Ocean Return

 

Back to work on finishing up Ocean Effect for the Bay Area Modern Quilting group exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair. I've already gone ahead and entered it, so now I have to finish it up. Referring to my initial sketch, I started with the lowest horizontal color line, just to see how it's looking.

Adding in a few more colors.

And here are a few more of the colors pinned on and ready to sew. I've just got a few greens left to go up to the very top. Then it'll be time to trim it up and do the facings and hanging sleeve.

Possibly Ocean Effect

 

The pin basting for the quilt in process that I'm working on had to happen before I did much more walking foot quilting. 

My trusty Parmesan cheese container of safety pins came out. This is such a tightly woven cotton, they had a little trouble getting through the fabric. Or maybe the safety pins need sharpening? Is that even a thing?

As promised I veered off from horizontal, using the corner of the green rectangle as my starting point.

I have postponed the decisions on the sheer fabric until tomorrow.

And then I went vertical for the section in the right hand upper side. So far so good.

I think the possible (maybe probable) name of this quilt is now: Ocean Effect.

Continuing the New One

I'm starting out the quilting/construction of this new quilt from the bottom up. There are two lightweight upholstery pieces (thank you FabMo), that are getting stitched down with fairly close lines of stitching. I chose a very light green rayon thread. I like how it pretty much disappears, reminds me of some of the Agnes Martin paintings I've enjoyed seeing at at SF MOMA. That works for me, as I wanted this piece to be a combination of things that I've learned from modern artists.

 After a couple lines stitched, I remembered to put my walking foot on, and that was working better. Stitching through upholstery stuff onto a finely woven cotton is a challenge, but I tried to take it slow at the transition point. I put on a good audio book (Missing Sister by Joshilyn Jackson) and my headphones and got the entire bottom section all quilted.

The last thing to add is the sheer, but I have to decide several things.

1. How to attach it, just at the top and leave the other 3 sides loose?
2. If I attach all four sides, whether to quilt on top of the sheer or not? 
3. If quilting it, change thread color and go with horizontal lines of stitching?
4. Do I keep the folded up (and thus darker) part at the bottom or not. If so, how to make the curve stay? (because I Really Like that curve). Maybe the stitching in the sheer could echo the curve?

I pinned up the gold part just temporarily to make sure it will still work in the composition. I am really glad I chose this hand-dyed piece for the background. It's an old one from back when I was first learning dyeing.

 I think I'll continue the walking foot lines of quilting, but probably will switch up either the thread color and/or the direction or spacing of the lines.

Still thinking up a title.

Almost Out of Words

 

I concentrated on getting the words left to be stitched done yesterday on May You Ever Return. This is the before picture, mostly for my reference so that I can put it back in the correct position after I did the stitching. I switched over to a free motion foot and dropped the feed dogs so I could do the smaller cursive writing.

Here's the after stitching picture. I used a small width zig zag stitch. The smaller shapes have single words, intentionally written small and hidden. See the picture below for a before picture. So, I've stitched the words in a blue that camouflages them pretty well. And it's also done in a straight stitch, no more zig zag. I stitched them in place instead of taking each off and then repositioning.

There's going to be several more thread color changes needed.

And then...a mini disaster! A broken needle! That big pin was caught underneath in a folded-over seam. I thought I'd uncovered all of those, but apparently not. All the parts of the needle were found, and it was definitely  time for a needle change anyways.

Here's how it's looking so far. Looking more finished day by day.

And only one more section with words left to do. Then it's mostly free-motion quilting left to do which is a lot easier.

Returning to UFO-ing

Starting in on trying to get May You Ever Return completed before the next Sew Day for the BAMQG UFO Challenge.

I did some more digging and found my notes (yay!) and have more of a plan. First up is working with the words that I've already written in pen. I found some colors of rayon thread that would work, zig-zagging some of them.

Turns out that this was the first thing that's been stitched down to the entire quilt sandwich. It was all holding together so well that I thought a lot of the stitching was all the way through. Whoops! A lot of the top is pieced together, or just top-stitched, but it wasn't anchored (except by straight pins) to the batting/backing. That meant I spent time pinning it down through all the layers with safety pins. Much better, I don't think it's going to fall apart all the time.

Some of the words are quite small, but I made my zig-zag teeny tiny and sewed very slowly.

There's a lot of layers and a lot of colors. I'm remembering why I really like this project.

I trimmed off the excess backing fabric and pinned it back up on the design wall after all that. Onwards!

Returning to May You Ever Return

 

The BAMQ UFO challenge has started in January, and the number chosen for us to work on this month was #12 on our lists. For my list, this was my very hardest one, which is finishing this quilt, May You Ever Return. This was started in the excellent class/workshop, Word for Word, that I took with Rosalie Dace along with friend Jaye when we made the pilgrimage up to Sisters, Oregon for Quilter's Affair in 2018. 

It took me a while to even get my hands on the box it was stashed in, and I have as yet been able to find the class notes. (shoot!) So...as you can see this "almost a quilt" is in quite the state at the moment, a little smashed up and un-ironed. It's in an in-between place, I know I was making moves, there were decisions being made about it, placement of pieces, additions and subtractions, etc. That's what I need the notes for.  Seeing it pinned up on the design wall is definitely helping it come back into focus.

Or maybe I just need to listen to the song that it's based on a bunch of times to get me back in the headspace to access my ideas about it all. This quilt has the lyrics to a verse of a Neko Case song, Pitch or Honey, sprinkled around the piece, in an unexpected order. Not at all intended to be easily legible. Just like the song I guess.

Faux Goose Chase Columns

All those fluttering half square triangles are sewn together into columns. Much more manageable. Now it's time to sew all these columns together. Then I'll have my design wall free again so that I can work on the new batch of Orange Bullseye blocks I've recently received.

Edited to note that the above picture is missing something. I discovered when I started sewing that the right hand side was missing a black/white column. It had fallen to the floor at some point. Now it's sewn in and accounted for! For the corrected record, here's how it looked before I started sewing:

 

Triangle Taming

 

The multitude of HST on my design wall are getting sewn together, column by column. They've been falling off the wall pretty regularly so the design has been in flux.

I've been taking them off one column at a time, pinning them together, and then referring to the photo of the design to get them sewn together the "right way".

There are a few extras, which may end up on the side somehow in a border arrangement, or maybe on the back.

There are 5 columns sewn together, but not to each other yet, and 6 left to go. Quick, before the rest are on the floor.

B/W Baby Back

 

The backing fabric I chose for the black/white baby quilt is this great alphabet flannel.

But unfortunately the quilt turned out to be more than a couple inches too wide for the flannel which shrunk up a lot after being washed and dried. I think it was just barely going to work before I preached everything. I always forget how much flannel shrinks.

That meant it was time to do some cutting and rearranging. This is what I came up with. I had four extra HST from the front. I sewed those together and then added a square from the layer cake assortment to the top and bottom. I think it works out pretty well visually. Sure the letters are going two different directions, but that couldn't be helped. I can also write the label on the white part of the HST. I like how the busy black/white print blends in so well with the alphabet flannel.

Now to do some quilt sandwiching.

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.

Orange You Glad?

 

So, uh...yes, I'm still trying to get started on making a Prism Play quilt for the SAQA show. I made a design months ago for the three colors I'd wanted to do but then I dropped the ball on actually making the actual quilts. And now the deadline approaches! 

I'm starting out on making my number one choice which was ORANGE. This is the pull of fabrics I'm working with along with the Joen Wolfrom color card. The rules are only tones and tints, not allowed to use any pure black or white. So it's a whole range isn't it?

This flower from the current bunch on our kitchen counter would probably make the cut. Why am I so lucky to have a DH who buys me flowers?

Here's how the colors look without the white distraction of the color card on top. Quite different to my eye. Thus the rules of not using black or white! There's a range of fabrics in there from a loosely woven cotton/linen hand-dye, commercial printed, batik, various weights of solids and one with gold woven checks.

And so it begins...I drew the design right on the batting and cut the fabric pieces to fit the spaces. I have another in process picture of how it turned out once I got all the pieces sewn on. But I have to look at the show rules to see if I can show it to you or not. Some of the shows have prohibitions of in-process pictures.

Just A Bit Of Stitching

 I'm almost done with the quilt for Stretching Art and Tradition, just a little more hand-stitching left to go. I used the Spagetti embroidery thread again and was very pleased with how smoothly it stitched with a Sashiko needle.

Door Quilt Progress

Machine quilting on the Doors quilt is all done. There will be a little hand-stitching added and then onto the binding, sleeve and label. 

The striking Italian colors on one of the trees on our street. These colors indicate that oh yes, this is most certainly a tree that will be removed to protect the integrity of the power lines. Okay, PG&E, any time that's convenient... Last month they were out here removing limbs from a tree literally three trees up the street from this one. Very thorough there guys.
 

Energizing

 

Continuing to work on my Energized challenge for Curated Quilts. 

Due tomorrow, yikes!