Yee Haw!!! It's Rodeo Time!!!!





Houston really starts to rally when the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo comes to town -- it brings millions of dollars to scholars - plus it's just a LOT of fun! And rodeo time... reminds me it's time to have fun, which means it's time to sew. Over the past two months, I've tried hard to focus on sewing... and relaxing... and sewing some more... and so finally, I have a few things to show you. First of all, I've always wanted to make a crazy quilt and I've been saving fabric and ideas for ten years. Finally, I figured out that instead of waiting for the perfect set of ideas to materialize in my head (no pun intended!), I should just make a ton of fans and put a different stich down each fan blade and embroider some sort of motif in the area outside of the fan. Below is my first one... with half of a fuschia blossom done. I think I bit off more than I can chew with this project -- embroidery is not for the faint of heart... it reminded me of why I gave up counted cross stitch. For the amount of time it takes me to finish a 12" block, I could make a whole quilt! Nonetheless, all of my fans are done, so working on the stitching of the fan blades... over many, many months, one stitch at a time, will ultimately give me my long-sought-after crazy quilt!



 The next picture is another very simple sawtooth star - I gave instructions for it in my November 30, 2011 post.  These stars are simple and fun to do - and they are great for using up scraps.  You can see one finished star below - along with a stack of pre-cut units for making a little over a dozen more stars.  I cut up my scraps as I go, so that I always have some stars ready to sew.  What am I going to do with all these stars?  I don't know yet, but I better hurry and figure it out...

Because I have a stack of 50 FINISHED star blocks to go with the unfinished ones.  Somehow, I don't think using them is going to be a problem!

I also found time this past month to resume working on my Block of the Week blocks -- making one block a week for a whole year gives me 52 blocks.  Somewhere around block 39, though, I fell off the wagon and stopped sewing these blocks.  And to make matters worse, I have not been making one block a week... I've been making one block a DAY... so at the end of the year, if all had gone well, I would have over 350 finished blocks!  Back to block 39... I finished that set of 7 and started on the next set.  Here's the first one... I am terrible at precision piecing except I know how to turn any block into a paper-pieced block which is what I did with all of the blocks.  So here's the first one....

and here's the other six that I made using the same pattern.  It's pretty nifty to see how one pattern can look so different depending on color, pattern, value... it's an interesting combination to see what I end up with when I'm fnished!

 Here's another one of the blocks....
 

And here are its six siblings in different fabrics.  This is where you can really start to see some differences in the background fabric and the star prints!

And here are another six blocks; the seventh is a duplicate of one of them, so I didn't squeeze it into this set of pictures.

But below are the almost 300 blocks I've finished so far...  I'll use some in a scrappy quilt; some will

become borders in quilts, some will go into my guild's auction... and who knows where the rest will go?!

So what else have I been working on?  I've got a new quilt in the works.  See it below?  You can see how I tape little fabric swatches onto each pattern so I can keep straight which fabrics go with which block.  This will be a scrappy red and green quilt -- half applique and half pieced. 

 

Once I have the fabrics chosen, I like to batch them together so I don't lose track of what they are for.  You can see below that I've got all the fabric batched together for five different 15-inch star blocks -- I'm ready to roll at this point!

 

I really got rolling on the applique blocks over the past two months - there will be 8 applique blocks, 5 pieced blcoks, and a dozen corner/side setting triangles.  Here's the only block I've finished so far.

 

This one is finished except for sewing down all those circles.  If you look closely, you can see all the "tail threads" which I'll use to sew the circles on with. 

 

Here is the third block; it too has a lot of tail tyhreads that I'll be using to sew down the pomegranate circles.  I also have e of the gold flowers left to applique in place -- you can see here that I prepare all of my units, baste them in place, and then go back and needle-turn applique them onto the background fabric.

And this poor fifth block -- it's just covered in wooly tail threads, with all those berries based in place and ready to stitch down! 

 

This block is not as done as it might look - you can see that the green "spikes" are sewn down on the left side flower and the lower left corner....and the circles are ready to stitch in place on the center flowers, once they are sewn in place.
 

These next three blocks have a lot of stitching left to do on them - this one needs berries packed onto all of those empty stems.

And this one needs a ton of berries, too -- at least these are sewn and ready to stitch down, though!

 

This last block has a lot of work left to do -- only one corner is basted and ready to sew - the others still have work ahead, as do all the red side flowers.  Andonce the spikey leaves and flowers are in place, there are a ton of flowers that need to be finished.  Sigh.... 
 

I get a lot of my sewing done by putting zip-lock bags together with berries ready to stitch... these go with me on doctor appointments, bee meetings, or just about any other trip out of the house.  Note that my bags have more than needle, thread, scissors, and berries...  I have my note card with a list of things to do... a magnetic "Needle Nest" to keep my needles from slipping around in the baggies and poking me, and somewhere in that bag is an extra pack of needles.  You can see that I organize things so that I rarely miss a beat:  I can always make a teeny bit of progress even on a very busy day!

My 13 blocks will all be set on point, requiring setting triangles to be placed along the side and corners of the quilt center.  Here is the on-point applique design... 

 

and here is the first half-started setting tirangles...  I think I'm really going to like how these look around the quilt's edge!

 
You might ask... but what is she doing for the pieced blocks?  I'm making my own version of a feathered star.  With some clever twisting of triangles, the star will look almost like it has a halo of traingles in its center.  The paper piecing foundations are ready to go... I just need time, time, and more time.  Leap Year day gives me an extra 24 hours... I suppose I should be thankful for it, but it just made me want ANOTHER extra day this year!  Okay, so I lied.  I want an extra day every week....

 

I can't show you the project I spent most of the last half of December working on, along with the first half of January... but here's a teeny tiny hint...  Maybe I'll give you another little hint before the cover is pulled off the entire project; this is a quilt that will be shown in the June issue of Quiltmaker magazine!

 

The above hint is obviously part of a papercut block... which brings me back to Sarah's Revival, the papercut quilt I recently finished.  I'm in the process of hand-quilting it and just finished quiltng the first block using 3/4" cross-hatching.  Hand-quilting is SO relaxing for me - I love it! 

Here's the border - I love how quilting really does make a quilt come alive!  I generally buy 2-3 quilt stencils at every major quilt show I go to, so I have quite a collection of stencils to choose from when I decide which motifs I want to include in a quilt.  The important thing to remember about using stencils is you do not have to use the WHOLE stencil each time you use it -- in the quilt below, the scalloped shell between the swags is part of a much larger stencil - but I only used the scallop portion of the stencil.

Below you can see the quilting in the corner of the quilt.  I love how it looks!

Remember back in November when I showed you a tulip challenge quilt?  Several members of a bee I'm in decided to use a late 1800s twleve-inch red and green tulip block, and remake it however we wished.  I've seen MANY combinations of enlarging, shrinking, re-coloring, etc. of this tulip vase block.  For my own quilt, I enlarged the 12-inch block and turned it into a 36-inch block... and then made four of them using teal blue, red, gold and cheddar!  By the time I was done, I was not a happy camper - the block was too twirpy  - read: ugly - for my tastes.  I decided that I needed to take the primitiveness of the block (which is what happens when you supersize them!) and lift it out of the gutter by adding a very formal, structured, elegant background of quilting.  Here is the pre-quilted quilt top....

And here is the quilt, complete with 1-inch and 1/2-inch cross hatch quilting.  Doesn't it make a difference in the look of the quilt?!!
 

Here's another view..... 

 

And here is the whole quilt...  The quilting really made a difference by adding a formal texture to an informal applique pattern.  I was quite surprised at the difference and now I'm ready to start another quilting project like this!  The key to quilting with a longarm (for me) is to quilt it like you would like to see it hand-quilted.  Don't take shortcuts and give it a fast whirl... add what you would have added if you'd quilted it by hand!
 

And now... we're at the end of the trail for this month.  A hundred Salt Grass Trail Riders came clippety-clopping down the road where I live last week, so I know the rodeo is in town  and it's time to keep on sewing! 



Best wishes and happy sewing to all--
Sue Garman

(c)2012 Susan H. Garman

 

Uh-oh! It's That Time of the Month Again!

Yes, it's time to make a new posting, as it's the first of the month.  I must confess that I am way behind on just about EVERYTHING, so I am going to again post photos from the International Quilt Show held in Houston last November.  Not that those are second to anything else I'd post; I love the quilts that hang at the Houston quilt show - The show is overwhelming, wonderful, exhausting, unbelievable, and more!  In the meantime, before I post photos and comment on them, I promise to do better planning and more picture-taking in February so that on the first of March I can show you all of the things that I've been working on lately.

And one more thing...  I invite you to go back and take a look at the January posting.  Brenda Gael Smith was kind enough to give me some links that you might want to check out.  If you go to www.twelveby12.org, you will find photos and artist statements on all 288 quilts in the Theme Series and Colorplay series.  These are 12 inch square quilts that are all nothing short of stunning in terms of techniacl merit, creativity, and design.  Both of these exhibits will be on display at the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati April 13-15 of this year, as well as in Long Beach, CA on July 27-29.  The Theme quilts (144 of them, to be exact!) are featured in a book that contains extensive background information about the Twelve by 12 project.  You can check it all out at www.tinyurl.com/12x12book.  These quilts will challenge you with their originality!

For now, though, let's take a look at some other quilts that hung in the Houston show.  These are all landscape and naturescape quilts - I love these quilts but rarely have time to do pictoral quitls any more -- though these quilts inspire me to make time!  This first quilt, below, is called Peaceful Sunset at Nara and was made by Michiyo Yamamoto of Chicago, Illinois.  She says that the sunset, over an early capital of Japan, "is amazingly peaceful.  Each second, it seems the sky changes to bright yellow, then orange, then red.  Birds cross the horzon on the way back home."  Michiyo dyed kimono silk to make this quilt.  I love how she reflects the landscape across the water.

In Butterfly Garden, Ellen Anne Eddy of Porter, Indiana, used free-motion embroidery, machine applique/quilting, and oil stick rubbing to make her quilt -- and includes hand-dyed fabric along with a wonderful assortment of threads to embellish the quilt.  Can't you just feel Spring bursting forth when you look at this quilt?!

In Gyotaku Fish, Karen Huggler of Columbia, Missouri was inspired by a Japanese technique of fish printing called gyotaku.  She used commercial and hand-carved stamps to make the stamped images, which were further enhanced with paint and threadwork, and then free-motion quilted.  Finally, bobbin work and decorative threads were added to complete the quilt.  Quilters like Karen are masters of incorporating unique methods into quiltmaking - from Lumiere paints, inks, couched threads and ribbons to photo transfer, trapunto, and an assortment of applique methods.  Her work showcases her multiple talents well!

Sara Sharp of Austin, Texas, chose to create a sun-printed fabric using bird feathers as the sky in Birds Sing Because They Believe in Spring.  Sara is drawn to bird images because, as a bird watcher, they always show hope for the next spring and inspire her with their graceful flight and freedom.  Note that Sara built the bird nest out of fabric "twigs."  The detail in Sara's bird is amazing!

I love this next quilt, by Suzanne Kistler of Visalia, California.  Through the Waters  was inspired by a 2006 Class V rafting trip where Suzanne thought she was going to die after falling out of the raft twice.  Her quilt thanks God for carrying her through the waters.  Notice how Suzanne captures the weight of those huge rocks and the wildness of the river while using minimal fabrics and piecing.  I believe that sometimes we tend to "overdo" images in pictoral art, and this is a perfect example of how minimal applique works well!  Suzanne added extensive beading to convey the sparkle of the whitewater.

In The Meadow, Betty Busby of Albuquerque, New Mexico, commemorates a trip to British Columbia.  She used silk painting, paint stick, turned edge applique, fused applique, thread painting, and machine quilting to make her quilt.  Again, here is an example of how simplicity captures the essence of a quiet meadow beneath a cloudy sky.   



Pat Durbin of Eureka, California, captured a scene and a mood at Glacier National Park in Lift Your Eyes to the Hills.  As in the quilt above, much of the quilt is painted.  I am always intrigued when a scene is reflected onto water-- everything has to be subdued and reversed.  In addition, Pat manages to portray the lake bed - that's not easy to do well!

If you've ever hiked the Appalchian Trail, you may have come across Mayapples.  In Mayapples, Terry Kramzar of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, builds a memory of the delightful surprise of blooms hiding beneath the canopy of Mayapple trees. 

In this close-up of Mayapples, if you look carefully, you can see how Terry has used a wide variety of threads and stitching to enhance her gorgeous quilt.  Threadwork like this does much to add meaningful texture to a quilt top.

Mary Ann Hildebrand of Comfort, Texas (I love the names of Texas towns!) took a picture of cypress trees along a creek and made Cypress Sentinels.  She used a scrunched fabric technique (which she learned in a Judy Sisneros workshop) and the styles of Cynthia England and Ruth McDowell in making this quilt -- and appliqued the leaves closest to the viewer to ensure they looked more realistic.  What makes this quilt so lovely, in my mind, is the definition she gave to the tree trunks (along with the uneven border at the top) -- the coloration of the trunks is wonderful - as well as the ground beneath the trees.  Good job, Mary Ann!

Here is another quilt that captures the texture of tree trunks and the rough bark.  In Grounded, Doria Goocher of San Diego, California, explored bias line design. In her words, "Grounded evolved from the idea of a tree's roots being strong, growing deep, and seeking individual directions while remaining part of the whole."  Consider how Doria captures the texture in her piece through a wide variety of color and prints in her trunk - and how she chooses to separate these with handmade bias.

Gay Ousley of Abilene, Texas, toured Japanese Gardens in Portland, Oregon, when she was being courted by her husband.  She had a photo of a waterfall -- and the colors called to her -- and the texture drew her in.  You can almost hear the falling water in this quiet quilt called Portland Reflection.

This next quilt is quite different in "weight" and style.  Carol Taylor of Pittsford, New York, used transparent organza leaves and berries, appliqued with satin stitching on a background, and quilted extensively to create more texture, in Bountiful.  I love the overlay of different transparent organza fabrics; it adds such depth!

Weeping Dorothea by Ann Harwell of Wendell, North Carolina, chose a 100-year old weeping cherry as her subject.  The tree is at the Dorothea Dix Hospital, founded in 1856 as North Carolina's first hospital dedicated to the treatment of mental illness.  It sits on a hill in south Raleigh, overlooking downtown.  The hospital is being slowly decomminssioned and the patients and staff relocated.  Notice how Ann has pieced the sky - isn't it lovely?  Whenever I hear quilting and mental illness in the same breath, I am reminded that the father of occupational therapy, Dr. Duntan, used quiltng as therapy for his "nervous ladies."  I'm not surprised; I've often referred to my quilts as my "therapy!"

Based on a photograph, Daphne Green's Looking West recalls a sunset seen on a 30th anniversary weekend vacation on Vancouver Island.  Daphne says the quilt reminds her of three things she holds dear:  her husband, trees, and ocean views.  Look at how Daphne has pieced the sky with squares set on point... and made the borders look just like an actual picure frame.  What I notice about so many of these naturescape quilts is that thread is a critical component of the composition - as is a combination of commercial and hand-dyed and painted fabrics. 

 Inspired by photographs, Peggy Spitzer and Lori Olek of Fargo, North Dakota, created Sentinels of Fall.  The quilt started with a hand-painted background and bindings.  Notice how the paint fades from gold to blue as your eye moves from left to right.  It adds a sense of the sun rising.  Also used to make this quilt were Tsukineko inks, water-soluble crayons, and colored pencils.  Lori used 28 different threads in quilting Sentinels.  I love the soft tones used in this quilt.

Melinda Bula of El Dorado Hills, California, says "I love to visit gardens whenever I am on the road.  I was teaching and lecturing in southern California and my friend, Nick, too me to Huntington Gardens in Pasadena early one morning.  The shadows on the water lilies' pond cast blue and turquoise reflections on the water.  It reminded me of Monet."  Melinda hand-dyed most of the fabrics used in this quilt.  Note the wavy lines of the water; they add so much to the vision of Monet's lilies.

Added to the wiggly-lined applique is Melinda's wiggly-line quilting that adds texture and a sense of movement to the water and a sense of texture to the lily pads.  I love the colors Melinda has chosen, too!

That's all for this month -- there are so many inspirational quiltmakers to see when you go to a quilt show.  I hope this little tour has inspired you!

Until next month, happy quilting.  I hope to show you some progress on a new red and green quilt I'm working on, as well as more quilting on my Sarah's Revival quilt and a (surprise!) quilt that I made for a quilt magazine article.  Also, blocks, blocks, and more blocks!!!!  It's not like I have been sitting still... I just don't have time to pull the camera up to snap photos!

See you in March -
Sue

(C)Susan H. Garman 2012