Art, Quilts, and Other Adventures

Bead overload

So this crazy red wholecloth I'm working on has suggested to me that it might want some beads.

(Yes, my quilts talk to me.  Don't yours talk to you?  Sometimes I'm not sure if I should listen to my quilts or not.  Listening to them sometimes gets me into trouble.  More often than not, though, the quilt is right about what it wants.)

Where was I?  Ah yes:  beads.

I already have a bunch of red beads (thanks to some stash enhancing before Christmas), but I decided I needed a better variety before deciding what to put on the quilt.

I had to get groceries today (we were out of some really important stuff like Lucky Charms), so while in Waterloo I visited Hobby Lobby.  I found a bunch of red beads that I needed wanted, and also some cool clear plastic stacky thingies to put my beads in. (The plastic thingies all screw together and have one lid per size).

Now, as you look at this picture you have to remember that I already had about 2/3rds of these beads:

To me, this is a lot of red beads for one person to own.  I suspect that some of you are agreeing, but others of you are probably thinking "Sheesh, she's an amateur."  I think it's probably time for me to start buying beads of other colors, though.

I messed around a little with what beads might work.  The problem with beads is that I find that I really need to actually sew the beads on to see if they actually look good or not.  Laying them on top just isn't quite enough for me to visualize.  I've got an idea, but I need to do some experimenting to see if it'll work or not.  I just hope that I have enough of the beads that I think I've chosen (which are ones that I purchased today, so it was worth the trip).

Now, I need to start planning projects to use all of those other red beads that I am the proud owner of....

Back to pebbles -- see you tomorrow!

Suzanne

Alphabet Round Robin Ship Day

Today is the deadline.  My Alphabet round robin book has to be in the mail today.  I have really struggled to make up my mind about what to do to get it started.  It's now in the box and there is no turning back!

Here's the book closed:

As I said in a previous post, the cover (front and back...) are a work in progress.  Right now it is just painted with black gesso, which is very flat.  I also managed to get some glue on the front cover.  The hardest part of this project (for me, so far...) is dealing with the paint and glue and not making a mess!

Here's my sign in page:

Does that pinky-purple fabric look familiar?

The pink sheets that I want the artists to sign are also from yesterday's sunpainting experiment.  I experimented with a sheet of Tyvek.  It had pennies and some salt on it.  The Tyvek doesn't absorb the paint the way fabric does, so it didn't sunpaint the same way, but it still had some interesting effects:

(The blue paper was colored with Tsukineko ink  -- I dipped a cosmetic sponge wedge in the ink and then splotched the ink on the paper)

I was going to send it out with just the above done.  but then I had an idea.  And I put this page together:

The black and white polka dot fabric is fused to some Fast-2-fuse interfacing, which is fairly thick.  I was inspired to do the beading by Laura and her February 12x12 journal quilt.

The black scribbles on the paper around the little quiltlet are the names of objects that are red.

All of the pictures are clickable, so you can view them slightly larger if you so desire.

I was hoping to do some more sunpainting today, but the wind kicked up, so that's not going to happen.

Better get to the post office!

Fabric Crisis!

I have had an extremely productive weekend.  So productive, in fact, that I decided to focus on what I was doing and skip blogging about it until after it was over.

I'll get to the fabric crisis mentioned in the title in a minute....

On Friday, I managed to finish up the monster quilt that I was complaining about in the previous post.  The quilt has since been delivered and the customer was very happy.  I did not take any pictures, as I prefer not to have photographic evidence of those sorts of quilts.

Saturday was full of cleaning fun.  Or something like that.  My studio and office have reached the point where the chaos is seriously impacting my ability to accomplish anything, so I dug in.  Literally.  My studio doesn't look a whole lot better, but I'm trying to be systematic about it, and really sort it out, rather than just move the piles around.   We also got our Christmas shopping done Saturday night.  Well, almost done.  Just one or 2 more things here or there....but the bulk is done.  Now comes the wrapping....

I did also manage to make 2 things on Saturday.  One is a gift that I can't share a picture of yet.  The other is kind of silly and only took about 5 minutes, but...it's red and I made it.  I have been using my car key with no key chain for about forever, so yesterday I pulled out some beads and a charm and made myself a quick key chain thingie....

Today (Sunday) was going to be another day of cleaning fun, but it occurred to me that if I want to give the boys' teachers quilts for Christmas, I had better get them quilted, um, NOW....

So, off I went to the cupboard to retrieve the tops that I had set aside several months ago for this express purpose.  I set them out on the floor and the boys happened to wander by.  Joe said "I hate them."

Excuse me??  Keep in mind that I had not asked for opinions, nor had I actually said anything about them at all.

I told them what I had in mind for the quilts.

Joe said "Oh.  Well, Mrs. D. would probably like that one."

Will allowed that Mrs. K. would probably like the other one.

Alrighty, then.

The one for Mrs. D. already had a back pieced and the binding made, so I decided to start with it.  The quilting went pretty fast, and it looks pretty good, I think.   Actually, the quilting went remarkably well -- the borders had been applied well, it was nice and flat and square and I was sure patting myself on the back.

I pulled it off the frame and started to attach the binding.  I had to restart the binding because I assumed it was cut 2.5 inches, but quickly realized that it was only 2 inches cut and needed a 1/4 inch seam instead of the 3/8 in. seam I was trying to use.  Usually I make the wider binding, but since I had made this so long ago, I could remember why I had only used 2 inches.  My suspicion was that perhaps I was running low on fabric and this was all I could do.

I rounded the 3rd corner and thought, "Gee, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of binding left."  So, I stopped and did a little test run of the rest of the binding.

Yup.  You guessed it.  I was short.  By about 10 or so inches.  Fabric crisis indeed.

Did I mention that it has probably been several years since I pieced this particular top?  I have moved since I pieced this top.  It has been years since I've seen even a scrap of the binding fabric that I was using for this quilt.

Ugh.

I did decide to go searching through my scraps to see if there was any possible way I could find a small bit of this fabric.

This is one of the bins that I keep scraps in.  By scraps, I mean little bits of leftovers from various projects.  Small bits.  There are some orphaned blocks in here, and the occasional large hunk, but mostly it's little bits.  The scary thing is that this bin is not the only bin.

The scariest thing is that when I opened it and dumped it out, this is what I was faced with.  I'm sure that you won't be surprised to find out that I did not find any of the fabric I was looking for.  I also discovered that I was unable to squeeze all of this fabric back into the same bin it had come out of.  It grew!  Like a monster!  It was actually kind of interesting to dump it out and paw through it for a short while.  I can barely even remember some of the stuff that these scraps go to.  I wish I have been better at documenting the quilts I make.  I need to work on that going forward.  Hopefully this blog will help.

In a completely different pile, I found about a 1/3 of a yard of one of the other fabrics that I had used to make the quilt, so I punted.  I took the binding I had already sewn on back off.  I cut the original binding and the new binding into 2 by 10 inch strips.  I sewed them together with diagonal seams and wound up with:

It's OK, and might have even been better if I had used shorter strips.  Actually,  I guess it's kind of hard to see what it looks like in this picture.  I need to take better pictures of it tomorrow in the morning light. 

It's a cute quilt -- it's a Thimbleberries pattern from one of the original books -- Peppermint Swirl.

In addition to all of that mess, I also spent time today working on Mrs. K's quilt.  At this point, it is on the frame waiting to be quilted:

When this top went into the closet it was just the inner body of the quilt.  It was only 48 inches square and while it might have been OK to leave it that way, I decided that it really needed to be bigger to be a usable lap quilt.  And now that it is done, visually I think it works better.  For me, at any rate.

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to quilt this one, or what thread color I'm going to use, but hopefully I'll have a finished quilt tomorrow night to report on.

And if that isn't enough, I actually did something else this afternoon related to a gift that I can't talk about (yet), but as soon as I can, I'll post some pictures.  It's pretty fun.

Just thinking about everything I did today is making me sleepy, so I guess I'd better toddle off to bed!

A Colorful Meme -- Red answers

A month or so ago I found this meme over on a blog that I like to read (Red Shoe Ramblings).  There are actually questions that go along with all of the colors, but I'm getting tired and am only going to post the questions that go along with my current obsession -- Red!

Before I do, I have to say that I have been reminded today of why I need to take a break from customer quilts.  I fully appreciate the fact that just because a certain quilt is not to my taste, doesn't mean that it is bad or anything like that -- I appreciate that people have different tastes, and that the quilt they have made is meaningful to them.  Even though I *get* this, I am unable to enjoy working on some quilts that are just really awful.  They suck the creative life out of me.

On a happier note, I did spend part of the day working on a new entry for the Have a Heart contest sponsored by Unlimited Possibilities.  I think this new version is going to turn out pretty nicely.  More about that tomorrow, maybe.

And now, on to the red portion of today's post:

Red

1. Closest red thing to you? The walls in my office/laundry room. It’s a red with a lot of pink in it, but it is definitely red.

2. Has anyone ever cheated on you in a relationship? Not to my knowledge!

3. Last thing to make you angry? My former long distance company and their horrible customer service. Yesterday I probably spent 45 minutes on the phone with three different people, at least one of whom was difficult for me to understand as English was not her first language. The first person was completely worthless, the second one had me on the phone for 20 minutes before she finally determined that she couldn’t actually help me, and the third was actually able to do what I wanted (i.e. cancel my service), but could not (or would not) accept that I should have gotten a refund, considering the fact that I thought I had canceled my service way back in September. Grrr. Can you tell I am still angry about this?

4. Are you a fan of romance? Hmm. Romance as in flowers and poetry and heart-shaped candy boxes? No, not really. That kind of stuff is nice and all, but at the end of the day what you’ll probably end up with is a bunch of dead flowers and an extra couple of pounds because you ate all of the candy. If the intent is romance as in romantic stories (i.e. books or movies…), then my answer is sort of. I can’t stand the really sappy silly Harlequin-type romance novels, but I have read lots of books that are centered on romance that are truly wonderful. I also enjoy a good chick-flick, but only sometimes.

5. Have you ever been in love? Yes! And still am with my wonderful husband.

6. Do you have a temper? I’m guessing the intent of the question was to ask if the respondent has a bad temper – a temper in which he/she is quick to anger. I would have to answer this one no. Mostly. My children seem to know how to push my buttons, and I can get upset with them probably more quickly than I ought to (and who is the adult in this house??), but in general I would say that no, I do not have a temper.

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I can't decide if I'm going to try to answer the rest of the questions that go with the other colors right away or if I'll wait until I am focusing on those colors.  Some of the questions are kind of odd.  In the blog-reading I've been doing, I've had a suspicion that some of the memes I have read were originally written by teenagers.  It is definitely an interesting way to read about and get to know people, and if anybody wants a copy of the complete list of colorful questions, I'd be happy to send it to you.  Just leave a comment or send me an e-mail!

Take Heart!

It's finished!  Well, almost -- it still needs a hanging sleeve, but...it's done enough for me to want to show it off.

Click on the picture to view it larger.

The impetus for this piece came from two sources.  First off, the Fast Friday Challenge group's challenge last Friday was to create an odd-shaped small quilt.  The only "rule" was the shape -- everything else was maker's choice.  The second idea behind the quilt was to maybe make something that would fit the guidelines for the Have a Heart contest sponsored by Unlimited Possibilities.  Keep in mind, that I already had an idea for that contest, and the start of that quilt is still on my design wall where I abandoned it last week to work on this idea. 

OK, a third idea that came into play was wanting to continue playing with red.  Can you imagine?

As part of the challenge, the moderator gave us a website to visit for pictures of quilts that are most definitely rectangles or squares or anything close.  The artist is Sonji, and she creates some very wonderful, unique pieces. 

Several weeks ago, I had written down all of the sayings with the word "heart" in them that I could think of.  I picked one of them (take heart) and started doodling.  I didn't want to imitate Sonji's pieces, so I tried to think of other ways I could use the words and create something that was oddly shaped.  One of my original sketches was to have the quilt itself be a rectangle, with the some of the letters hanging off the edges.

I picked a font, printed the letters out and went into my studio to get busy.

I threw the background fabric up on my design wall and cut out the letters.  I stuck them up and just started playing.  Eventually I decided to contain the letters on the background, but took my chalk and started drawing outlines that sort of vaguely followed the overall line of the words.  Vaguely.  I cut it out (freehand with the rotary cutter...).  Layered with batting and did the applique.  Then I got the wild idea to make the tabs for the outer edges to mimic the letters.  And of course, my heart had to have the same tabs.

Figured out how to make the tabs, enveloped the quilt and turned it right side out and stitched in the ditch around the letters on my DSM with clear thread.  I thought it would be faster than trying to figure out how to load it up on the longarm.  I was reminded of exactly why I'm a longarmer.....

This is the point at which the quilt started talking to me.  I tried beads, but those were too subtle.  I'm not even entirely sure what possessed me with the buttons, but I started laying out long lines of them and eventually drew in some chalk lines I liked and started sewing them on. 

The hardest part was deciding what to do on the heart itself.  I have some letter charms that I tried to use, but they weren't cutting it.    I wanted to add in the words "care of your" to add extra meaning to the phrase.  I'm feeling especially clever about the many meanings that the words on this quilt have.   I wanted the TAKE HEART to mostly stand out, and the rest to be there, but not be as important or as obvious.  I wish it were a little more subtle, but I'm OK with what I did end up with. 

Well.  If you have actually gotten this far, I applaud you!  Most of that was probably really boring, but it's been interesting for me to sit here and think about how I got from point A to point B.  There are a few leaps in there that I'm not sure I can exactly explain even to myself.  One thing I did was to not let myself think too hard about the decisions.  No agonizing allowed.

So now that it is all done, I've actually gotten quite attached to it, and I'm not sure I'm going to use it for the Unlimited Possibilities contest.  Part of that is because the only machine quilting is that poor edge stitching around the letters.  It's a machine quilting magazine!  I'd like to show off a little more than this does, I think.

I'm thinking about going back to my previous idea and seeing if I can make it work.  I also have another idea to do this piece again but different.  More quilting (on the longarm), less buttons.

By the way.  The total button count is 203. 

All but 2 were by hand.  I started doing them on my Bernina and decided that was using too much thread (they don't actually have to be functional, so they don't need to be *that* secure!) and it was taking longer to fuss with getting the button placed, the quilt under the needle, etc, etc, etc, than if I were to do them by hand.  I'm not sure if I'm right or not, but the satisfaction of being able to say they are all by hand is pretty high!

Red postcard

Most of you probably know about the Fiberart For A Cause fundraiser in which artists from around the world created fiber postcards.  These postcards were used as thank yous for a $30 donation to the American Cancer Society.  The project has raised over $110,000 in just 18 months. 

My friend Lynn got to go to Houston this year to Int'l Quilt Market and Festival, where the postcards were available. I asked her to make a donation and pick out a postcard for me.  I received mine today, and I'm very excited about what she picked:

Keep in mind that she picked this out for me almost a month ago.  Do you suppose she could see into the future and know that I would be on a red kick right now? (Thank you, Lynn, for picking out such a cool postcard for me...)

 

A few weeks ago, somebody somewhere (on one of the many lists I belong to) was talking about how to display fiber postcards.  One of the ideas was a photo album-y thing they had gotten at IKEA.  Well, guess what!  I have one just like it, only mine came from Target about a million years ago.  I had only ever managed to stick one picture in it (there is a frame on the other side that flips over, but I wouldn't use it on the postcards, as it "mats" it to a smaller size).

Now all I need to do is fill it up with more postcards!  I've thought about joining the art2mail project, but I think that involves more postcards than I can commit to making at this time.

How's this for a deal: if you send me a postcard to fill up my frame, I'll send you a postcard in return.  If you are interested in trading with me, send me an e-mail and I'll give you my mailing address!

Stained Glass Pine Tree

About a year ago, a stained glass business opened in my small town. Dreamland Productions is the company -- they do beautiful, beautiful work.

Over the weekend, they had a few pieces on display at our quilt show -- one of them caught my eye, and today I decided to go get it and bring it home.

Isn't it pretty?  It looks much better hanging in the sun.  I'm not exactly sure where to put it.  Maybe in one of the windows in my studio.  Maybe in one of the kitchen windows.

I love the shapes in the design.  It also kind of ties in with the great big pine tree we have out in front of our house.  I should get a picture of that tree some day.

More red things:

Dorothy's ruby slippers
wagons
strawberries
clown nose
peppers
red hot candies

I did do some work on a project that is using some of my new red thingies, but it's not far enough along to share, plus it's for a contest, so I might not share it at all until after the contest is finished.

Speaking of the contest, it's for a very good cause. Unlimited Possibilities is sponsoring the contest:  "Have a Heart" Competition -- all entry fees will be donated to the American Heart Association, and after the quilts are done touring, they'll be auctioned off to benefit the AHA.  Quilts have to be 1/4 red fabric and include at least one heart motif.  You can find out more about the contest on the Unlimited Possibilities website.

More Things That Are Red

Thanks to Vicki, I have a few more thing to add to my previous list.  I'm going to copy them here, and then add some more that I thought of on my own.  (Vicki's additions to my list were in my original post to my other blog on my website.  I'm copying my posts here for completeness, but unfortunately I don't know how to drag over the comments...)

lips
Cardinals (the bird and the team)
Scarlet Tanager
stop signs
Twizzlers
cranberry juice
nail polish

and a box in your mailbox…….

fire trucks
cherries
rubies
my Mom's car
ketchup

Speaking of that red box.  Oh my goodness.  Thank you so much to Vicki for the fun things she sent me.  My red stash is growing by leaps and bounds. After the meeting I spoke at on Saturday, I had to visit Michael's and found some more things to add to it myself:

First off, the red box!  I just giggled when I saw it!  Even the address was written in red ink!

The contents!  Make note of the dog treats with the red centers....

And the stuff I got at Michael's:

I also got some red wool, but I'm already trying to knit something with that, so it didn't make it into the pile of goodies for photographing.

So now, I guess the thing is that I need to actually start using some of this cool stuff to MAKE things!  I've got tons of ideas, but am short on a key ingredient -- time.  Soon, though!  I really need to just sketch out some of the ideas so I don't forget.  Not that I would ever forget anything.  LOL!

Lady Jane

It seemed wrong not to add a picture today, so here's a funny little creature I made about a month ago.  She is a ladybug named Lady Jane.  I made her up out of my own head after looking at some pictures of funny stuffed animals I found on some other websites.  I'll go looking for those links next week.  Too tired now....

She has her issues, but I think she's kinda cute! Plus -- she is RED!!!

Things That Are Red

Sounds like a Jeopardy category or something, doesn't it?

I spent the day hanging quilts and making labels -- getting ready for our local quilt show.  Plus, getting books ready -- I get to have a book signing on Friday and Sunday.  Not to mention the longarm guild meeting on Sunday that I'll be the guest speaker at!

I'm pretty well exhausted, but thought I'd spend a few minutes thinking about things that are red.  I didn't get to work on any of my art projects today, so this will have to suffice:

roses
stoplights
stop signs
apples
poppies
my laundry room walls (aka my office)
my sectional
Santa's suit
Rudolph's nose
stripes on the American flag
tomatoes
Coca Cola Cans
Target's logo
Candy cane stripes
Katie's food dish
Mom's car
a bunch of the quilts I've made.  too many too count.  well, too many for my tired brain to deal with right at the moment....
the frames of my new glasses
the frames of one of my first pairs of glasses -- ala Sally Jessy Raphael.  Didn't look any better on me than they did on her
some of the highlights in my hair...
Lightening McQueen (from the movie Cars...)
Winnie the Pooh's shirt (in the Disney version...)
ladybugs (the pretty kind, not the obnoxious Asian Beetles)
Cy -- ISU Cyclone's mascot
Darth Vader's Light saber (I think.  I must verify with my children...)
The color I'm going to paint my house when all of the siding as been replaced

If I weren't so tired, I bet I could think of a bunch more.  Maybe later.