Two finishes and pondering my next move
It’s been a wild week again – 2 more days of wrap-up work on the house, which disrupts my studio and office, and, hired a new, faster internet service and had it installed. On the Good news front my small quilt group met on Monday – oh how delightful it is to meet in-person! I have to pull myself back because I just crave personal interaction sooo much that I’m afraid I will embarrass myself. I can’t wait until we can hug, have in-person classes, show our faces, wear lipstick and just be ourselves.
I’m still working on virtual live classes and some big things that I hope work out. I was a zoom guest to a Julie Silber lecture on Tuesday and I have to say, I probably enjoyed it more in person at home on my laptop than I would have in a guild meeting. It was a delightful lecture and I could truly enjoy every quilt because it was right in front of me, big as you please. There are trade-offs.
If you are not already aware, Sue Bleiweiss and Lyric Kinard have created the Global Quilt Connection with a worldwide reach. They have 3 Meet the Teacher events scheduled and I’ll be presenting on Sept 2. But here’s the deal, get your local guild or any organization you know of that hires teachers to tune in for the MTT events. This will give your guild or shop or organization an opportunity to see teachers from all over the world that are teaching virtually. Remember, in the world of Zoom, your guild can hire teachers from Australia, Canada, England, oh my! It’s a tremendously valuable new resource.
I did have two finishes, let me introduce them. I’m in an odd spot right now, getting set up to go virtual, no gigs since March 14, Hubby having had two knee replacements during this time, people we know have died, the horrific house debacle, etc. I have sailed along quite well until recently and have taken a dip for a moment here. What do you do when you’re in a funk? Something, anything creative!
I’ve thought about another attempt on my trapunto quilt that failed (wrote about that here):
This is a horrible photo but right now this quilt is wadded up in the “Time-Out-I-Don’t-Want-To-Even-Look-At-You” pile. It’s actually a glorious light, icy blue dupioni. I am thinking about a second try, even ordered the silk for it. But it is a Major Time Suck and I’m not sure I want to give all my quilting time to one quilt right now. I do love that idea, the design, the silk and the trapunto!
I needed to find a project that I could just fly with, something fun, free and fast. I looked through my stash and rediscovered a series of small panels. There were 6 but I used one to play with couching upon. It was a fail, so I’ve got 5 left. They are fun:
This is just fun: grab some showy thread and thread paint! The photo doesn’t show it well, but I had a blast with the details:
And one wasn’t enough so I finished the second one too:
I tried something new with this one: the border is what I’m going to call ” Random Ribbon Candy”. I kinda like it! Details here:
In real life you would see the impact of the thread much more vibrantly. It was a fun thing to do; I think I’ll finish the other 3, maybe even this week.
I am such a fan of panels to get you free motion quilting. If you’re stuck, if you’re just not ready to quilt your real quilts but you want some fmq experience, grab a fun panel and have a blast!
I am also really itching to do a larger inset circle quilt. I was going to use my silks but then I remembered Sky Ombres by Jennifer Sampou. Oh these ombres are glorious, unlike anything you’ve ever seen. I quilted one of the quilts for her book, Ombre Quilts:
I took this at the Houston Fall Market last year. Yup, I was mighty proud!
Can’t you see that those ombres would be fabulous in an inset circle quilt? I took a scan of the fabric swatches from my book and played:
I’m liking that bottom row of 3 fabrics but I’m still playing. I use my Color Tool by Jean Wolfrom, a classic. For this project I really needed to be mindful of my colors – I’ll need a strong palette but also lots of value changes from light to dark. These ombres will be perfect for that. My color tool kept me from going off the rails. I am not quite ready to sew on this one yet, it needs to percolate.
And you might not know it but this, is a beautiful thing:
Yes, it’s my baseboard, remade, mitred, painted and installed. That means we just have to get the walls painted, have the carpet cleaned and The Great Repiping and Flood Debacle of 2020 will have come to an end. Allelujah! We’re meeting with painters today, can’t wait to schedule.
So have a great weekend and cruise the links at Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday!
Test
Lovely!
You have a gloriously resilient spirit, Jenny! You just keep “skipping” along no matter what comes your way. :-). I’m sure it was healing to be able to step outside of the fiasco inside your home and enjoy that beautiful garden!
I know what you mean about the trapunto redo — I’m starting to be more judicious about what I contemplate jumping into as well. For instance, I was smitten by a few Dear Jane quilts enough to buy the book and the EQ software patterns, and I have all of the patterns for Esther Aliu’s magnificent 18th century reproduction Love Entwined quilt (insanely detailed, densely appliqued), but I’m beginning to have a better awareness of how long these things really take me, and that the number of projects of that magnitude that I can actually finish in one lifetime is necessarily finite! I had been holding Dear Jane and Love Entwined off to the side, thinking I’d tackle them once my skills were up to it, but now I don’t know whether I’ll ever want to make that kind of time investment on someone else’s design, just to make one more quilt like so many others that have already been made.
But your trapunto quilt doesn’t fall into that category. I suspect you WILL tackle it again, when you’re ready, and I look forward to seeing it when you do. Meanwhile, the butterfly thread painting is a delightful way to lift your spirits!
Hey, by the way — in your teaching and travels, or perhaps within the circle of quilters you know locally, have you heard any feedback from Bernina Q24 long arm owners who use their machines for hand guided custom quilting, by any chance? I spent 2+ hours test driving one at my dealer a few days ago (masked, of course) and was impressed by perfect tension and perfect stitches no matter what thread I was using (I brought Glide, So Fine, King Tut, MonoPoly, and even Metallic) and a lot of great features of the machine, but a lot of the feedback I’m finding from other owners is coming from folks who have their machines computerized.
Okay, step away from the DJ and Love Entwined!! They are dangerous. I probably will redo that trapunto, I love it so. I think it’s a matter of economics on the Q24, most that invest that much take in customer quilts. No one wants to pay for custom quilting so computer guided is the way to go. I know mostly Q20 sit down folks. I’ll write you.