Another new one!?!

Despite my best intentions of quilting the tops that are waiting upstairs (and a marathon basting session in which I got 5 projects ready to quilt), I still managed to get another new one cut and half pieced this week. The pattern is Avalon by Elizabeth Hartman. I'm going to call this one "Petticoats and Polio" because I don't have a lot of sympathy for false nostalgia.

Two of the four blocks are already finished. I might do a little retro-motif stamping on the solid background, but a variegated quilting thread would fill in the space too. I'll let the possibilities brew for awhile.

This will finish at 60 x 72". (A nice view of the Cloud Nine quilt that I basted yesterday too. I'll post about that one later this week.)

With Halloween eerily looming on the horizon, my sewing machine time will be costume focused for the remainder of the week.

Ravens, continued

Picked up the necessary Nevermore fabric after my Tuesday night meeting, and I also found the perfect red-and-purple batik to use as the accent color. The pieces of the raven tabletopper are all cut and ready to assemble! (Well, not quite -- I still haven't cut the 2" border that goes at the very edge.) When my 9-year-old comes downstairs in the morning, sees it and says "Wow, Mom, what is that?!? I love it!" I suppose I'm on the right track.

The developing conspiracy...

I am trying to pick up the pace of posting on here, but my computer is in the process of failing. A brand spanking new laptop (first new computer in eight years!) is on order, so if you find yourself weeping and pulling your hair out for want of new posts, rest assured that I will be more active in November once I figure out how to configure said laptop.

Color Journals: Purple for Polly

On the first month of our color journal exchange, I made a purple page for Polly's fantastic journal. I loved the elongated shape that she chose. I used a simple Karen Eckmeier freeform technique to make a mountain landscape, accented with some free-motion quilting and a few aqua beads that looked like emeralds in the deep dark earth:

"Misty Mountains Rise" -- my boys gave me the name, which is apparently from a Hobbit song. SciFi geekery for the win!

Who'd'a thunk I'd have some purple and mint ice cream fabric? Perfect for the back!

The meeting last night was a delight -- I think everybody was so excited to share what they had made that we blew through all 13 projects in less than an hour! My next assignment is to make a "Travel"-themed page for Sue's gold-and-teal journal. So many ideas brewing for this one...

Scrappy Trip

I have been cutting strips for Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt all summer. I wasn't thinking big when I first started the cutting, but the strips just kept appearing, so at this point I'm anticipating that this will be nearly queen sized. I have the first 11 blocks done:

Scrappy Trip Around the World: A first look

Ravens begun

A friend of mine who is a serious fan of all things "raven" (it is hoped that this fandom doesn't extend to a certain NFL team from Baltimore...) commissioned me to make a table topper after she saw the Nevermore fabric that I used to make my sister a table runner earlier this summer. I showed her a few different concepts with hexagons and pinwheels that might work on her round table, but we settled on the decagon pattern that I bought at one of the Newington Schoolhouse meetings last year. I couldn't resist this nifty ruler set -- I love that it has pieces with 72 and 36-degree angles. (Stars! Decagons! So many geometrical delights!)

I bought the raven fabric this weekend, got it all washed and ironed, set to cutting...and realized that I miscounted the repeat...so, sadly, another stop at the quilt shop will need to be in my immediate future. (What a bummer.) In the meantime, the pieces that I do have look spectacular in the round:

If only this mathematically inclined quilter could count...

Dance the Orange!

After the successful River project, our journal art quilting group has begun a new project that will take over a year to complete. Each one of us has chosen a color (and some have added a theme as well); using that color, we each created the covers of a journal that will be passed around for the others to make the pages.

I considered a few other options, but ended up with my best beloved after all...Orange. I decided to create the entire book as a big hexagon, which meant custom cutting some art boards to the right shape for the covers. The whole thing is about 14" wide and 15-16" high. I couldn't resist doing a little more micro-(not nano-)hexie piecing for the spiral on the front cover...but these are about twice the size of the river hexies so it felt like it went very fast. The tiny gold beads at the hex intersections gave just the right amount of glitz, and the bee just looked at home there in the middle of the honeycomb spiral. Plus, bees do something called a waggle dance when they get back to their hives, and that seemed like yet another layer of meaning for this project that I have entitled "Dance the Orange" after one of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus.

Front cover of my "Dance the Orange" journal.

Inside front cover, with complete text (different translation than the link above) of the "Dance the Orange" passage from Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus.

For my sample page, I used a few of the Renaissance drawings that my friend Deb gave me, covered with sheer orange organza to warm them up for this project. The adoring look on the woman's face seemed perfect with the poem. The six-petaled "frame" shape around her picture is based on the shape of the symbol for the orange chakra Svadhisthana. To make the tabs that hold the page into the book, I cut up a little orange leather swatch that I got at Crate and Barrel when we were considering some new chairs a few years back. Perfect use for a 4" swatch! Finally, I added the leaf on the right just because I loved how the warm copper reflected the orange glow of the page. 

Sample page

My nine-year-old let me use his typewriter to type Alicante (in the original French!) on a pretty packaging ribbon.

Alicante, by Jacques Prevert

I sewed a tiny booklet and stitched it into the inside back cover for signatures and comments. (I can't wait to read this at the end of the project!)

Inside back cover

Isn't this notebook paper fabric perfect as a booklet?? A single fat quarter makes an eight-page 5x7" booklet. I had a tiny bronze D-ring of just the right scale to make a closure tab with this little piece of ribbon.

Inside back cover, booklet opened.

Again, the boy let me use his typewriter to add the typed text (on orange typewriter fabric! how delightfully meta!):

Inside back cover (close-up)

Our meeting of this project was on September 17, so I have already passed this along to someone else to make the first page. I haven't decided yet if I want to see each page as they are completed, or wait a year and a half to see it again -- what a wonderful and difficult choice!

In the meantime, I currently have Polly's purple journal to work on...the first of many challenges over the next year or two!

A different shade of girly pink

My cousin asked if I could use some tractor fabric to make a light little throw for her new baby girl to use at the county fair next month. I applaud the "girls don't need to be swathed in pink 24/7" sentiment (looking at you, Debbie...) so of course I said yes!

She sent the fabrics and asked me to embroider "This is my pink" on the corners. I used a nifty valentine alphabet from CinDes Designs in (by request) the brightest pink I had for the lettering and the meander quilting. The binding is on, but not stitched down yet; that will be a good task for the nine-hour drive back to Pennsylvania. Actually, this little bit of binding will only take me about one of those hours...I'll have to plan a few other things to while (wile?) away that time...

As finished as it's gonna be before I get in the car!

The binding is the same as the denim-print corner fabric.

The blue binding will wrap around to frame this side too.