Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 14

Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 14

21" x 21" x 21"

Sometimes, when I get to a certain stage of making a quilt, the work speeds up for me, in eager anticipation of the finish. This was not one of those kind of projects. I had to deliberately work slowly so as not to tax my hands.

And then there were the unintentional delays.  The six stranded floss, at the point where it goes through the eye of the needle, becomes 12 strands. It is hard to push through the little quilted blocks, and much harder when there are also fused eyes to contend with.  Sometimes I would just yank it and accidentally peal off the fused eye. Rats!  I tried using a tiny miniature iron, I think it is called a Clove iron?, but I would over focus on the eye and the quilt, and not pay attention to where my fingers were, resulting in numerous clumsy burns. 

So, I opted for fabric glue, and clothespins and waited for the glue to dry. 

I also found that certain parts of the project were hard to reach at times.  The more I added, the taller it got. At one point, I had to switch from my table to a (closer to the floor) coffee table.  But then THAT was too low. 

My favorite seams were on the sides of the cube, because there are only 2 quilt pieces to join.  Very easy!

Here's what that stitch looks like from the inside.  You can also see me burying the thread end after taking 2 very tiny stitches in the end.  

Here is a sample below of sewing 3 pieces in one seam.  In this view you can only see 2 of the pieces.  The third piece is underneath, out of sight, until you flip this around.

Here's what it looks like to sew a seam with 4 little quilts in one seam. URGHH!

Just for a little trivia, I did not use any knots in the hand sewing seams.  I made a couple of very tiny stitches on the inside and then just proceeded forward.

I only used 2 hand stitching needles for the entire project.  This is the first one, after it broke.

Here is a photo of the inside at the part where it was time to use the little lime green squares! Ah YEASS!

And, here is the part where I got to add the little yellow squares.  Predictable, you can probably guess where this single yellow cube is.  Which is good, because once the cube is completely sewn, it is too dark to look inside to find it.

It is getting taller and heavier now. A view from inside the studio.   Ironically, the quilt on the wall is called Windows...

About half way through, I started arranging the 'ceiling' layers on my design wall.  It made it easier to keep up with the internal color patterning inside the cube. 

I never got tired looking through the holes to see the view. 

Getting very close to finishing.  This is the very last and top layer to add! Never thought I would see the day!!

The final project. I am not sure this view entirely captures how wonderful this is to experience in real life. So, I hope the process photos have help expand your imagination. The colors in real life are also pretty vibrant! 

As for the meaning behind this project, I have hidden some little trinkets inside the cube that are attached in a way that you cannot see them by looking through the holes.  I tried very hard unsuccessfully, and I KNEW where they were.  You could upgrade your "looking abilities" by investing in some technology, like a snake camera (which I did), and be able to see the hidden trinkets. It is possible to find them this way. And, it serves as a perfect metaphor for hackers upping THEIR game to steal YOUR privacy. 

Ta da! It really worked.  All those layers and it held up and did not collapse! 

And, for inquiring minds.  This build has 73.5 square feet of surface area.  That is equivalent to 102 in x 102 in quilt. And, all of these little pieces are essentially two-sided, so imagine twice the surface area!!

Compared to the flat version of the project (you can see here), it is even larger than THAT!

Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 13

Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 13

This part took so long to complete! Wahhhh! I took hundreds of photos along the way, and it has taken me a while to narrow it down a bit.  And, it is still too many photos for one post, so I will be making two posts about the building.

It is all hand sewn, like the prototype. Every seam is a different color.  Some of the seams have 2 squares, some have 3, and some have 4.  As expected the ones with 4 pieces being combined in a single seam were the most difficult physically.  I am pushing a needle through 4 quilted pieces while it is threaded with 6 strands of embroidery floss. Chonky! 

And, trying to remember the orientation of the thing while it is rotated many times during stitching. I selected one face (the front), and put a safety pin in it, to ease my confusion. There are also a number of different color patterns INSIDE the cube, that were a bit cumbersome to remember. 

The first row is completed, and now I move on to those even more tricky seams with 4 pieces at a time. After the first one, I wanted to quit! 

I am starting to get the hang of it! More rows on the first layer! I am also learning that the hand sewing is very stressful to my hands. And it tweaks my tendons, so I started doing hand therapy and getting out the forceps to pull the needle most of the time.

But, I did not. Breaks and rest time are a crucial part of this project! Here is the complete first layer. Every little interior cube will have 4 walls, a floor and a ceiling. The little interior cubes will share their walls, and floors and ceilings with adjoining little cubes. The beautiful colors and threads kept me going!

My stash of embroidery floss.  I had no idea when I started how much thread I would need.  I ended up shopping for more thread about 4 times throughout the project. 

I also changed the color scheme before I started. I liked the aqua blue so much better than the navy blues, that I opted to have all the external sides the brighter and lighter blue. I worked out the math because the entire structure was envisioned with a different set of colors, which were made to order. And, with a few modifications, I was able to make the change. I am so glad I did. I absolutely LOVE the aqua color on the outside.  

I also preplanned the layout of the external sides, to make sure that I was able to both have enough pieces, and that I could arrange those pieces in a pleasing layout.

You can see some of the missing pieces above, which shows how far along I was when I took this photo! 

On to the next level!

And flipped over...

And looking through some holes...

These process photos of looking in the holes before the 'ceilings' are sewn on, have an abundance of light, which really shows off the wonderful colors.  Once the ceilings are sewn on, this beautiful view gets lost, or maybe I should say, goes private? 

Stay tuned. I will post the rest of the process photos and the final project next week. Nearly there!

Untitled, Part 8

Untitled, Part 8

Finally a title has emerged!! Unfortunately, I am not sharing it with you yet. Ha ha! Sorry!

This stage requires me to deal with a giant mess of tangled embroidery floss. I did not take a photo of the giant pile, but this is what it looked like after I pulled the threads out carefully, one by one. Wahhhh, so tedious and not fun!

I learned to wind yarn around my hand to make skeins back when I was a weaver.  So, I tidied these up the same way.

And, then stored them in color coded boxes, a yellow box for the warm tones, and a blue box for the cool tones. And while this pile of thread looked like a lot to me at the time, I think I purchased embroidery floss at least 4 more times because I never got enough, and a future step required even more and more floss.

Now, I am all set to begin the cut work. I usually cut a small section at a time, 8 to 10 circles, to prevent my hands from getting tired from using the scissors too much. Here I am with some, working out on my deck on a beautiful morning. (Yes, all 1000+ circles were cut with hand held scissors.)

Making thread selections for the hand stitching of the cut holes.

I also discovered that having the blocks in narrow strips, only 2 motifs wide, helped with thread management.  I could attach my thread choices to each block and have work that could go anywhere with me. So I carefully cut all the bigger pieces down.

When I got to the blue ones, there were so many.  Over 700 of these to do.  I wanted to maximize diversity of thread colors with the thread from the satin stitching, the color of the batik, and the color of the background.  So, I made thread color choices in mass.

Here is a sample after stitching.

All the holes...

And, after many months of work, the completed stacks of nearly ready blocks.

I am thinking that it doesn't look like much yet, but in my head, so much wonderfulness, it's hard to contain!

Prayer Flag for Pokey

Pokey got Married!!

All my best to Pokey and Patrick on their recent wedding last weekend!  Pokey Bolton has been a long time champion of my work.  She is a delight in person and has an incredible talent for art and business.  I remember when she first bought her property in Napa Valley with an amazing idea to build an art barn and host events for fun and learning about art quilting.  I knew that if she dreamed it, she would find a way to do it! And she did!  Craft Napa, an annual art quilt retreat, has been successfully going for years now!  And, she has found the perfect partner to share her life with! I am so happy for you Pokey!!

Meanwhile, without her knowledge, a call went out to make prayer flags to string together for her wedding.  I was happy to make this one for her!

That little hummer represents joy.  That is my wish for you Pokey, that you have many happy years filled with Love and Joy!

Here is a close up of the back, with a little hand stitching:

Bloom: Part I

Bloom: Part I

71" x 71" (the other side of Seed)

I had an idea for this side and it took a few tries of sketching it to get what I wanted.  It is the first time that I have tried a design like this.  I believe it is very similar to the Dahlia quilt design, block? 

This is the color palette.

After sketching it on drawing paper, I drew it full scale using old school tools.  I got some white craft paper and my giant compass, (which is really more like a pencil and a long string).  I also used a protractor, which turned out not to be as accurate as I needed on this scale.  The paper arcs were cut individually and then folded in half multiple times to get the right sizes.  I used a freehand to draw the curves, and then cut out plastic templates to use for marking and cutting fabric.  And, since each arc gets bigger, I needed a new template for each arc.  Only one went wonky and had to be redone, so I consider it a pretty huge success that these methods worked as well as they did!

Each section needed a template with three pieces (with the exception of the tiny innermost lime green part).  To make right side and left side pieces, I used the template pieces right side up, and then right side down.  I marked the stitching lines on the back of the fabric pieces, and then cut seam allowances.  Everything was cut with my scissors....wah....

I also discovered that the innermost ring of lime green pieces was too tight of a curve to do on the sewing machine.  Fortunately, I had just accrued an amazing amount of practice sewing small curves from the work on the other side! 

After I had about 8 blocks completed, I sewed them together in an arc, and then checked the accuracy and fit by comparing to the original paper template and making adjustments as needed.  That worked amazingly well! 

There were a lot of seams to keep track of.  Some of them were pressed open (the straight ones), and some of them were pressed to one side (the curved ones).  I always think it looks interesting to see the back!

It was hard work to piece everything accurately, but so incredibly satisfying to see an entire ring come together. Here is some progress on the second ring.

At some point, the arcs are sewn together to form a quarter circle.  The last seams were the straight lines connecting the four quadrants. 

I prefer to sew curves without a lot of pins.  I was not very successful with this design, and spent a lot of time making minor adjustments on each and every curve.  It was frustrating!! Which led me down the rabbit hole of using lots of pins, I mean really, a LOT of pins.  It does take longer to pin it, but every seam was perfect, so it was worth it in the long run.

And there was the added satisfaction of the interesting shapes these curves made when the pieces were pinned...

So there is also the option of glue basting seams like this and skipping the pins altogether.  My biggest problems was that I cut all the pieces by hand, which meant that not all the seam allowances were very accurate or precise.  I normally sew curves by matching the edges of the fabric together.  This did not work.  And, while the accuracy of one piece is not that significant, it becomes more so when multiplied by lots of little pieces.  For glue basting to work well here, I would need some plexiglass type templates that you can use a rotary cutter on (and the templates would need to include the seam allowances).  I didn't have those, nor patience to learn how to make them.  It was possible to do this project with just low cost freezer paper and pins...just possibly less fun.

Seeds Part 2

Seeds Part 2

71" x 71"

...I was stitching these small circles....And, then I decided where to put the blue one.  The blue one relates to the story of the quilt and what the other side will be about.  The grid is not complete yet, as the finished size will be 9 x 9 circles.  But it was time to cut out the white blocks that these circles would be stitched to.  And, it was time to visualize the real spacing of the circles, something more like this:

Each corner of a circle will be stitched to each corner of a white square.  Then all the white squares will be stitched together.  Also, these are still looking larger that they will actually be because they are just placed, and not yet stitched, so the seam allowance of the circles is still showing. Here's a close up.

Many afternoons that looked like this: (Also, perfect project for zoom meetings!)

When I finished all the little arcs, it was time to start stitching them to the white blocks. I needed to make sure to sew the right piece to the correct corner and it helped to lay them out in order.

Pinned to the blocks, they kind of look like little boats:

Just another issue, since all the circles were slightly different sizes, the corners of the white blocks had to be cut to fit.  This essentially meant measuring the size of the stitched circle and then using that to draw an arc on the corresponding corner (and then making sure to cut a slightly larger seam allowance).  At first it felt daunting, but after getting organized, it was fairly straightforward.

I think back to making these blocks and being surprised that they weren't perfect.  I had taken so many steps to try to piece them accurately, and yet some of them were just off a bit.  The question was that after I discovered the tiny imperfections, should I re-do it or leave it as is?  That was when I sort of fell in love with the imperfections.  They are like life, imperfect, and I love them!

I also discovered this wonderful halo effect, of the outermost ring color showing through the white background fabric.  This will most likely get me some pretty negative comments from judges because it is seen as a mistake or poor craftsmanship.  I realized early on during the piecing phase that this would happen and decided to leave this because it looks like a small halo and like the seed is starting to grow!  Which is fantastic!  I love it! 

The last photo I have before the reveal next week is the blocks, all pinned together.