Week in Review 2014 - 04/25

Ariana's Building Blocks64" H x 49" W

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

It's spring in Appleton, WI, my home town. The birds are sporting their brightest plumage of the year, pairing up and building nests. My husband and I relish this time of year as everything comes to life. We take advantage of the ice free ground and warmer weather to walk the neighborhood, noticing the changes and chatting about this and that. This morning the dominant topic was financial planning for our retirement, still nearly a decade away. What we didn't include in this discussion, but something that I think about is what, oh what to do with all the quilts I have made over the years. True, some like Ariana's Building Blocks have been given to friends and family. A few quilts have been commissioned or sold. However, after making 5 - 6 quilts every year for over 25 years I have more quilts than even the Princess and the Pea could sleep on. My children have not expressed an interest in my work. Who knows about my grandchildren, but I assume they won't my quilts either. I could use some help. What plans have you made for quilts? Any recommendations?

Hip, hip hooray! Ariana's quilt is done. I will send it to her next week. That is one quilt I won't have to worry about  when it is time to downsize. It did dominate my time this week as you can see.

1) Ariana's Building Blocks previously known as Tumbling Blocks I 

a) block and square up the quilt - Done!
b make the binding - Done!
c) attach the binding - Done!
d) make the sleeve - Done!
e) attach the sleeve - Done!

2) Leah Day projects.

Blazing Spiral
A free motion quilting motif by Leah Day

a) Baste the face, torso and arms to Express Your Love II. - On hold until the quilts with deadlines are completed.

b) Do Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting lesson. - Done!

I tried my hand at Leah Day's Blazing Spiral. I found this pretty tricky despite the fact that I am normally comfortable with spiraling in and out of shape. This would be a great motif for tree bark or reptile skin. 

Life Book 2014 Lesson 17
Taught by Tascha Parkinson

3) LifeBook 2014 - Do the assignments.

It was a wise decision to tackle the mixed media lessons in Life Book 2014 this year. Each assignment gives me a chance to explore design principles from repetition to scale. I am also enjoying learning different ways to systematically approach drawing people and animals. This lesson was taught by Tascha Parkinson. Her work features girls with apple kissed cheeks. The lesson gave me another opportunity to incorporate text in my artwork.

4) Little Lake Butte des Morts in Fall (Due August 3) - a commissioned quilt - On hold until quilts with earlier deadlines are completed. 

Start piecing the quilt.

5) Tickling the Ivories - make and attach the label.

Now that Ariana's quilt is done it is time to move on to other projects. Here are some of my ideas for next week:

1) Little Lake Butte des Morts in Fall (Due August 3) 

a) Create the blue print for this quilt
b) Start the piecing 

2) Wild Apple 12" x 12" Opportunity - (Due August 15)

a) Determine if any of my free motion quilting samplers could be repurposed to suit
b) Create several 12" x 12" or smaller works for the exhibition

3) Leah Day projects.

a) Baste the face, torso and arms to Express Your Love II. - On hold until the quilts with deadlines are completed.

b) Do Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting lesson.

4) LifeBook 2014 - Do the assignments.

5) Tickling the Ivories - make and attach the label.


I am now linking up to two blogs on Friday's. The first is Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project and the second is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays.

Week in Review 2014 - 04/18

Ariana 

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

Sample block for the Community Quilt Workshop

Last week I left you with this cliff hanger: "It is down to the wire for finishing Tumbling Blocks. The big question is what will happen first. Will I finish the quilt or will my grandchild be born?" The answer is in, Ariana arrived on April 14 and I am still completing the finish work on her quilt. Heavy sigh, since I hate to miss a deadline. Still, I am delighted to welcome my fifth grandchild and second granddaughter to our family.

One of the reasons I didn't have Ariana's quilt done before she was born was because I joined a local artisans collective. Their mission was to fill a popup gallery with art, music, poetry and workshops. I am one of the artists, have volunteered to run a workshop I titled "Community Quilt," am organizing the schedule of gallery hosts and of course attending some of the numerous planning meetings. The exhibition is next week. We have built it. Now, fingers crossed, the community will come to see what we are about and engage in the numerous interactive art events. The hope is that this will be successful enough to become an annual event.

Even with all this excitement I did manage to move ahead ever so slightly with my published plans for the week. Here is how it went.

Detail of Tumbling Blocks border quilting - backside

1)  Tumbling Blocks I (Due April 30 - however, Ariana had other plans) 

a) finish quilting the border - Done!
b) block and square up the quilt - Not yet.
c) make the binding - Started
d) attach the binding - Not yet.
e) make the sleeve - Not yet.
f) attach the sleeve - Not yet.

2) Leah Day projects.

a) Baste the face, torso and arms to Express Your Love II. - On hold until the quilts with deadlines are completed.

b) Do Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting lesson. - Not yet.

Actually, I was very tempted to do this, but decided to save it for next week when I would need a free motion quilting fix. 

We were encouraged to use puff paint.
I don't own any, so I substituted glitter glue.
I just can't resist all things sparkly.

3) LifeBook 2014 - Do the assignments. - Done!

Traci Bautista was the teacher for Week 16's lesson, titled "In the Moment." The premise was to create the piece intuitively with each new mark and shape being suggested by what had come before. This is the first mixed media piece I have done where I felt my text work actually enhanced versus detracted from the piece. 

4) Little Lake Butte des Morts in Fall (Due August 3) - a commissioned quilt - On hold until quilts with earlier deadlines are completed. 

Start piecing the quilt.

5) Tickling the Ivories - make and attach the label.

My priority for next week continues to be finishing Tumbling Blocks. I am very confident that I will meet my goal of mailing it to Ariana before I head out in a few weeks to give her the grandmother seal approval, a kiss on that precious baby's head.

1)  Tumbling Blocks I 

a) block and square up the quilt
b make the binding
c) attach the binding
d) make the sleeve
e) attach the sleeve

2) Leah Day projects.

a) Baste the face, torso and arms to Express Your Love II. - On hold until the quilts with deadlines are completed.

b) Do Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting lesson.

3) LifeBook 2014 - Do the assignments.

4) Little Lake Butte des Morts in Fall (Due August 3) - a commissioned quilt - On hold until quilts with earlier deadlines are completed. 

Start piecing the quilt.

5) Tickling the Ivories - make and attach the label.


I am now linking up to two blogs on Friday's. The first is Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project and the second is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays.

Weekly Report 2014 - Week 04/11

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

Front Side of Tumbling Blocks after
the inner panel has been quilted.
Most browsers will provide you with an
enlarged image if you click on an
image in the blog.

I had forgotten just how heavy, or should I say HEAVY an intricately pieced quilt can be when I am trying to manipulate it under the needle for free motion quilting. At first I thought the heft was due to the fact that I opted to baste the quilt with safety pins instead of hand baste it with thread. However, even after 75% of the pins have been removed it feels just as heavy. True it is larger than I normally work, approximately 70" H x 50" W before it is trimmed. My suspicion is that the weight is due to all those seams, so that instead of two layers of fabric and batting I am really dealing with three layers of fabric.

My tip for working with such a heavy piece - yoga. No other exercise routine I have done over the years has done a better job of aligning my back, keeping metacarpal tunnel syndrome at bay and building my upper body strength. On a previous blog I stated if you only want to learn one yoga posture than chose Mountain Pose. That is great for releasing kinks and bringing down stress levels. If you want to get the benefits I mentioned earlier, then add Downward Facing Dog and a reverse wrist stretch to your repertoire.

This is the back side of Tumbling Blocks. It
is much easier to see the progress I made
with quilting from this perspective.

Despite a week with a few extra commitments I managed to make good progress with my number one quilting project. Of course it didn't hurt that the quilting motif that made the most sense for the majority of the piece was a mid-sized stippling.

1)  Tumbling Blocks I (Due April 30) 

a) finish quilting the inner section - Done!

Ultimately I opted to quilt on the black and white blocks with a mid-sized stippling. There is so much happening visually with this quilt that anything fancier would just get lost. I didn't quilt the colored blocks in order to give them just a bit more sculptural relief. 

b) finish quilting the border - Started

Close up of the stippling from the back side. 

c) block and square up the quilt - Not yet
d) make the binding - Not yet
e) attach the binding - Not yet
f) make the sleeve - Not yet
g) attach the sleeve - Not yet

I just couldn't resist doing something other
than stippling in the outer border. I purposefully
opted for a blending versus contrasting thread
on the front side so that the eye wouldn't
be distracted from the bold, overarching
pattern of the pieced quilt.

2) Leah Day projects.

a) Baste the face, torso and arms to 





Express Your Love II. - On hold until the quilts with deadlines are completed.

b) Do Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting lesson. - There was no lesson this week






3) LifeBook 2014 - Do the assignments. - Done!

Tam Laporte taught this lesson on creating a Quirky Animals totem.

4) Little Lake Butte des Morts in Fall (Due August 3) - a commissioned quilt - On hold until quilts with earlier deadlines are completed. 

Start piecing the quilt.

5) Tickling the Ivories - make and attach the label.

It is down to the wire for finishing Tumbling Blocks. The big question is what will happen first. Will I finish the quilt or will my grandchild be born? You will know the answer to this either next week or the week after that. Obviously I will be focusing on finishing up Tumbling Blocks next week with brief dips into other projects for balance.

1)  Tumbling Blocks I (Due April 30) 

a) finish quilting the border
b) block and square up the quilt
c) make the binding
d) attach the binding
e) make the sleeve
f) attach the sleeve

2) Leah Day projects.

a) Baste the face, torso and arms to Express Your Love II. - On hold until the quilts with deadlines are completed.

b) Do Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting lesson.

3) LifeBook 2014 - Do the assignments.

4) Little Lake Butte des Morts in Fall (Due August 3) - a commissioned quilt - On hold until quilts with earlier deadlines are completed. 

Start piecing the quilt.

5) Tickling the Ivories - make and attach the label.


I am now linking up to two blogs on Friday's. The first is Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project and the second is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays.

Week in Review 2014 - 04/04

Sample quilted with gray variegated thread.

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

Often, when I meet someone new they ask me what I do. The conversation follows a predictable path that frequently leads to my new acquaintance stating that "I would love to do that, but I just don't have the patience." Do I have more patience than she? Am I more patient than most people? Certainly I can't answer that question. I tend to look at this premise differently. What I have learned about myself and come to accept, grudgingly about myself, is that I am tortoise. I am a slow, methodical person. When I accept this and don't rush, I do better. When I go against my

Sample quilted with jewel toned variegated thread

nature and push to go harder, faster or longer than I am comfortable with - disaster! In fact the longer I am in the business of making art quilts the more I slow down, at least in some aspects of the creation process. I spend far more time these days auditioning fabric choices, designs, quilting motifs and even techniques before I settle in on one or another. For example with Tumbling Blocks I did a fair amount of auditioning the border before I selected the one with the stained glass feel and corner blocks. I also tried out two very different thread possibilities for quilting the black and white blocks. I ended up selecting the gray variegated thread versus the jewel toned variegated thread.

Last week I was wondering whether I could settle down and concentrate this week. I did. As you will see I did 100% of the first item on my list plus a bit more. Yeah!

1)  Tumbling Blocks I (Due April 30) 

Tumbling Blocks, pieced but not quilted.

a) Finishing piecing the top - Done!
b) Piece the backing - Done!
c) Baste the quilt for quilting - Done!
d) begin quilting - Done!

One of the advantages of testing techniques and other aspects of putting together the current project is that I have practice scraps to do further testing. When I first started piecing the hexagons I did a test strip first. When I needed to test the quilting motif I simply pieced that strip with some black fabric. This way I had something to hold on to and I now have the beginnings of my next sampler to practice my Leah Day free motion quilting motifs.



2) Leah Day projects.

a) Baste the face, torso and arms to Express Your Love II. - On hold until the quilts with deadlines are completed.

b) Do Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting lesson. - Done!

Isn't this a fun quilting motif? Leah Day has given it the title, Alien Eggs. Honestly it reminds me of spermatozoa. ;) It could make for subtle commentary on the right quilt.

Leah Day suggests that this motif, Alien Eggs would make
a great sashing motif.

My take on Dyan Reaveley's lesson.

3) LifeBook 2014 - Do the assignments.

Our teacher for Life Book this week was Dyan Reaveley. It was listed as a bonus lesson versus one of the more intense featured lessons. All I can say is that Dyan packed quite a bit in for a bonus lesson. One thing I struggle with is how to incorporate lettering/text in my art work. Dyan has a simple solution to this. She had us write out a full page of stream of conscientiousness text on separate page. Next we drew the outline of our shapes, such as tree trunks and flowers on top of the text. These shapes are painted with watered down permanent ink. Finally the shapes are cut out leaving approximately 1/16 of an inch extra. Very effective, don't you think?




4) Little Lake Butte des Morts in Fall (Due August 3) - a commissioned quilt - On hold until quilts with earlier deadlines are completed. 

Start piecing the quilt.

5) Tickling the Ivories - make and attach the label.

Not a bad week. I have a few commitments next week, but hopefully I won't loose my momentum. Here are my plans for next week and beyond:

1)  Tumbling Blocks I (Due April 30) 

a) finish quilting the inner section
b) finish quilting the border
c) block and square up the quilt
d) make the binding
e) attach the binding
f) make the sleeve
g) attach the sleeve

2) Leah Day projects.

a) Baste the face, torso and arms to Express Your Love II. - On hold until the quilts with deadlines are completed.

b) Do Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting lesson.

3) LifeBook 2014 - Do the assignments.

4) Little Lake Butte des Morts in Fall (Due August 3) - a commissioned quilt - On hold until quilts with earlier deadlines are completed. 

Start piecing the quilt.

5) Tickling the Ivories - make and attach the label.


I am now linking up to two blogs on Friday's. The first is Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project and the second is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays.