Maverick Quilts

For some reason I'm not sleeping. I'm usually very good at sleeping. Eight or nine hours every night, and there are normally dire consequences when I don't get that much. Granted, I seem to need less during the summer months when the light starts earlier and lasts longer but this is ridiculous. I've been awake since 3:30 a.m.!

While I was not sleeping it occurred to me that I should make you aware of some quilts I found via someone else's blog. When I think of whose blog it was I'll let you know. In the meantime, if you like the quilts of Gee's Bend you'll want to go have a look at these.

I'm going to go play in my orphan blocks... or something.

Orphans Revisited

Dh is late getting home so I have time for a quickie. Post, that is!

After my last entry I made the rounds of the blogs I read regularly and discovered that Finn at Pieces From My Scrapbag had made a couple of posts since my last visit (only yesterday!). She's been talking about orphan blocks and quilts and has posted some great pictures and issued a challenge to those inclined to pick up the gauntlet. Consequently I have opened my drawer of orphan blocks to see what could be done with them.

They are all neatly sorted according to size... except for the ones I've thrown in most recently of course ("recent" being anytime in the last year or so!). I went through a couple of the bags and quickly realized that I was going to have to divide them up in some other way. There are blocks I want to keep and work into one or more baby quilts (we have a second grandchild on the way - yippee!) and other blocks that technically aren't orphans yet because I still think I may make more of them and make that quilt someday. Then there's the fact that I have so many 12" orphan blocks that I could probably make a quilt out of them without any other blocks being thrown into the mix. But what fun would that be?

I want to divide my blocks into at least two groups. I know, I know, the ideal is to put together blocks that totally do not go together and make it work (because it always does somehow) but there are limits to my time and energy. My goal is to combine as many different sizes of blocks as I can and to play with the various options for making them fit together. My thinking is that I can use this opportunity as practice for assembling my friendship quilt (seen in a previous post). So you see, I have to divide my blocks up! The really bright ones can go into one quilt and the more subdued ones can go in another quilt. (Geez, did I just commit to making two quilts?! I hope there's no time frame for this project!) I'm going to try to make at least one quilt 56" x 84" so it can be donated to Quilts With Love, an organization that is working to get quilts to our active duty soldiers. We'll see. Like I've said before, I'm not doing big quilts these days. But there's always the exception to prove the rule!

Stitchin' and Rippin'

While I've been waiting for my goodies to arrive from Shipwreck Beads for my journal quilt I have been working on Colleen's Bead Round Robin block. I'm the third person to embellish it; there are two more participants before Colleen gets it back. I didn't think to establish a theme for the block I sent out. Colleen did, and I was delighted by it: things that would be found in a lady's boudoir or dressing room! I thought that was original and fun. Someone before me had put on a hand mirror charm and charms for sunglasses and a comb. I found a purse charm in my stash and put that on. While I was going through the S. Beads catalog the other day I discovered that there were tons of charms that would be appropriate for this block! It was hard not to buy a bunch of them! (Hopefully Colleen will read this and go check it out for herself if she wants more on her block.)

I did not think to take a 'before' picture of the block before I started beading on it. That's okay though, because today I took out everything I did on it yesterday. This was after writing in my journal this morning, "I am determined not to take it all out to do over again. There's doing quality work and then there's tyrannical perfectionism. Taking it out and doing it over would be bowing to Perfectionism." Well, guess who kowtowed. I just couldn't bear the color imbalance I had created. So I took off what I'd done and moved it over to the other side of that section of the block. (I'm going to maintain some illusion of secrecy by not being specific about the beads I'm talking about. It's unusual for me to reveal as much as I have. I'm sure there are those out there who will figure out exactly what I did!) At least the beading went more quickly the second time around!

So here's the before picture.

And here it is after I did my bit. I knew almost immediately that I wanted to do something with that dark patch with the lace on it at the bottom of the picture (the patch is actually a lavender in real life). I bought beads specifically for that seam. Did I end up using them? No. Oh well; they weren't that expensive and I'll undoubtedly use them somewhere else someday. As I finished up that seam treatment I realized I had unwittingly copied an element I'd seen on someone else's block I had worked on. That's good; I'm learning! One of the benefits of round robin projects like this is the opportunity to see how other artists think and work and maybe pick up pointers from them. (If you click on the picture you should get a larger image.)

My treasures arrived from Shipwreck Beads today while I was stitching on the last seam treatment on Colleen's block. The pictures of the beads and charms in the catalog are probably as close to life size as they can be expected to be but, in person, a couple of the things I'd bought on spec look too big for my journal quilt. I haven't played with it a lot yet so we'll see what happens in a day or two. Tomorrow is the day DH and I have set aside to celebrate our birthdays - which are a mere 5 days (and 5 years) apart. We're not sure yet what we'll do to celebrate but it's unlikely I'll get much stitching done. Typically our celebrations are pretty tame. A movie, maybe, and lunch out somewhere. Except that tomorrow is Saturday and the whole world will be out and about. That's dangerous for me anymore. So we'll see whether one of us can come up with some other, more creative, option! (Maybe he'll give me lessons in digital photography so I can get better, clearer pix and good detail shots!)

Friends and Orphans

Been surfin' the quilter's blogs and have been inspired by all the discussions around orphan blocks and orphan train quilts. What I'm about to show you has been hanging on this sheet in my studio for over a year I bet. It's the best photo I could get; my sewing and cutting tables are in the way and there's no way to get them out of the way! The wall I use for a design wall is not big enough to accomodate this sheet. It's rare for me to work on a bed-size project anymore.

These are friendship blocks I received from members of my local quilt guild a couple of years ago. Technically they are not orphan blocks (in my mind anyway) because they were requested and planned for a specific quilt. But I had always intended to put them together much the same way the orphan train quilts are going together. The problem is getting started! I've had internal debates about whether to frame up any or all of the blocks, whether to use one or more fabrics/prints around or between the blocks, what kinds of compensating units to make to go between blocks, etc. etc. etc. I'm really not any closer to knowing the answers to some of those questions but I do have a fabric picked out to use between any blocks I feel the need to separate. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture of it! It's white, with dots of various shades of pink scattered on it. The various shades of pink was essential as there are many different pinks in the blocks!

I certainly don't need to be working on this project right at this moment in time but I am getting tired of having that sheet hanging in front of the closet and having to squeeze around the open bi-fold doors to get out of the room. (I removed the ironing board that normally sits at the end of the table in order to get this shot.) I have a dim memory of those doors being closed when I first put the sheet up. Maybe I need to enlist some help to hold the sheet out of the way to get those closed again. At least the posts about orphan block quilts has stirred up some interest in working on it again! And then there's that whole drawer full of REAL orphan blocks...

Cheap Therapy

It feels good to finally feel good. At least it did before I made the mistake of going shopping again. {sigh} But I needed some more beads (!) and other, less interesting, things. I do feel better now than I did when I first got home.

There has been no progress on the Fabric of Life challenge piece. Instead I have been working on the second version of my third journal quilt (he he). Once I had it pieced I seed stitched the background area around the two main figures. Then I spent quite a bit of time going through my beads and buttons and charms, looking for appropriate embellishments. I found some possibilities but wasn't completely happy with all of them (that would have been asking too much anyway!). This morning I went through the Shipwreck Beads catalog and made a list of things they have that I thought might work for me. Twentysix dollars (plus shipping) later and a few days from now we'll find out what works and what doesn't! Still not content, I went back out to my LBS. They are taking 20% off of all seed beads this month so in addition to looking for colors for my journal quilt I was sort of keeping my eye out for anything else I might want to use someday. ;- ) That was another $14.50. At least I'll be able to do some beading on the outside borders of my journal quilt while I wait for the goodies to arrive from Shipwreck! (By the way, if you're a beader and you're ever in the Olympia, Washington area you really ought to try to get to Shipwreck's warehouse/store. And plan on spending a lot of time there!)

Okay, for whatever reason, I wasn't able to share with you why I put aside my first attempt at my third journal quilt when I posted a few days ago. I think I can now. With pictures even.

I worked my way through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way a few years ago and at that time learned about the strengths and proclivities of the right side of the brain and the left side of the brain. It was easy to see that my left brain had been allowed, in fact had been encouraged, to be the more dominant of the two. Since then I've been working to counteract or damp down that dominance. The idea behind my third journal quilt was to portray the battle I feel takes place in my head everytime I start a new project (or want to stitch, for that matter). So I intuitively pieced, in lots of colors (but not the purples and greens that I showed in an earlier post), what would represent the right side of my brain (the creative, emotional - 'female' - side). For the left side (the logical, analytical - 'male' - and often overly judgemental side) I used black and white and precision piecing. Getting the look I wanted for the bit in the middle where the two sides meet took several attempts but I finally came up with something that I felt worked. (Basically two flying geese units turned on their sides.) As I said before, the composition was fine but it didn't feel "right" to me.

During the course of my paper-journaling over the next few days I discovered that it was the negative nature of the idea behind the journal quilt that was the problem. I was looking at the two sides of my being as adversaries. What I needed was to see them as companions, partners in crime as it were. My major goal for this series of journal quilts is to achieve a sense of healing that will hopefully have a positive impact on my physical body. Well, here was a prime opportunity to do some healing work. I was so pleased and proud of myself for recognizing it! And then I found the perfect piece of fabric in my stash...



It was a scrap someone had given me some years ago. I don't remember when, but I think I remember who. At any rate, there were two or three images of courting couples on the fabric. The one that ended up in the center of this journal quilt had already been fussy cut to size and really was the most appropriate of the available couples. By this time I was thinking of the left side of my brain as "Body," possessing male characteristics, and the right side of my brain as "Spirit," epitomizing the female characteristics. I plan to use buttons and charms to emphasize the qualities of each character and to show them coming together in co-operation. Beading in the border areas will help hold the layers together and function as quilting. And now I'm a happy camper!