5-4-5-7 Finished!

After much hand sewing accomplished both by spotlight and regular light, my quilt for the Stretching Art & Tradition exhibit is now done and on its way to the coordinator. I'm so pleased with how this one turned out. You'll be able to see this exhibit at several of the Mancuso Bros. shows this year:

SAT24 Shows -

• Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival - Thursday, February 29 – Sunday, March 3, 2024
• QuiltFest Greenville, SC – Thursday, April 18 – Saturday, April 20, 2024
• Pacific International Quilt Festival – Wednesday, July 24 – Saturday, July 27, 2024
• Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza – Thursday, September 19 – Sunday, September 22, 2024

The title is 5-4-5-7, which is my shorthand for: 

5 gray fabrics in the background - 

4 lines in the machine embroidered # - 

5 hand stitches in a row - 

7 different green circles filled with grey embellished centers

The theme of this year's exhibit is Rhythm, so here's my artist's statement: There's a rhythm to my day, time that is spent consciously creating or goofing off and playing. All of it filling the work day in my work room. All of the regular ups and downs adding up to creating something new.

I like the look of this grey fleece with the freehand quilted design.

Most of these centers turned out to be quite different one from the other.

Some were more calm and restful like this just plain suede one.

Others were complex and interesting but still kind of calm.

Then there were the very layered complex ones. That's what I was trying to get at in my artist's statement. The rhythm of my days are compartmentalized into really distinctly different types of my work. They're all similar colors and shapes, but the sizes are very different. Most importantly no matter how difficult or challenging they are, they're still part of my whole day.

I really like this overlapping circles quilting that I did on this section. Reminder to self: do that again. Putting this in the "quilt motifs to repeat" category.
 

Stitching by Spotlight

 

Hand stitching down the facings on my SAT 24 quilt. And using WonderClips to hopefully clamp the corner edge.

No power still, and now no internet 🛜 🥸sigh. I’m posting on one bar of cellular so hopefully 🤞 this works. 

It’s going pretty well, I’m using my around the neck lights. DS saw me and started laughing,,he said I looked like a submersible!

So Embellished

 

Working more on the Stretching Art and Tradition 24 quilt. Here's one of the centers done with some free-motion quilt stitching and a whole lot of needle felting.

Here's what the back looks like. I almost like this better!

Pinned on the colored shapes.

Choosing threads for the zig-zagging.

Final placement of the shapes.

No help at all today from the studio assistant. Naps were more important.

Zig-zagging on the outside of the shapes done, and the quilting stitching on the inside of the colored shapes. Two of the centers are stitched down, the rest pinned. So close to done.

How About Texture

Continuing work on the Stretching Art & Tradition '24 quilt. In my original sketch the centers of each of the seven shapes were grey-silver. Different than the background. My notes included the idea of having some sort of texture. Here is my first attempt with the seven centers made with grey fleece.

Here's one with grey fleece on the right, and on the left, grey suede. (I had grey suede?Huh.) Good, but needs more texture.

Out came the rarely used embellisher aka the needle felting machine.

 This circle is gray cotton fabric with wool roving, suede scraps, fleece scraps and stitching. It's not sewn down yet, so it won't be raw-edged.

The roving color was a little too brown instead of gray on that last one, but I still wanted something else that was wool. Ages ago I bought a bag of wool penny circles in random colors and sizes. I chose the ones that were grey, grey-patterned and embellished them on to one of the fleece circles.

I like it with the wool patterned fabrics.

This one is just pinned on so far, but I'll stitch it down with a zig-zag.

I think I'm really liking how this turning out.

At this point, I'm thinking that I'll embellish one more circle, leave the small one with the suede center, and leave another one of the circles just plain fleece.

 

Green Shape 1 of 7

 

Back to getting my quilt done for SAT 24, it's been languishing on my design wall. You'll recall I assembled the background's five strips of grey fabric and then pre-quilted it with a different design in each strip. At that point it was quite oversized, and needed to be trimmed to the size 24"w x 36"h to meet the exhibit requirements. I didn't want to nail down where the green shapes were to be placed until I had the actual size and shape nailed down. So now that's the next step as well as the other plans I have sketched out. Including some hand-stitching, so I better get going on this to finish it in time. The super-bright neon pink Tula Pink unicorn pins are a real standout here, but no, I'm not going to add that in as a color to use.

First a stay-stitch all the way around about the un-bound un-faced edges.

Starting with the bottom right corner green shape, I did two colors of zig-zag, gone over twice for emphasis. 

Each of these seven green shapes is supposed to look like it has an opening up to the background. I first thought of using clear thread for those spaces, but I decided it wouldn't look very good in a zig-zag, so I matched the green of the shape instead.

A test piece of fabric for the grey-silver center that sits on the lower right-hand side corner of the quilt.

I'd say it looks pretty good, but I think it might need to be more substantial or of a very different texture to work. It's blending in too much with the background. I had originally thought of using my embellisher to add texture, or I may go for something like a wool instead. At least I"m working in it now.

Start With Quilting

Finally doing some actually quilting, the first of the year, woohoo! I'm working on my SAT24 quilt and decided to pre-quilt the background before I apply the green shapes.

 Using the walking foot, I started in on the darkest gray and did some unmarked quilting. Decided to do a different motif in each of the five background fabrics.

Korben was keeping a sleepy eye on the proceedings. He pretty much slept through the walking foot racket. Is it just me and my walking foot, or is yours loud too?

Two more sections done. One with straight lines and one with curves.

Here's where I left off with two sections left to go. I started in on circles in the big remaining section. I traced several circles and then echo quilted so that they interlocked.

Here's how it looks on the wall with the green shapes pinned up and waiting on the side.

Burn, Grow, Slide, Done

This is slightly premature as I still have to add the facings today, but here's Burn, Grow, Slide all quilted.

Here's my 100 word artist statement for the San Mateo County Fair challenge exhibit: Due to climate change, I've observed that the four seasons have now become three: Burn, Grow, Slide.

I did a lot of quilting on the two side sections.

There was a little too much volume and puffiness in some spots especially in the places where I hadn't ironed enough to activate the fusible batting.

Just some detail shots.

That's enough for now, I've got to go actually stitch down those facings so I can turn this in tomorrow.
 

The Grow Part

 

I got the Grow section of "Burn, Grow, Slide" done yesterday. I used the same zig zag for all the edges of the branches.

So many many layers involved.

Very pleased with how the tree section turned out. 

The choice I made to not use prints for the tree branches worked to separate it from the chaotic backgrounds.

The bright greens on the tree really get across the strange coloring of the bright new growth. It doesn't last for very long, but it is really this striking in person.

I intentionally followed through the shape of each branch piece, crossing it over the other sections. That's how these trees look. The branches are open enough that you can see them crossing over each other.

Instead of changing thread colors a million times I stayed with one color throughout. It mostly blends in, but gives some visual texture when it contrasts.

Now to get the last quilting done on the Burn and Slide sections. Nearly there!