Water, Water, Everywhere

Didn't think I would get to post this week, but found some time today to say there has been some progress on the lake quilt. The progress is hard to see in this photo, because all I've worked on is the water...and there's a whole lot of it.

The water in the upper half of the quilt (where you don't see pins anymore) has been free-motion quilted. Kind of hard to see here, but that's ok, because I want the water fabric to speak for itself.

That said, I had a heck of a time choosing the threads for it. I started out with this conglomeration:

But trying to figure out, much less mark, where all of the sections of these colors would meet up or overlap, just drove me crazy. And then I remembered all the gorgeous, variegated thread my friend Janet gave me for Christmas (in a beautiful fabric basket she'd made). Tada.....!!!


(Bad) early photo of lake quilt inside transparent vinyl, marked 'light' and 'dark' with dry-erase markers.

These spools are 'Rainbows' by Superior Threads. Oh. My. Gosh. The way they stitch out (sorry, I'm a novice with them, so excuse my enthusiasm)...incredibly beautiful. This photo doesn't really do them justice.

What it does show clearly, along with the photo below, is something I hadn't encountered with any other landscape quilt. This one is larger than any others I've made, so the scale of the quilting needed to be larger, meaning keeping the stitching lines further apart, as well (or so I was thinking). Also, the background (water) fabric is not stabilized and is of course the first layer of fabric atop the batting. So, long story short...I wasn't prepared for the soft puckering that occurred between the lines of stitching.

The reassuring thing is, after the rest of the elements--rocks, turtles, grass, etc.--are quilted, there will be the option of adding more stitching to the water. That should diminish, if not eliminate, the puckering (and some people don't really mind puckering--it's just not something I'm used to with all of my previous, denser quilting using polyester batting). Even so, one thing to keep in mind is that the density of the overall quilting needs to be fairly consistent. Otherwise the quilt can end up with some narrow sections and some wide sections---and by the time you square all of that up, your landscape may look totally out of proportion! Not good.

At any rate, quilting is coming to a halt here for a couple of weeks. The next two days will be spent doing laundry and packing, and Monday I'll head out with my son and daughter-in-law to visit her family in Jackson, Wyoming--a part of the country I've never seen. Yesterday a friend said to me, "Oh Linda, you won't believe how beautiful it is there," so I'm more excited than ever about taking my camera for new landscape quilt inspiration. Whoop whoop!

Taken this week at the house of a family friend in WY

Everyone have a wonderful weekend, and try to stay cool. It was ninety-five degrees yesterday here in Kentucky. Wyoming should be a bit cooler, but with the weird weather everywhere these days, who knows? Crossing my fingers, as hiking and rafting--more water!!--are on the schedule. Whoop whoop again! :) And that's my segue over to Whoop Whoop Friday. I love what Sarah is doing for her granddaughters for Christmas. Check out her reader hookups, too. Also hooking up with Leah Day's FMQ Friday. She's hitting the road, same as I am, but her trip is definitely quilt related. Check it out, along with her reader hookups.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Mainely Quilting

Back from the wonderland that is Maine, I've pin-basted the lake quilt (how appropriate is that--lakes and Maine?) and it's ready to go on the machine.

Other than for the lake itself, I have no idea what threads will be used for all of this free-motion quilting. The water will be stitched with three shades of green. Those periwinkle flowers in the tall grass could be a bit of a bug-a-boo because of their small size, but something will occur to me (I hope). The rocks might be a lot of work but will also be fun once I figure out what color of thread(s) to use. The turtles, geese, dogwood blooms and lily pads will be the last to stitch so that they can appear as dimensional as possible. The fabric on the edge is just a temporary extension of the backing, not a border or a binding. It serves to cover the batting, which also extends beyond the quilt-top edges and tends otherwise to get caught under the machine needle.

And speaking of Maine...forgive me for posting a couple of photos, but I don't get out a lot. Nature scenes are a big deal when you're a landscape quilter, and Maine is a world away from Kentucky.

This is on the way out from Portland to Great Diamond Island, for my niece's wedding rehearsal dinner. The weather was great, so I was able to get some wonderful shots for quilt inspiration.

Then there was the day-after brunch at my sister-in-law's home. I pretty much want to live in a tent in her back yard...

...but as you can see from the first photo on this blog entry, I did come home.

I can't sign off here without sharing this next little gem. I had taken a few ratty white washcloths on the trip to wipe makeup (which I wear seldom and very little of) off my face after the rehearsal dinner, wedding and reception. But as ratty as they were, housekeeping kept taking them away with the nice hotel washcloths, so when my husband and I went to the grocery today we bought some more.

After I took them off the grocery shelf and tossed them in the cart, my husband, a punmaster from way back when, picked them up, pointed at the brand name on the package and said, "Couldn't be more appropriate, since they're replacing the ones that stayed in Maine."

Gotta admit, that was a good one.

Hooking up with Sarah over at her Whoop Whoop Friday link (since I'm definitely whooping about getting the lake quilt on the machine). She just happens to be showing some other folks' work, which I missed seeing last week. There are also plenty of reader blog hookups to check out at the bottom of her post. Also hooking up with Leah Day at FMQ Friday--she's dyeing fabric, something I want to do eventually.

Hope everyone has a great week. Don't know if I'll get to post again before heading out to Jackson, Wyoming on the 22nd with my son and daughter-in-law (it was no joke when I said I don't get out much--this summer is the exception). Looking forward to visiting with my daughter-in-law's family, rafting on the Snake River and hiking in the Grand Tetons with them, and bringing back even more photos for quilt inspiration. Yeah!!!!

Stay cool, everyone!

Back to the Lake

It's summertime, and what better time to head for the lake?

Yes, after leaving Lida behind last week, it was time to get out a lake scene quilt top that had been sitting since last November. This one is larger than any landscape I've made, and the old studio had become so cramped that the quilt top had to be designed in the living room. I'd progressed as far as possible on it and then stashed it in the closet. With the new studio up and running, there's room to work on it now.

This is by no means the entire quilt top; it's only a section of the lower left quadrant. The turtles (pinned on in the first photo and fused on in the second one) were designed with just two fabrics and needed embellishment to look more real. Tsukineko inks are somewhat transparent, so I left those in the drawer and chose some Jacquard textile colors instead. Turns out they're only semi-opaque. Two other bottles of fabric paint caught my eye, some Scribbles 3D left over from painting T-shirts a long time ago. One of them was just about the right color for the sides and stripes on my turtles. I used a tiny paintbrush to spread the paint just enough to keep it from gobbing anywhere while leaving it thick enough to cover well. I'm not entirely thrilled with the results (lots of guesswork due to my shadowy photos), but they could have been worse.

The turtle shells will be free-motion quilted, following the spiral lines in the fabric. In fact everything on this quilt--rocks, water, geese, grass, dogwood branches and blossoms, and water lilies--will be quilted in free motion.

Leaving that on the cutting table to dry, I reluctantly turned to a task I've been putting off for months--altering the hem of this dress to wear to my niece's wedding next week. It's made of no-fuss crinkle cotton and should pack beautifully for the trip to Maine (where I'm also hoping to get some great coastline/island photos for quilt inspiration).

 

After running a single row of straight-stitch 3 inches away from the old hem edge, I pressed the new hem up on that stitch line (all freakin' 5 yards of it) and used an overedge serger-type stitch on the fold, similar to the original hem. (There is no blue area in this. That's just a trick of the light.)



All that remained was to trim, extremely slowly and carefully, the old hem away from the underside--the challenge being of course not to cut into the dress itself. Mission accomplished (with an iced coffee close at hand to keep my mind from going into Zen mode like it usually does during anything monotonous). Whew! And now I have some nice, long, 3-inch wide turquoise strips for my scrap drawer.

By Tuesday the paint was dry on the turtles and the whole quilt top was ready to be sandwiched. Realizing there was nothing in my fabric stash large enough to serve as a back for this quilt, I turned my thoughts to designing a new landscape. I have to say, happiness is having a design wall and space large enough to audition 6 half-yard panels of Vicki Welsh hand-dyes at once. What a mood-booster this was!

The lake quilt top is still on the cutting table. (I'm not quite ready to show a closeup shot of it.) Yesterday I found an interesting green print at JoAnn Fabrics for the quilt back, with enough leftover yardage to use as foliage in a future landscape quilt.

 

Signing off here to go shoe shopping...ugh! The only shopping I like is fabric shopping, so it takes an upcoming event like a wedding to get me into any shoe or clothing store.

 

Hmm...wonder if there's a shoe store near JoAnn Fabrics....

 

Hooking up with FMQ Friday over at Leah Day's site. Her post about finding a balance between intensity and sanity certainly strikes a chord with me. Click on some of her reader hookups to see what they're up to. Also getting my whoop whoop on (for having finished my turtles) by hooking up to Whoop Whoop Fridays. Look what Sarah has managed to piece in just a few days! (And check out the multitude of reader hookups at the bottom of her post!)

 

Everyone have a great week next week. I probably won't be posting then but will look forward to catching up with everybody after we return from Maine.

 

Speaking of posting, if anyone is having trouble posting comments on this blog, you are not alone; I know of at least two people who've commented on my blog in the past but haven't been able to do so for the last two or three weeks. None of my settings had changed, so I contacted Blogger (Google). Hopefully they'll figure out what's going on and fix it. So please keep trying, I love to hear from you. Yesterday I did enable comment moderation (the only setting I've ever changed), after learning that apparently spammers can post vulgar language or ads on your blog and cause your blog to be deleted. Not taking any chances on that! Again, very sorry if you are having difficulty. Please keep trying. Thanks,

 

Linda  



Leaving Lida

She's done! Lida Luna is finished at last. After cutting out a jillion sections of gradient batik for binding strips, then piecing them together so that the dark-, medium- and light-gray sections were positioned just so around the quilt, I machine stitched the whole strip onto the front--only to discover that after the first 2 feet or so, the sections had not landed where I'd planned. Seems I'd made a geometric miscalculation at the corners (let's leave it at that). Being in no mood to rip it out and start repiecing, I told myself the new arrangement looked better than the original, that fate had stepped in and improved my plan. Yep, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. So here's how it worked out (minus the pins at the top and my bad photo-crop job). 

 

Lida Luna by Linda Wulf Koenig, June 20, 2013

Lida's boa and tail feathers have been attached for some time now, but she just got her beak painted last night and her eyes sewn on this morning. By that time we'd bonded, so when I took her to Moore's Sewing and Learning Center this afternoon to put her on exhibit, it felt a little like taking a pet to the kennel for a long stay. I kept waiting to hear a screech from the trunk on the drive over.

 

So now she's hanging side-by-side with my previous landscape quilt, Rock of Ages.

 

 

If you're in or near the Louisville, KY area, stop in at Moore's and take a look. There is no way to convey the texture of a landscape quilt with a photo, it just doesn't translate. But here's a side-angled shot that at least hints at the dimensional effect of the bird's body, which was appliqued over two (graded) layers of extra batting. Still not entirely obvious, though, until you see it in person.

 

 



 

 And one more shot, a close-up of Lida the moonbird:

 

 

Darn it, it looks like her right eye needs to be moved a bit further from her beak. Oh well. As Rosanne Roseannadanna (Gilda Radner) of Saturday Night Live often complained in her nasal whine, "It's always something." That's ok, I'll fix it before Lida goes to a permanent home. For now, she and I can use a break from one another.

 

Meanwhile, I'm on to my next project. Don't tell Lida, but it involves a family of geese.

 

Hooking up here with Sarah's Whoop Whoop Friday post, as Lida's completion is definitely a whoop whoop. Sarah's beautiful quilted pillow has spurred me to get that un-used pillow form out of storage and get busy.

 

Also hooking up here with Leah Day's FMQ Friday post. She's creating a specific space in her house for handsewing, and asking if we have a particular spot where we like to handsew. Interesting coincidence, as I've been debating whether or not to use this nook in the studio for that very thing. 

 

When the room was a bedroom for my boys, I made a cushion for the window seat (which is actually a storage bin my VVHH built). They could sit there and read or just stare out at the beautiful foliage between our house and the one next door. I'm not sure they actually did that, although somewhere there's a photo of the younger one climbing up there in his diaper. So now I'm considering making another cushion for it and using the space again for something other than storage (the bin is full of batting and that pillow form I mentioned). And the thread couldn't get much handier for handsewing, now could it?

Looking forward to seeing other folks' handsewing nooks over at Leah's site. Instructions for hooking up at her site and Sarah's are on their pages at the bottom of their posts (links above), and are very easy to follow. Check them out, along with their reader hookups. Inspiration abounds!

 

Happy summer, everybody!

 

Linda