mindful sewing...

Warning, if you don't like green, turn back now!

I needed to sew yesterday.
Needed.
When I need to sew, I don't necessarily want to work on a project, or learn anything, or achieve anything.

I began by pulling out the most overstuffed scrap bin, the greens. Tiny little scraps of green in fact. I made these...

okayyyyy but so what. Then I turned to the very little strips, about 1 inch by 4 inches and sewed them together, then slightly larger strips on a new sew, just sewing, one color to another.
I made three strip sets, very ragged on the top and bottoms.
I free-cut some curves with a longer scrap strip and joined two, then the three into the piece you saw at the top.
I worked on it oriented like this the whole time...

But then turned it just to see if it might look better...

and settled on the one you see at the top. There, now it reminds me of a stand of trees with shadows.

I like to see something representational.
Now I want to finish it, so I am looking at possible borders...

how about this brown batik?

or this speckled one

Or both!

boy the color got washed out on this pic!

When I work on abstract pieces, I must see something in them or the experience is flat to me.
I do love trees, and recently wrote a poem about two trees    See the drawing and poem HERE

I plan to use darkest brown threads to quilt the trunks heavily. Sparkling blues to hint at water streams.
It goes into my abstract nature series.

So far I have loved each one and I started them as a learning exercise  in abstraction, with the plan to sell them all.

Now I'm not sure about selling them.
"I am still learning" , said Michaelangelo

What do you think?
On my design wall this morning

A thimble full of color

My scrappy tumbler project has grown.

Little by little...choice by choice... slowly done by hand, basted on printed thick paper templates, tiny pieces of fabric scraps come together.

It's a study in:
Line and  repetition.  How do the lines intersect? Where do they cross and how does it feel when they come close but don't match?

Scale... from 1" to 2.5". How does the scale effect the mood of the piece? large next to small...

Color... Mostly chosen from one side of the color wheel, cool colors of green to turquoise to blue to purple, then one step toward red. The red sparks it to me. The red and the flashes of yellow in the green. Warm against all the cool colors.

Shade... from deepest dark black to almost white aqua. The variation makes it sparkle.

Print to solid ratio... if there is a print, it's blendable. I chose to include only a couple of recognizable prints, for instance the tiny thimbles of black are actually black with tiny stars of bright color. Otherwise the print looks mottled, hopefully like tiles or glass.

Right now before borders, it is about 20" X 26". I have pieced in the stonehenge border fabric with an eye to putting one of them on the outside. Or both.

My inspiration for this piece are tile mosaics hanging on the wall in the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Etruscan I think. Old for sure. The broken areas make it more interesting to me. The colors no longer brilliant but faded to an organic soft look.

My friend asked why I am so invested in working small, with little scraps of fabric when I own so much yardage. I feel free when playing with my scraps. And it's physically easier to work small. And I get such joy from seeing the colors blend in artwork.

This has been on the cutting table, slowly growing long enough and it's about ready to finish.

How thrilling!

Funny that they tell you when they're done, isn't it? 

Interested in more handwork? I believe the label on the right, "this is gonna take a while..." has more posts!

Valentine quilt components

Not Done yet but will be!
I finally found a border to satisfy me after auditioning a lot of fabrics.
I finally decided on a binding after auditioning even more fabrics.
I just took a scrap of the back to do the sleeve, and a leftover block for the label. I chose a thick variegated gold thread to couch along the binding.

This is to show you some of the quilting, a mix of straightline echo and free motion. All of it done with halogram mylar sprakly metallic thread, in pink and red. Used a superior topstitch titanium needle in size 90.

Just to prove no space is too small for a free motion unplanned feather...

It would have been wasted on busy prints, but the sparkling pink called out for it, as the red above called for spirals.

I still love all the heart fabric.

I have so many quilts to make.
probably 50 UFO's or WIPS
Likely that many PIGS (projects in grocery bag)
Hundreds of patterns I want to try
Hundreds of books with ideas
Journals with sketches to make
and I get inspired every day looking at things other people make.




So much to look forward to. I'd better finish this fast and get busy!

Blue tumblers... or are they thimbles??

Ah hand sewing! I was putting away the blue scrap bin then thought... hmmm what if I used these really small scraps for tumblers of different sizes? Will they go together?

some of them are 1" Some 1.5" and some 2.5"

Close enough!

It snowballed. Like eating potato chips I couldn't make just one.

I'm totally obsessed now.

sew them into strips then decide how to place the strips...

Will I add a strip now and then?
Will I put a little and medium next to each other?

Separate them with bigger ones?

Now that they crossed over from an idea to a project to an obsession....
They need a carrying case!

This little make-up case will do for now.
Til the project out grows it.

I printed the thimbles onto card stock and cut them out to make templates... here
http://www.quiltviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/thimbles1.pdf

little ziplocks for each size, little snips of fabric rough-cut ready to baste, with thread or glue

I don't know what got me going but it's very fun. Could be the colors, the mindless aspect of same shape with the choices of color placement and design still there to make it interesting. It's small but it's teaching me as I go, and it's really quick to make too.
Whatever the reason, I am enjoying the process so much.
Update: MORE is BETTER!

This picture skews to blue but I have added in bits of ruby red, purple and green. And this weel little perfectly placed little scrap of what looks like a spirograph drawing. Remember those?

All pieces someone else would have thrown away.
I'm obsessed with color!

on using painted (not dyed) fabric

What do I make with painted scraps of muslin? 
Start with stamping.
I really like this one. Fly free! Live your life!

Here are five I stamped...

Some of the other painted pieces will be stenciled but it's too cold. I need to work outside because of my chemical sensitivities. Or under a chemist's hood. In my dream studio, there is a hood exhaust. 

What will I make with these?? stay tuned!

In progress...Christmas edition

This cute little 15 inch square came from a pattern I purchase at now closed Seminole Sampler. I thought, cute! And I can do it quickly! 

Have you met me? Do I ever take the simple route? Why make it simple when you think of all the cool possible settings? First of all, this is choc-a-block full of teensy little fused fabric pieces cut from a pattern. 

What was I thinking?! It's really cute but all that fusible adds up, and I am sensitive now to the chemicals release in ironed fusible web. I put this together two , count them, two years ago, and it gave me a headache, and I let it sit in the Christmas projects box to think about what it did. 

This is the year I want to finish it. I plan to build borders that look like a window with a curtain. Can't just border it. Then quilt best I can through many layers of fused fabrics with my titanium needle and sturdy thread. I'll show you when it's done. 
 

this is a small section of the kaleidoscope I've been working on. The one that caused the chip eating fiasco of '15. The top is done! The center is mostly still square! The borders are even! It's big! 

oh... nearly 50 inches square, just a bit big to fit in my family room display area. I admit this has been another pattern that nearly did me in. This one from the free demo Ricky Tims did on the Quilt Show recently. I would watch a little, run to the studio and make a section, run back to the computer and watch a bit more, etc. It was not fast. It required a lot of thought, and care with bias, and fitting together, ripping out, pinning, etc. I had a hard time choosing borders that complimented the center bringing your eye back to it. 

I think I am going to love it when quilted if I can figure out how to quilt it and not stretch the bias while quilting it. A lot of the fabrics are vintage from my Christmas collection gathered over many years. I was given this fabric...
 

I think it was from an abandoned project of making a tree skirt as it came with precut sections of muslin that looked like a tree skirt. I have painted those. This was large enough to use for the back with a slim section pieced in. The motifs are enormous and the colors spectacular. 

I have a really hard time using pretty fabrics on the back of wall quilts, do you? I mean, using this makes room in the stash, and it goes perfectly with the top. I had a large enough piece to almost cover the 47.5" top. Still, it won't be seen when it hangs. 

Why is fabric so darn precious to me? 
Do you use pretty fabric on the back? For binding when most of it won't show? 
Are you like me and make seasonal quilts in the season instead of looking ahead? 

I mean, I do not want to make a Christmas project in August. I want to use fall fabrics in Fall, Christmas fabrics in December. Ah well, planning isn't my forte, creativity comes with it's own demands! 

slow stitching/ hand stitching/ Bead fun

I am finishing up the painted fall piece.
 I showed you the painting of it, and showed you the 3-D leaves, and this is a pic of the leaves sewn down, the top is pretty heavily quilted for a small 22" X 27" quilt.
I am putting on a striped binding slightly larger than usual, finishing at 3/4". 

The leaves are standing up nicely and I quite like the rough threadwork on the edges and the veining.
The binding will brighten up the whole caboodle.
Of course I woke up thinking about embellishments though. I am not even done with binding although I did add in the sleeve already. I should wait to do beading and special trims til the binding is done, however....

Can you see the bugle breads, yellow sequins, and gold metallic star sequins?? I played for an hour while having coffee this morning. Pulled out the bead trays, auditioned many possibilities. A few are being called back for a second trial but by tomorrow I should have sewn down the binding by hand, then be well into the hand beading.

The whole thing was never meant to go this far. I painted it on a whim, and thought it wasn't worthy of finishing til my friend Annie said it was. I looked again and thought, maybe it is.

Then I fussed with borders til I got the idea to make scrappy 9-patches and loved them. Some leaves are painted, some raw-edge appliqued, and some are free standing finished on both sides and curling up like real leaves.It's almost all done but the hand work and I wrote a short story to go with it.
Should be ready to post by Monday.
Thanks for looking!! 

Portable hexie transport system

It's hard to get a good shot of this project.
I have been slow stitching on this king sized hexie project for at least 10 years I think. It's my take along, car/bee sewing.

Can you see the safety pins? When I am ready to take the project with me on a trip, I lay the whole caboodle on the bed, lay out colors of hexis, then safety pin them to the section to be worked on and the whole quilt is in 5 sections at the moment.

This way I know what goes where when I'm sitting in a car or at bee, and can do the zen sewing while chatting.
In the picture above I am setting in the border blocks of the darker hexies. These run along the bed line around the whole quilt. It's taken on a life of it's own at this point, very close to completion. 

This is a shot with the light pink petals already sewn into a unit, hanging around waiting to join the larger section.

Some are individual hexies pinned in place, some in groupings.

It's a way to organize it into being portable.

Don't you love a portable hand sewing project??

hand quilting again.... Fall Tumblers

I finished sewing the fall tumblers together with EPP. I did not like glue baste as it made the fabric too tight against the paper and harder to whip stitch through. Next time I will hand baste behind the paper as I do with hexies. I wanted to hand quilt this little runner and ran into some issues I want to share.

 I started with some tracing paper over the runner and sketched out a lovely swirl with leaf pattern. Worked really well. Then to transfer the pattern to the tumblers I tried SARAL paper. Place it between the pattern and fabric and trace with pencil. Nope. Nada.
Next I tried dressmaker transfer papers...in every color... nope, nada, no marks.

Next I traced the design onto heavy paper and cut out the swirls, what a pain, so I could mark around them with wax marking pencil. Nope, nada. Tried the chalk wheel. No go, not showing up. My next attempt will be pinning the papers to the quilt and quilting around them.
The quilting I've done so far, see top photo, is done kind of by feel trying to see a hint of the traced line and mostly just winging it.

The yellow thick thread doesn't show well, so I tried this thick metallc by DMC that frays into three strands after you pull it thru a few times.
Now I am wondering why I wanted to hand quilt? Oy vey! (the process LeeAnna, and the piecing was done by hand so you thought hand quilting, and it's small, and you haven't hand quilted in a long time)
I decided to use hand dyed thick thread to embroider/quilt the leaf shape. That's not going particularly well.

Right now I am quilting through two layers, top and batting, with the plan to back it in black felt, so it will lay well on the table. I have done this before and it usually looks great. I have done one swirl with gold thread, one swirl with yellow thread, and two more to go, and the leaf.

I used to hand quilt all bed quilts, back in the 80's. Now I protect my hands for beading and hand piecing. It feels good to hand quilt but this isn't making much of an impact and it's another LALAMO  project.
Live and Learn and Move On. I'll show you the finish soon...

The working title is Batik Starburst

The working title is Batik Starburst. This is the quilt made with the binding tool pattern, the one discussed HERE click to read about it later if you like.

I sewed the whole center section before I found out the black fabric was rotten. Since then I have heard many horror stories about black fabric gone bad.

I took the blocks apart, then ripped out the black from the batiks, leaving as much together as possible. When I found stable black fabric and recut each piece (insert curse words here) I began the process of resewing,  like partial seams. It worked but was a bit tedious. I learned something then...

I sewed that part on my Janome Gem travel machine. I finished on my beloved aging Bernina 1630.


The two blocks did not match. I am a stickler for cutting correctly. I am almost a stickler for sewing a good quarter inch seam. But... the two machines were just off by a bit, enough to make a difference. It explains why your friend's blocks aren't always the same as yours. The Bernina's seam is better, so I went back and tried to unpick the poor joins and match better.

This particular one was not having it.

I tried every trick in the book, and after 7 un-sewings of this particular join, I gave in and said, apparently this one, will. not. be. right.

I am not new, I am not without skills, but I ran out of patience! Quilt police, have at it!





Some seams just do not want to match, not with pinning, not with pressing opposite, not with anything.

Anyway I pressed the the blocks well, and trimmed the blocks down to 16 and 3/8 before the final construction began. They are sewn together in three sections at the moment ready to be quilted.
After all the hassle I decided not to border it to make it King sized. It's fine, just the way it is.

Now I want you to do something... Look at the top picture, see the top and bottom center blocks? The blue and green ones? On the first picture the two blue ones are together and the green ones together.

On this picture I mixed them up.
This is the final layout... it just felt better, know what I mean?

All pictures are pre-ironing and pre-trimming of blocks, it looks nice and regular and flat and square on the wall now, but I haven't taken more pics.

What I love...
1.the shading of my scraps from light to dark.
2.The fact that I used scraps not yardage (and the bin is still too full)
3.Color! Brilliant color, glowing color, not organized by rainbow order.
4.I salvaged the quilt when there were times I considered tossing the whole mess away
5.It's a pattern I never would have made but for wanting to do a project with my bee

What I learned
1. Scraps chosen carefully can do a great job in a quilt
2. Black fabric is often more unstable because of the chemicals used to make it
3. Use the same machine to piece the whole quilt if possible
4. It's okay to use a pattern even if one is an art quilter and works originally, ahem.
5. Sometimes good enough is good enough and one moves on

I am now busy figuring out how to best quilt it. I want to try black batting this time, and will quilt the whole center top to bottom sewn together into one 8-block section, the side four blocks as separate sections then join as usual.