Current Works

We've nearly hit the half-way point of February, and we haven't had a full 5-day work week since about Thanksgiving.  It has been that kind of winter!  There have been 4 full snow days (with school cancellation), at least 2 half days and another one today.  To keep up the count...two weeks of vacation, a holiday, two school "work" days (ie, no school), and I have had 2 days with sick kids home.  Add all that up, and you guessed it...it makes someone that works from home very cranky, and sadly, very much behind where she'd like to be.  And, you guessed it...next week is winter vacation week.  I try to play catch up on the weekends, but I am just getting sick of that.

There.  The whining tirade of the tired and overworked is done.  Here's a look at a couple of very poorly photographed client quilts.  With all the snow days, I don't always get nice light.  This is an older Judy Niemeyer quilt.  It is nicely quilted, but in all honesty, just not my favorite.  I do not find splendiforous joy quilting her designs.  They are too edgy and monotonous for my taste. None the less, I had to come up with something for this that didn't involve an absolute ton of stop and start.  Budget, ya know!...

There is another perhaps not obvious design thing with this particular quilt which makes being time effective harder.  Normally, I might prefer to have a thread that either shows on both the black and the gold fabrics, OR to choose one that blends on both.  But because of the nature of these batiks, it was challenging.  I didn't have the time budget to coordinate threads. That would have just meant way too much stop and start.  That's not really something I like to do on a high-use quilt anyways.  I rather quilt more continuously.  Threads that might have shown on both colors (which nearly represent both extremes!) include hot pink or aqua -- remember, the thread should still coordinate with the rest of the quilt too.  Neither of these colors seemed right so I chose the gilded gold - I think it is a polished poly from YLI.  It blends on the gold, where I stitched freehanded feathers, and shows on the black, which only gets lines.

The feathers were allowed to just spray wherever they want.  They lack structure that some feathers have in order to keep the style of this quilt lighter. You have to be very careful using a gold thread when there is as much backtracking on black fabrics as this quilt has.  Such extreme color differences make the detail work time consuming.

The smaller 6-pointed stars are cute little pinwheels.  All stars are  quilted with a purple variegated Aurifil poly thread.  When I win the lottery, I will stock up on more cones of this stuff!  It sews like a dream.

These larger 12-pointed stars are one of the many reasons I don't care for quilting the Niemeyer quilts.  It's not that I don't like some of them...I just don't like to quilt them.  Difference to be understood.  When you get more than about 6 to 8 pieces coming together at a point, like these stars have, it is absolutely impossible to avoid having the intersection look like a dimple!  I have learned this probably the hard way, from quilting many of these quilts this past year.  And they ALL end up with dimples, and I hate this.  On this quilt, with it's many 12-pointed stars, I just avoided the dang centers all together.  It has the wool batting to give this region loft anyways.

 It is not me alone.  I have seen many of these quilts done by others and they do the exact same thing.  Too many seams just do not lay flatly, plain and simple.  Here's a look at the back.  It's very graphic.

The wider outer border of the pattern has applique, which my client chose not to stitch.  I don't really care for the applique, as it seems kind of out of place.  It does beckon the question, though, what to put on a wider border that looks in keeping with this very linear quilt.  Somehow nice soft curving feathers seemed uncharacteristic.  I chose to repeat the 12-pointed stars in 10 places, and then filled them with purple.  They are also double outlined in a darker purple to make them show more (done after the fact).

 Here's another recent quilt.  I did have several other photos, but my iphone seems to have swallowed them whole, and I cannot locate them!  This quilt is pretty, but would have benefitted significantly from a wool batting, rather than the absolute thinnest Quilter's Dream cotton, which the client brought.  The applique is blanket stitched, and just has no loft whatsoever.  Unless the light hits the quilt just so, you can hardly see the quilting.

I outline stitched all of the spools with monofilament.  It defines them without showing on all of the many colors.  Then the background is feathered.  I can't honestly remember, but I think it is a Glide ivory thread. To give some variety to the border, there are parallel lines, and a couple of fills.  It's pretty finished, but you'll have to take my word for that since this is all I have to show.

Here's the status on these blocks (tilk head sideways since my picture is rotated!)...Five more ready to finish, and then onto the next part...the next border, the arrangement, more applique...

 And, one last sneak peek at a sort of secret project...Just some very pretty, and very different custom quilting.  I love how this turned out and can't wait to someday show the entire quilt.

Happy snow day!