Slopes Quilted

 

I finally got to sit down at the sewing machine late yesterday, and I finished the diagonal quilting on Slopes. But first I sat in the rainbow-ness of the sun setting in the window.

It was really quite bright but it made for good light on the quilting left to be done.

Well-illuminated indeed.

I turned on some music (X-Wild Gift and The Blasters-Live 1986) and finished off the diagonals going in one direction. And then flipped it around and did the other direction too.

I think I like it. 

And now I'm done quilting it. Now for the finishing! But what color of binding? I do have small-ish pieces of all the colors left over, but that might be too much variety for a binding. I think one of the darker blues might be nice. I'll have to see if I have enough of one of them to make the binding or not.

Too Many Buttons

I recently heard about a quilt challenge that I thought would be worthwhile to participate in and make a quilt specifically to donate to this cause, because it is something that I have a real interest in supporting. It is for the UN Global Fund to Fight HiV/Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis. There is to be an exhibit of the quilts in Geneva, Switzerland in November and then they will be sold through the UN Women's Guild Fundraising Bazaar.

The theme that I wanted to work with was the commonalities between the world's children that are challenged with these easily preventable diseases, represented in fabrics from different countries from around the world. Luckily I have an aunt who has traveled a whole lot, teaching English in many different countries and she gifted me with a great collection of fabrics from many places.

I cut out a bunch of motifs and stripes and patterns and started arranging them.

Then I quilted and bound the piece. But it still did not say what I wanted it to say. There wasn't enough content about just how many children are affected by these entirely preventable diseases.

So I started sewing on buttons from my recent new cache of buttons from my friends that hadn't quite gotten put away yet.

Rows and rows of buttons, representing all those children around the world.

Just too many.

Too many buttons.

Too many children.

Too little money spent on this problem.

I would love to be able to make this quilt once again, someday, and not have to use any buttons at all.
Too Many Buttons measures 30"w x 25"h.
Go here to see all the other quilts that others have contributed.

This Is How It Happens

My worktable was getting unusable again. Too many scraps piling up and overflowing and making it hard to get anything of any size done. In this picture it looks as if Cerridwen is stirring up the scrap pile, making something out of nothing.... All of my scrap boxes are completely packed and I just don't have room for yet another one, so I wanted to use up this pile of goodies. My first instinct was to do another Spiral Recycle but the pieces of fabric were too big to work well with that technique.

So I started laying the pieces out and placing them together with the intention of making a "background" to do a spirally thing on top of. But this turned out too interesting to cover up with a big spiral plopped on top.

Next I did some stitching first one direction in mostly parallel lines.

And then back again. Ho hum, kinda boring when you're doing the stitching and trying to avoid all the pins.

But I like how it looks afterwards, I think the stitching adds a lot to the whole look of the piece. So is this piece finished? No, not yet. Do I know what it needs yet? Nope. Does it have a title? Not at the moment. But at least I don't have to find a place for it in my scrap box. At least yet.

Taking My Lumps

After I shared the manipulated fabric experiment last week, I decided I wanted to try and use this now very 3D fabric surface in a 2D quilt. So I thought to keep it coherent and complete, I'd just use the silk skirt fabric that the lining fabric came from as the base for the quilt. Turns out it makes a very effective base to play off of with its graphic undulating lines and interesting use of space. And I really like the idea of this complete recycling of a silk skirt! (except the zipper, which on second thought, I should use on the back for the label...

The first picture shows how I originally had the whole shebang pinned together before attempting the sewing part.


Here is how it looks after quilting and re-arranging and folded and stretching and tucking and trimming. I used invisible thread on the 3D fabric, and black rayon on the background.

Not sure if there are still to be beads in and amongst the lumpy bits as was my original thought. I think I'll try beading a section and see how it looks to me. There are some swaths of fabric not currently quilted through, so they need some type of anchoring otherwise they'll pooch out too much after hanging for any amount of time. (learned this by personal experience, oh yes I have!).

The title of this finally came to me: Taking My Lumps
and the size is: 31 x 37"
Let's call this Quilt #2 of 2009!

How Does a Spiral Recycle?

Here is a visual description of how I make my Spiral Recycles pieces. This is how I made #4 in the series.

I start out with a selection of scraps. Usually I am using the tiny strips and edges cut off when rotary cutting, most about 1/2" wide. I start out with a fusible batting piece on a quilt backing.
Here you can see the backing fabric that I've pre-fused so it is nice and flat, acting as one piece for the manipulating coming up ahead in the process.
I spread out the compressed scraps and start figuring out what I've got to work with. Looking for colors and separating out the batting scraps. Since those are white I have to distribute those carefully. I like using a small collection at a time. This keeps it simple and I'm not trying to find the "perfect" piece, I'm limited to working with what I've got right there in front of me in the workspace.
If there are larger pieces of fabric I will put them along the edges of the piece as that tends to be harder to fill in using the method I'm working with here.
Once I've got it all arranged, I place a piece of tulle net on top, pin around the edges, flip over and iron down on the backing side with a hot and steamy iron. The fusible batting holds most of the fabric down enough to work with and the net doesn't melt if I iron from the backing side.

There may be some re-shuffling to do if blank spots have appeared after the ironing process. And I do pin a bit throughout the whole surface, just to make it a bit sturdier during the quilting.
Here it is under the needle. I go back and forth and around and around. Working from the center out to the edge. It gets flatter and flatter, remember this used to be about 1" high before I ironed it!
Then, interruptions!
Back to quilting. I don't want anything shifting around, that fusible isn't going to hold forever once this is vertical on the wall. The stitching lines begin to show through the chaos of the background and give the piece some coherence. As the edges are stitched I fold around the quilt edge the excess net as I'm sewing.
Here is how it looks after lots of stitching. I don't like how that green piece is so outstanding. It is a piece of bias binding and it looks very out of place.
Time to add something else, so I go to the current scraps bin which has pre-quilted edges I've trimmed off of recent quilts. These have the three quilt layers held together with stitching. Adding them on top will give more dimension to the piece.

Using the green bias tape as a guide I start stitching them down, creating a spiral on top of the recycled chaos below.
And here it is finished! Voila' , "Spiral Recycles 4"

A Matter of Scale

As promised yesterday here is just some of the **output** from my newly renewed flying fingers:
A teeny tiny quiltlet about 3"x5"
Many Pages ( 28"w 30"h ) not quilted yet.
Black Hole Sun (40"w x 32"h) not quilted yet.

Buddha Moon (12"w x 25"h)

Buddha Swirl ( 13"w x 19"h )

Blue Grids

You may not recall, but I showed these to you "In The Raw" (with no quilting)back in October. So, I took a bit of time last week and quilted all four of these, they're about 12x12" or so, some a bit larger, some a bit smaller. It is funny comparing the before and after pictures, they looked so fragile and insubstantial. Like they could just fly apart with the slightest breeze, leaving no trace. But now they are weighty, they aren't going anywhere, unless it is together!
I used a dark khaki olive-y brown rayon for three out of four of these. I like how that quilting line looks like a pencil mark. A bit more subtle than using a black thread.
This one asked to have blue, and there are some embroidered pointy tails (click to see closer view). It also asked not to be squared up, I didn't have a problem with that.
I'm calling these Blue Grid #1 -4

A Bag for the Big Book

Here is a special bag I made within the last month. I apologize for the bad pictures, I'm not sure why I didn't use the flash, or take this out in the sun. I'll have to re-shoot it when it comes back around to me.

I recently was given the task of sewing a bag to house a very special book. It is a specially hand-made journal for recording the thoughts of all the women who become priestesses in our organization, Sisterhood of the Silver Branch. It is a remarkable book just to hold, very substantial, not to heavy, quite long and surprisingly skinny. As it journeys from one hand to the next, we thought it best to have some kind of protective bag. So I came up with this!

Lunaea found the beautiful fabric (Hoffman "Silent Inspirations" by McKenna Ryan) and she also bought a special vintage button on ebay.

This is closer in color to what the fabric actually looks like, it is the "ice" colorway of a similar print, "pine needle panels".

It was pretty easy to put the bag together, and I just kind of winged it making an oversized rectangle for the bag, layering the fabric over batting, quilting it with metallic decorative thread, then adding the lining and flap closure.

Here is the flap closure on which I did some decorative embroidery and a whirlpoolish swirly design. I used rayon and also metallic threads. The button was really perfect, it is a silver almost pewter with swirling leaves.
This shows the lining which was a silky, shiny polyester charmeuse weight fabric that I had leftover from a cape for one of the many Halloween costumes that I've made over the years. It was very ravelly and slippery to sew. I hope that it is strong enough to hold up to some use.