Nothing is as Easy as it Looks

Studio time has been hit or miss lately, but I do get down there at least four to five hours per week, I'd guess.  I took last Friday afternoon off, and was able to work uninterrupted for about three hours, then back after dinner for a couple more.

For a long time I've wanted to try doing more with printed fabric.  Nancy had us bring geometric prints to all three of the workshops I've done, but we never got very deep into using them.  I have been following Maria Shell and really loving what she is doing with prints, specifically her Color Grid series,seen in this process shot she featured back in May.

Maria Shell - Color Grid Series

So given a three hour window to mess around with, I pulled out the prints and started cutting strips and making "fabrics."  I deliberately worked intuitively, without any particular plan in mind, but I did try to limit the color range and intensity.    Once I had four or five strip sets made, I grabbed one and started slicing and dicing.

After I made the blue units, I threw them on the wall in a sort of grid pattern.  Since there were eight of them, I had the concept in mind that they would evolve into eight blocks, and then I would make eight more out of other fabrics, and assemble 16 blocks in a checkerboard arrangement.  That seemed sort of boring, though, so I started arranging them in more of an overall symmetrical layout, thinking I would have a greater number of different blocks and more of a reference to traditional quilt making block layouts that could create overall secondary patterns....  

This is what the wall looked like this morning, after some additional fabrics and blocks were made. 

I don't like it.  Yet.  I'm not sure what it's going to take to get it to something I like, but right now the whole overall arrangement thing is not working for me at all. Scattered, distracting, confusing, overly complicated. It's questionable whether I can get it anywhere that I will like it.  I may have to go back to just having two blocks and repeating them, or otherwise simplifying.   As an alternative, It might need to be more of a "chunk" arrangement. Where multiple blocks are grouped.  I'm trying hard NOT to be too derivative of Maria's stuff, i.e. making a grid like hers.    I find I get more focused on geometry and mental gymnastics, and not enough on the visual that is actually produced, or the figure/ground relationship.  I wonder how they will look without all the white space...    I created the fabric on the left out of solids, thinking it would be unifying between blocks.  But - No.  You can see a couple thin strips in the center.  They are too big, in relation to the striped fabric.

Stay tuned.

In other news,  I took apart the black and white "thing" and got rid of all the arbitrary angles.  It's on the wall, and I played with adding some larger black areas.  Now I'm distracted by the couple of lines that get too skinny.  I thought they added interest or hierarchy or something, but now they are distracting.  We'll see.

And then there's Jane.  The temporary obsession with Jane has abated slightly.  but I did enjoy the paper piecing, and it helped me practice precision.  Not something I love, but something necessary.

I have sort of copied the blocks as drafted in the book, but also taken some liberties here and there.  The last one I completed was the 16-square in the lower right.  I did this by cutting squares, and it did not turn out sized correctly.  I can see now why people use paper piecing even with simpler assemblages.  More precision.  Question is whether I'll redo it, or just make do?  

Struggle

The last few days I have struggled and struggled and struggled to get that first piece quilted.  I accomplished a fair bit, but I wanted to use some shiny Sulky thread, (polyester?) and I had a hard time with the stitches dropping at the turns.  I have ripped and resewn at least five times.  The frustrating thing is the strips DON'T drop when I sew on my sample fabric piece.  The only difference is the batting on the sample is MORE puffy.  Wouldn't you think the reverse, the'd drop on the puffy, not the flat?

When I get home I will change the needle.  If that doesn't do it, it's past time for servicing anyway.  I just can't stand being without it for up to two weeks right now!!!!  I am finally getting time to focus a little bit.

In other news, I'm becoming very fond of Dear Jane.  Although I tried and failed to make the simplest block, a 1-1/2" nine-patch!  Got too lazy and cut some pieces to finished instead of raw size.  I had just tossed it in the trash when I remembered my resolve to do some improv squares too.   I cut it in quarters like a disappearing nine-patch, resewed, added border and Voila!  THAT at least made me happy.

Now I am pondering ideas about how to put together my Modern Jane.  Many versions, many examples on Pinterest.  But I don't want it to just be a different setting, I want to somehow incorporate the blocks into something more creative.....   Stay tuned.

A Variety

I have not finished anything else this week.  I have been hopping around pulling out different projects.  I like to be working on a lot of projects at once.  I am very easily distracted.  I can be in the  middle of quilting a section of a quilt and suddenly jump up and start playing with another design on the wall.
Rather than pound on myself for being "scattered" I prefer to think of it as overflowing with creativity.

I got kind of bored with the two pieces I planned to quilt this week.  I was not terribly  unhappy with the quilting, but doing it on the machine with walking foot can get very tedious.  My biggest problem is how to make "U-turns" that don't look messy.  I have my little pieces that I bought from Lisa, and I look at her photos on her website, but I don't know how she makes her edges so neat.  Somehow she is able to stitch over things and get the stitches to land in the exact same place.  Practice, I'm sure, is the key.  But it tells me that I'd better get serious about free motion quilting. Which also means more PRACTICE.  Sigh.

Here's what I've been up to:
The two pieces to be quilted:

This was my prototype for Working in a Series last year.

This was a challenge for FFFC.  Abstracted Van Gogh.

I almost hate to admit it, but I've been sucked back into "Dear Jane."   Sometimes doing something teeny and precise appeals to me. Another thing I need to get good at.  I don't see my real art being that way but there are always times when I get frustrated by my lack of technical skills.  So I spent about 90 minutes Wednesday and Thursday piecing block A-1.  They finish at 4-1/2" so blocks are made 5".  5" and 28 pieces.  1-1/8" half square triangles.  I had fun trying out this method for making eight at once.  Thank you Katie.

I had an epiphany about Jane - I do NOT have to make all the squares.  Not only that, but I can make DIFFERENT blocks too.  I can make up my own, if I want.  I have no desire to do the applique blocks. I have enough hand sewing backed up to get me through a winter worth of TV, why do more (badly)?  I can just keep making random blocks until I am bored.  I have been loving watching the Tula Pink City Sampler bloggers.  But I am fighting the urge to star one of THOSE too.  And the urge to buy the book!

Instead, I plan to mingle Modern blocks and Jane blocks to my hearts content.  Maybe that's stupid, Jane is the ultimate in fussy, Modern Quilters are the ultimate in loosen up already.   But what the hell, maybe it will be like Grandma meets Modernism.  

I also realized that in addition to a selection of teal-ish fabrics bought for Jane, I have a bunch of teal-ish fabrics bought for Tipping Point. So I might do the whole thing in shades of teal.  Or I might add a second color.  Or two.  Or ten.   Here's my progress so far:

Yeah, seven blocks.  But look at that sucker in the upper right.  That's the one from last night.  And if I may say so, the points are pretty damn good.  ;)   The one on the upper left I made up when I was practicing the HSTs.

Some other oldie-moldies that are back on the design wall:

Pink and Black nine-squares.
Sorry about the crappy picture.  

I started this really early in my career, when I was still interested in more traditional stuff.  I bought a whole lot of pink and black fabric because I had Zero quilting fabric.  Now I'm thinking about whether it should be anything or just scrap it.  What more creative thing can I do... ?

Carol Taylor Class

I NEED to finish this because I spent waaaaay too much money on her fancy yard.  Really?  I need 6 different yarns for this 18" square piece? What am I ever going to do with all that??

What to do with this project from Nancy's class is more interesting.  I thought at the time that making a diagonal cut seemed like the way to turn it into something.  While it hung on the wall I realized it was nothing, horrible, a mish-mash.  So I took it apart and stuck parts back on the wall.  But I'm thinking I have to take out the slash.  At least for now.  So those pieces are wasted.  Oh well, it will be smaller.  

P.S.  I forgot to add that I am spending WAAAY to much time on Pinterest.  I've become sort of hooked on seeing my followers increase. Not that I'm vain or anything.  :) But I have gone from 4,000 last weekend, to over 4,500 today.   I like to search out new things on the web to post, rather than just re-pinning from the people I follow (bcs. my followers probably have already seen those things too).   It's a guilty pleasure, that at least doesn't contain calories.

I guess since this post has lots of stuff on the wall, I'll link up to Nina Marie's Off The Wall Friday!

Monday morning

The sun came out on Sunday, so gardening and dog walking took priority over sewing.  I'd planned to get at it after dinner, but the motivation was just not there.  I'm realizing it's good to have some busy-work no-brainer tasks set aside for days and times like that.  So I cut out the applique piece for the DJ block.  after doing so, I understood why I should have made the freezer paper template the size of the finished piece, not the piece-plus-hem.  Then the extra edges could have been folded over onto the template.   Oh well.  This simple shape should be ok as it is.   

...and Trois

I finally finished my DJ block, but it took a lot longer than I expected.  Lots of very careful sewing and aligning and measuring.  Probably because I didn't use a template or pattern, just measured from the book as I went.  I could never have done it without my new best friend, the Pilot Frixion.  Supposedly it erases from paper with a regular eraser, but for a quilter the handy thing is that it disappears from fabric when ironed.  So you can draw whatever construction lines and guides you want right on the face of your fabric.


I had a few other lessons to learn, as well.  Like don't try to cut the pieces to the exact size you need, overcut, then trim down the seams once you have the thing assembled.  I'm sure this is all wrong according to the experts, but hey, go ahead, send the quilt police after me, I don't care!


I ripped out several seams before figuring out methods of aligning things that worked for me.  Here's the result (although the color's off, it's really a nice teal):

I'm still drawing a complete blank on the Round Robin.  The piece I received has no suggested theme, and the only direction is no hot glue or paper-type items.  It's an interesting dyed fabric with colors from coral to pale yellow.  And three diagonal tucks.   The tucks sort of remind me of striated rock like you see in Utah and Arizona...    or here.

Good thing I have until the June meeting to figure out what to do.  I don't want to make up a theme that others are forced to live with, but without a concept of some sort it's just a bunch of ornaments on a piece of fabric...  sigh.

Wednesday Part Deux

I didn't get the block done at lunch.   I had to run errands, and buy a new notebook for quilting info!  I got about 30 minutes in, enough to cut the white strips and make two sets of square-strip-square pieces.  Another 30 minutes should do it.  A lot of the time was spent figuring out the best way to mark and align the pieces.  Using the wonderful iron-off marker I got Monday.  I can't recall the name, but will come back tonight and provide a link.  


Did discover a great new site -  Quilter's Pastiche on Tumblr.  (Discovered via Pinterest.)  She just posts lots of photos of quilts.  Mostly art quilts, it seems, many by well known quilters.  I don't know anything about Tumblr. Guess I need to find out.  Between Pinterest and Flickr I'm not sure I can absorb anymore quilt sites, but this one is worth looking.

Lull

Ever since the rush to finish the big quilt on April 1 I've been in sort of a quilting lull.  It's a natural cycle and I'm not stressing about it, but don't want to let precious time slip away either.  I have been cleaning up and reorganizing supplies and equipment, which is always necessary after the chaos of a projects' final days.  I'm refolding and reorganizing fabric which gives me a chance to discover things I'd forgotten I have.

In preparation for the idea of doing some 15-minute scrappy play with the Bumble Beans group I had to admit that my little scrap box was WAY to small to contain many more scraps, so I dumped it into a plastic bin more than twice as big, and fluffed them around randomly, rather than having them all folded neatly, so I'd feel free to root around without "messing."   My OCD tendencies sometimes cause me to spend WAY too much time trying to define in my mind what constitutes "fabric folded and organized by color"  (i.e. the bulk of my fabric, fat quarters - halves).  What's then a regular scrap, or a "teeny scrap?"  Teeny scraps just go into a zip lock baggy.  Why? I guess the bigger scraps were thought to be enough for some projects.  See what I mean about OCD?  I also need to start thinking about strategic packing for this trip to Ohio, and what I might just buy there rather than worry about transporting.

I spent a nice lunch hour yesterday cutting out different inspirations I'd saved and taping them into my sketch book.  Then I added the goodies from this week's Moonlight quilters workshop night to my binder of instructions and patterns.  (FUN!  Learned 5 new things in one night, with handouts as well!)   At that point I really NEEDED to sew something, so I ended up pulling out Dear Jane and working on my next block.  That turned out to be just what I needed, I was ready to sew, but not to design.  

I also got three books from the used book sale at the Guild meeting Monday, including one on reverse appliqué, which I'd like to learn (along with forward appliqué!)  So I tried doing something like that on block B-5 but I didn't do it anything like the suggested method.  I just cut out and folded back the openings and sewed some white fabric behind them.  I did it in a sort of "topstich" way on the machine, and it's not so pretty, but it's going to be acceptable (to me) and I'm going to move on and complete the block at lunch today, I hope.

Sewing day

Today was my big day to finally have some time to sew.  I got home from the Rotary garage sale by 11:00 and after a brief "clean-up-and-organize" session I started with quilting on "Cloister" a bit more.  Who would think that a simple 12 x 12 piece of fabric could take this much time and effort?

I still have to do quite a bit more, but after an hour or so I suddenly got bored and put it aside.  I picked up the Dear Jane project instead.  I watched this tutorial on paper piecing about 6 times before finally getting the hang of it, But when I did, it was really fun.  My first piece is slightly wonky but I think I can live with it.   I'm not sure how I'll ever do these little teensy tiny ones, though!

Last night I worked on the Orange Chair for awhile.  I was able to finish zigzagging the outline, and to do a little bit of hand work on one of the raw appliqué pieces. 

 Given the time that took, I will probably be reducing the amount of hand detail I put on it.  At least before Monday.   If I want to show it Monday, I have to finish quilting and binding this weekend.  ACK! I was working on that other stuff - uh why???

Tried a little more hand embroidering, but the glued/fused chair is not holding up to that handling.  I have to machine quilt that down before I do more, but don't want to interfere with the football game/nap.  So, I might as well piece another Dear Jane.  I did this one with strips, but I see why people like paper piecing.  I am picking off all the easy ones first, and am still not very exact.  I hope I am close enough.  I wish I'd saved this dark fabric for one of the less bold blocks.

Precision is not my strong point

I pieced the simple A6 block from Dear Jane, but it ended up wonky - not square.  Carefully sewing pieces that are barely an inch square is not my strong point.  But I'm doing this because (a) I need practice in lots of different techniques, and (b) I'm fascinated by the way the original quilt looks.  I think tonight I will cut out 2-3 more sets. Hopefully I can get one of them right!

Anticipation

Well,  the first Fast Friday challenge is only a few days away. I'm almost buzzing with the anticipation of getting started.   I've been trying to mentally prepare myself, without any preconceived idea of what the challenge will be... fabric and batting lined up and ready...new blade in the cutter... ready, set.......

I'm also excited about my "other" challenge group, Artitude.  This is a brand new group of about 25 people who came together via the Quiltart list to do similar challenges.  I think that Artitude has some more "newbie" type members, but  I know there are some really experienced and successful artists too.    Some very generous members have been working through the process of creating a private website for us to "meet" on, and deciding on our challenges.  This group will be monthly, so we will have a little more time to think than the FFFC folks.

I also just joined a local quilters guild here in my hometown, and they will be holding their annual show next weekend.  I am so excited to suddenly be connected to so many fun and accomplished people.

Since I've decided to try blogging regularly again,  I will also try to post what I've accomplished on my quilt art projects each day (or week).  Yesterday I didn't get as much time as I'd hoped,  (when do I ever??) but I did assemble the quilt sandwich for my Chair of Your Dreams quilt.  That was a small but significant step.  I had to dig the black batting out from behind the dresser (yes, storage is becoming a crisis!) and get S.O. to help unfold and cut it.   I had to buy a queen size piece of black batting for the original dark-colored piece, "Twenty-seven," (also not finished, but at least partly quilted) because that was all the shop had in stock and I was too impatient to wait for a special order small piece.   So I've gotta do a lot more dark stuff.

I also spent a lot of time this weekend studying the Dear Jane quilt, thinking and sketching ideas and re-drafting some block patterns on AutoCAD to print out.  I don't know WHY I am starting this Dear Jane thing right middle of all the art quilt groups starting up, but I just couldn't resist it.  I'm not totally sure about the colors I'll use, but I know I want it to be in the same vein as the original, but more pastels and less browns.  I did decide on one color - which is a aqua tone, something I've been collecting for an eventual bed quilt for myself.  It only takes a few snips out of each fabric to make the DJ blocks, the rest can go towards a more easily completed functional quilt.  But now I have to make the blocks that land in that color of the quilt, or else start mixing and mingling them around.  I'm not sure I want to do that, I think Jane had a careful organization that balanced the heavier and lighter elements...

Anywho - right before bed I cut out the pieces for block A-6 Uncle Homer.
So there.
It's started.
What have I done?