Before & After

Swapping fabrics is one of the most fun ways to build a stash. I started swapping fabrics online almost as soon as I started quilting. I swapped 4-inch strips, 10" squares, Fat Eighths and Fat Quarters.

These are the FQs I sent for Teresa's recent swap of Amish Solids FQs . . . and look at the rainbow of fabrics I received in return.

I joined this swap, once again, to begin to build a stash, this time of solid fabrics. It's a great start, isn't it?

Work Interrupted

This is technically more work interrupted than work in progress. It's a detail of my class project from Bonnie McCaffery's face painting workshop in Houghton Lake last month.

The same weekend that I was there, enjoying quilts, vendors and great teachers, events at home would lead me to the decision to find a new home and move ASAP and that has been my priority since ... in the meantime, this woman patiently waits on my design wall, until my focus can return to more creative pursuits.

WIP Wednesdays

Since I'm not very good about blogging regularly or sharing my work in progress, I thought to start checking in, once a week and sharing whatever it is I'm working on, in whatever state it exists.

In June, I swapped some Stretched Stars blocks and, last weekend, when a friend invited me over for breakfast and a day of sewing, I thought the time was ripe to make the extra blocks I wanted to make a small quilt.



Here they are on the design wall at the end of the day. I had decided to add some yellow, some green and some more red stars and I like how it looks . . . except now I think it needs more yellow more green and maybe some orange stars added to the mix. This small quilt is growing . . . and I haven't even decided whether to sash these blocks or not.

Anyone want to join me for WIP Wednesdays and share whatever they're working on or thinking about today?

Houghton Lake Show

Despite a few organizational glitches and a lack of promotion that produced a small crowd for the vendors, last weekend, spent at the Houghton Lake quilt show, Out of the Box, was a pretty perfect quilt weekend.

I drove up with a friend and stayed in a hotel on the lake that was only minutes away from the show and workshops.

Besides the Debbie Danko quilts, the travelling exhibits of Woman of Biblical Proportions and Men of Biblical Proportions were there, as well as about 100 quilts made by local quilters. I was impressed with how much hand applique, hand piecing and hand quilting I saw in these quilts.

This quilt, Beauty of Milan, is based on a photo of an 19th Century Aubusson carpet and is made entirely by hand.

The description says that it is only the SECOND completed quilt made by it's maker--the first was another show-stopper based on Cinderella--and that she worked on it, off and on, for 14 years. Quilters joke about their forever projects. Here's proof that some forever projects are finished.

For detail photos of the applique, Broderie Perse, trapunto and quilting, as well as the rest of my photos from this show, hop over to my Flickr set, Out of the Box 2006.

Fabric Gardens

One of the nice surprises at the Out of the Box quilt show in Houghton Lake was an exhibit of Debra Danko's wonderful flower quilts. This is a detail from Hibiscus.



I've seen many of these quilts before, but this was, for me, an opportunity to really look beyond the beautiful images and examine the details of the artist's alchemy and how she uses fabric, textile paint and thread (after taking a class with her and with a better understanding of what to look for).

Here is another detail photo, from Yellow Rosebuds.



In a show where few quilts were hung well, it was fantastic to see Danko's Trumpet Lilies hung so that you could see the transparency in the dark chiffon background--at least you could in person.



All my photos from the Fabric Gardens exhibit are featured in the Quilt Show Flickr badge in the side bar. You can also find them in my flickr album, tagged with fabricgardens.

Why We Quilt

This weekend, I went to a small regional quilt show in Houghton Lake, Michigan. The artist statement for this hand pieced, hand appliquéd, hand quilted quilt, made by Connie MacAllister, made me smile.

It said: I made this quilt while waiting for our new house to get done. It helped me keep almost sane. All done by hand in 2003.

Sometimes it's as simple as that, isn't it? Keeping almost sane.

This quilt reminded me of Becky's hand piecers on the Quilting forum--who are currently working on lemoyne stars. I thought they'd appreciate it, so I took a couple detail shots for them.




(Click images for larger versions)

What Kind of Flower Are You?

I am a Snapdragon What Flower Are You?

"Mischief is your middle name, but your first is friend. You are quite the prankster that loves to make other people laugh."

12 times 3 is (not) 48

Last weekend I finally started on my blocks for Kate's half-square-triangle sampler swap. I started with the black and red blocks, so that I could include Kate and Michelle's blocks with the sets of June lotto blocks they won.

Each of the sawtooth square blocks contains 12 HST units and one large one ... I started doing the math and realized I'd be making 260 HSTs by the time I'd finished my blocks for the swap. It was daunting ... so much so that when I started making HSTs for the three red blocks, I multiplied 12 times 3 and came up with 48 ;-)

After recovering from that mistake, I proceeded to sew right side to wrong side when making the pink block, decided I was too distracted and put the blocks away until today.

Things in the studio went smoother today ... and I'm happy to report my new status: 169 HSTs done, 91 HSTs (in blue and neutral) to go.





With each color I find myself saying, I wish I would have decided on this colorway ... these are going to be very pretty quilts, I think.

It's Only a Paper Moon

I discovered a wonderful set of vintage photos on Flickr --> Only a Paper Moon. Check out the clothes, the hair, the hats, the expressions--both on the people and the moons. I loved them.

Flag Day

Yesterday was Flag Day and I planned to mark the day by starting work on my interpretation of this element of an antique quilt that has captured the imagination of the hand piecers on about.com

The original photo comes from the book, The American Quilt A History of Cloth and Comfort 1750-1950, by Roderick Kiracofe and Mary Elizabeth Johnson.

But ... it was a perfect spring evening here last night and I had dinner outside on the deck and lingered too long, enjoying the cool air, the meal, my glass of wine ... and catching up on blog-reading on my wireless laptop.

Flag MONTH continues through July 14 and, by executive order, the Governor urges Michigan residents to observe Flag Day and Flag Month by flying the U.S. flag from their homes and other suitable places to honor America and celebrate our national heritage. Do you think I might observe and honor by having my own flag pieced by then?

Seen the USA?

"Red states" are going to mean something entirely different in a few months, but for the moment, look where I've been:



How about you? Create your own personalized map of the USA (There's also a world map, a Canadian Provinces map, a European countries map ... )

Life Imitates Art

This morning, I left the house in such a rush–I was late and I was distracted, already creating a mental checklist of everything I wanted to do before I ran to a meeting starting almost as soon as I would arrive at the office ... Once I was out the door, the sight of my Clematis vine in bloom briefly brought me back to the present.

I planted it less than a year ago when I moved into this place (I'm the Johhny Appleseed of tumbleweed renters and plant flowers wherever I go). It didn't seem very happy last year. I wasn't sure I'd see it again. I wondered if I'd made a bad choice for this zone and the location next to the porch. When it started to come alive in Spring, the resident expert gardener told me there was no way it would bloom for a few years.

In spite of all that, this morning, when I walked out the door, I was greeted by a half-dozen deep purple blooms and lots of buds holding out the promise of more. I think this little-plant-that-could deserves a trellis this year ;-)

I came home for lunch today–to grab something I had left behind in my earlier, distracted rush–and took a minute to take these photos. While I enjoyed some sunshine, before heading back to the office (and another meeting), I remembered a quilt block I'd made for a friend several years ago, long before I'd even thought of moving to this area, that bears an uncanny resemblance to the blooms in my yard .



Isn't it interesting how we're drawn to the same shapes and design elements over and over again?

Crazy Aunt Purl Explains It All

Lately I've been thinking about how how best to share my life's journey over the past month ... when I have been woefully absent from the page and disconnected from friends. After reading Crazy Aunt Purl's astrological forcast for June, I think it might be easier to blame it on the stars.

About scorpios, she says, in part:

I heard it through the Pissed-Off-At-Astrology Grapevine that Scorpios were really unhappy with the way most of last month went.

That would be an understatment. But it does feel as I've come through it and my life now has some of the qualities of a fresh start--or as Aunt Purl notes:

The best thing about you and June is your real willingness to try new things to revitalize your life. It's rare that ya'll don't dissect through the consequences or results of all your actions, and this month you will feel liberated and (mostly) care-free, willing to travel to a new place, meet new people, all of it with a who-knows-what-could-happen attitude.

If you're a knitter--or even if you're not--check out Crazy Aunt Purl ... she's a very entertaining writer and wise astrologer ;-)

Portraits Among the Pages

Faced with hundreds and hundreds of 8 1/2 by 11 inch page-sized Journal Quilts at IQF Spring show in Chicago, it's interesting to look back over my photos and notice what caught my eye. The portraits definitely pulled me in. Here are a sampling of styles, made by ...

Deirdre Abbotts and Pamela Allen:



Michele David and Patty Gamberg:



Denise A. Hitzfield and Diane Kopec:



Lampi-Legaree and Kathy Nida:



Linda S. Schmidt and Louisa L. Smith:



Synnov Vanar and Sue Wilson:



There are more faces in the pages in my photos of selected quilts from the Journal Quilt Project exhibit, beginning --> here in Flickr.

Celebrate Spring

Breeze
Originally uploaded by jeansophie.

This quilt, Breeze, made by Rachel Wetzler of St. Charles, Illinois was the viewers' choice winner from the Celebrate Spring exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Chicago a week ago.

I've uploaded my photos from this exhibit to a Flickr ... with more from the show to come (have I mentioned that I took many hundreds of photos this year?)

A Full Blown Tulip Catches My Eye

When this adventure began, I had no idea what that interesting block I noticed in Nancy Rink's quilt, Cocheco Star of Bethlehem, was called. The quilt was hanging in the IQF Spring show in Chicago, as part of the exhibit, In the American Tradition IV. The notes said that the design source was an antique quilt featured in QNM that caught her eye. What caught my eye was this interesting block design.


I knew the quilters in the hand-piecing discussion on the Quilting Forum on about.com would be interested, too. So I shared these photos.

Becky almost immediately identified it as the block known as Full Blown Tulip and before long had drafted the block and templates. Here's her first outline drawing and a link to her sample block in her WebShots album.

Gail shared a link to an antique quilt with a similar block, which prompted me to google for more. I found a quilt with another variation of the block on the Quilt Collection page of the Rochester Museum and Science Center web site and another on a quilter's blog, Scraps and Threadtales. I even found templates online for the Full Blown Template block, also known as the Strawberry here.

I even found an excerpt from the out-of-print, 1929 book, Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them, on Amazon. The author, Ruth E. Finley is quoted in one of the customer supplied reviews:

Describing Pennsylvania Dutch quilts within the context of the drabness of the Pennsylvania Dutch woman's existence she says, ...it may have been some unconsciously craved compensation for the drab monotony of their days that caused the women of these households to evolve quilt patterns so intricate. Only a soul in desperate need of nervous outlet could have conceived and executed, for instance, the "Full Blown Tulip"...It is a perfect accomplishment from a needlework standpoint, yet hideous (she describes it in detail and goes on): This green-red-lemon-orange combination is enough to set a blind man's teeth on edge...

Wikipedia Spawns a Meme

I just read this on Jules blog and loved it. You put your birth month and day into the search on Wikipedia. It spits out a list of events, births and deaths throughout the years that occurred on your birthday. Here are some of mine, from November 8:

Events:

• 1519 - Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with great pomp as would befit a returning god.
• 1793 - In Paris, the French Revolutionary government opens the Louvre to the public as a museum.
• 1960 - U.S. presidential election, 1960: John F. Kennedy is elected over Richard M. Nixon, becoming the youngest man elected to that office. Election day often falls on my birthday, among others, in 1864: Abraham Lincoln is reelected, in 1892: Grover Cleveland is elected, in 1932: Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover in a landslide victory, and in 1988: George H. W. Bush is elected.

Births:

• 1836 - Milton Bradley, American lithographer and game manufacturer (d. 1911)
• 1900 - Margaret Mitchell, American author (d. 1949)
• 1949 - Bonnie Raitt, American singer

Deaths:

• 1674 - John Milton, English poet (b. 1608)
• 1887 - Doc Holliday, American gambler and gunfighter (b. 1851)
• 1978 - Norman Rockwell, American illustrator (b. 1894)

Anyone else want to play?

Signs of Spring

Last week, Spring arrived at 28 degrees.

I was determined to start walking to work again, and bundled up and made the trip downtown to the office, about a mile and a half each way, twice. I remember noticing the temperature on the bank that's across the street from that capitol: 28 degrees on the first day of spring. It was a very bleak.

But tonight, in the garden, I saw this and finally felt I'd seen a real sign of Spring.


It's simply amazing how giddy-happy these little buds made me feel. I came inside and prepared a feast of pasta primavera, opened a bottle of chardonay and started looking forward to gardening, meals on the deck and naps in the hammock.

Confessions of a Swapaholic

Soon after I began quilting, I discovered online quilting groups and swapping. I loved scrap quilts and built a scrappy stash swapping 4-inch strips and 10-inch squares. I made blocks and swapped them, too ... and before long I was hosting swaps of my own.

Since re-starting the Beginner Block Lotto last fall, my swapping has slowed considerably, but sometimes I can't resist the idea of making blocks to swap for others' efforts. I love to see the often unexpected choices others make in their interpretation of the same block or theme. I love the wonderful, scrappy quilts that come from these blocks. Even when the blocks don't find their way into a quilt right away, I don't mind, because I enjoy the process and the friendship I've found in these swaps.

This weekend I was making Not Quite Bow Tie blocks for a swap. I joined this swap because, I rationalized, a "clean out your stash" type activity would be good for my stash. I created a little challenge for myself by building blocks that reflected various color wheel combinations. The only guideline for the swap is that the large squares must be RED--not an easy color for me. But here are my attempts at: monochrome, analogous, direct and split complements and triad. It was fun