Black and White Couching Spirals

 

After all that quilting, it was time for some quilt trimming.

I have a design drawn out that needs to be added to this quilt, so I decided to try some couching.

I'm using a black and white  two-ply twisted cotton baker's twine. This first part in the lower right hand corner is the most fiddly part.

I'm using a black and white twisted 2-ply rayon thread (Wonderful D-Twist) to do the couching. Last seen being used last year, on my Stretching Art & Tradition 25 quilt

This is working out pretty well so far. It shows up just enough, like a sketch.

Heat Shadows

 

The curtain in our bathroom garden window is closed because of the heat wave and this shadow play made me stop and take a picture. It's lightly edited, turned into a black and white version, just because. It made me laugh because I can see the mini rubber duck shape so clearly. I like the texture of the curtain, as well as its folds. The texture achieved in black and white photos always works for me, I really enjoy that and am happy when I can approximate something close to it in my own photos.

This was a photo taken from my workroom chair, looking out the window at a little lizard with the sun coming behind it through the exterior sunshade. There's the woven texture from the sunshade, the overlaid regular grid of the window screen, and the slight distortion of the double paned window. That's so much going on between my eye and the lizard. And why was it up on there on my second story window? I really hope that it made it to safety and didn't get picked off by the birds that tend to hang out in the palm tree.

On The Floor

These pictures are from a floor in Powell’s City of Books.

It’s near one of the elevators.

I just thought it was super interesting and textured. Usually stores have such boring floors.

 

So I decided to do a black and white conversion and I like it a lot.

This one even more.

Perfectly Accidental

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 Sometimes you end taking an accidental picture that’s not going to get deleted like all the blurry ones of your feet. You know when you’re done taking your “actual “ intended picture but don’t click off the phone quite fast enough. That’s what this is. And it’s one of the best pictures that I’ve taken in a long while. I never would have come up with this perfect composition. Or the texture variety, rough wood, machine marked wood, smooth wood, blurry grass, pressed concrete. Or the golden late sunset dramatic warm lighting creating the glare reflections and the shadows.

I thought it would make an interesting quilt design or a carved stamp. I played around with it In SnapSeed and quite like the black and white version.

White On White

I've now finished the quilting on the B/W Baby quilt. Now to make some binding and a label. I also have to bury some threads. 

I'm hoping to get this quilt done before this weekend so my son can gift it to his friend at their D&D session.

A lot of the quilting design was inspired by the fabrics. I mostly used the walking foot attachment for all the line work. 

The difference between white and slightly not white is so apparent in this quilt. This was one of the quilts that I spray basted and it worked perfectly, no shifting at all, and no gumming up of the needle either.

I hope the baby likes all the texture.

B/W Baby

I wasn't sure how the printed side borders on the panel were going to work out once I sewed all the block units together. It looked like it'd be close to fitting.

Not only did it fit, the points exactly matched up with where the printed side borders began. I couldn't have planned this to work, well maybe I could have if I'd used EQ8 or actually did the math. But I'm chuffed nonetheless, I lost a small amount of the printed border but that didn't really bother me. This looks more intentional. 

Now on to the quilting!
 

Black White Design Wall Fun

Trimming time for the black and white baby quilt HST. I made a lot of them, and they were mostly very accurate. But once I started trimming I decided to go through and do them all. Now they're all 4.5"

I wanted to highlight this black and white variation on this pattern so you can see just how nice the fabric design looks with the two colors sewn up together in a HST.

Time to make visual decisions visually, aka playing around on the design wall.

I have resigned myself to the fact that white and not-quite-white are close enough to okay for me to go ahead with using them together. 

Very toothy looking, maybe a little too aggressive for a baby quilt? I think it works pretty well with the side "border" looking columns on the central panel.

 Constrained and orderly up on the top and kind of going crazy down on the bottom. I have to say I like this quite a bit. It almost looks like three undefined hearts. I definitely like this arrangement of two rows on the top and four on the bottom. I'm feeling like I should just start sewing two HST together randomly and then see where it ends up. But no, I think I need to play around with it a little more before I start sewing.

Vicuña Visit

 

New project begun, a black and white baby quilt. I'm using the black and white print layer cake my DH gave me for Christmas to make a bunch of HST.  There's been a lot of research about high contrast black and white being good for retinal development in babies. Plus it looks cool to grown-ups too.

I love the measuring part. The new Sewline pen is working out great for this.

8 HST at Once! I love this technique, it feels so efficient and effective.

These HST will be on the top and bottom of this panel in some sort of arrangement or other, tbd for now.

And the backing will be this animal alphabet flannel. A Vicuña mention FTW! Oh no, I just realized this will not help a kiddo learn letters beyond the first ones in the animal names because the words are written out in cursive. C'mon now, fabric designers. But yes, the cursive looks so nice with those big blocky first letters, it really does.

Black and White and Wood

Doctor's offices and medical facilities just have the nicest ceilings these days. The nice wood, the interesting lights, and all the windows. 

 There's just something about having to wait that makes me look up, notice how cool the ceiling is and take a picture. And then playing with making it black and white to see how different it looks. (and to see if it'd make a good quilt design)

This one was taken in the spot where I sat for 15 minutes after getting my first Covid vaccination shot. Both of these ceiling shots were at Stanford Medical facilities, I'm betting that they have a corporate wide interior treatments list because they're very very similar. Or maybe this is just the style these days?

Pretty moody. And a possible quilt design with all those great horizontal and vertical lines and angles.

Getting Photo Ready

 To prepare for one of the classes I'm taking at QuiltCon Together this week, Bias Tape Mastery with Latifah Saafir, I've been searching through my pictures for some curvy inspiration. 

I took this picture yesterday at Quail Hollow Ranch where we went for a short hike. I really like the arching gentle curves and how they overlap. 

In SnapSeed I fooled around with it and made it into a black and white, sort of cartoonish image to make the curves really pop out even more. I'm going to transform this into a plan for my quilt that I'm going to make in class.

I also might incorporate some of the curves from the trail map of the park as well.