Hugs and Kisses for Reilly

This is my second journal quilt, still in the works. I decided to try free piecing X's and O's, and I had wanted to do a journal quilt about my studio dog Reilly. The dog image is cut from a Laurel Burch print. There's a smaller dog in the print that I think looks a little more like Reilly, who is a Miniature Poodle-Terrier mix, but it was too small for the composition. The fabric had actually been laying around for a couple of weeks (but had been in my stash much longer!). I knew I wanted to use it somehow, it just took a while to figure out how!

In this pic I have begun embellishing the bottom O. (Click on the image to get a REALLY LARGE close-up.) Since the picture was taken I have completed that beading. Now I have to figure out how I'm going to embellish "Reilly" to make him stand out visually as much as the letters do. I have some eyelash yarn I'm thinking of using. Beyond that I have no idea. I may also decide to try to beef up the beading on the X's. They seem a little wimpy compared to the O's. On the other hand, this is just a journal quilt and a learning experience. It might be better for me to leave them as is and learn from the experience!

Reilly is a lot rounder than Larel Burch's dog. He gets a pet or puppy Poodle trim every 6-8 weeks so his coat is short and curly. (And he's gray, not purple-blue.) We've let his ear hair grow long; it's mostly straight but waves at the ends. His tail is his greatest feature in my opinion. When he's happy or on full alert he holds it straight up and it sort of curls over his back. But the hair on his tail is looong and waves like a flag when his tail is moving. I love it! I'll have to try to get a picture of him in all his glory :- )

I'm having a real hard time getting anything done today. I felt great on Saturday, and accomplished a lot. Felt fine again yesterday but it was a quiet Sabbath day with no sewing. Today I just seem to have no energy at all. Developed a headache early this morning but it hasn't become serious (thank goodness). Can't decide whether this is diet induced or if putting out the trash this morning exposed me to something in the air that I wasn't aware of. The worst part of this condition is that I often can't even detect the toxins that make me ill. What's really weird is that, for me, chemical exposures can cause emotional depression, not just physical reactions. Sewing is usually a good antidote but I have to pick up that needle and thread first! Or have something ready to work on, something that doesn't require any thought or creative energy. It may be time to go piece some scraps together...

Preemie Quilts

Throughout the year members of my local quilt guild make quilts for babies in the neonatal intensive care units of our local hospitals. These preemie quilts are a minimum of 18" wide and 24" long to comfortably fit on top of the isolettes. You can imagine how they brighten up a sterile environment! Each quilt becomes a gift to the baby's parents. Sometimes when the infant does not survive it is the only tangible evidence of their baby that the parents have to take home with them.

This quilt...

and this quilt...

were made from orphan blocks I'd made in my early quilting career. Back then I would cut 2.5" squares from my fabrics as I used them in other projects. Eventually they were sewn into four patch units (on days when I needed to do some mindless sewing!) and then apparently abandoned while I went on to other things. As I am learning how to cope with my new health situation I have had time to go back through my old projects and bags of blocks. I'm having to make some difficult decisions about what to keep and what to pass on to someone else (or put in the trash). Some of those fabrics I bought in the early years are now hazardous to my health! Even though everything in my stash has been prewashed, some of those cheap fabrics have a sizing or something in them that off-gasses when hit with a hot iron. So out they go, no matter how much I like the color or the print! (In the early years I had three toddlers and no money so the $1.00 a yard cottons at Wal-Mart seemed like a good deal. Live and learn!)

Anyway, I was able to piece almost two preemie tops from just those four-patch units I made so many years ago. The pictures are actually in reverse order. I made the first one you see second and the second one you see first. I needed 6 more blocks to complete that second top (the one at the top of the page) so I dug around in my orphan block collection and found the pinwheels and the 16-patch block and the hourglass blocks and sewed them in randomly, only making sure I didn't have two of these "oddball" blocks in any one row. I think it's much more interesting than the one that is all four-patch blocks.

Below is the quilt that I referred to in my previous post. And as I said before, this one is my favorite of this batch. I made it from scratch, as it were, not from leftover blocks. Although it is almost completely created out of scraps. Nearly all of the strips were leftovers from projects of mine or friends of mine. When I got to the outer edges I had to break down and cut strips from yardage to get the lengths I needed in the colors I needed. (There are more strips and scraps of duller colors waiting to be dealt with someday.)

I piece my tops, back 'em with flannel, and do minimal quilting to hold the two layers together. All of these have been "stitched in the ditch" in a rectangle in the center of the quilt. Rather than bind them I finish them pillow style and then top stitch around the perimeter of the quilt, sometimes using a decorative stitch on my sewing machine.

Sometimes I fret that I don't make "pretty" or "cute" quilts for these babies. I just don't do pretty or cute! It's unnatural for me! Hopefully there are families that come in who appreciate these funky creations of mine. Even better, maybe the strong colors and busy prints provide energy and stimulation for the little souls trying so hard to survive. I sure hope so.

Ta Da!

My first picture uploaded! Hurray for me!

This is a detail shot of a preemie quilt I made recently. As soon as I learn how to fine tune the image of the whole quilt I'll share that with you.

I think this preemie quilt turned out pretty cool. It moves from a crazy patch block to one giant Log Cabin-type block with every strip being a different color/print. I'd been wanting to try this particular design style for a long time. It was fun to actually do it and have it turn out so well (in my eyes at least!). It may be hard to part with this one ;- )

Yesterday I went to the La Conner Quilt Museum to see the exhibit of Gwen Marsten and Freddy Moran's collaborative quilts. I lucked out in that there were only a handful of other people there and no-one was wearing toxic fragrance. The color in those quilts sure brightened up the place! Lots of gorgeous reds (Freddy uses red as a neutral; works for me!) and tons of fun prints. There was actually one quilt that hurt my eyes to look at. Those who know me well will be surprised to learn this because I love bright saturated colors. The truly odd thing about this is that it was one of the calmer quilts. I think what was happening was the juxtaposition of red and yellow was aggravating my astigmatism. Other than that I can't account for it. Suffice to say that I thoroughly enjoyed being able to see these quilts by two of my favorite quilters/artists in person. If only I'd been able to go on opening day when both Freddy and Gwen were there!!! {sigh}

On my way home I still felt well enough (in spite of the absence of obvious toxins, something in that building makes me ill; that's why I had to quit working there) to stop in at my LQS where they are celebrating their anniversary with a sale (fancy that!). I was able to buy Gwen and Freddy's book, Collaborative Quilting, and a few pieces of fabrics at 20% off. Let's see... I bought a red batik, a funky stripe of red and orange and green and black, a yellow/orange batik, and a multi-color on black print in Robert Kaufman's "Color Quake" line. All very bright and happy :- )

Still No Pix

Sorry about that. May have to get DH to give me a show-and-tell lesson. Seems I'm too distracted/busy/lazy/fuzzed-out to read the directions in the owner's manual and learn how to do it all by myself!

I have recently finished a baby quilt for a commission, and then a small companion pillow. Next I will be creating the top and back of a dorm quilt for the same client. Then it will go to a professional long-arm quilter for lovely stitching, and back to me for binding. The baby quilt was only two fabrics, both flannel. The top and the back were essentially two giant Puss in the Corner blocks, done in postive/negative colorway. Turned out pretty cute but the flannel was not fun to work with. I've done it before but it was always for myself and I'd choose patterns that didn't require precise piecing specifically because of the nature of flannel (it shifts rather like velvet does). Working for someone else I naturally wanted to do the best job I could! Fortunately the dorm quilt is plain old cotton and the piecing couldn't be simpler: five stripes of two fabrics (three of one and two of the other).

On a more fun note - for me, at least - I've been busy beading my second journal quilt. I'm doing the standard 8 1/2" x 11" vertical format and have challenged myself to use my favorite shade of green in each of them. My goal is 12 quilts, one a month. I have allowed for Life to get in the way and will settle for 10 if that is what needs to happen to keep me on an even keel. I'm working improvisationally on each one. Trying to learn to hear what my soul wants to do instead of always working to someone else's parameters. This will also be an opportunity to practice keeping the inner critic at bay!

The Purpose of This Blog...

I mentioned in my previous post that I wanted to share what I do with others. I also want to have a source of accountability for myself. So very many times I say I want to do one thing or another for my own benefit and then it doesn't happen. Sometimes life gets in the way, sometimes it's pure avoidance. This will be where I hold myself accountable for those things that I say I want to do.

The other aspect of this blog will be to educate the reader about the ups and downs of life as a chemically sensitive individual in the 21st century. Hopefully that will be kept to a minimum as it is not especially uplifting. It is, however, a major factor of my life now and impacts every moment of every day. For example, I need to re-cover my design wall so I can take photographs of my quilts and works-in-progress to share with you. It is currently covered in a light yellow flannel. That hasn't been an issue for me as I've worked on projects but I figure it could pose challenges in photography. Sixty inch wide white flannel isn't as easy to come by as I had hoped it would be! One twin sheet will cost me $16.00 plus shipping. I can get 45" wide flannel but then I'd have a seam running down the middle of my design wall. I can get 90" wide flannel but then it's way bigger than the spot I have for my design wall (there's an electric wall heater on that wall; I'd just as soon not start any fires!). I did find a 54" wide flannel but I'm concerned it will shrink more than I want it to when I wash it. And I will have to wash it to remove any fragrances it may have picked up along the way and to remove the chemicals used in the finishing processes. I briefly thought about using a needlepunched cotton batting but it will also have to be laundered and they don't recommend doing that until it's in the middle of a quilt! Polyester needlepunched batting is out because it's polyester (petrochemical byproduct: boo, hiss). So for the moment I'm thinking 90", wash it, cut it down. Maybe even hem the raw edges if I get ambitious (ha!). We'll see.

I took a few pictures with the new digital camera but still have to learn how to get them into the computer and onto the blog. ;- )