Quilt Update

In my One Thing post I showed you a pile of fabric that scared me; here's the pieced quilt top I made out of it. I cut all of the pieces on an 18" cutting mat and sewed it freehand on my Singer. I faced the demon and stitched it into submission. It took me almost a week.

And it's lovely, and fulfilling, and looks a lot like Minecraft, am I right? Yeah, that was my first thought, too. Oh well.

I make one big quilt every year, and this will definitely be that. It's huge. At one point I had the whole thing in my lap while adding the last rows because it's too large for my work table, and I was almost buried in fabric. I still worried the whole time I was stitching, but the making of a quilt brings on this calming determination in me that let me get through the nervous jitters.

There's always good and bad in every project. Like too many light- and medium-gray spaces in this, despite my adding some prints. Some of my piecing is off-kilter, for which I have to blame my inability to cut fabric straight. When you're trying to cut a 27-1/2" rectangle on an 18" mat, things get crooked. I also had to fudge some seams. But that's okay. I'm planning to do a little embroidery work in the big blank areas. My piecing is always a little skewed, and my seams are never perfectly matched. I still love all the green, and the fish, wood and stone panels make me very happy. It's not too far from the quilt I saw in my head.

I'm proud of myself for trying. I won't let this quilt go until it's finished, even if it ends up looking like an advertisement for Minecraft, because that's how stubborn I am.

I'm not afraid of this quilt anymore. It actually made me laugh when I spread the finished top out for the first time, and saw nothing but Minecraft. My daughter loves that game, as it happens. And it's funny that it resembles it. If it still does when I finished quilting and binding it, so be it.

I'll enjoy the process. I'll finish what I've started. And I will learn from this quilt, just as I have all the others I've made.

No one can give you creative freedom; you have to pursue it. Fear and doubt will try to stop you from attaining your goals, always. We don't want what we do to end up being a bad joke. But sometimes it does anyway. Nothing ventured etc.

I'll keep you all updated as I continue to work on it, and let you see the end results.

One Thing

This pile of fabric looks harmless enough, right? Not when I look at it. It's the makings of a quilt I've wanted to create for about a year now, ever since I came across a pattern called Zen Garden. It's not a complicated pattern -- I'd say confident beginner level -- and it requires only skills I already possess to put together. I've practically memorized the pattern by reading it a couple hundred times. I worked it out in my head, and then on paper, and did the math involved and whatnot. Not a problem.

Only the more I looked at it, the more it became a problem. It's not what I thought of as a Zen garden. It was a boxy bunch of plain blocky rocks with a couple squares of color. What I really wanted to do was tweak the pattern, use more color and alter some of the design and fabric choices. I wanted weathered wood in my garden. More green, too, I love green. The fabrics would have to be very specific to what I saw in my head. I'd have to swap out two of the piecing steps and reinterpret the gray fabrics. I came up with major plans for the hand quilting, too -- hundreds of circles, like ripples on the still surface of a pool, instead of the recommended straight line work.

I couldn't leave well enough alone. Everyone else might be happy enough to follow the pattern faithfully; I wanted to take it in different directions. Story of my creative life, really. Where people see instructions, I see the gardens of possibilities just beyond them. And that scares me, and often I put it off because I think on some level I want to be like other people. Or I'm not as brave as I think. Or maybe I envy people who can follow a pattern without a problem. Sometimes I just procrastinate. Other times I end up paralyzed by doubt.

After going through another bout of temporary blindness and being robbed this year I'm tired of being scared of the things I want to do. How long have I got left to do them, anyway? So I've finally gathered the fabric and and started cutting. I've another day or two of that, and then I'll begin piecing.

Now, that little bitch of doubt in my head is already sneering that I've used too much green -- and she thinks it's acid green, not the spring green I see. Also, just FYI, she says the quilt will be a disaster because I suck at cutting precisely with my arthritic hands. Doubt thinks instead I should work on the other kit quilt I bought (and follow the damn directions.)

I don't care what Doubt thinks. If it's more acid than spring green, great. If it ends up crookedly pieced because I cut badly, fine. I'm doing one thing that scares me because I want it more than I want to be scared of it. I'm making this quilt the way I see it in my head. I'm not sewing this quilt for Doubt. I'm creating my vision. I'm doing this for me.

Now apply that to writing, scuplting, painting -- anything creative thing you want to do -- and do it. That's my message today. Do the one thing that scares you, in the exact way you want to do it, because only you can -- and you aren't immortal.

The Journey

One of the many books I read while on hiatus was Slow Stitch: Mindful and Contemplative Textile Art by Claire Wellesey-Smith. For a while now I've been studying various methods of art quilting to learn more about it, but also to navigate where I'm going with my own needle work. Last summer for the first time I made an improvisational art quilt with eco-friendly, sustainable fabrics and threads that really challenged me, and put me on a different path with my quilt work. This book added a lot to that shift in my thinking as well.

Claire is a textile artist from Yorkshire, UK who doesn't churn out perfect quilts from patterns that a thousand other quilters use. She dyes her own fabrics and threads using seasonal plants that she sources locally. She has an enduring emotional connection with her work and materials, and hand stitches her projects, two things I also feel strongly about as a quilter. She supports using traditional methods in quilting and patchwork, like Kantha and Japanese boro, which are sustainable. The one thing she doesn't do is hurry.

This book is not about utter perfection, over-productivity, or finish line races. There aren't endless pages of complicated projects that you'll never master. In fact, I doubt there's a single straight line of stitching in the whole book. What Claire does is steer textile artists toward taking more time and thought with their work, going green by using recycled materials, and finding inspiration from some lovely traditional methods. She does so with a quiet, elegant honesty that really spoke to me. The slow stitch mindset is very natural, and more grounded in what quilting is for me. Her goal is not to help you finish ten projects in a month, but to find the pleasure in the making of one -- however long it takes.

I highly recommend this book as a wonderful guide and companion for any textile artist who wants to get more out of the journey.

Back

As promised (or threatened, depending on your POV) I'm back. The much-needed break jump-started my muse, and also let me properly prepare for the very busy year ahead. In addition to the work I caught up on I finished up some old projects from 2017, and got my home office cleaned out and tidied up. I hate working in a mess, and not being able to find anything, so having a neat work space really feels great.

I spent a lot of time thinking about and planning for the big changes that are coming this year, too. My guy and I have some major shifts ahead in our work dynamic. Now that we're empty nesters we'll also have more time to do the things that we've always put off while the kids were at home. After we get some necessary repairs done (our 22-year-old fridge and A/C unit both decided to start failing at the same time) we're planning to renovate some stuff we've never liked about this house. The bathroom prefab shower stalls and too-slick tile floors will likely be at the top of the list. Once all the dire needs are seen to, I personally intend to get rid of the old white bathroom tile counters in my kitchen -- the guy who built this place made some really weird choices -- and get proper counter tops to go with my still-lovely cabinets.

My daughter's pet bird and rat moved into the office with me, so we all have some company during the day. The rat likes me well enough, but then I bribe her with fresh banana and carrot bits and let her out to play regularly. The cockatiel is still on the fence, pardon the pun. We're settling into a comfortably antagonistic relationship since I started letting her out of her cage for an hour every morning. I think she's noisy but still adorable. She evidently thinks she should not have to live in the big cage. I think she'd be happy only if I ditched the cage altogether, fed her sunflower seeds nonstop, rubbed her neck and head for hours, and let her fly around the house like the bird of prey she imagines she is. Oh, and birds? Poop everywhere.

Since we're trying to cut our spending I've been cooking at home almost every night. Another challenge that comes with the empty nest is cooking for just two, which I've never done before now. We're tackling it by planning ahead with leftovers, freezing what we can, and trimming down our meals. I'm also searching for smaller recipes online, which has led to some delicious discoveries.

This year I'm slowing down and putting more thought into my quilting. I'm working on a lap quilt now, but I hope to get more into art quilting and work on smaller-scale quilts after this project. To keep everything tidier I've organized the notions and tools I use regularly in arty containers on a recycled bookcase. As with my home office having a neat sewing space makes me happier and more productive. If you want to see what I'm working on this year, you can follow my projects on my Tumblr blog.

I definitely don't want to harp on the negative, but the ongoing stress of just being a human being in these times of late has been especially frightening. We're all finding ways to cope, which is why I'm trying to be supportive of my family and friends in any way I can (and quilting every night, to work out my own stress.) I don't have any answers, except to fight it, and to fight for the people we love, by being part of the light however we can.

I'm learning at last that finding new ways to connect can make a big difference. I'm having such fun with my little writer's group; once a week I have a chance to spend a couple hours with my fellow scribes. They're all terrific people. To combat the empty nest blues my guy and I are trying to get out of the house and be more social as a couple. too. The last two weekends we've gone on outings that we usually never made time for, which we should have before now. The other night we went out to dinner at our favorite restaurant with friends (this is something we've not done in years), and we had such a great time. We also planned to get together for a cookout. Life is not over, turns out, once the nestlings fly off.

So what's up with you all? Any news from your corner of the planet? How is your 2018 going so far? Let us know in comments.

Sew Me

When I wasn't writing in 2017 I was sewing -- a lot. I wanted to complete at least one project every month, learn to design more patchwork, and dabble a bit in art quilting. I also documented everything I was doing over at my Tumblr blog, which helped keep me on track.

Here's some of what I got accomplished:



I started the year with a small patchwork pillow project to use up some scraps.



I bought a vintage quilt top at the annual county quilt show and made it into a new quilt for Skye's kennel.



I practiced some new embroidery stitches and techniques on this crazy quilt tote.



I tried working with modern fabrics for the first time to make this black/white/gold lap quilt.



I designed and made my first bargello quilt.



I experimented with new types of hand quilting stitches to make this little tote.



My big project of the year was designing and making this quilt from fabrics and some patchwork sent to me by a dear friend.



I made my first official art quilt out of recycled linen remnants and eco-dyed fabrics.



Another lap quilt I made, inspired by a lovely linen from my friend's fabric.



This was the month my sewing machine started to die, so this cute tote I made from orphaned patchwork blocks I purchased on Etsy was done largely by hand.



A winter table runner I made for an art swap.



A pillow I made from an old cutter quilt piece.



A table topper I quilted and embroidered for Thanksgiving. On Black Friday I did venture out to buy a new sewing machine, too.

I still have one more quilt to work on this month, and a table runner I want to make for New Year's Eve, but I think I did okay with my non-writing projects in 2017. One very positive side of doing so much quilting was that I kept my creative energy high, which really helped my writing. Next year I'm probably going to do more art quilting, as that's the bug that bit me most often in 2017, but I'm also constantly finding new inspirations, so we'll see.

What creative projects did you finish this year? Let us know in comments.

For Art's Sake

This is another pic test, but also displays what was a big step for me as a quilter. Over the summer I made my first official art quilt (which I define as a quilted piece created organically and strictly to function as art.) I've done some crazy quilted and fiber art pieces, but both times I used stitch guides or patterns. This time I planned nothing, collected the materials I wanted to use as I spotted them, and then put it together and embroidered and quilted it. No patterns. No stitch guide. I designed it based on things in my life, and went with improvisational stitching.

How was it, working on the art quilt? I can tell you that it felt intimidating and frustrating, and at times scared the crap out of me. The whole time I worked on it I wanted to run for my how-to books and use something from them rather than invent my own designs. Even as I put the last stitches in I considered hiding it under the bed.

It's definitely not perfect, and I've seen art quilts that are a hundred times better. I also love every single awkward unplanned imperfect stitch of it, because it's mine. My world. My art. My hands. My vision. I know because I did the same thing thirty-three years ago when I wrote my first novel.

I had no practical reason to make this art quilt. The time I used to work on it could have been spent working on a handmade gift for someone else -- I live in what has become the house of quilts, so I give away almost everything I make now to family or friends. I didn't need another wall hanging; I'm actually running out of wall space in the office. When I thought about it before I made it, I felt like I was being selfish to put so much of my spare time into what seemed basically useless.

Any of that sound familiar? Most of us are so busy with making a living or caring/providing for family that we feel guilty when we give a little of ourselves to our art. To do something just to create beauty, that doesn't generate income, almost seems wasteful. To vent or rejoice or mourn or celebrate through art is probably the best therapy on the planet, and yet we beat ourselves for doing it, or behave as if it's something we have to do in secret, like using drugs or booze.

This art quilt, awkward and amateurish as it is, represents one of the changes I'm making in my creative life. I'm taking a little time for me now, and I don't feel guilty about that. I've spent my life to caring for and giving to others. There are still things I need to discover. I'm going looking for them.

Pics Problems

I am ready to give up on Photobucket as a photo archive, as their service has become so problematic I can hardly upload anything anymore. Since Blogger offers a pic upload, I'm going to experiment with it today to see how it works (and show you some of the work I've been doing while I was on hiatus):

Pics #1-2 (Small Size on the Blogger Upload): Two throw quilts I made over the spring; I designed the bargello pattern for the second one myself.

Pics #3-4 (Medium Size): A tote I made from fabric scraps for a friend of my guy's who was in a car wreck; a quilt I designed and made with some gorgeous blocks and fabric that our pal Theo sent me.

Pics #5-6 (Large Size): A beach tote I made for my daughter after accidentally destroying hers in the washer; and my very first official art quilt, which I made for fun last month.

I have to figure out the text wrapping on Blogger's photo upload, but otherwise it seems pretty easy.

Can anyone recommend a photo archive/hosting service (other than Photobucket) that is simple to use and doesn't cost an arm + leg? Let me know in comments.

Now and Then

This is going to be an artsy, I-just-want-to-show-you-cool-stuff post that I want to write more of on the blog. Apply it to writing if you want, because the shoe certainly fits.



I bought this antique crazy quilt fragment from Kelley Street Studio on Etsy because a) it's beautiful, b) it depicts a spider in a web watching an owl reading a book, which is way cool, and c) it was my reward for working through my birthday. It's also over a hundred years old, which makes it even cooler and more precious to me (plus it was very affordable for a little piece of history.)

I'm working on an art quilt right now, and having another quilter's work helps me improve my craft. I can look at a lovely piece like this and let it teach me something by taking in the stitches, colors and composition. The palette of the patchwork, the texture of the silk, the design of the embroidery -- all of it speaks to me as a quilter on multiple levels.

That said, I have my own mojo, too. Before the antique patch arrived, I stitched a spider and web in one of my art quilt blocks:



It was fun to compare the two. I made my web with holographic Sulky, and my spider is based on an orb weaver I often see in my backyard. Mine is also much more primitive, as that's the look I wanted for this piece. What I brought to the creative table is how I see spiders, what I know of them, and how I envision and translate them in my art. The quilter back in 1890 who made the spider watching the owl likely did the same.

In a hundred years or so maybe a quilter will acquire a piece of my work they think is cool and historic, and compare it to their work, and this connection will continue -- or not. The delight is that it's possible, as I just proved by acquiring hers.

A Little Reveal

Since I probably won't have time to do any more with it this year, I thought I'd finally share my secret art project for 2016: Valerean, aka my Tumblr art blog.

I started it on a whim, really. I still miss PBWindow, and I wanted to have a space where I could post photos that I took and show what I made during 2016. I also didn't want to be the author me while I was doing it, or do it every day, or feel any pressure.

Of course I had absolutely no idea how to use Tumblr when I first started, and I'm still pretty clueless, so it's very basic. That said, it was fun to be Valerean for twelve months and share my art with people who didn't know me. I could post pictures of my family and no one batted an eyelash. I found some super inspirational photographers and quilters on Tumblr as well, and followed their blogs so I could watch their projects evolve. Everyone was very kind to me, too (which is why being anonymous has its privileges.)

I have removed some posts that had personal/family stuff involved, but the rest show how creative I've been this past year. If you want to see thumbnails of everything I've posted for the last twelve months, the archive is here.

I don't know if I'll continue posting to it now that I've made it public, but it was definitely a neat project.

Second Time Around

This is my Gypsy quilt that I made during Hurricane Matthew, constructed entirely of cutter quilt pieces, an old quilted pillow sham, the sham's backing fabric and some vintage soft white muslin. Even the binding is a leftover from another project. I tried this as an experiment to see if I could make a new quilt out of some old quilted pieces, and it turned out even better than I expected (the Roman numeral II in the center was just a happy accident, btw.)



Here you see what I started with as raw materials. My pillow sham had different fabrics from the pink quilted pieces, but the colors went well together. For more contrast or a crazier look, you can use pieces that are all wildly different. You'll want to trim and lay out everything as you want it to fit together to assure you don't have any spaces between your quilted pieces. Also, keep your main pieces fat-quarter size or bigger to cut down on the number of joining strips you'll have to use to put them together.



I cut the pillow sham backing fabric into 2" strips, which I ironed into 1-1/2" strips with 1/4" folds on either side. These strips are what you use to join the pieces of your quilt together. You can also use wide single-fold bias binding if you don't want to iron strips.



It's important to have very straight edges on your quilted pieces, because you're going to join them together with your folded/bias strips. Pin them together so the quilted piece edges are flush, not overlapping, under your folded/bias strips, and then sew down (by hand or by sewing machine) each side of the strips. Two notes on this step: If your quilted pieces are very thick you'll probably need to use a walking foot on your sewing machine. Also, if you don't want to do any hand-sewing, start joining the back of the quilt first, and make your strips for the back 1/4" to 1/2" narrower than your strips for the front of the quilt, so the front strips hide the machine stitching.



This is what it looks like when you join two quilted pieces together. From there you just have to pin and sew your strips all over.



The back of my quilt, with Skye hiding her head behind it. I hand-sewed the white strips to cover the joined seams on the back because we didn't have any power.

Because the pieces I recycled for this were already quilted, once I finished sewing my joining strips all I had to do was bind the quilt, and it was done -- and it took only four days from start to finish. If you have some old damaged quilts or quilted pieces you want to recycle, this is a fun way to make them into a practical, pretty project. This also works if you want to quilt smaller pieces and then join them together (versus piecing and basting your layers and then quilting the whole quilt.)

My idea was inspired by Bill Peschel's wife, Teresa, and her series of very cool NotQuilt posts on his blog.

Summer Fun

It's funny that almost the minute I come back from hiatus, every other thing that pops up in my face is about two very famous people getting a divorce (and forgive me for not naming them, but I'm not inclined to join in the hen party/crow fest.) These were the same two people who got together in properly scandalous fashion back when I started PBW, so it's a little ironic that I've outlasted them. Or may not. The day I retire they'll probably get married again or have a secret baby or something. Well, at least they're not Kardashians.

What have I done that I can talk about . . . I finished quilting the lap quilt I made for my Mom's birthday:



I machine pieced it but hand-quilted it, and battled my aversion to the color yellow in the process. Yellow pretty much won me over, but it was a necessary surrender. Since Mom is spending the winter in Oregon I wanted this to invoke summer and sunshine. The pattern is Atkinson Design's Yellow Brick Road, which uses blocks made by cutting up fat quarters into strips and piecing them in different ways. Very easy to do, with nice results.

I also rehabbed a Victorian-era photo album into an art journal, which was a first for me. Here's how the album looked with its worn and torn velvet covers, and dirty celluloid flowers, before rehab:



This was a delicate challenge, because I had to carefully remove the celluloid before I cleaned the cover. I also made a new binding for it and handstitched it together. Here's how it looked after being cleaned, repaired, and bound with my journal pages:



I loved being able to show on the front some of the original blue velvet used for the covers, which the dirty flowers actually protected for a hundred years or so. Here's a peek inside:



I made all the pages with recycled papers, old calendars and some pages left over from another art journal. It turned out massive but so worth it. I have another old photo album in red velvet that I'm going to rehab in the same way.

Finally my kid and I made our annual summer pilgrimage to the no-kill cat shelter to make a donation and spend some time with the kitties. They really love her:



Even the suspicious ones were cute:



And of course I fell in love (again):



My guy and I have made the difficult decision not to adopt any more cats, as they tend to be very long-lived with us, and we're not getting any younger. We also don't want to introduce an older cat into a household that at present has two very active, nosy dogs. That and we really are dog people. But that just means I can go and visit the shelter whenever I need a feline fix.

So did you all have any creative adventures over the summer? Share your stories in comments.

Trying New Things

In between projects for the clients I've been experimenting with some different vintage fabrics and making them into neat stuff. One came out rather extra-neat:



This piece of chenille is in one of my favorite shades of peachy orange, but I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I've never actually worked with chenille before this piece arrived in an inspiration bundle I bought to challenge myself.

I kept looking at the spaces between the fluff, and thought right out of the blue: why not feather stitch them?



So I did, in a very random, free-form way. Lots of feather stitches. It was also great practice for me as my hand-stitching has been a bit sloppy lately.



The end result came out better than I expected, and since I've never seen anyone else do this with chenille, I felt quite inventive.

Moral of the story: don't be afraid to try something you've never seen done. You may end up with a cool pillow, or maybe something even better.

The Path Not Taken . . . Yet

Last night I opened an e-mail from a quilting sister who (again) tried to talk me into joining the local guild. They're a lovely, friendly group of ladies, many of whom have issued similar invitations over the years. I had two more requests while I was at the show. Then, when I got home, my guy suggested I join, which really surprised me. I didn't know he was aware that I quit my online guild when all the eye trouble happened back in 2014, but apparently he pays more attention to me than I thought.

I sometimes suspect the family is trying to find things for me to do now that my kids are grown. Which, honestly, is weird. In addition to my full-time job as a ghost writer I have two dogs and a very large house to maintain, meals to cook, laundry to wash, a daughter to get through college, books, my own quilts, art, reviews to write for LT . . . all of which leaves me very little idle time to join a new group and get into even more creative trouble.

It would be nice to belong to the local guild. Right now my pal Jill is the only quilter friend I have in my real world life, and she's just as if not more busy with her family. Our conflicting schedules make it hard to get together very often. I rarely do well in groups (and that's me, not them) but I'd probably have a great time with this particular guild. Nearly all of the ladies in it are my age or older. No one is snobby or acts superior, although a few of them are masters of the art. Most of the guild ladies use machines for everything, but they like the kind of hand work work I do. I could probably learn a lot from all of them, and I know some have been quilting for half a century (I've only been at it for twenty-five years.)

That said, family and work must come first for me right now. Today, while the guild is having their weekly meeting, I will be finishing up a series proposal for one of my clients. That one job will pay my bills for six months. Or I could be sitting and gossiping and sewing, and having fun, and earning nothing. I also know in my heart that while I love quilting, writing really owns me.

It's not a tough choice. If I ever retire from writing (doubtful) or when my youngest gets her degree I may change my mind, but for now I'll just be content with seeing them once a year at the big show.

What have you given up for now that you may take up later? Let us know in comments.

Quilting Therapy

One thing that I do when for whatever reason I can't write is sew, usually on a quilt. Really excellent therapy, as it's fairly mindless yet comforting work, and it always makes me happy. Today I finished this quickie lap quilt:



To make the top I followed this YouTube tutorial by Valerie Nesbitt, which shows you how to make it in 40 minutes from scrap strips. I did every step the same except for the sewing after the last cut, which I skipped so I could get the long stripe effect.

Swanning Around

I finished my latest crazy quilt tote yesterday, and I'm so happy with how it came out I'm going to make you all look at it:



I made every stitch by hand, which is why some of them are a bit uneven, but my stitching is slowly improving:



I've had this swan lace applique for a while, and couldn't figure out how to use it. Finally I just sat down and made it a center motif, and let the subtle colors in it inspire the embellishment beading:



Sometimes I think too much about how to do something, and the solution is always to just do it, trust myself, and see what happens. Even when something doesn't turn out perfect, it still gives me the opportunity to learn from my mistakes (and with this one, about a hundred stitches I had to pick out and do over.)

Working with materials I love also helps. All the backing fabric for this tote is thin, hand-dyed silk that feels like air when you stitch through it. I went crazy with the beading, which is always fun, and used holographic thread, which makes every inch of the tote sparkle. This will be part of a gift for a family friend who is going through a tough time right now, so I poured a lot of love into it, too. Hopefully it carries as many good thoughts and wishes as the beads and stitches.

All that's left is to fill the tote with goodies and make a gift tag. Tomorrow I'll show you how I make fabric gift tags that also work as a little extra gift.