MUST QUILT

5% Red
by Ilene Atkins

I've had this big neon sign flashing inside my head for some time now, saying MUST QUILT. So that's what I've been doing. It does beg the question, why must I quilt?  I've always loved sewing, sewing anything, really. But why quilting, why now?

I was recently making the Dragonfly Quilt, here, and had some insight. After my presentation last week to my quilt guild, here, I heard those voices inside my head that say I'm not good enough, and Who do I think I am?  You know those voices!  But getting feedback on my quilts has been so positive.  This disconnect between the outside world and my inside world just didn't make sense to me.

5% Red, detail
by Ilene Atkins

So today I was emailing my friend about the dragonfly quilt, and I came to the realization that when I'm making my quilts, they are the visual representation of the essence of who I am. It is the deepest part of me coming out for the world to see. Any worries or troubles or discontent in my life become inconsequential.

The quilt I'm showing today is a finish from last fall, and I didn't get it photographed until recently. I think I pieced it the year before, and got it quilted in last years finishing frenzy. I've called it 5% red, since it has so little red. I think now I could have put in more red, but this is the way it turned out, so I'm leaving it at that. And I just quilted it with wavy lines. It's been added to my growing stack of finished quilts.

Linking up this time to The Needle and Thread Network, here, and Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday, here.

Making Dragonflies

I've been working on a quilt for someone deeply associated with dragonflies. I've made a watery blue background, with green borders. Very nature influenced.

I've decided to work with a sheer gold fabric, that has a purple shimmer, to make the dragonfly itself. The challenge has been to work with the edges so they don't fray. I was trying different fusibles, to hold two layers together, then satin-stitch the edges. I plan to quilt in the wing lines for detail.

I'm not quite finished the big dragonfly, but the smaller ones seem to be going well. And I do like these nice mitred corners in the borders. This is the sneak peek stage. More will be revealed in due course. I only have a couple of weeks to finish this up, so I must get going on it!

Linking up this time with Design Wall Monday, here.

Rose Progress

I finished doing all the random heart FMQ on the unnamed red and denim quilt, which is now ready for binding. I want to put in a hanging sleeve before the binding goes on, which is not ready, so it will wait for a bit before it it finished.

In the meantime, I have been adding a few stitches to my October Rose piece that I wrote about here. You may be able to see the difference. I have a lot of pink threads now to use, and they have made a difference. I am aiming for a bit more contrast than the original photo has, so the rose shows better from a little distance.

I only have a little bit left of the petals to stitch. There are a few more leaves and stems to stitch, too, but for some reason they seem to go in much easier than the petals. I've decided to put it up on the wall to look at it for a bit to determine what it needs next, but now I'm looking at this photo of it on my computer screen and I can already find places to add a few more lines. Sometimes the hard part is to know when to stop!

While it waits, I have other projects to do. Have you figured out, yet, that I don't work on something from start to finish? I always have a number of irons in the fire.

I'm linking up again with the Needle and Thread Network, here.

An October Rose

I'm taking a break from sandwiching, and working on a thread-painting piece, a photo I took at the end of October of a beautiful rose in our garden. I happened to catch a couple of ladybugs, too. I find I don't have all the right shades of pink thread I need, but I did manage to do the ladybug, and I can do the buds and leaves, so I'll keep doing as much as I can until I can get more thread. It's always fun to go shopping for thread, isn't it?

I'm linking this up with WIP Wednesday, over at the Needle and Thread Network, link here.

In other news, my piece with the monarch butterfly was accepted into the Grand National Quilt Show, link here, but you will have to wait for opening day to see the whole thing. I wrote about it here. Very exciting.

Piecing vs. Free Motion Quilting

Piecing won out today, and I made another quilt top to add to my stack! I'm giving only a sneak peak at this one, that I think I'll call 5% Red. I say that, because so far, for every quilt I've made, I wish I'd done something differently. And on this one, I wish I had put in a lot  more red. With the blocks all joined together, it looks pretty pale, and more red in the mix would have given it a more striking contrast. It's together, though, so I'll chalk this up to experience and leave it at that. Since I think it will look good  quilted in circles of varying sizes, I might move it to the front of the sandwich line.

And speaking of quilting. I am realizing up until now, piecing has come naturally to me, from my previous sewing experience. The free motion quilting part is all new to me. I've had some epic failures with this, so I am hesitant to get to quilting my pieced tops. I must remind myself that I've also had some epic successes, so this is my struggle at the moment. My determination to get my quilt tops turned into finished quilts is what is keeping me going. So on that note, I started quilting one of my sandwiches this afternoon. Nothing big to show yet, just laying down some grid lines along all the block edges.

The saga continues. Having this blog medium to work this out helps tremendously, and for that I am grateful.

Still Sandwiching

I'm still heavily involved in my stack of quilt tops, which I recently wrote about here. I've been preparing backs and bindings, and setting up quilt sandwiches. Not very glamorous, I know, but these jobs need to be done if I'm to finish up any of these tops. It becomes mind-boggling when I start using other orphan blocks for the backs, and end up with a stunning backing and want to use it instead for another quilt top! Decisions, decisions. I've not progressed to the quilting part of them, but hope to get on with that soon.

And I've realized that my love for piecing quilt tops is drawing me away from these tasks. See the pile of quilt blocks in the photo. I cut these out a while ago, and want to put them together into yet another quilt top instead of making quilt sandwiches.And there is a pretty rose quilt that I printed out that wants to be thread-painted as well. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

I'm linking up this up with WIP Wednesday on the Needle and Thread Network, here. Have fun checking out some of the other bloggers.

New Quilt Photos

Wintergreen
by Ilene Atkins

Stardust
by Ilene Atkins
after Nancy Mahoney
used with permission

I was outside yesterday to photograph my Christmas Quilt, and wanted to also take a photo of another quilt I made a few years ago. I did not have a single photo of it, good or bad, so it was time to add it to my bio.

The quilt I have shown on the left is called Wintergreen.  I made it a few years ago, not sure which year, should have recorded the date, but did not! Lesson learned. I had collected all these pretty blues and greens, and was heavily influenced by the work of Kaffe Fasset. I wrote about him here. I liked the way he put a lot of colours together into simple blocks, for a spectacular effect, and thought I might try the same idea. There are probably several hundred fabrics in this one. Again, I wish I'd recorded the details, but alas, it is all to memory, now.

To choose my colours for Wintergreen, I laid all of them out on the table outside, for natural light. I took photos to see which ones worked together, then started cutting. Zoom in to see the borders, subtle, but they are there. And to quilt it, I had the two vertical halves quilted to two separate pieces of backing fabric, so I would not have so much bulk in my machine, then joined the two halves. Worked really well, but I don't know if I'd do it again. I kind of like to have the whole quilt top made in one shot, rather than having two pieces of it sitting around, taunting me! Seems more finished that way.

And the Christmas quilt, you've seen parts of it here in my blog before, and I can finally show the whole thing finished. It should be noted that I styled this design after Nancy Mahoney's quilt called Pomegranate Passion, in QNM's Best Christmas Quilts, 2012, image reproduced here with her permission. See the link here. Stardust is officially now in the storage box under the bed, and will be brought out with the other Christmas stuff in December.

I hope you enjoy both of them.

A Little Organizing

After a busy week, I wanted to sleep in a bit today, but I was so excited to work on quilts that I got up early and have been at it ever since! My mind is swirling with quilt thoughts, images and calculations keeping me up at night. Not complaining, though, it's good.

I went through all some of my stuff, in various boxes around the house, and pulled out all my large quilt tops that need to be quilted and finished up. One of them is the first quilt top I pieced in 2000! I finally think I can get to quilting all of them, but they need to have backings and bindings made, and battings purchased. So I made myself a chart to keep it all clear. I found 5 completed tops, and 5 with blocks made. I keep finding plastic zipper bags in my stuff, with cut pieces or blocks along with my scribbled notes.

I think I've gotten a little smarter, since now when I make a quilt top, I plan and make the backing, binding and sleeve to go with it. This makes actually finishing the quilt much more likely. I usually make a complex backing, so it is not a simple or quick task to get that done. And if I wait until some time later, I've lost the train of thought that went with making the top. The more time passes, the more difficult it is to get the same colours and look to the back. Experience has taught me to do the whole thing at the same time.

It will take some work to get all of these done, but I am determined at the moment to get on with it. I think it's time to actually get some of these projects finished, wouldn't you agree?

Another thing I was working on yesterday and today is this quilt I was planning, out of white shirts and skinny red lines. This one, too, was started a while ago, I cut up some white shirtings I had left from my tailoring days, along with some other b&w's I had accumulated, and appliqued these red lines on, in a random way. I started off random, then I was trying to set them up into a heart pattern, but they just weren't made to cooperate that way. I wish I'd thought of the heart thing before I appliqued, but this is what I have. So I've reverted to the random idea. I can't leave them out too long around here, so I'll probably just go with what I have.

I'm hooking this up to Leah Day's UFO Sunday blog post, link here.

A Christmas Quilt

I've made huge progress the last couple of weeks on a quilt I'm making for Christmas. I need the deadline to motivate me to get it finished. And I know that if I don't finish it very quickly, many years will go by without me working on it at all. So I've been madly working away. This weekend was a big push that saw the back assembled, the top finished, the whole thing sandwiched, and the quilting started. This is when my kitty cat wanted to settle in. They've been helping a lot as I've been laying out pieces, but this was serious. I just had to grab a camera.

Just Like Making a Quilt

Last week, after much planning, discussion, and general thinking, we had somebody in to build an interlocking patio for us. Measures 15 x 21 feet. We had decided on a nice red brick, with a lighter coloured inner border. The bricks arrived, and a bobcat-type machine came in to dig out our existing concrete driveway. The bricks were all in sizes of multiples of 3":  12x12, 6x9, 3x6, 6x6".  When the guys were laying down the bricks, I commented to them that it was just like making a quilt, I got some funny looks from them! You know what it's like, you make blocks in different sizes, all in multiples of 3", all the blocks will fit together, even if you set them up randomly. Add your borders, and you have a quilt. You can see the similarities, can't you? Between the quilt, and the brick patio? I knew you quilt people would get it. 

New Hamburg Mennonite Relief Sale

Talk about a quilt buzz!  I went to the Quilt Preview for the New Hamburg Mennonite Relief Sale today in New Hamburg. Tomorrow is the Quilt Auction for one of Canada's largest quilt auctions.

One could take a look at the quilts today and register for the auction. I hadn't been to the preview or the auction before, and I'm thrilled to have checked this one off. There were excited quilt enthusiasts like no other. It is one thing to see such quilt beauty all in one show, quite another to think of the prospect of bidding on and owning such an item!

I noticed people moving up and down the rows of quilts, taking notes on quiltmakers, colours, item numbers, etc.

And these people were not all quiltmaker types you encounter at the usual quilt shows. There were a lot of people there who looked serious about buying. It would be interesting to see who buys what, but that will have to wait for another year for me.

I saw a lot of other activities related to the Mennonite Central Committee. It was apparent that this was a fundraiser, with fun and food for all. Early tomorrow, strawberry pies go on sale. Apparently they sell out fast! And the line-ups to get yummy Mennonite food were all 100 people deep. And I also saw quite a large number of Mennonite people of all ages there. So while the quilt excitement was palpable, it was the entire experience of exitement that was so enjoyable.

So that's it for me for this year's St. Jacobs Quilt & Fibre Art Festival. I've been to every venue on the list, every show, every community! Quite a marathon of quilts. Next week I will turn my attention to Quilt Canada in Halifax. I'll have a few days off from quilt shows, and will be ready by then. Stay tuned for more quilt stories.

Sigh

A trip to not one, but two separate Chapters stores yesterday, did not yield any newly released quilt magazines. I was looking for my favourite, Quilting Arts Magazine, and was not satisfied with that or any other. I checked out the photography books for a while, but left without any purchases. Can you believe it? The new quilt mags should be out soon, I can feel it.

A New Gadget Needs a New Quilted Cover

I got a new electronic gadget for Christmas. It's a 10.1" Samsung Galaxy Tablet, and I love it. I had been thinking about it for a while, and my sweetheart surprised me, really surprised me, with one for Christmas. It's amazing what's possible in the technology world. Anyway, I decided I needed to make a cover for it, since the neoprene ones weren't very exciting or personal for me.

I looked around the house for ideas, for fabric, for whatever I could use. There were several possibilities, but what I came across was a quilted piece I'd started some years ago, and never finished. I had extra blocks left from making a quilt, and put them together into a wall hanging. I quilted the stuffing out of it, in a contrasting colour, and didn't much like where that was going. Where it went after that was into the closet, quickly forgotten. I didn't know what else to do with it.

I was only too pleased to cut it up into something more useful. I even

managed to find the original fabric for the binding. It was easy

enough to figure out how big to cut it, and joined the edges in an envelope fashion to fit the Tablet. I added beads and yard for trim, and added Velcro for a closure.

I now have a very personal Tablet cover.

A Houston Finish

So that very pretty yarn I bought in Houston is now knitted into a scarf. I needed a model to show it off, and my faithful cat, Tigger, was only too happy to help out. The wool has mohair in it, and it is very cuddly and warm, and I love wearing it. And I like the way it looks all bubbly and colourful.

I started another scarf from some wool I've had in my collection for a while now. I haven't been doing very much sewing lately, though. Hopefully I'll get back at it now that Christmas is past.

Stack of Success

At this busy time of year, I can actually say I've finished something. I was working hard on some Christmas cards to send out, and they are finished and in the mail. It wasn't hard to do any part of them, just time-consuming. Well, truthfully, I had some technical challenges all along the way, but everything worked itself out, and they seemed to take on a life of their own.

I hope everyone I've sent one to really gets a kick out of it. I included a "family" photo inside, which was a lot of fun capturing.