Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

Found 2 more quilt starts, that I'd held back, thinking I would get a picture or something of them, but that is not to be. My dear husband loses a little more ability every week, and he's not going to magically turn back into a master of all trades just because I need his steady hand with the camera for recording my work, and I'm being a real baby about not taking that job over. I hate doing bad camera work, no patience, would rather be sketching or sewing.

So, scan city it is.

Here's the Purple Fire Bean Pot Quiltette. It's about 38x56", guestimating

It looks like some I saw growing up in West Texas, where Latin American citizens made cooking the old way. We lived there in 1959-61 in two different towns in 2 different school years when Dad worked in school administration.

 

[freedombecki]

The other "find" was one I know I held back. I loved this cinquefoil blossom, designed it with a pair of scissors. For some reason, cutting paper for me comes out better than scribbling with a pencil for an hour. Other times, the pencil does the job in under 30 seconds. (rarely). Scissors, one or two clips, it's better than expected. Although there have been days when the floor looked like a threshing floor with all the paper scraps that just weren't good enough get scattered about. I guess I hated cleaning so much, it taught my eye to project a finished product right on, and the scissors obeyed the vision. lol

I have no idea if any flower ever looked like this one or not. I just know, I fell in love with the shapes that my scissors cut and the resultant blossom. Sometimes I work from nature, sometimes not. This one was a whole top when we moved here in 2009. At the first sewing group meeting, a lady needed a piece of some fabric in it, so I took it apart and gave her what she needed. It slimmed the quilt and made it prettier anyway. She felt so embarrassed, I just laughed. It really improved the quilt, but she wasn't on my page, I guess. She was able to finish her quilt with just the one strip piece.

 

[freedombecki]

The Senior Citizens support pillow was finished this morning. It was a lot of quilting for a small object as a 16" pillow, but it took only about 7 hours to do all of it. The pillow itself was quilted to an old sheet that had torn and was washed to line pillow fabrics for a little additional layer between the stuffing scraps, and then the front of the pillow slip was quilted and the back slips for placing the pillow inside the sham-like pillow outer cover were all quilted at 1" intervals.

Here are the parts before placing the dark-marine blue pilow inside the slip that was so well-quilted. If you quilt things finely enough, they outlast poorly quilted items. They also look nice longer and are sturdier under the heaviest use if you take a little extra time with fine-quilting an article. Well I scanned the dark blue pillow, but had to crop most of the picture off just to show the quilted stitches.

 

[freedombecki]

When doing a different pattern that no other quilter has done, it's nice to make a record and save samples and pictures of the first quilt. That didn't happen with the pink quilt, although there were a lot of scans. It may happen soon, however, the minute I can reach as high as the sole of Ansel Adams' loafers, that is. I have to open the camera box that's been sitting on the dresser since it arrived from an ebay seller last year...

Here's the inspiration for "Ziggurat Quilt"--our visit to Chichen Itza the beautiful Ziggurat located on the Yucatan peninsula.

One mirrored square has already been completed it will have to be scanned at another time.

Happy trails, everyone.

 

[freedombecki]

This is the second Ziggurat quilt and has been approached from a do-the-borders-first approach. Sorry, by the time the borders are reached and they are complex, the thrill is gone as time is marked through the finishing process, and it takes longer than expected. So by doing the dirty work first, through fastidious plan, it's a lot nicer. I scrapped yesterday's plan and will share the newer approach at a later time, unless more time-savers are discovered in making this quilt doable in 2 days to persons who've never done it before. That takes a lot of reviewing the schema and seeing a faster way to do something, seams to eliminate, and the like. Here are the 3 most important panels--including the vertical center that is now Part H as well as Parts A and B quadrupled and this shows the central upper area of the quilt. The hard work starts tomorrow. Today was a day the hedges out front needed to be trimmed, and a bug didn't like it and bit me. Anyhow:

Scan 1 Panel A (4 needed)
Scan 2 Panel H (center)
Scan 3 Panel B (4 needed)

 

[Mr. H.]

Quilt, becki, quilt!

 

[freedombecki]

Quilt, becki, quilt!

Oh, yeah. Love that work.

The Ziggurat started out in the Sam Houston Memorial Museum office area between the museum grounds and gallery area that is reserved for travelling art shows. Last winter sometime, they had a quilt artist's show, which was the first time I went into the gallery building of the museum complex. Upon the wall was a beautiful pioneer quilt, but in the center, I noticed some confusion, and it just didn't work right, but the quilter, just to cover her family, just sewed stuff together for a charming quilt. I took it home in my mind and tried to figure a better way. It was so confusing, I went back, sketched what she'd done, and went home and thought about it some more. I forgot it for a few weeks, then, got out a pencil and some graph paper one day and designed (without looking at hers) a center that would serve as an interest center, not a collision center.

It was fun. Here's the result, and I will be the first to say, I just wanted a nice center, and that's about all I got.

This time I'm working on expediency of the same design, just fewer seams in areas that could be whole, not divided by seams every which way. It's been a few months since the pink one was made, shown in posts around July 7-10:

The turquoise version takes a totally different tack. Insted of making 4 quadrants, two on either side of the horizontal row, this one has a simpler vertical center of two blocks in width done as one row. It went together in no time compared to the ziggurat zig rows. The zig squares on both quilts are in vitro the same size of 5" when they are finished.

 

[freedombecki]

A couple of years ago, I made a quilt for charity, but couldn't find it the day I was delivering quilts to the Charity Bees closet. Yesterday, I found it between a couple of boxes of cut strips waiting to be sewn just as long.

This quilt came about after I made a purchase of hand-printed bird squares an ebay vendor made and sold. An elderly couple was making all kinds of good things and selling them on ebay, I don't know how or why, I just know I made several purchases of their items because they were so unique. I bought enough birds to make 2 quilts, and this may either be the second one or the other case, there's a stack of printed birds among my souvenirs, somewhere... I have one and one-half bazillion fabric scraps everywhere, and putting them away just means I can't remember where i put them, so my dining room table is stacked. Soon as #100 quilt goes to the Charity bees, I'm going to disappear into my scrappy house and do some major sorting. It should be under control if I deal with a few thousands of pieces to storage areas in 30 days. That's an optimistic hope, I know, but true.

Here are the first 3 prints of "Birds and Pastels 16-patch quilt:"

 

[freedombecki]

More scans of the "Birds and Pastels 16-patch quilt"

 

[freedombecki]

Yet more scans of Birds and Pastels:

 

[freedombecki]

This is the last page of scans on the birds and pastels quilt, so now, I can get back to the turquoise ziggurat quilt. Hopefully, I can complete it before sunset. Oh, that would be so loverly.

Final scans:

 

[freedombecki]

Well, work isn't going so well. I worked some time this morning on the two quilts, 99 & 100, then realized clothes needed laundering. When I got to the back door, I remembered the willow tree that I chopped down last week needed to be dragged to the pile, and the rest of the growth and seedling trees by the tractor garage needed to be removed from the area of the slab, so woo hoo, that got done, plus, I asked my sweetie to help mow, so he gassed up the mower, and I mowed the rest of the weeds down where you can't get at them with the tractor. Then when I got back inside, it was work city on doing my husband's neglected laundry. So sorry, no report on progress today, except I did a couple of more colors on the fall colors quilt and stitched a large part of one quadrant on the turquoise ziggurat quilt. That just wasn't enough to call it any kind of accomplishment. Time to go spend an hour or so before bedtime doing a little more work.

Thanks to everyone who drops by and says hello or leaves a little thanks. It truly helps me get through this task, I can't tell you how grateful those of you who've stopped have been in encouraging me to complete these tasks with no final results except what little I can scan with me being so paranoid about cameras.

Love,

becki

 

[freedombecki]

Every time I see enlongated objects or emaciated people, I think of Giacometti's peculiar sculptures of soldered metal or whatever, that I saw in a Los Angeles Metropolitan style museum back in the middle 60s. I fell in love with the style. This quilt was adapted from someone's quickie idea, except I just went for longer, slimmer like Giacometti's model people, thus the name above, "Giacometti Autumn quilt" The colors--obvious.

The quilt will be 63" give or take an inch by 36 to 45" wide, depending on when I've had enough.

Scans 1, 2, and 3, are continuous parts of strips 1 & 2. Two strips almost fills the screens, but 3 would've been impossible to scan:

 

[freedombecki]

Scans 4, 5, and 6:

That's all folks!

 

[Mr. H.]

You should compile these thread posts and publish a book.

 

[Mr. H.]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Some people are so inspired by solar eclipses that they quilt. Pictured above is a resulting textile from one such inspiration. The 38x38 inch quilt offers impressions of a total annular eclipse, when the Moon is too far from the Earth to cover the entire Sun, witnessed in Spain in October of 2005.

 

[freedombecki]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Some people are so inspired by solar eclipses that they quilt. Pictured above is a resulting textile from one such inspiration. The 38x38 inch quilt offers impressions of a total annular eclipse, when the Moon is too far from the Earth to cover the entire Sun, witnessed in Spain in October of 2005.

Thanks for the link to APOD, Mr. H. I'm no stranger there, followed them daily for the first 10 years till we moved 3 years ago. Your link is to "today's page" which has changed. I sewed all evening and was unable to get here sooner. Susan Winkelman's beautiful quilt is here: APOD: 2012 November 13 - A Solar Eclipse Quilt . You have to wait a day, go back to yesterday's post, which is then archived, and people can ever after go there and see what you saw when you link the archived APOD. I learned that as a long-time admirer of the website and love for stars. They have one lady who makes a quilt a year of the stars. I'm not her, it's just not my thing. I've only brought one of my books to my Albums page. It's the one on the baby animal alphabet quilt I designed, made, and copyrighted all by myself. (chore city). I decided to share it with USMB members only fi they would like to make the quilt or use the animal designs. My other books are too long and far too complex to post in 30 pictures. Most of them have over 100 pages, all black and white instructions, with only one or two pictures. The quilts have been given to my children, one of whom uses my smaller art pieces for tablecloths, although his quilt took a calendar year to design and construct. What mothers do for their children. "I don't want to know the quilt's fate."

The other one takes care of them although she carefully uses them. It's fun to go to her house and see the different ways she hangs them. She should have gone into interior decoration, but nope! Gotta be a cop, ma. ok, dear, but you know people go to your town for the distinct purpose of getting in trouble. Job security, ma...

 

[Mr. H.]

Wow.

BTW there's an APOD app. Got it on the iPhone.

 

[freedombecki]

Scan 7 is a back and front of one of the pieces of this quilt, the fabric of which was a bad purchase. It was a "find" at a discount house that packages fat quarters in plastic containers, and gauge quality through cellophane that is suitable for a well-made piece is impossible. When removed from its mooring, the fabric was so thin and loose woven it was most translucent (not good), and its mate, the leaf print in the center, was not much better as it too was thin though a little closer woven.

When that happens, it is a good thing to have a few yards of bleached muslin or cotton batiste on hand, as the problem arises oftener than one would like if collecting hues, shades, tints, atmospherics, and batiks are one's range, not even going there with visual textures (also a passion).

First, a finished rectangle was taken, and one side basted to batiste (my definite preference, since it adds little weight but firms up the worst threadbare freaky piece with substance that makes it wear as long as the better fabrics you buy. It also wrecks your sale of the cheap fabric you thought you were getting a deal on by adding $6 per yard for the batiste of fine muslin backing to upgrade the piece to a better quality. I made 6 of these, and affixed 3 of them by stitching in the ditch around the center, then pressing and finishing the other three sides. Now the sheer piece is not sheer and is similar in weight and fineness with other fabrics in the work, all of which are now priced at around $11 per yard. The white area doesn't show the back side of the piece well, maybe if it is enlarged you can at least see the stitching (I won't know till I post this) I could barely make out a dark center, but that was on my computer, and I'm not sure how slight transfers online. The secret to getting it to lie flat is an iron set to cotton at all times through the process.

Scans 8 and 9 show the first two 11" lengths, starting at the top and descending.

 

[freedombecki]

Scans 10, 11, and 12, the remainder of rows 3 and 4:

Hopefully you will notice one of the backed pieces fits into my schema of using a large range of values, scattered throughout the quilt, and that one was a hard-to-find overall pale orange. Fabrics can be too cutesy for an art quilt, which I hope this one is. Cutesy fabrics would be the cliche hearts we love on baby quilts, but if a little boy gets the quilt, he may not cotton to that if he has a dad. I so am not going there.