Around Here Week 52

I’m looking ahead to 2018 and want to share my choice for the new year’s motto. I see it as the only way forward.

Not your usual epitaph, but Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland isn’t your usual cemetery.

This ends a year of Around Here. I’ll still take photos in 2018 and may share some with you, but less systematically.

Happy New Year.

Around The Corner

My recent visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Jazz Age exhibit revealed a surprise near the end – a quilt. The exhibit features scads of diamond and platinum jewelry, stylish but uncomfortable looking furniture, impractical coffee and tea sets, flapper dresses, intriguing textiles, and all sorts of room interior designs. However, its sleek styles didn’t find their way into period quilts.

Yet as a portent of the 1930s, Mrs. Shaw’s Prosperity quilt can’t be beat.

Herbert Hoover’s quote “prosperity is just around the corner,” inspired this wonderful humorous quilt created by Fannie B. Shaw between 1930-1932.  It is 72″ x 86″ and is hand appliqued, pieced, and quilted. It’s in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art.

The applique figures depict women, businessmen, baseball players, a farmer, a cowboy, and more peeking around the corner expectantly. Mrs. Shaw even included herself in her hallmark apron.  She used a variation of the attic windows pattern and quilted footprints in the sashing to show movement and the search for jobs.Apparently the farmer behind the plow represents her husband, a Texas farmer.

In the lower right corner, Uncle Sam finally arrives with farm relief, money, and legal beer. Priorities priorities. Mrs. Shaw included the Democrat donkey and the Republican elephant in her blocks, maybe “a plague on both your houses” sentiment or a suggestion that both parties need to work together.

Some contemporary “message” quilts strike me as unduly heavy and shrill. In contrast, the Prosperity Quilt is fun to look at, inventive in its use of the attic windows block, and yet it conveys effectively the widespread distress of the 1930s. You can catch more flies with honey …

Around Here Week 51

This is a photograph by my brother, who is an accomplished sailor and has visited many glorious places. One of them is Salt Whistle Bay on the island of Mayreau, which is part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

I’ll tuck it away as my personal, private happy place this winter while I wrap myself up in more wool, and watch the salt trucks circle our street.

 

Another In Nancy Series Gets Quilted

So Not Nancy got quilted this month with few headaches. Yay! I dyed the large mottled solid fabrics and pieced the busy squares using some of Nancy Crow’s methods. Nancy just doesn’t use large blocks of solids, ergo the title.

I even drew out a quilting plan. (Imagine a picture of me patting myself on the back.) Well, it wasn’t rocket science, but consisted of following the piecing and keeping the diagonal line pattern straight.

I used a hera marker to draw those long quilting lines in the solid areas. You can see the “line” drawn on the right side, below. I found that worked well with the solid fabric and saved me the fuss of masking tape. I don’t think the line would show well on a busy fabric.

As usual, the FMQ in the two pieced areas didn’t go smoothly, but I expected that. I feel naked doing FMQ on solids; prints hide so much.

The quilting in the solid areas was done with a walking foot. The larger spaces between lines are 3/4 inch wide, while the smaller ones are 3/8 of an inch.

I used a heavily discounted dark blue Judy Niemeyer fabric for the binding. I don’t think the barbed wire fence in the print appealed to many quilters, but it doesn’t show when it’s 3/8 inch wide. While I’m fond of facings, I decided I wanted the STOP of a contrasting binding on this one.

Only one more to quilt in this series. Now if I only knew how I should quilt it.

Technical details: 34 x 36 inches; Quilters Dream cotton batting, Aurifil thread.

Around Here Week 50

The different textures of tree trunks show up now that the leaves are down. The sycamores gleam with patches of white, and the hickories and oaks reveal deeply fissured bark. On a recent walk sunlight enhanced the textures on a trunk and cast interesting shadows. It could be a striking abstract composition.

Other tree structures have been revealed as well, thanks to some sunny days.

A gnarled crabapple reaches toward the sun. I love all the angles.

Denuded wild grapevine stems and brush frame woods lit by the afternoon sun. Maybe it could be the basis for an austere pieced abstract.

A Wonderful Windfall

Over the past few years I’ve bought hand dyed fabrics from Vicki Welsh and have been very pleased with them. Recently Vicki did a week of giveaways, which included what she called large scraps. I had the good fortune to win that random giveaway.

I’m delighted with my windfall. My only quibble, which totally works in my favor, is that Vicki and I have very different concepts of large scraps. I received three different hand dyed fabrics that total at least 3 yards. My idea of a large scrap is a fat eighth.

No matter, here’s a glimpse at what I received.

Vicki has in no way solicited (or even hinted at) a plug from me, but I do want to let you all know of a good source for hand dyed fabrics – gradients, shibori, and lots of other special effects. You can get assorted packets or large pieces of fabric.

Here are a few of the pieces I’ve used Vicki’s fabric in.

Moonrise

Winter Fields

I assure you it’s much easier to email Vicki than to break out my dye pots and make sure I have enough supplies.

Around Here Week 49

Over the river and through the woods? I only wish the path led to my grandmother’s house though it does lead me back to my house. We’ve had a very light dusting of snow, but the ground is frozen and ice is forming on the local ice skating pond.

I have no idea where the blue in the shadows came from, but I like it.

Gift Buckets

Heaven forfend, I found my stash of small gifts on hand was depleted. This is not a good position to be in at this time of year. Luckily, I subscribe to Christine Cameli’s blog, where she gave me the perfect quick (and small) gift to make. She calls it a bucket though I think you could call it a basket.

Since Christine teaches free motion quilting she has scads of fat quarter size quilting samples that are perfect for her project. I have a few practice squares, but I also have upholstery samples. After a scrounge through my large scraps I matched up bucket exteriors and liners and went to work.

A video in Christine’s post shows how she makes her buckets. The post also has a link to her free pattern on Craftsy. If you know the size bucket you want, just watch the video. Christine’s pattern makes a bucket about 4.5 inches wide and tall. I think it’s a good size for gifting with some candy or sewing notions tucked inside, but if you want something larger adjust the size accordingly.

As you can see, I used the same fabric for the liners and cuffs, but a contrasting cuff would definitely be fun. The bucket and liner are made from 8.5 by 6.5 inch fabric pieces (2 each of both exterior and lining), and the cuff is 4.5 by 16.5 inches.

After you sew the exterior pieces (then the linings) together around 3 sides, you cut out a 2 inch square of fabric at each bottom corner. Then you match the seams and sew the cut edges together. I don’t know if that’s clear, so just watch the video.

The short ends of the cuff are sewn together and the cuff is pressed in half long ways, right side out.  You nestle the lining inside the exterior (wrong sides against each other), then pin the cuff inside everything, raw edges together. Once you sew around all the layers you can turn over the cuff and admire your bucket.

I think you could also use pre-quilted fabric for the exteriors. I thought of using some fancy silk scraps but stopped when I saw I’d have to interface the silk. I was in production mode, which meant done was better than fancy.

Around Here Week 48

I live about a half mile up hill from the Cuyahoga River. Many mornings the river valley is shrouded in fog that gradually lifts by mid morning. It makes for wonderfully atmospheric landscapes.

I ran this photo through a filter to increase the contrast between the trees and the fog. It heralds the end of autumn to me. The leaves are down but the snow hasn’t yet started.

Target Practice

The Ohio chapter of SAQA was inspired by the exhibit, “Circular Abstractions,” to start a bullseye quilt challenge.  I poked around to see if I could find anything about the history of the bullseye block, but have come up empty.

Not to worry. I think you’ll get the idea without any words.

The chapter is holding online meetings to discuss approaches and even an in-person sewing afternoon to work on our projects.

I decided to build some bulleyes first and worry about their placement later. A rummage through my scraps piles gave me enough material for two different approaches.

One is based on Jane LaFazio’s Recycled Circles, a method featured in “Cloth Paper Scissors” magazine [March 2009 issue].

With this technique you machine quilt a 12 inch quilt sandwich, cut it in quarters, and then fuse on scrappy curves. The idea is to make each quarter unique. You machine or hand stitch the fused curves down, and add as many embellishments as you like. You can zigzag sew the quarters together or treat them however you like. I chose to keep spaces between the quarters.

The machined stitched part of Bloodshot Bullseyes is done and I’m starting a lot of hand stitching. The quarter squares are zigzag stitched to red felt, and each fabric arc is sewn down with decorative machine stitches.

For my second approach I constructed crazy pieced pentagons with light and dark rings. Most feature blue and blue/green fabrics as I seem to have lots of those colors in my scraps. The shapes are angular rather than rounded, but I think they convey the idea of a bullseye.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I had enough pentagons (and a few hexagons) to create two pieces. My attempts to put them all into one looked  too cluttered. Rather than piece the pentagons to the background, I decided to machine sew each down to  the background fabric. I’ll cut out the fabric behind them to reduce bulk. That’s happened already with the composition below.

My second crazy bulleye is still in flux.

I predict the final version will look different than this. Already I’m contemplating sheer overlays and playing with shape placement. I’m thinking of quilting pentagons with heavy thread to continue the theme.  Unless I radically change my plan, each pentagon piece should finish around 30 by 36 inches.

Both approaches have given me lots of quality time with my scraps collection, and a chance to feel virtuous as I use some of it up.