Two More Weeks

That's how long it took me to complete this latest quilt top.   And I love it.  After "Are You Crazy?" I felt like I was in a zone.  I challenged myself to try to complete the next top in a week.  It took me two, but there was just too much other stuff going on.   It was actually about 80% or more done in a week.

It's not all about speed of course, it's about doing good work.  But I know that for me right now it's also about just doing work, not diddling for weeks trying a dozen different options for every move.

ANYWAY, I actually really like this as-yet untitled piece.  I just started out making strip piecing fabrics, knowing I wanted to use prints again, but in a somewhat less chaotic way.  I made quite a few fabrics, but "cheated" by making several that were only 18 - 22" long.  So what?  No rules, right?  After having at least ten or twelve fabrics made, I started cutting and creating units.  You can't make a large number of repetitive units with short fabrics, so I found myself with a lot of different random pieces.

I was in the midst of a very complicated composition of all these different units about a week ago, when I suddenly realized that I really liked the lower left portion of the composition.  And realized that (as USUAL) the composition was way too complicated and chaotic.  So I just pulled off about half the "stuff" and simplified, focusing on the green "L," orange figure and lightest value upper right.

Instead of continuing the direction of "Are You Crazy?"  as I'd sort of thought I would do, I ended up back in the comfort zone of strip piecing, about where I left off at the end of Lisa Call's Working In A Series last November.  But what the hell, it's where I felt like being.  I succeed in the goal of using the prints more subtly; they are much less of a factor here; more of a supporting role than a starring one.  Just for fun, here are the two striped fabrics I used to make my strip pieced fabrics.

Only one section of the top one appears in this piece, but I have several more bits and pieces waiting around for the next piece.  My goal for that is to continue working with the pieces that are left, but to focus on simpler compositions,  with clear figure/ground relationships and good use of value.   The one thing I have not done yet, is to look at this latest in black and white.....   Will do that next!

Bouncing Around

I couldn't seem to make up  my mind what I wanted to work on today.  I spent the morning cleaning upstairs, and got a whole lot of crap out of my library/office/dumping ground.  It almost looks as though it could be used for a small art studio now.  Of course the crap is now in the living room instead, but that's only because it's on the way to the used bookstore, resale shop, or Goodwill.  


Then I promised myself the afternoon free to quilt.  But what??   Straightening up piles of fabric, I found a quilt block pattern that I had agreed to make for the "President's Quilt."  She loves thirties/retro fabric (which seems pretty common.  Why is it of all the eras of quilt-making everyone seems focused on either Civil War or Thirties?  But I digress.) 


 So I made the block.  I hope this is 30's enough.  I'm not sure where this came from, but the only other 30's I have is what I used for the last (only) friendship block I made - coincidentally, for the same person. 

Then I decided to tear into the striped shirts.  I cut one sleeve off the least attractive one, and cut out a six and a half inch square, then cut the square into quarter-square triangles.  I discovered that you can't make a nice square block out of one block, you need two, cut exactly the same place in the pattern repeat.  I prefer to just try things and see if they work, rather than actually thinking sometimes.  

               

Craftsmanship is not my strong point.  This was a really stretchy loosely woven cotton, so I'm surprised the didn't turn out worse, actually.  I still don't know where this is going - pillows, quilt, art...  ?

Next I decided to pull apart the City Hall quilt and "finish" it properly.  I did some free motion quilting on the sky, which turned out okay, then got bogged down in trying to quilt the stone pattern... four stitches, stop, raise foot, rotate, four stitches, stop, raise foot, rotate.   Blocks are boring!  Right in the middle of all that, I decided, if I'm going to do  FFFC challenge #56 I have to do it NOW.  So I did.  

The challenge was to study the work of Andy Goldsworthy.  Many of the works he does are made out of leaves, branches, rocks, flowers... some of them last only as long as the wind doesn't blow...  So I decided that I would use natural materials in a quilt.  I wandered out into the yard to see what was there, and first went for some fuzzy stachys (lamb's ears), and then beside them, some copper fennel, a complete color contrast.  Moved on to the front yard where grape hyacinth is in full swing.  So I grabbed a handful of each and went back to the sewing machine.  Suddenly there was a huge sense of urgency to execute and photograph a piece before the plants wilted or disintegrated.  Must be just how Goldsworthy felt when his leaves were swirling around in the water.   Before I'd even gotten back to the work area I knew the two fabrics I wanted to use.  (Because I've been re-folding and fondling all my fabrics they were fresh in my mind).

Here are some process shots:

So far so good...

Getting the whole assembly under the machine without breaking stems became problematic at this point.

The final row went on with the help of the extension table, and  my biggest ruler

Turning it over to trim the stems was a mistake!

The process was a lot of fun, anyway.  The limited time frame made me work harder.  (I seem to work best with deadlines hovering).    The difficulty of working with the plants distracted me from being able to think about the composition - In my mind there was more space between the plants, and a more rhythmic or patterned layout. (This was another element of the challenge).  So here's the final result:

I like the color and materials, I'm really pleased with the way the branch-y motif in the dark fabric echoes the featheryness of the fennel, and the beige/green colors of the spotted batik really echo the stachys.  I didn't notice until I looked at the photograph, that there is a deep purple element in the brown fabric.  Serendipity.

If I were to do it again, I'd use only a few plants and feature the fabric more. But it was fun.  Outside the box, for sure!

Stripes

I think I mentioned that I've become a bit obsessed with stripes, lately. But I didn't post the evidence.  Here is my current stash of stripes.  A couple of them were already in the stash, but most of these were purchased on my trip to Seattle.  Aren't they luscious?

I had a few spare minutes this morning while in the vicinity of the Salvation Army store so I just had to pop in and browse.  I was thinking of a blog post I saw a few days ago (I'll have to search out the link later) about making a pillow cover from a men's striped shirt.  I didn't intend to make pillow covers, but might change my mind now....  Here are my finds.  20 minutes and $22.50 for seven shirts and a flowered sheet!  (I also promise to work on editing the photos to be more color correct).  Take my word for it that the four purples actually look wonderful together and with the sheet.  So I may or may not use them for the other stripe project, I might just make a big bunch of pillows.  

The pink and the aqua certainly belong in The Stripe Project, whatever that turns out to be.  The machine embroidered white thing - was just "why not?"  I can see pieces of it in something cute with the pink stripe.  

I hope tonight I can find those links again!