Winds of Time

Favorite Book was the theme for this time around, and I spent a lot of time thinking about all the books I've read over the years. I can't say that there is any one favorite book, to be honest. I have lots of favorites. 

When you see my quilt, you will assume that my favorite book might be Don Quixote but I regret that I have only partially read that book. Perhaps one day I will finish it. My quilt reflects my choice to go with a faovite quilt book - sorry if that's too off theme, but it was all that appealed to me. This particular book is one I pull off the shelf quite often, looking for inspiration. The book is Art Quilt Collage by Deborah Boschert. I've yet to try all of her practices she suggests in the book, but this time I did choose a few while creating this little quilt. 

My husband and I spend more time than most driving around the countryside looking at wide open fields, wind turbines and other features of the landscape. On our last outing, I was struck at how time changes things. Fields sprouting wind turbines when times ago you would only see corn or some other crop for miles. Size and proportion change, from the small windmill to the soaring wind turbines dwarfing the now lonely family farm. 

While my quilt is not exactly a collage, it does attempt to show before and after through stitching and a little bit of mixed media. Nestled between the barn and the gigantic wind turbine is the old skeleton of a windmill, a shadow of what once was. 

It is my first attempt at block printing, carving the windmill from a freehand drawing I made. I declared it not bad for a first attempt! The little barn and house are freehand cut out of scraps. I machine stitched them down and then added doors and windows by hand. 

The large wind turbine is green, to indicate the "green energy" idea. The sky is a blue fabric print with clocks, as you can see, to indicate the passage or winds of time. The yellow polka dot ground was chosen because I like yellow and the circles remind me of the motion of the turbines and windmills. 

The quilting is just a simple wave across the quilt, like a wind blowing through the open fields. The finished quilt is 8 inches by 23 inches. 

Another challenge done, and I enjoyed coming up with this one! 

Wendy

Keep Swimming

 My favorite nonfiction book is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.  Annie used her nature observations as jumping-off places for essays that combine poetic images, quotes from past researchers, and facts about nature.  It is not an easy read, but it is a book that reveals something new each time I dip into it.

It is the mindset of the book that has remained with me the strongest. To paraphrase a three-page section, in the time I am writing this, the galaxy is careening, hundreds of solar systems are being born, the sun’s surface is exploding, winds are blowing, caribou are moving across the tundra, sharks are moving up and down the coast, a moth is crawling, a snake is stirring (Dillard 97 –99).  

For my quilt, I didn't try to reproduce any of Dillard's personal experiences; I chose one of my own that echoed her mindset.  It is my attempt to capture one moment at our pond's edge, when I saw a big old turtle swimming by, while birds twittered and shrieked from the trees, and minnows splashed in the shallows, and dragonflies guarded their territories.

"Keep Swimming", a quilt that celebrates the book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

All the blue fabric in the birds was hand-dyed by me; the other fabrics are batiks.  I beaded around the outlines of most but not all of the creatures.

detail of a bluebird and a minnow

I spent enjoyable hours on this quilt, and I had the new BTS album Arirang on repeat while I did so.  The first single they released was "Swim," so it seemed apt to name this "Keep Swimming".  :)

If you would like to read more quotes from the book and see a few more details of the quilt, you can visit my home blog at textileranger.com. 

A Hobbit Hole

 

There are no prizes for guessing which book I chose!

I had a hard time deciding as I've had so many different favourite books at different times of my life but Tolkien has been an enduring companion to me throughout and The Hobbit is my chosen tale.

There are so many wonderful quilts that were crying out to be made but I settled for a modest, understated Hobbit Hole framed with a gold ring. 

I'm very much looking forward to seeing what others have made :)

New Theme

Thank you, everyone for sharing your quilts in motion. I always enjoy seeing the different interpretations of a theme.

We're left with just one theme:

Favourite Book

Reveal for your "Favourite Book" will be Friday, May 1st. 

In the meantime, I suppose we should be thinking of prompts for the next time around. I’m just filling in and helping out posting this prompt. I’ll leave it up to the Administrators (with a capital “A”) to decide the ongoing direction of this group after the May reveal.

Bird in Motion

For today's reveal, I made a bird that (with help) can flap her wings. I did also make a hanging felt heart but, once I put the strings on, the heart wasn't heavy enough to make her hang without her wings drooping so (after a lot of searching) I found a stone pendant and that did the trick.

Here is a selection of photos showing her in motion...

The background is a room Mr RH was decorating, with various coatings of paint over new plaster.

Thank you Mr RH!

I thought this was a particularly challenging theme so I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has made :)

Zoom

 I made this from a piece of umbre fabric so that the colors progressed from light to dark. At first I wanted to make a ball bounce but that did not really work without a 3D shadow. 

Motion: After the Storm

Since I had just a short time to work on my project before leaving on a trip, I wanted to find something I could do quickly. Often when I’m looking for ideas, I consult The Google. After typing “motion in quilts” into my search bar, I came up with “bargello.” Cool! I’d never made a bargello quilt before, and I didn’t even know how to get started. So I spent a little more time searching, and came up with an idea from Quilt Inspiration for a free bargello pillow pattern. 

I’ll admit to feeling a little guilty about using a pattern for this, but since I had limited time, and it was a technique completely new to me, I cut myself a break this time. Pawing through my stash, I came up with these fabrics.

The first step was to cut strips all the same width and then sew them together in order. Here’s how that looked.

Next, I was to sew the two ends together to form a tube.

Next, I was to cut strips perpendicular to what I had already. Those were cut in variable widths. To get the feeling of motion, the tubes were “unsewn” at different color changes until I had a pattern of strips that looked like this:

It made sense to sew the strips together using the quilt as you go method. I created a large-enough back and batting, and then sewed the quilt top together quilting each strip to the ones that came before.

Then, I squared it up, gave it a red binding, and my quilt was finished.

Here’s how it looks from the back.

And since you can’t have a rainbow without some stormy weather, I’m calling my quilt “After the Storm.” It ends up 20 x 20 inches.

I'm looking forward to see what the rest of you did with this prompt. I hope you like my quilt.

A Thread of Motion

 Thinking through this theme, I had all kinds of ideas. I thought I had settled on one idea until I was paging through a quilt book one day and a whole new idea came to mind. I quickly stitched up a quilt top using an orphan block I had made from scraps another quilter had given to me. That quilt top sat on my design wall while I considered how to quilt it. I decided that I should do a practice run first, so that I had a plan when I tackled the larger quilt. Oddly, the practice quilt is my favorite of the two, although the block in the actual quilt top has more motion in it (I think). 

This is the practice quilt. Motion is shown in the quilting, which was done with my walking foot. The quilt is 14.5 inches square. 

The quilting was done with Aurifil 40 st thread in Mustard (#5022) which works well with the pickle green fabric in the block and binding. The different angles of the quilting creates motion in the quilt. The quilt backing is just a solid white/black print which also has a bit of movement or motion to it. 

Okay, getting back to the actual quilt I was planning for this theme. Same idea, just larger. The block is made from some scrap improv units given to me by another quilter years ago. My daughter says the block is "wild", so I'm taking that as there is some motion in the block! 

While I had planned to do similar quilting for this quilt, I changed my mind the more I looked at it. Once again I was paging through a quilt book and saw this idea for adding quilting, so I thought I'd give it a try. 

For this quilt, I used Aurifil 40 wt thread in Beige (#2314) and 50 wt threads in Neon Orange (#7000), Neon Yellow (#7001) and Turquoise (#2810). I'm not entirely happy with the outcome of this, but I think it does add some motion to the quilt. The backing is one of my favorite fabrics for the color and the movement. 

This quilt finished at 24 inches by 31.5 inches. 

I'm looking forward to seeing the other quilts in this challenge! 

Wendy

New Theme

Thank you, everyone for sharing your beautiful Sashiko quilts. It was interesting seeing so many different interpretations of the theme.

We're left with just two topics:

1. Motion = Heads

2. Favourite Book = Tails

With just two, I've decided to do a coin toss to choose the next theme. Thus, the "heads" and "tails" designation. And I had a hard time deciding on a currency since not everyone here is in the United States. So I selected my favorite one dollar American coin...the Susan B. Anthony. Susan says:

Heads! The next theme will be "Motion."

The next reveal date is Sunday February 1st. I hope you all have a peaceful holiday season. I'm looking forward to seeing how you put this theme into motion.

Happy Sewing everyone :)

Sashiko Blooms

 Upon hearing the next theme was Sashiko, I considered using one of my Sashiko stitcheries, but of course I stashed it somewhere where I'd remember it, and I'm still wondering where that is. So, I stitched up a little piece, but then thought it wasn't enough, so that is still on my design wall. In the end, I decided to create some flowers using raw edge applique and Sashiko stitches. 

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I have a book on Sashiko that had examples of stitches, so I tried to use some of those. In the end, it really looks like I just did big stitching, but I really did use examples from the book. 

In the petals, I used long stitches and "pluses". In the brown center, I attempted some diagonal stitches. 

The stems are just long stitches in green threads, and the leaves got a little more creative. You might also notice the quilting, done by machine, but it is a nod to another Sashiko design. 

I added the blue/white border because I thought it worked well. The backing is a cheerful blue floral I had in my stash. 

I'm not really sure I met this challenge, but I enjoyed stitching wiht the 12 wt threads and finishing this little quilt. It measures approx 14" x 21". 

Wendy

Sashiko Reveal: Mermie's Cabin

Good morning, fellow Endeavourers. Before I show you my finished quilt, let me tell you first about Plan A. When this prompt was announced, we’d just returned from our trip to Alaska. While we were in Alaska, we were fortunate to be among the 30% of visitors who actually get to see Denali. This was a picture I took when we pulled off the road.

I spent some time perusing Pinterest, looking for inspiration. Some of the images I saw on Pinterest made me wonder if I could recreate my image of Denali using the sashiko technique. So I printed my image onto a sheet of Sticky Fabri-Solvy and went to work on it. I’d planned to stitch parallel running stitches in the various colors from the image.

After stitching on it for a few days, I started having doubts about whether this was going to work. Without some kind of outlining, I didn’t see how it would ever look like anything other than a bunch of random stitches. I hadn’t decided to give it up yet, but I was thinking about what else I might do. 

Randomly one evening, I was in our spare bedroom where this watercolor painting hangs on the wall.

It was painted by my husband's grandmother. Her name was Olive Riddle. We called her "Mermie." In the post I wrote on my personal blog, I went into some detail here about Mermie. If you're interested in the more detailed version of this reveal, you can read my blog post right here.

So, as I looked at the watercolor on the wall, I could envision it in stitching. I had an idea to outline the main subjects in stem stitch, and then fill in the interiors with different sashiko patterns. I took a picture of her painting, and then printed it as a photograph. 

In preparation for this project, I'd already purchased some sashiko templates. I used them for inspiration and then as guides to help me trace the stitching patterns I wanted to use.

Then I traced the design onto fabric.

And then I just stitched and stitched and stitched until it was finished. I only had a loose plan about how to stitch various sections, and made some decisions as I went along.

When it was finished, I trimmed it very close to the stitching, and then added borders. The pattern in the gray batik seemed just right for this piece dedicated to sashiko.

And then I quilted it on my domestic sewing machine by stitching very, very close to the stem stitching. The quilting is mainly functional, but it also gave some texture to the piece.

When the quilting was finished it looked like this from the back.

All that was left to do was to add the binding. Here is my finished quilt. It measures 15 x 17.5 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

Here’s a closer look at the stitching.

And now, it is hanging with the watercolor cabin that Mermie painted.

Thanks for visiting today. I hope you like my quilt.

Sashiko Colour

 

After ages of not knowing what to make for this challenge, I ended up making six 9 1/2" square quilts inspired by sashiko, colour and typography.

It was something of a scrap project, using up the fused silk pieces I had left over from my Circles and Squares quilt.

The first little quilt I made was probably the most sashiko/boro inspired but I was having fun so I just carried on without worrying about keeping too closely to the theme.

I've posted more about this project over over at Rainbow Hare.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone has made this time :)