With A Little Help From My Friend...

I put this quilt top together several winters ago. It was the first in my 'winter color' phase and the pattern and fabrics are by Kaffe Fassett. The pattern is called New Orleans Star. I have not really been able to capture the beautiful colors here...sludgy greens and mauves. I had been holding onto this top waiting to quilt it. Recently I decided that in order to move ahead with my own ideas, I needed to get help with finishing some of these tops.


So I gave this one to my good friend, Veronica Nurmi, machine quilter extraordinare. She did a fantastic job with it, designing her own quilting patterns and then working with a beautiful green thread on her Juki. (She is the one who talked me into buying my Juki and I have to say I have NOT been disappointed.) So now this quilt will go into the house to be used and enjoyed. It's nice to see it again. Hopefully more of my stack of tops will get finished now that I have a little help from my friend!

Last Night's View

Dealing with Denial

The last day or so I've been doing a lot of ripping. Ripping out seams in a project from long ago. It began when I was thinking about starting a new project. I thought I might want to recycle or reuse something as a base to start it. I remembered this quilt top I had finished several years ago that didn't turn out right. That out of frustration I'd thrown into a bag with other tops to be quilted "when I had extra time".


It's a complicated pattern. Lots of paper piecing and curved seams. Beautiful colors. When I first put it together all was well until I got to the corners, that's where denial set in. I was on fire with this project. Everything was going well, I could visualize the finished piece with quilting and all. I'd already bought the thread and had the quilting pattern worked out in my mind. But I wasn't present, my mind running on ahead and it blinded me to the fact that on that first corner things were not working. But I pushed on, confident that I could 'fix' it if things got out of hand. And boy, they did. Once the finished top was laid out it was so distorted that I later nicknamed it 'The Parachute'. I realized that I couldn't fix it and I moved on to something else. I chalked it up as a learning experience.


So yesterday I pulled this top out of the bag and laid it out and ironed it. I thought "I can fix it...put a few pleats in here, cut some fabric out there". But I realized that once again...I was in denial. I had to buckle down to the hard work of ripping apart what had taken days to sew and to reconstruct each corner. As I spent time with my seam ripper, I thought about how denial keeps us from seeing things clearly. In quilting and in life. It makes us do things we wouldn't ordinarily do if we were thinking straight. It keeps us avoiding the hard work. Looks like I have some hard work ahead, but enjoyable now. I feel like I'm putting things right. I wish most situations in life were just a matter of ripping out a few threads and straightening a seam.

Persian Star Revisited

You may remember seeing this quilt a year ago on this blog. If not, check here. Well I guess January is the time I go through my UFO box and see if there's anything in there that still has my interest, and I came across this. I decided that I really did need to figure out what the heck was wrong with this thing and get it finished so I could quilt it. After spending time looking at it, looking at the pattern, I discovered that the two side borders were each missing a block at the bottom. Hmmm...that's why I had two extra blocks...go figure. So I sewed those on, voila! One vertical border fit perfectly. The other didn't, it was too short. Then I fitted the top and bottom borders, same deal. One fit, one was too short. By about an inch in both cases. No, I was not going to go on a 'rip and resew' fest. So I decided my only option was to add more fabric at each end, center the border between it, and applique the border on. Of course I could not find the two fabrics I needed in my nightmare of a stash, so I went to my last ditch, go to place--my scrap box. After scrounging up enough scraps, piecing them together and finally sewing everything together, it was 4 hours later and finished. Now on to the layering and pinning...*sigh*...maybe another day...

Third Round of 2010/11 Complex Cloth

I have to admit that I haven't gotten much done in the studio the last few weeks. We've had a glorious break in the weather with daytime temps in the upper 50s and 60s and lots of sunshine. The nights are still quite cool, getting down to the teens and twenties with lots of frost. So I've been trying to spend as much time outside as possible before the 'big storm' that's supposed to hit on Monday and break this pattern of weather nirvana. *sigh*


I did spend some time in the studio working on this cloth for the next round in the Complex Cloth Round Robin I'm participating in. Another beautiful piece of dying by Jacque and Gisela. The previous layer was accomplished with snow dying and black dye, so I guess I had snow on the brain when I opened this package. Much of the patterning on the cloth reminded me of snowflakes and I just couldn't get that image out of my mind, so I decided to define it with more 'literal' snowflake images. I used a screen from Lyric Kinard's design collection and screened with Jacquard's Lumiere Metallic Silver.


I'm really happy with the outcome of this...was thinking this would make a lovely curtain or room divider if it was a little bigger...


Here's some playing around with different colors trying to decide which one(s) to use. Hmmm...in the end going with a simple color seemed best for this technicolor cloth. It's now off to the next person and I'm waiting to see what's passed to me next. So far I am loving the challenge of working on these diverse and beautiful pieces of cloth...

Round 2

This week I finished up my second piece in the Complex Cloth Round Robin. Above is a piece of bamboo/cotton blend fabric dyed by the amazing Jacque Davis for the first layer. I totally fell in love with this fabric from the moment it arrived. I had so many ideas that I could have used, but ended up with the idea of stenciling trails of small bubbles on the fabric to complement its watery theme.

I made a stencil out of reinforced brown kraft paper, by burning with an incense stick then sealing with numerous coats of gel medium. Once the stencil was ready, I used a mixture of Jacquard's Lumiere in metallic turquoise and metallic purple. A little extender made the paint flow easier and toned down the metallic part.

I was really happy with how this cloth turned out and I plan to try to make a similar one this spring when the weather warms up enough for dying. Hurry up summer!!!

Most Recent Completion

Now that Christmas is over I can show the project I've been working on over the last six months. This is a wedding gift for the oldest son and his new wife.


I started on it last summer, but got sidetracked with deadlines on other projects so decided to finish it off for a holiday gift for the two of them. It is 54" square and made from the numerous Asian fabrics I had in my stash. Most of these fabrics are old. Purchased in the 90s when I had just started sewing and was wanting to do an Asian quilt (which I never did). The edges really are straight, these photos are taken on a clothesline outside on a breezy day.


I really enjoyed working on this one, despite the issues I had while quilting the inner border which is made out of gold dupioni silk. I'm looking forward to seeing it displayed in their house, but I think this is the best view of it.