Fresh Eyes

Yesterday I retrieved my un-sold quilts and began packing each one for shipment, so that when an order does come through, the quilt will only need a receipt, a shipping label and of course a box in which to travel to its new owner. The quilt will have already been neatly rolled and tied on a hollow core, and sealed thoroughly in plastic to prevent any possible water damage during shipment. When this is done, I can cut my estimated shipping time from the current 3 to 5 business days, down to 2 days. That's good for sales.

However, the third quilt I pulled out of the closet gave me pause. I'd long had a nagging feeling about this particular quilt...that, for some reason, it wasn't going to sell. Which was a disturbing thought, as I had put an extraordinary amount of embellishment on it (mostly free-motion machine embroidery) and was fairly pleased with the result.

Or was I?

The Overlook

Lying there on the table after months of being hidden away in the closet, the quilt presented itself to a more objective eye on my part, and I started thinking, Maybe I should just keep this one and find someplace to hang it here in the house...but where? The basement? NO. No way am I relegating something I worked so hard to make beautiful to a place where dirty clothes are washed and cats use their litter pans.

Then I zeroed in on something. I had never been entirely thrilled with the foliage in the distance, across the river bend. That lilac-like color, for one...it wasn't quite the look I'd been going for. It just didn't make sense for summer-into-fall foliage. Even my husband had commented on it back when I first finished it. And looking at it with fresh eyes, I noticed other parts of that distant foliage I didn't like. It just didn't look leafy enough. Too blob-like. Almost cartoon-like.

And that's when the Muse was freed up. (I hadn't realized I was holding her prisoner all this time.) The paint markers came out, and twenty minutes later the lilac color was masked, and all the "blobs" were more leafy. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the quilt was ready to go back into the queue of those waiting to be sold---and I was feeling grateful it had never left the house in its previous condition! So there was a lesson (which I'm probably not the first landscape quilter to learn): If something doesn't seem good enough to hang anywhere but my own wall, what is there to lose by changing it?

It may not look perfect, but I like it a lot better. And that goes a long way toward the possibility of someone else liking it as well.

Coincidentally or not, I just had cataract surgery. Here's to fresh eyes!

Linda

Someone Else's Design

Last year, I decided to try a different (for me) method of landscape quilting, and pulled my copy of art quilter Cathy Geier's Lovely Landscape Quilts off the shelf and started cutting and auditioning fabric strips. (Click on photos to enlarge.) This would be my first (and so far, only) time making a landscape quilt based on someone else's design.

The project came to a sudden halt when my machine went in the shop for four months, followed by the holidays, followed by a two-week bout with the flu for both me and VVHH, followed by his knee replacement and recovery. We're not quite back to our normal schedule, but there has finally been a little time in the studio to pick up where I left off (after a delayed finish for my Wyoming landscape quilt--see last post). 

Using one of the beautiful background designs in Cathy's book, I first sewed sky and mountain strips to a piece of fusible interfacing and a piece of tear-away stabilizer. The same was done for the water and foreground.

Lots of thread colors were needed
to blend in with the strips.

Since I chose to use raw-edge strips (no seams), each edge was zigzag-stitched. This proved to be tedious but necessary, as even after that, several pesky ravelings eventually popped up and had to be clipped. I still prefer that to seaming the strips.


The two halves of the quilt top were then joined by satin-stitching the water line. Then the sailboat applique was cut and pieced using Cathy's full-size pattern, which is included in the book along with some other applique patterns.


The sail edges were meant to be turned under, but again I chose raw-edge applique instead---forgetting my sails would consequently be a little too long for the mast. I compensated by zigzagging an extension of the mast top in white thread (not shown in the photo), which worked pretty well.
    Then it was time to tear off the stabilizer on the back. The quilted texture wouldn't have been nearly as obvious with that much stiffness left in the sandwich.

Deciding to spare my neck and shoulders as much strain as possible, I chose some decorative machine stitches for the quilting, so that the dual feed foot could do the work of moving the quilt. Only a bit of free motion stitching was done, some of it while using quilting rulers, where painters tape marked my stopping point at the arc of the sun's rays.

A sandy beach was added between the water and land, and shredded polyester batting served as foam at the water's edge, secured by white tulle and clear mono-poly thread.

A variegated boucle yarn was machine-couched
for some definition between the sand and the grasses.

The quilt needed more action, so two other sailboats and two eagles were cut and fused from fabrics in my stash. Clear mono-poly thread was used to quilt them, along with the large boat.

So here's the finished quilt...

...and a photo angle that shows the texture better.

Again, the background (except for the beach and waves) and the large boat are from Cathy Geier's Lovely Landscape Quilts. Detailed instructions and the applique pattern are in the book, and you can embellish the quilt as much as you want. All this one needs now is a label.

As mentioned before, my main sewing machine spent 4 months in the shop last year. I live in the South, yet on the first full day of spring this year, all of our kitchen appliances and one TV were fried when a tree branch bearing eight inches of heavy, unseasonable snow snapped a ground wire coming into the house---but my sewing machine survived! The surge-suppressor power strip it was plugged into did its job and died protecting the machine. Same for all the computers and other televisions in the house. Surge-suppressor power strips are well worth the investment, waaaaayy cheaper than replacing or repairing computers and appliances. Yes, we fortunately are covered by homeowner's insurance, but there's still the deductible to pay.

Have a great week, and here's wishing you true spring weather!

Linda

Wyoming Whimsy

This week, it's a finish for the Wyoming quilt. Yay!!

I didn't realize the camera was slightly tilted--which makes the top of the quilt look a bit wider than the bottom. Be assured it's perfectly square. (I'll take a better shot of it for the Etsy shop.)

Here are a couple of zoomed-in views.

This quilt is based on a photo taken by my daughter-in-law, Shannon, at String Lake in Wyoming last year. Here's the original...

...and here's the saturated version I used for color inspiration. The colors I put in the quilt are a little over-the-top for me, almost fantasy-like; hence the quilt title, Wyoming Whimsy:

Many thanks to Shannon. I had been floundering for landscape quilt inspiration at the time, and was thrilled to get her permission to use the photo.





While pressing the binding toward the edges (before hand-sewing the back), I used these finger/thumb protectors for the first time. I've never burned my fingers doing this task, but have come pretty close a couple of times, so was glad to have found this product in Nancy's Notions catalog.

And speaking of Nancy's Notions...in case anyone hasn't heard yet, we lost Nancy Zieman--master seamstress, quilter and teacher, and longtime TV host of PBS's Sewing With Nancy--to cancer on November 14, 2017.

She will be missed not only by her family and friends, but by hordes of people who never even met her--including me. You see, my introduction to landscape quilting came through Nancy's show one memorable October day in 2009. And I've relied on her garment-sewing expertise for decades. What a teacher, and what a lady. Thank you, Nancy.

Enjoy your weekend!

Linda

Getting Back on Track

It seems almost anti-climactic to say my main machine is back, following a stay in the repair shop that lasted from August 9 until almost Christmas. By that time there wasn't much opportunity to quilt, with all the holiday prep and celebration going on and the sea of wrapping paper and Christmas storage boxes covering every surface in the studio.

Then on New Year's Eve the flu came to stay for about 10 days. But this past week, work has resumed at last. Yay!!

One quilt did get made on my vintage Singer during fall season, but was waiting for a finishing touch. As soon as the big machine came back I sewed one of its decorative stitches, a tiny evergreen tree, in the middle of each block, and the quilt was ready in time for Christmas.

Then, during the week between Christmas and New Year, before the flu struck, the Wyoming landscape, previously pieced and waiting for the machine's return, was quilted. (These landscapes are too big and too stiff to quilt on a regular-size machine, so this one had sat waiting for a couple of months.)

Next time I post, this will have been bordered, steam-blocked and bound...in other words, DONE!!! My first finished landscape quilt in 5 months.

Feels so good to say that. Landscape quilting is my passion, and I haven't felt like myself for some time now, with this forced hiatus. The one saving grace--and thank goodness for it--was that my interest in knitting has revived, big-time. But it feels great to be getting my quilting bearings again. There are some other pieced projects that were also waiting for the machine, so time to get moving on those, too.

Have a great weekend!

Linda