More Road to California is coming–just had a lot of lesson prep to do–plus this little detour.

This is a WIP post–Work In Progress post–hosted by Lee of Freshly Pieced Fabrics.  Since having my heck-of-a-December, these weekly deadlines have been quite a blessing for me.  They give me a goal to have my hands on the cloth at least once a week.  Many thanks, Lee!

But this afternoon/evening I stole away from the computer for a few minutes to start on a Valentine Quilt (Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a Forth of July quilt!).  It all started when Rhonda sent me a photo of a quilt she was doing for a class for Mare’s Bears–a local quilt shop near Alexandria, Virginia, where I used to live.

I fell in love with it–so fun and fresh and so red-and-white.  We talked on the phone and she told me her inspiration was Le Jardin Cerise, in a recent McCall’s magazine.  I looked up that quilt and to me, they looked very dissimilar.  The original was a blender quilt, with more emphasis on color, whereas Rhonda’s had an emphasis on value–the light-to-dark of a quilt.  She gives credit to the magazine for the pattern, but I give credit to Rhonda for making it sing for me!

So I opened the “red” cupboard. . .

. . . and picked a swath of reds.

Maybe I had red and white on the brain, having shopped at Sandy Klop’s booth at Road to California, where they gave me this very cute bag.  (See our photo with her below).

And maybe because Cindy and I (on the right) were all decked out in reddish tones.  And maybe because all the stores have put away their Christmas and gone straight to Valentine’s Day.  But I think it’s more because of Rhonda’s amazing skills.

Beginning, I cut red squares, until I remembered that Rhonda said she’d done a more streamlined way of putting it together, sewing the thin strips onto the larger.

Okay.  Back on track.  Then I bordered them with strips on which I’d placed a square, then stitched diagonally to make a triangle.

So here are my first four blocks, with the little pinwheel in the center.  Mine’s much more unkempt than Rhonda’s, because I drew from my stash, while she limited herself to six fabrics.  Of course, I like hers better (I always do), but mine will work.  I have to teach in the morning, but look forward to getting back to this tomorrow afternoon, raiding my stash for reds to make it work.

About 3 or 4 years ago (or so the scuttlebutt goes) she hired a new person to help her hang the show, run the displays, and since that time I’ve seen it tilt heavily to overly quilted quilts with lots of spangles and sparkles.  This year, I’d have to say that the show has hit a new low, and I started referring to it as Road to Las Vegas.  This is not to dismiss the workmanship of the quilts that were displayed.  The technical skill and stitch quality of the top prize-winning quilts cannot be disputed.  What can be disputed is whether I liked it, or the ladies next to me liked it, or if  using a million crystals (Swarovski or not) or ten miles of embroidery thread enhances a quilt or if I found the quilt show interesting, or inspirational, or motivational (as in: I want to make that quilt!).  Enough yakking.  Here goes.

The title of this is the Magical Mermaids Castle, [sic] by Claudia Pfeil from Germany.  The workmanship is exquisite, with quilting no more than 1/4″ apart, and embellished to within an inch of its life with those aforementioned 40,000 crystals.  Shimmer.  Shine.  Sparkle.

She obviously has spent a long time on this.

I turned off the flash so the quilting lines would stand out, so sorry that it’s blurry.  When I walked through with Cindy, from Live a Colorful Life (more on our meeting up, later), she had tried some of the crystal work and noted that it must have taken this quilter “hours and hours.”

The back.

Back, detail.  Obviously this quilt is about what you can do with a longarm, what you can do with embellishment.  I finally heard a term that described what these types of quilts are: “show quilts.”  That term came from a quilter, shown below, who was standing beside her quilt, talking about it, and she said she tried to make at least two “show quilts” a year.

It was hanging on a side aisle, the shot angle is a bit skewed (sorry).  The title is Witches Brew [sic] and it is a clever quilt, made by Cathy Wiggins from Macon, North Carolina.  In the accompanying sign, she tells the story of her quilt, plus adds “There is [sic] over 250 hours of hand-embroidery on the scroll.”  I liked how the scroll was like a hand-written recipe, with things crossed out and changed.

NOTE: I keep writing [sic], which means “this is how I found it in the original source.”  I don’t know whether it was the quilter, or the people who printed the signs, but there were lots and lots of typographical/grammar errors everywhere.

Witches Brew, detail

William and Tony’s Magical World is pieced and quilted by their mother, Kristen Vierra and it also shimmers and shines.

Magical World, detail

The Director’s Choice blue ribbon went to Sherrie Reynolds of Laramie Wyoming for her quilt America, Let It Shine.  An absolutely stunner of a quilt, I had her pose by it–she was there a lot, standing by her quilt like a proud Mama (and she should have been proud–it was beautiful).

This is the only shot I could get of the quilt without someone beside/in front of it.  It’s a simpler design in some ways, with a central medallion and detailed borders, but she also used embellishment extensively, as well as a tremendous amount of quilting.

Back of the quilt, held up by the white-gloved hostess.  This shows you the amount of quilting that was on it.

Border detail

Detail, word strip.  The sign reads “5121 Swarovski Crystals represent the words of the Constitution, Star Spangled Banner, Pledge of Allegiance and the age of America. The 13 colonies are represented by using 13 points on outer blue rays and red triangles. The 50 states are represented with the ring of 50 stars.”  And my favorite words of all; “free motion quilted on a Bernina 1001,” or a home-sewing machine.  So, no long-arm, but as you can see, she has a lot of skill in her FMQ.

I remember reading that this got high honors in Houston and it got high honors here as well.  It is heavily (and I mean HEAVILY) quilted with gilt and regular threads, with lots of embellishment.  I should point out that the award winners are at the front of the exhibition hall all in a row, with signs by each one, as they are in other shows.  So, I’m showing them in a cluster as well.

Detail, lower left corner

Backside of lower left corner, showing that there is more thread than fabric showing here.

Detail of the cherry blossoms–all done with thread.  So essentially this is a three-ply thread painting.  Whether or not you like it depends on your own sensibilities, but there is certainly a LOT of work in this quilt.  The title is Harmony Within, and it’s a tribute to marriage by Sue McCarty from Roy, Utah.  Below is another thread design, based on a photograph.

This is a depiction of a potter from the Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, as was her mother before her, and it titled Grace. It’s made by Jennifer Day, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who printed the enlarged photograph on fabric and then went to town, quilting it and covering the face and hands with thread, using sixty-six colors and one-and-one-half miles of thread total.

Detail.  They put tape across each section of the display so it’s hard to get a full-on quality shot, but I think you can see how densely she “painted” with thread.  It’s remarkable how she was able to shade and color the face with all those threads.

Yes, those women really are striding into the scene of helping to put up a quilt show, somewhere in Australia.  She created the figures separately and they are attached to some black tulle netting for support.  Clever, I thought.  Titled Color Comes to the Back of Beyond, it was based on a painting by Pauline McPharlaine.  The makers are Pam Holland, Jan Munzberg, Pauline McPharlaine, and Jeanette Coombs (all from Aldgate, Australia) and was quilted by Pam Holland, the true heroine, for making the quilting integral to the quilt.  I stood at found detail after detail, in this not-so-large quilt.

At first I thought those were dropped glass-headed pins, but they were in other places in the quilt as well, so I decided they must be itty-bitty flowers.  Do you like thread-painted quilts?  The jury is still out for me, but I did like this one.  What you can’t see very well is the texture of this quilt–it really has a lovely quality to it that makes you want to touch it (I didn’t!).

Two more Big Fancy Quilts, then more in the next post.

Deruta, by Suzanne Marshall of Clayton, Missouri. She notes that Deruta is a town in Italy well-known for its hand-painted pottery (yep–I’ve been there!), and that her quilt was inspired by some plates she has with beasts on them.

What’s hard to see about this in the photographs is that she apparently has couched a thicker thread all along the edges of her applique pieces, giving them a harder edge.  Quite remarkable technique and skill.

Calling all you hexie lovers!!  Cheryl See of Ashburn Virginia has made a quilt for you to emulate!  Titled Star Struck, it has 12, 256 hand-pieced hexagons in this quilt. It was stunning, as you can see.  Here are some detailed photos (below):

What’s interesting also is how she used the printed fabric hexies to blend and smooth to the solid-fabric hexagons, which act as borders and as outlines.  And guess what?  No sparkles anywhere!  You CAN make a quilt without quilting it to death or turning it into a Las Vegas Showgirl! More, next time.

Yessirree! Road to California welcomes you–with a typo.  (Maybe only English teacher types would notice?  Certainly the lady I showed at the official booth had no idea what was wrong with the sign, and I have to admit it’s the first time I’d seen a verb with an apostrophe).

My friend Leisa picked me up early, and we were there in the show by 9:40 (we had to wait for the end of the line to arrive so we could get in after them).  After going to this show for umpteen years, we’ve seen a lot of changes and have perfected our plans.  I always head to the quilt show first, and she likes to give the booths a once-over before doing that.  Really the best time to see the quilts in the show is around 4-6 p.m., when all the busloads of shoppers have gone home and it’s cleared out, but I didn’t know if I would last that long.

I don’t like to show too many quilts until the event is over, so watch for upcoming posts, if you’re interested.  But I will show you some of the things I bought–surely there’s no harm in that.

Flying Geese ruler, Kaffe’s latest violets (in multiple colorways), print fabric, notecard, a set of leather handles for a tote bag and a pattern.  When I told my mother that I could fit everything I bought into my one tote, she said “You must not have been feeling well.”  I was a little under the weather due to complications with the recent surgery, and I felt shopping was like trying to eat dessert after a Thanksgiving feast–you want it, but your heart’s just not in it.  No one had the typewriter fabric I was hoping to find.  Bummer.  And I avoided too-crowded booths (gimp girl, here).  I loved seeing all the quilts that the vendors had decorated their booths with.  Hold onto that thought because I’m coming back to it in my wrap-up at the end.

We had a great day, yummy lunch (box lunches from California Pizza Kitchen) and saw lots of interesting things, but by 3:00 I was ready to go.  So we hopped in the car for the ride home.  Many thanks to Leisa for taking me there!

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The girls watch a movie under their new quilt

Last night I pulled out some Moda Candy Bar stacks, fed up as I was with convalescing.  Sometimes you just have to sew something.

I was thinking about that Sticks and Stones pattern, so cut some of the 2 1/2 x 5″ strips into half, then sewed them onto the existing strips.  I tried to count so it would come out somewhat even.

I decided to flip them: every other row would have the “stone” part on the bottom.  I sewed them together, trying to be careful of my gimpy leg (which I’m tired of being careful about.  Let’s just say I am not a very good sick person.).

After sewing the top together, I did the pillowcase method of layering backing (face up), top (face down), then the batting, then sewing around the edges.  I clipped the corner at a diagonal to get rid of the excess, then turned it and stitched the opening closed.  Quilting just off the seam vertically, with a couple of crosswise quilting lines finished it off.

One doll quilt for a granddaughter–done.  I have six granddaughters still in doll-playing mode.  Five more to go.  But not until I recover a little more, according to the doctor today.  Lay around more, he says.  Rest–stay on the bed.  So I guess I’ll do as the dolls above are doing and watch a few more movies.

Or better yet — I’ll go and read all your fabulous WIP projects on today’s linky page, hosted by Lee of Freshly Pieced Fabrics.  See?  I feel better already, knowing I have an adventure waiting for me.  Many thanks to Lee for hosting us all on WIP Wednesday.

Another time, when I was a long-term sub, the 9th grade students needed some help with basic math and geometry.  Since by this time the lesson plans had long run out from the regular teacher, I developed a series of lesson plans that were ordered around quilt patterns.  I gave a lesson on a few shapes, then turned them loose with their pencils, rulers, colored paper and one piece of black paper to use as their foundation.  The results were dramatic and wonderful; I found out later these “quilt blocks” were left up all year long, even after my sub job ended.  I chalked it up to the enduring power of quilts.

So I was thrilled to receive a flyer from a biologist friend of mine, touting a lecture given at the University of Alberta, Canada: “Quilts as Mathematical Objects.”  The above quilt was on the flyer, and was made by Gerda de Vries. She describes herself this way: “I work as Professor in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at the University of Alberta.  I am an applied mathematician, specializing in mathematical biology.  I am interested in understanding and explaining physiological processes through the development and analysis of mathematical models.”  So she invents a rule, applies it to her quilt design and carries it through.

This one’s titled “Cyclic Permutations (Study in Red, Black and White #1).”  The rule on this one that each triangle has a certain number of pieces, with the colors laid out in a particular order.  If you study it you can start to see the “rules” she applies.  I started listening to her lecture, “Quilts as Mathematical Objects” available on iTunes, via iTunes U (type in the title in your iTunes–she gave it at McGill University) and can hardly wait to finish.  I only wish I could have been there to see the visuals–which is what matters to us quilters.

She also does traditional quilting, as evidenced by this beautiful example.  She writes on her website that “I have a soft spot for ethnic fabrics.  This quilt highlights my collection of fabrics from the Netherlands.  Most are reproduction fabrics purchased at specialty stores; others were donated by relatives.  Traditionally, these fabrics were used in costumes (shirts, aprons), as well as home furnishings (bed sheets, mattress covers, curtains).  Also featured are a variety of so-called farmers’ handkerchiefs with traditional patters, purchased at town markets throughout the country.  I took particular delight in the construction of this quilt by fussy-cutting most of the fabric pieces.”

I think sometimes we operate in an insular world, in our own little quilty bubble, or at least I do, so it’s interesting for me to think about practical applications of our skills as quilters.  Perhaps if we relish in the color of quilts, we extrapolate that to our clothing, or our home dec.  Perhaps if we like the intricacies of quilting–matching up corners/seams/pieces just right, we will have perfectly ordered drawers and cupboards.  Or perhaps, as in the example of Ms. de Vries, we make our vocation (the thing that pays the bills) coordinate with our avocation (what we love to do) in creating beautiful and interesting quilts.

and

Suite 88′s dark chocolate with ginger.  Alas, I’m on my last squares and you can only buy it in Montreal!

I had wanted to create a new look for the blog–left it for the Christmas break–and am finally glad I feel like doing something creative.  It’s hard not feeling like yourself.  When I was reading blogs last night from Lee’s WIP, one quilter wrote that it was “her turn to get sick” and she’d posted a photo of herself in her bathrobe, stitching on some applique.  It’s been a bad year for sick–bring on the chocolate–bar, or all frothed up in a steamy mug of liquid deliciousness.  It’s also a strange year for weather–no snow yet in most places in the US.  And down here in OPQland, that is Southern California, we’ve been having spring since Christmas (guess that means we’ll have a scorcher of a summer).

I added a counter on the side showing the days until Road to California.  That counter may appear and disappear, depending on my mood.

I think that’s a brilliant idea; she’s culled a lot of ideas using scraps to make quilts and has a challenge going to use up our scraps (see her website for more details).  I think the idea, really, is to stash-bust, using up all those bits of fabrics leftover from our projects (or a too-ambitious buying spree).  I’ve been looking for a few of my own ideas on how to use up the stash.  Here’s one, a free pattern from Lila Ashberry, titled Summer House, and you can find the download *here.*

I’m looking for patterns that have a complexity to them, and will use lots of fabric and be quickly put together.

Or how about Mayra Dubrawky’s Sticks and Bricks pattern?  There would be a LOT less angles/triangles in this one, although it doesn’t have that complexity of the other.

Here’s one idea I’ve had in my files for a long time: a scrappy log cabin.

Join Rachel’s “Festival of Scrappiness.” Your finished quilt top is due by the end of March.

I am a work in progress this year.

I just had cancer surgery, a sure-fire way to whack me upside the head and force a look at the musty, over-stuffed closet of a life I’d been leading.  Too much shoved in, with the door slammed shut. A veritable chifforobe of clutter.

I had a birthday–Happy #58 to me, and also to Krista, my microbiologist blog-buddy (although I don’t know how old she is).

While trying to locate the surface of my ironing board today, I found detritus from two recent trips: Montreal in October and New York City in November.

I fell in love with Julia Ritson’s blog, a habit I could indulge while haunting my bed while in recovery, and especially this recent collage she made of a city (I asked for permission to post it here).  I think I could never make something this intriguing with hidden layers, ideas, textures.  I sometimes feel like I’ll never make anything else again. When I feel like this, it’s just empty inside.

My mother consoles me by saying it’s an after-effect of anesthesia (yet I’m ready to be back who I was).  I can feel the pull to colors, shapes, cutting, cloth, but resist.  It takes too much energy, and there was that syllabus I had to write.  Luckily my husband gave me Ringle and Kerr’s latest quilt book, so I consoled myself with their transparency brilliance.

I’m a crazy quilt, a wonky log cabin, a beginner’s Shoo-fly block with points cut off.

Talking exhausts me.

Writing feeds me, but I don’t spend enough time doing that because I’m talking.

A day of quiet restores me.  I hope this quirk doesn’t persist much longer because most everyone I love lives at the other end of the phone line, and talking is the only way we have to keep in touch.

I haven’t bought this year’s diary and my days are slipping away.  I didn’t realize it was Wednesday until I saw Cindy’s post about her fabulous quilt.  (Can I use her Work in Progress for Lee’s blog?  Didn’t think so.)

I’m in pretty good spirits today as I went to Target for a shower cap, Michael’s for medium treat bags, and Costco for dinner rolls.  They didn’t have the rolls done yet (“40 more minutes”) and I suddenly realized that I was crashing into a wall of tired, so pushed my empty cart back out into the parking lot, drove home and took a nap.  Even though I feel like a pathetic dishrag at times, I am making progress in recovery not only from the cancer blippiness but also from the bronchitis and double ear infections.  “Sick, sick no more” should be a slogan on my T-shirt.

I’m a riddle, a collection of wishes, a basket of fears, and a quilt without her borders.

Things I’m Working On (Quilt-wise):
(I would have photos, but the camera batteries died.  In all three cameras.)
Getting the borders on the autumn quilt
Deciding whether or not to take all the Christmas quilt squares off the wall, or to try to sew them up.
Figuring out how I want to spend my Fat Quarter gift card from my son
Lollypop Trees
Friendship Quilt

Getting the stitches out of ME–this Friday.  The margins are clear.  All is well.  Now to find the brain cells.

And that beginner’s block?  It was my mother’s, when she was a girl and it’s about 75 years old.  It’s one of my treasures.

Many thanks to Lee, who threw me this lifeline of a deadline today.  Check out her lovely bee block!

But January is my birthday month (as an adult, as a mother, you are allowed a whole month) so I would like to Make Some Plans.  Not resolutions.  For if these plans don’t come to fruition, my pride won’t be wounded.  Like those stand-by passengers on airplanes today, any unfinished plans will just be carried forward to the next List of Plans.

Some Quilting Plans for 2012

1. Make some Cross-X Blocks. I want to do wordy fabrics in the backgrounds somewhere, in order to take advantage of my stash of wordy fabrics. (Photo from janejellyby.)

2. Basket Blocks.  I collected, in my earlier days, an entire group of food fabrics.  (That’s the first batch of selvages I cut off and sent to Cindy of Live a Colorful Life.)  My goal has always been to make a quilt of basket blocks with these fabrics. (Photo from Gray Cat Quilts.)

3. Get back to work on my Lollypop Tree blocks.  I started them last year, and should have followed the advice I saw on several blogs, which was to lay out all the fabrics for each block all at once.  Then I could be sewing them all year long.

4. Get the borders on this harvest/autumn quilt before autumn comes again.  I need need need to get that stack of fabrics tucked back up on the shelves and I won’t as long as the border isn’t on this one.  Like most things quilty, I am over-thinking these borders, but I don’t feel like a plain 4″ all around would suit this quilt.

5. Play around with the QR code quilt idea.  Don’t know if it will pan out into anything, but I just like thinking about it.

5. Spend the Fat Quarter Shop Gift Certificate my son and his wife gave me for Christmas.  I have this in mind, although any colorway will do:

6. Leave time to quilt and listen to audio books in between work (grading & teaching), church service, spending time with friends and family.  I read a piece by Pico Iyer today in the New York Times and he talked about the necessity for quiet space, free from distractions, away from the constant flow of noise and information.  I think many of us struggle with the demands of the things I’ve listed above, plus trying to be a thoughtful and interesting blogger as well as a good member of the blogging community, in responding to our favorite blogs.

It sometimes can be too much, can’t it?  When this happens, I try to get around to comment on those bloggers who I have a special connection to, whose ideas have really sparked me to be a better quilter.  I also try to include a few new ones occasionally in order to keep my ideas fresh, and to sample what’s out there.  I can’t comment on everyone’s blog, although at times I have left the quilting behind in order to attend to the rigors of commenting.  Not a good trade-off, as the comments get more and more brief and tend to be “drive-by” blurbs that don’t really show my appreciation for what I’m reading, and for the creativity I do want to notice, and to allow me to create my own online community with those who interact with what I’m doing.

It’s a balance, and Iyer quotes Marshall McLuhan: “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.” Here’s hoping this new year allows us all to enjoy the fruits of our labors,  allowing us to fully reconnect with who we are in the process of quilting.

Happy New Year!

Our grandma taught her nine-patch, strip-piecing,
how to measure, how a fabric falls.

My sister heard her and came out a maker.
She garners fabrics, hoards a jumble-pile.

She’s skilled enough to half ignore geometry,
to spread out winter evenings

and ignore us. Obbligato with the treadle’s whir, she leans
into a tag-sale apron, Japanese cottons,

cambrics dyed one summer in the yard.
She likes found fabric, asymmetries:

She’s taught herself to work by instinct
basting light to dark, canary

to an emerald paisley. We all watch
her coverlets grow wider.

Her expression’s almost revenant
as she rips, re-hems, and irons, mouth

full of pins, cloth billowing around her.
Tonight she sliced our mother’s raw silk saris.

Dark ribbons bloomed and I admired
her fierce concentration to resettle

all her scraps at staggered angles,
the way her body stores her making,

how she destroys each thing she’s salvaged
to harvest it as her exploding star.

***********************

An explanation:  The week before Christmas, I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma–a small spot on my leg that threatened to turn my world upside physically, yet did upend my world emotionally and mentally and in most every other way.  Before this story gets too scary, I should say that I am now home from surgery, convalescing, finding that reading poems on Poetry Daily is about all my anesthesia-fogged-in-mind can comprehend, besides feeling really grateful that the the surgeon excised a chunk of my leg to take out the offending spot and that the adjoining lymph node came up clear — free of cancer.

But it kind of puts a dead stop to things such as preparations for Christmas, as I harbored this little horrid secret away from everyone, not willing to go thunk into their holiday preparations, wanting instead to read only about sweetness and light and those tender feelings that I treasure so about this time of year.  So I went silent, instead, the cloth laying idle on the table while I shuttled to lab appointments and doctor’s appointments. Silent, here as well, on this blog, with pictures of holiday cheer a hopeful substitute for the writing.  (I did write about it on my other blog.)

The night we found out the news and the big awfulness of it all hovered over us like a black shroud was the same night we had decided to celebrate our Christmas (we were headed off to Ohio to my son’s for the actual holiday).  I cooked a full fancy meal, and we sat savoring the good food, the chaotic news, the uncertainty, the tenderness and love we felt for each other in our joined journey together as man and wife and wondered how we would ever bear it if the news should be bad.  Turned out two weeks later that it wasn’t, that I can anticipate many more happy years of seeing oncologists and dermatologists and that now I check over every spot on my husband’s arms and back like a mother looks at her child’s face, searching to make sure only happiness is written there, easing away gloom and fright by attention.

So poetry, short and rich and condensed in word and meaning, is my companion tonight and I found this poem which celebrates what we do as quilters: harvesting those quilts which are sown from destruction.  I felt it echoed my somewhat somber mood, as I struggle to make sense of things, still too fresh from surgery to sit (it hurts) and finger the cloth.  We cannot know how the bumps in our roads will shape us, inform us, or teach us, but I hope to have many more days cutting and sewing, willing my body to “store [my] making.”

I wish you all a Happy New Year. Good things are ahead.  Good quilts are in our future.

Take care.