Maine Quilt

A client of mine brought me this quilt a couple weeks ago. She works at a local library, and the ladies of the library made the blocks. It will be on display all summer at the library and will be raffled off at the end of the summer. Each block was made or designed to depict something that Maine is known for.
They did not have money to do a true custom, so I had to aim to stitch mostly continuous patterns when possible. I did end up changing thread colors more times than I wanted, and doing more stop and starts than I like for how this quilt was costed, but it's for a good client and a good cause. Suck it up :-)

So, above are the lupine and loon. If you are not from Maine, you may not know what it's like to see large fields of lupines in late May. It is simply lovely.

The pine tree (Maine is the "Pine Tree" state) and moose block was destined not to photograph well. And the fish (trout or bass???) was a cute 3-dimensional block that I added scales to the green body and some swirls in the water.

A Maine quilt would not be complete without a lobster.

...or a puffin, though fewer people see the puffins unless they go island hopping.

The bear paw block is especially creative, I thought. The Univ Maine teams are the Black Bears and Maine has plenty of them too.
Lastly, this is a rather well-known lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth. But for some reason, the idiot in me cannot remember the name of it! A quick search has aided my Alzheimers... It is the Portland Head Light.

So if these blocks depict Maine life, I have just one question: Where is the Black Fly (aka Maine's state bug)??! Ha-

One little tid bit of advice I would like to pass on as a result of quilting this quilt. The blocks are all done by different people, and are a combination of regular quilting cottons and batiks. I found that mixing these fabrics on a single quilt made achieving uniform thread tension everywhere to be very difficult. Let that be a lesson to you...If you are having a quilt longarm quilted (or even stitched on your domestic) try to make your quilts of a similar fabric.

Belated 4th & Designs in the works

Finally, we had a very nice and hot summery day. Too bad it took getting to July 4th to finally have that. Besides having to cook too much, our 4th was good. And simple. Too simple. No swimming. It would have been a great lake or beach day, as we typically do, but this year was a different year. No big lake party held to attend. Too bad.

I have made progress on my baskets quilt. It's off the frame, and naturally I discovered 2 three square sections that I missed stitching the background filler. Go figure. It's not quite ready for a binding! I'll show pictures in a couple days.

Until then, I have been puttering with many new designs. I want to make a quilt that once again, uses much of my stash fabrics. Some of my new designs do a better or not-so-better way of doing this, but then. I also want a quilt that has a decent bit of hand applique since I am better able to do this in the evenings, and I do my customer quilt obligations in the early morning & afternoons. Ideally, the quilt design will have good open spaces for quilting designs too.

The first 2 designs allow me to use a curved cross-hatch ruler to creatively fill the spaces around the appliqued circles, which would very likely also be bordered with a 3/8"-1/2" bias strip.
I have many green prints I hope to use in the use in the quilt, and although I like these designs, neither really accomplishes this goal. Plus they both require I buy a good bit of background fabric.

This next one was actually the first layout I played with, and it does use many different green prints. It also requires much paper piecing, which is really not my favorite thing. In the end, it needs some refinement because it reminds me of a cross between a mine-field and a frog in a blender. Probably not the best quilt names, but maybe they'd be memorable!My last designs are not unique. I have wanted to do a dresden plate quilt for a while. It's relatively easy stitching, a pro for construction, but a con if this is a competition quilt. It will use many of the green fabrics. But like others, requires nearly 5 yards of background fabric. Obviously, I have a hard time making a small quilt. I figure I may as well make it fit a bed if I go to all that trouble! It has a decent amount of machine quilting space, though not an overload. I'm thinking of using a collection of scrappy tans for the background of the plates.

But I'm not sure if I want fewer, and larger plates...or more smaller plates (below). Thoughts?? Guess it all depends on how ambitious I feel like getting.

It's hard to design a great quilt. I have many competing needs...size, ability to finish, how much fabric I must buy, how I think it will show and compete, the overwhelming desire to only create my original designs, etc. That last one is hard. How could I make the very classic Dresden plate pattern original??

Oh well, I'm off to the beach today. It's gonna be a sizzler here. Yay!!

Baskets in the Making

I have this customer quilt that is on the frame at present. It's getting a lot of the stand and stare treatment. I have SID'd all the baskets with Monolon and done the stitching on the red outer border. But what to do ON the baskets themselves is somewhat of a mystery still. The client gathered these fabrics on her many trips to Hawaii over the years.
So...I have moved on to the background, or eye-blinding part of the quilting. The fabrics have a small print on them making the quilting nearly impossible to see unless you use a contrasting color, which I am not. The larger baskets are getting stuffed with ferns and flowers. Nothing for the small ones. I've settled on 3 fillers - feathers on the mostly white background, and swirls and double large pebbles for the others. The blocks are just too close to do any framing or separation.

What would you do on the baskets? Oh, and there are at least 75 of them before you answer that too quickly.

Is it ok to leave it pouffy for the most part?

Lastly-

I need to appologize to many. I have tried so many times to leave comments about lovely quilting and sometimes Blogger lets me and sometimes it asks for me to login and then keeps asking me to login, as if I gave it the wrong password (which obviously I know is right since I post several times a week!!). So, keep posting the pretty quilts. Love all the amazing Aussie show quilts too-

Sooo Ridiculously Small

Do you see the new ribbon to my collection??
Of course not, as it is the size of my index finger. My quilt came home from the Vermont Quilt Festival yesterday, with of all things, a first place ribbon. Since when is a first place, 96 points, deserving of a 4" high ribbon? It's so small it is just silly. Someone oughta protest, and question what our $25 entry fee was for. Like how much can a respectable ribbon really cost???

Enough ranting. I should just be happy that it is blue this time. I was starting to have the "always a bridesmaid" feeling. The quilt got a 2nd at MQS. And I heard through the grapevine that someone thought it had a 2nd place at VQF too. It was nice to see the blue ribbon and the kind judges comments. It makes me excited to have it go to the Maine Quilt Show next month.

I should be out reheating some leftovers for dinner, but I am lazy. Looks like my countertops will be several more days, and my builder is on vacation for a week starting Friday. No stovetop until he returns. My husband is late tonight. Seems he thought it prudent to get his finger checked out, finally. You see, he nipped the tip of it off Sunday afternoon with his table saw. I warned you all, he is not terribly handy, but he thought he could rip down a piece of our hardwood flooring to make a threshold. That he did, but the last 2 cuts came at my insistence after he chopped off a good hunk of flesh. Yum- not in the mood to make dinner now :-)

So, here's a couple scenes of my garden - the front one (since the back one got dug up prior to the renovation). It's full of color.

The Shasta's are huge this year.

No Mojo - edited

For those of you that love when you kids are on summer vacation, I think you are crazy. It is the time of year I dread most of all. Bickering, inability to do anything I need to do, etc. I got five times as much done the day before school got out than I did the week after they got out. I thought with my oldest at my mom's today might make the day easier, but my middle child is more than any mother ought to have to deal with. He's a constant handful, always into things, not the least bit trustworthy, and right now is quite defiant and sassy too. My daughter who will be 5 in August is usually well mannered and well behaved. They both lost all my trust this morning. THey were quietly playing up stairs, or so I thought. Bear in mind, my daughter is "all things girly". She loves her hair that has taken nearly 5 years to reach her upper back. We hate bangs - hate how they look, how they are always in people's eyes, hate the constant trimmings, so I never had her have them. I have not been able to get her to have so much as a trim of her hair to snip off the wispy baby-hair ends. And then I find this...

I'm just beside myself. Don't try to console me and tell me she'll look cute once it is properly cut. I have one daughter and I love that she wants to look like one. Now she's just a reminder of my ill-mannered sons. I'm mad, sad and angry today.

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edited...

Yes, you are right. We have all done this. Even I did, many times. I have my 1st or 2nd grade school picture as a cruel reminder, complete with hacked up bangs down to the scalp. I have had a few hours to cool off, stop hollering at my son, realize that my daughter most definitely did have a hand in this event. Let's face it, she could have screamed or ran away and she didn't. We have been to get a haircut, or more likely a "hair sort of evening". It was SO much more hacked on one side that it was hard to just straighten out Bryce's handiwork. I am still mad. Nobody asked me if this was OK. If she came to me and asked for haircut, I'd have at least had the time to think about it and talk to her about it. I see this from a Mother's perspective. She's my baby, and now she no longer looks like a baby. I know she'll grow up. But I just wanted the time to process that fact before I no longer had my baby-face to look at ever again.

She is very cute.

Show Quilt Peek

The Maine Quilt Show is only a month away. While I am readying my 2nd quilt for this show, I thought I'd show a sneek peak of another quilt I have done this spring for a customer that will be at the show. It's a lovely hand-applique wall-hanging, and I expect it will score well with the judges. Her applique is seriously gorgeous.
Next time you are working on a quilt that needs an all-over background filler, consider ditching the old standby micro-stippling for something else. I have done my version of the McTavishing here. Petite feathers fill the 1" triangles, and half inch stripes drop down from the mini-swags on the border. I'll post a full set of pictures in a month.

Adding the Finishing Touches

There's a lot happening right now at my house. The renovation is winding down. Still awaiting the countertops, but the last dining room box was unpacked last night, and all plastic is officially off of the floors. I need to decorate walls, but this quilt is part of that. And at the moment, I am readying it for the show it is going to next month. It has been 98% done for months now. This week I stitched on the hanging sleeve and finally added these little forget-me-not flowers. I went through about 4 perturbations on how to make a bad little flower before I settled on these. Go figure, these were the ones from Karen Kay Buckley's original design that I thought I was not going to use. I guess I figured I would add my own flair to the center block by creating my own little flowers, or so I thought. But I lack the energy for trial and error right now. I planned them to be a peachy color as well, but last summer I already made two in the light blue, si it was simplest just to make 2 more the same rather than 4! Could be lazy?...yea, but the little blue flowers aren't all that bad.
They are made from 2 circles of fabric (the back circle is actually aqua), and then embroidery floss is used to cinch them in to a flowery shape. The teeny-tiny seed pearls hide the floss. Then the ultimate in lazy - they are glued to the quilt (gasp!) - an heirloom quilt with glued on flowers. Shock! I just didn't want to see stitching on the backside and want the flowers to keep their dimensional look with floppy petals.

Now, a label, and some good photos and I think "Intertwined" is ready for delivery.

Rev 1 Done

Duties call. I have taken my quilt off the frame so I can quilt 4 quilts that are due in 3-4 weeks. I spent 12 days playing mostly freehand-fun with this one. It was liberating while mind-boggling all at the same time. My mind thinks in orderly and symmetrically. I love using templates because they generate perfect lines and equal spacings. This was challenging from that perspective. I know I have several things left unfinished on this, but it was done enough that I could safely remove it and finish them later.
I'm trying to use my WonderFil gift certificate to get some heavier and shinier thread to use to accentuate the swirls and other features. Go figure, they can give away gift certificates, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to use them at their online store! I shall call Monday...

This weekend we have a small mudroom to lay ceramic tile in. It's a doable project, hopefully. My right arm has nasty carpal tunnel and numbness in 3 fingers from all of the painting that has been done recently too. Oh the joys of a failing body... We are delighted that our house is coming back to normal. I put away most of the dishes. The table & chairs are once again out of the living room (as the dining room had been a holding zone for everything else. The new rug is down in the new and enlarged living room. All this room lacks is the baseboard heater to be completely finished. Plumber is returning when the kitchen's granite counters are here (abt 1-1.5 weeks). So close...I need to call to get the new dining room furniture delivered now that there is a real room for it. It almose seems surreal that we are only a couple days from being contractor and noise free, and living in a gorgeous new space. Oh, and there's that one issue of the basement. Sigh...I must clean it sometime, and reorganize the stuff, unpack my fabrics, sweep the woodchips, etc. It became usable 2 weeks ago, but I knew better than to clean it until the entire renovation was done.

More Sea Glass

Obviously, I have a good bit still to do, and then there will be rework before it is ready to be shown, but it's now down to the bottom border. Thankfully. It's hard to get the full effect of how the seaglass pieces play with the entire design, both in piecing/applique and in quilting, until it is off. Right now I am just hoping it will look as envisioned, or somewhat close. FYI - I have stitched around over 100 of these appliques.
I'm trying for interesting fillers, with meaning and flow, but time will tell there too. I plan to go back over key motifs with a 30 or 40 wt poly thread with a nice sheen, to make them show up more.

Here's a small closeup of a paisley filler, learned in an online wholecloth class quilt recently. In a larger quantity, it looks pretty interesting.

Today's going to be a noisy day - my living room hardwood is being installed. It's crunch time here at home with the renovation. Getting very close to being finished. My customer quilts are piling up, and will be attacked hard in a couple days when Sea Glass comes off the frame.

The teasers continue

I know it is hard to get a good sense of where my madness is leading when I only show snippets of the quilting. Sorry, that is somewhat intentional. There will be a grand reveal eventually.
I am trying to create am organic look here, with some new quilting motifs for me, ones that can convey the flow of water. Waves and tides to be exact. These are difficult items to "quilt", but hopefully you will see this feeling eventually with this quilt. The picture above show a couple of the "waves" I appliqued onto the watercolor background. Below is just sand.

Abstract or art quilts are hard to stitch. This is a tremendous stretch for me, as my orderly brain thinks better in terms of traditional, and symmetrical quilts. I am approaching halfway through the mid-section of this top. It does quilt up relatively quickly in comparison to other detailed quilts I have done recently since it is 95% freehand quilted. On one hand, it is very liberating. On the other, I have no idea if this will be nice or just 3 miles of thread!

Do you have any suggestions for organic shapes to quilt?

Sea Glass Teasers

Here's a couple more teasers of the body of this quilt. It is all constructed of 60 degree wedge blocks, sometimes called kaleidoscope blocks, in graded batiks. I am doing mostly free-handed quilting in the water-color region. I have done 10 of the 48 blocks so far. I am selecting more organic looking motifs and fillers to quilt like feathers, water-ripples, swirls, and those shell-ish circles I have stitched out. Since my threads mostly blend, I need the textures to convey the quilt.

The ocean area of the quilt is proving nearly impossible to get a good picture of. For one, the darker fabrics just don't show the texture well, and there really is not too much here besides different fillers. It looks better than what this picture is showing, trust me.

Question...It turns out that my MQS winnings are all in the form of thread (from WonderFil) - $1000 of thread to be exact. If you use this brand of thread, and have a particular favorite, drop me a comment and tell me which one. I am also interested if there are ones good for just DSM piecing as well as (and mostly for) for longarm quilting. Thanks

A Very Happy Border

I started on one of my tops yesterday. The construction on the 1st floor is winding down. Today & yesterday the carpenter was laying the wood floor. Chips of the subflooring were occasionally falling onto my head as I was sewing this. I am most happy to be getting things back to normal. Now, if only school wasn't 8 days from ending...(sigh)

I probably don't have the restraint to keep the quilting on this quilt only limitted to snippets until it makes its way to it's first show (targeted for the fall), but we'll see. So far I have only stitched out most of the top 7-1/2" border. Tomorrow I get to dive into the body of the quilt. It's a tremendous departure for me in terms of style and colors. Blue is not my norm, nor are non-traditional, non-symmetrical quilts. Despite the juxtaposed highly symmetrical border, the quilt ought to stitch faster since it will be done predominantly free-handed, with limited ruler use. I'm still hoping to throw in some of the tricks I picked up at MQX, both from my classes, and from staring at 200 awesome quilts.

My borders are symmetrically asymmetrical. Is that an oxymoron or what? I will have opposing corners of the quilt with a scalloped border, so I have made the borders themselves different too. I make a very clean and what I think is high-quality binding, but I am in search of those missing judges points, so I am thinking outside of the box so to speak, hoping that this variation might catch their attention. The title of this quilt is "Sea Glass", so the border quilting was designed to mimic waves. Some of the space in the picture below is still not stitched. Or I should say I am on the fence as to what I want so rather than stitch, then pick, then restitch, I am waiting. It will likely just be a filler of sorts.
At this point, I am extremely happy with the progress, even if this 3.25 square feet of quilting took 5-6 hours to stitch.

Finally Finished

Despite the other adventures of the weekend (painting an entire downstairs), I finally got this quilt off of the frame. I love how it turned out, but sadly don't have my usual spot for photographing the details of the quilting, on account of the construction. It will be lovely hanging in the Lowell Quilt Festival in August. Sandy in TX always does a fantasticly technical job of assembling quilts with nearly all perfect points, and textbook flatness & squareness. If the binding is half as good as the quilt, she'll do well with this quilt in the show.
I'll try to get some more pictures to show, but that is all for now. I have one of my quilts loaded to quilt on for a week or two (until the darn paintbrush calls my name again!).

Whine & Chocolate

Yes, that's what I need right now. I think the picture below of how I started dinner for this evening says it all. That's the dirty, dry-wall scrap covered steps to my house, and the meager ingredients for dinner. I have so little confidence that this will be remotely edible.

As some of you know, my house is undergoing an addition and renovation. The entire kitchen has been moved and there is nothing but a fridge and a disconnected stove in there right now. The walls went up 2 days ago and are being spackled and finished now. I have been mighty patient throughout this process, which started with an incredibly long winter, breaking ground several weeks later than we'd hoped, having our original POS (you figure out the acronym) builder quit after he dug a hole in the backyard for the foundation. We did get a better builder that we know personally in a very quick period of time, and his work has progressed better & faster than I could have hoped for. But this process is starting to take its toll on me now. Something in me snapped last night. I realized I am sick of this now.
I want to sew. I want to take my kids to Boston as we'd planned months ago. Thanks to a Morton's neuroma in my foot that is flaring up, this has been on hold. I want to eat food off of real plates, with something other than plasticware. Hell, I want real food and not things out of a box. We have no seasonings for anything I cook. Everything in the house is covered with a layer of silky dust, or saw dust as was the case with the crock pot. I am amazed at my in-laws that have yet to offer to help with a single thing. Like bringing us a meal would kill them, or watching the kids one day. Seriously. My mom's been helpful, but she's having knee surgery next week and all help will undoubtedly cease. Then as if our fate's not rough enough, she's going with my nieces to the beach for a week. I have the ceiling of an entire 1100 square foot downstairs to paint this weekend or Monday, and then the walls. If they are not done sanding the walls Friday, I may get stuck doing this all next week by myself. With a 4-year old home. Hello! I do need help. I asked my husband to take (No, I told him he'd take a day off if it went to next week) a day off next week to help, and his reply was "don't know if I can". Horseshit. Make it happen. Really, what's it about that having "junk" that makes men think that they can be indifferent to helping with well, absolutely anything? Does he think living through this process everyday is a joy? Oh, and the lawnmower died a week ago, and the front yard is knee-high, he won't go to ask about borrowing one until there's freaking rain in the forecast. Need I say more.

I've had it and I want out.

Another sneak peek

Though there is clearly space around the center still lacking its quilting, here's the central medallion of the quilt.

Memorial Day work in Progress

Remember a week ago, when it was raining constantly and was only 50F?? Today it is seasonably normal and close to 90F. OK, it's rather shockingly hot to the system. We are installing the upstairs air conditioners, but the downstairs one has to wait until there is a door between the kitchen and garage (or else it will try to cool twice it's rating). Plus, the drywall is going up tomorrow and then will be sanded, etc this week, and the living room window the A/C goes in is right there in the way. We'll tough it out downstairs fro a few days.

I did get to put on a customer quilt this weekend. I think I am several days still from having any more disturbances in my basement. This will be finished and off by then. I hit it hard this weekend, and it is about half-done. Here's a few sneak peeks...

The outer border is rather thin for too much fancy-ness, only being about 5". I like the look of straight lines on the outer border to help ground the quilt. I think that it will work especially well on this quilt since it is a lovely quilt, but with busier fabrics. It is so deliciously romantic. Here is a look at the entire quilt.
I am quilting two faux borders or boxes that are being filled with pebbles. You don't get to see much of it here, but it looks really neat, and it will add a textural dimension to the quilt. I like to see pattern in the quilting that is different from the piecing. It gives quilts a nice depth. I'll show more of this this week as it progresses.

Getting back to normal

With any luck, my house renovation interruptions will be on the decline so I can get back to normal sewing. I have not quilted in 2+ weeks. I've had limited piecing, but even that has been restricted due to distractions. Our house addition/renovation is set to get drywall on the walls next Tuesday, so I have the next 3 days to hopefully knock out a custom quilt.

In the mean time, here's a little progress on something I am puttering with. I have at least 4 blocks to redo because I used the wrong fabric. I assure you without the distractions, and having continuous quilting time, I will be much more focused. I have been unable to leave piecings out because of risk of sawdust, so they all go into bags at the end of any sewing session. It has been too easy to get mixed up on what fabrics go where.

Hope you have a warm & sunny Memorial day weekend-

Back in the Saddle & Riding High

Many thanks to Michelle who sent me the show program from MQS. It arrived today, and I am amazed at the number of quilts, especially in the Wall division. It is a big show and I hope to get out to see it in person some day. Now I have known for a week or so that I won the 2nd place award and suspected that it had a monetary prize. You never want to say "Hey, how much am I gonna get??", but the show program lists all prizes in black & white. $1000. Holy crap. Yes, $1000. One thousand. All I can say is thank goodness the world didn't come to an end this weekend. That check will come in handy, paying for this...

That mess of sticks is my downstairs. My kitchen specifically. It is actually progressing at a miraculous pace, but none the less, it is the reason that you have not seen as much quilty posts in the last few weeks. Hopefully, once the plumbing and electrical work finishes in my basement, I'll be able to get on to the 3 custom quilts that await me. Too much risk right now with saw dust. On Friday, though, I decided I had to sew, so I started on a new quilt that I had designed recently. It uses many batiks, including shades of black. Hopefully the black won't be a complete beast to see to quilt.
It may not look like that much - 16 blocks of each, but it represents nearly 8-9 hours of work. I must be slow I suppose. The largest blocks are only 6"x6". Those smaller 9-patch stars took a long time. I know it doesn't look like much yet, but stay tuned.

I do have a question for you all though. I paper pieced the diamond rectangles, as the angles can be persnickety to get right. I found I had some June Taylor foundation sheets, so I used these rather than regular printer paper. My question...Has anybody used these and NOT removed them before finishing the quilt?

Toddler's first quilt

I finished this quilt last week. It was made by a boy's grandmother for his first bed. She and her daughter picked it up a couple days ago, very pleased with the quilting. I always like days like that.The boats are fused-appliqued onto the blocks, and stitched with a wide zigzag. I outline stitched every one of them to assist the quilt in surviving the rigors of a child. The quilting in the blank areas was near perfect for depicting both water and wind. And an added plus, that it is immensely simple to quilt.
I am gearing up to quilt a large-ish custom quilt, maybe as early as next week. I have held off putting tops on the longarm because builders and a plumber have been in and out of the basement (where my studio is) all week. I'll think all is well, then I'll find a pile of saw dust where there wasn't one the day before. The rough electrical and plumbing will be finished in a couple days and then I should be safe to resume life as usual, at least as far as quilting is concerned. I am going into serious withdrawals. I did a little piecing today, but really want to quilt one of my own pieces...not at the risk however that it may get drips of water on it though (it is completely marked with blue water soluable pen!).

Give it a Twist

Life is giving me twists right now. Why should your quilting be any different?? Rather than doing a conventional curved cross-hatching on the sweet, old-fashioned quilt such as this, why not consider a Terry Twist. This type of free-handed pattern is aptly named by quilter Sally Terry, and is a fun and soft alternative to standard CC.
Now, back to painting (UGH)...