quilt!  I wonder why?  I adored it.

Creating the top was joy.  Cutting perfect squares of all sizes in a lovely array of solids on hand in my so-huge-to-be-scary stash made me happy. 

Tonight, I decided to accept my poor quilting skills in order to call it a completed work.  No rip out and do over.  Life doesn't work that way.

As the final seven squares are quilting, I accept that I'm not neat or skilled or meticulous.

And I'm happy to have another quilt to keep, or give to a friend who says they love it, just really want to have it.

Quilt 46

Quilt Number 46 was inspired by the quilt displayed in MGQ Showcase at the International Quilt Festival this fall.  Pick Up Sticks by Becky Goldsmith fired my brain for a way to use up the small bag of light blue strings left over from other projects and bindings.  

There was no measuring, there was no pattern.  It was improvisational fun.  

You can see Quilt Number does NOT look like pick up sticks.  

More like crazy diamonds.  

I happily dropped the free motion foot back in the basket to spend time with my old friend, Walking Foot.  Familiar ground!

My phone was not cooperating with the snapping of pics Saturday afternoon and I had to hurry on to a Christmas Parade rather than problem solve. I will update this post perhaps today as I rake leaves with the finished quilts in the December sunlight.

 If you visit my blog, please share what you were working on this week! 

It is nice to know I'm not the only person home quilting on Friday nights. 

Minty Intersection Update

Sleepless, coughing, stuffy head feelings need to go away!  

Two naps and a set of graded papers have me feeling more alive and in the mood to clean up the house. 

Step one - get Intersections off the floor so I can vacuum!

Minty colors are not often on my palate, so this project has been a joy to spend time on. Strange paisleys, flea market finds from the 60's or 70's and new fabric like the butter soft Michael Miller gray have made me happy.  

The blue was discarded from this project and used up in my chevrons. 

 Haven't made many quilts without blue.

It didn't take very long to trim and assemble the squares.

The awesome tutorial at Film In the Fridge was easy to figure out as well as tweak for the precut squares I had abandoned months ago. 

Snapping a few pics on a warm sunny day prompted me to walk in the leaves...

that need to be raked!

A project for a day my head isn't pounding.

Step two -  nap number three, under a quilt on the couch. 

Wish I Instagramed so I could share this with the #fitfquilts group.  

If you visit my Intersections, please leave me a post, just say Hi.  Even if you don't like the quilt, just send me get well wishes!

Friday Night Intersections

Adore when there is time to catch up on amazing quilter's work and ideas via blogs.  Odd for me to be crafting at midnight on a Friday night, but that is the wonderful thing about the computer - it is ready when you are. 

After a hectic week, and an emotional football game, with so many urgent things I need to do instead...I found a solution for a mess I started in January.  

I forgot the pattern I had cut fabric for.  I lost the idea, the form and of course I lost where I wrote anything down about the whole thing.  It was just a box of problem and unresolved issues.

On November 19 Ashley at Film In the Fridge shared Intersection as a tutorial. 

Her work is always vibrant, lovely and inspires my scrap loving heart.
You must go enjoy her work - even if you don't quilt, it is delightful eye candy!

Late on November 21st I'm taking the large blocks, framing them, recutting strips and having a blast.  One can't get all sad and emotional when sewing!

I just adore this print found in a flea market stall.  It is old!  How long has it been since fabric was sold in 36 inch widths?

The colors do not look harmonious here on the computer, 

but they do in the daylight.  

I think?  

Have I a new problem?  

Awe, who cares...it makes me happy!

Throw Back Thursday on Tuesday Night

I've spent far too much time lately rebuilding my iPhoto library.  Crazy thumbnails, missing pics, and every upload moved like molasses in January.  Now that all pics appear back in place, reorganization begins.  

Since I was in Time Machine anyway, thought I would explore what I was sewing back in 

November of Another Year

Flashback 2012! 

 I like purple.  I wanted to play with purple.  

Gray was the color of the 2012 Quiltinternt.  So gray and purple the quilt was to be!

Everyone in Quiltinternt 2012 was quilting on their own home machines while I was only stacking my tops into a huge pile. It was time to learn to quilt! I tried "Quilt As You Go".  Less successfully than the first time I tried it, it is sad to say.  I didn't follow directions...I just made them up as I worked.  

Then I went to Craftsy.   Craftsy and Leah Day was a great/bad place to start.  

Wonderful instruction, convenient, inspiring but overwhelmingly small scale and perfect.  Those last two are just not ME!  I asked questions, explained my problems and GOT ANSWERS!  Happy dance!  Still loving Craftsy for those very reasons. 

In 2012, my best friend from college was back in the South.  I took that first quilted quilt with me for our meet up that November to Appling, GA. as a gift.






We talked about life with 50 peeking around the corner, drank cold beer on the deck in the autumn chill, and I made a new boyfriend named Beau.  Alas, there was no future with Beau.  He is far too tall for me, but remains crazy about me to this day... or just crazy.








Many of my quilts are grief creations.  More on that another day.  This purple quilt was to become a grief quilt after the fact.   Christy died unexpectedly in May 2014.  Her folks still have the quilt (and Beau) to grieve with.   









Veal Girl - My college roommate, my high school running buddy for the glory days of senior year, and my fellow adventurer into Hot'lanta - 1980's style. Challenges of GT, first jobs, loss of identity, rebuilding identities...so much shared, understood and laughter through it all.   And my first quilted quilt.  I hope she felt my hugs to her soul under the purple quilt.   I miss you so much "dah'lin".

Libraries, Books and Quilts

I rarely purchase books - usually out of my fabric budget - but last month a new branch of the public library opened just across from my very own neighborhood.  

Welcome Live Oak Public Library to Garden City!!!

Of course I explored quilting books on my first visit. 

A treasure has made its way onto my Wish List! 

The list that starts with fabric, batting and now contains:

Modern Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman

The book has been out for a while (2012) and 
Oh, Fransson! was one of the first blogs I ever followed. 
it is a lovely layout of inspiring quilting and huge abundance of creativity!

In my life before May 6, 2009, we purchased books - any book that struck our fancy - on a regular basis.  My pendulum swung wildly those first years. I dismissed ideas of purchasing any type of book ...
and hid myself in the public library while not repeatedly checking my 401K to calculate my retirement to see if there was any chance I could stop working the paying job before I was 93....and there is no chance...


Since I do not usually refer to printed patterns or instructions (nor recipes, nor installation manuals...slightly ODD?) and just figure my way with a calculator and graph paper, I've been hesitant to buy quilting books.  

The quilts by Elizabeth Hartman in this book compel me to look more closely, to change things, to use a color and but not the block, to quilt something languishing in the closet with a lovely idea she applies with flair!

I needed a backing for something just completed, and was drawn to the woven Metropolis.

I was going this far, all the way with Elizabeth, but the main man in my life wanted more blue with a larger block look and suggest I stop here:

What does he know?  Something? Nothing?

I'm blogging because I have a 17 year old son whose tastes are limited to his mouth as my only creative sounding board.  Yikes!

I'm still in love with Benartex Dwellings! 

Those patterns keep leaping into so much I do.

This is the second quilting book I've fallen for.  The first was long ago and to be blogged about another day.  

What quilting books or blogs have stirred your brain?  

Hoping someone will share more quilting books and suggestions!

Bloglovin

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/13154497/?claim=nq45bn7h3z9">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Giving this a whirl.  I adore the bloggers I've found through Bloglovin.  Just trying to join in the quilting creativity.  Wish me luck!

Etcetera Fiesta!

Christmas came early for me when my friend Shelia shared years of her Etcetera Fashion fabric swatches!

Pink and Blue and Teal and Green and lovely textures in every shade.

Some are sheer, knit, wobbly.  A huge change from sturdy 100% cotton, but I so want to create something lovely from these for Shelia, a lady with a lovely sense of style.  

So I hauled out the Easy Knit stabilizer I had on hand to use for a T-Shirt memory quilt .

(Note to self:  MUST start on that soon!)

 I placed the tiny lovelies on a small section of pellon and ironed them down. I decided some of the knits needed 2-D support, so they have two layers of backing. 

Pinks were popping at me so I started there.

Auditioned several whites, grays, and taupes to complete the block.

Moda Grunge was the winner.  I seem to be the only person buying off that taupe gray grunge bolt at my fabric store, but I don't care...I like it and that means more for me to play with!

With thanks to the very first blogger I started following, 

I'm reusing a scrap-tacular  block assembly she shared in 2011.

Anyone with experience working with non-cotton fabrics, please share input! 

I know this will be a NO-wash quilt, for sure.