All the C's

 Having no prompt for this quarter's challenge meant that, of course, I left everything to the last minute! If I thought that it was hard making up my mind on a project when I had a theme to work to, then it was nothing compared to making a decision when literally "anything goes" :)

In the end I decided that I would like to make a companion piece to one of my earlier Endeavourers projects. So, I chose to produce a companion piece for Making Waves which was made in response to The Sea, our challenge for November 2020.

I have called this piece "All the C's" as it is based upon the island of Great Cumbrae, in the Firth of Clyde, which is shown on the far reach of Making Waves. The island is only accessible by ferry from Largs, a journey of approximately 10 minutes to cover the 2 miles distance. 

 One of the iconic images of the island for the last 100 years (according to the local folklore!) is a rock painted to look like a crocodile. So another C for Crocodile Rock! The rock is easily accessible on the shoreline at Millport, the only town on the island. When we visited recently with our grandsons they felt very adventurous clambering over a crocodile :)

Cumbrae is also the home of the Cathedral of the Isles, the smallest Cathedral in Britain, which dates from  1851. The Cathedral, which is tucked away in a quiet corner of Millport, is a lovely spot on a warm summer's day. The Cathedral houses a particularly impressive organ, which with its equally impressive acoustics mean that concerts are often performed there. 

 

 

So, there you have it "All the C's" a companion piece to "Making Waves". Now in an ideal world I would finish this post with a photo of the two pieces side by side, or even a photo of All the C's with Cumbrae in the background. Sadly, as a result of leaving this challenge project to the very last minute I finished this last night and, as I am currently in France it would be a bit difficult to see Cumbrae from here:( 

 

 

In addition, having searched the house from top to bottom before leaving for France I could not find Making Waves, so, naturally, assumed that it must be in France. Having now searched the house here I cannot find it here either so I have no idea what I have done with it! Hopefully, it will turn up in a most unlikely place when I am not even looking for it :)

Looking forward as always to seeing how my fellow Endeavourers have responded to this no prompt challenge!

Memories: The Yellow Chair

 We were taking a road trip, heading north, along the shores of Lake Superior. Just before leaving, we had heard of the death of a friend. She had lived for many years in a cabin on Lake Superior, and we had enjoyed staying at her cabin and visiting her. We decided to pull over and walk the shore a bit in her honor. 

As I came down to the shore, there sat a yellow chair. An ordinary yellow kitchen chair, like those I remember growing up. The bright vinyl back and seat, with aluminum legs. It was just sitting there, empty, facing the lake. 

Perhaps it was the poignancy of the moment, but I wondered what memories that chair held. Did it sit in company around a table, filled with the swinging legs of little ones enjoying cookies fresh from the oven? Was it grandma's chair, where she sat as she shucked the corn for dinner? And how did it come to be on the lakeshore? Who brought it there, and why? What memories did it have to tell about life on the lake? Did the old man sit in it while tossing a stick for his dog? Was it a resting spot as the fisherman waiting for a bite at the end of his line? And now it sat empty, looking a bit forlorn and sad. But oh, what memories it must have. 

The greenery behind the chair is simply green scraps pieced together, spliced with light green added, then squared and sewn together. The sand was also improv piecing without the added splicing. The chair is added by raw edge applique. 

This was an enjoyable challenge, and I'll share more details about its construction on my blog this Wednesday. I continue to have fun with each theme, finding ways to challenge myself and create something unexpected. Even that builds fond memories! 

The Sea: Sea Spray

Since I live in Minnesota, no where near the coasts, I rarely get to see the sea. My favorite "sea" here is Lake Superior, and I go there as often as I can. I enjoy watching the waves crash over the basalt rocks, making them a deep gray. Lake Superior is a moody lake, particularly in November. My Sea Spray quilt is a nod to my favorite body of water. 

The finished quilt measures 16" x 20".  I started with a background fabric of grey ombre for the sky, blue for the water, and layered the clouds and rocks, freehand. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I stitched the clouds and rocks down by straight stitching along the curves and angles. 

With the clouds and rocks done, I got to work on the waves. I had added in two strips of blue faux cork fabric, thinking that would give the feeling of the light on the breakers as they rolled in. To soften the edges of the strips, I tried adding some sea foam by using a little free motion thread painting. I had never done this before, so it was a challenge to get it to look realistic. 

After that was done, I used white embroidery thread and began to add seed stitches to create the spray. That ended up being more work than I expected, with having to continue to add stitches to create the right combination of dense and loose stitches. 

Then I added binding, and it was done. I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge. It is one of my favorite quilts that I've made for this group! 

I have more information about the construction of this quilt on my blog today, if you are interested in reading a bit more about my process. 

Wendy

An Imaginary Voyage of Discovery in the South Pacific

My partner, Janine, sent me this wonderful compass as my inspiration piece for this quarter's quilt.  I was quite overwhelmed to receive it.  

Knowing that all my fabric was, at the time, in my studio where I couldn't get it during lockdown Janine also very kindly and generously sent me some fabrics, including the marvellous piece of map which went into the quilt.

The compass immediately set me thinking about great endeavours.   I love the stories of Scott and Shackleton, and sea-going adventures, like Darwin's on the Beagle.   A couple of years back, we visited the Discovery in Dundee, and I was really taken with the laboratory and its portholes.  

Then, having a particular interest in plants and horticulture, I read up about some of the great plant hunters who travelled the world bringing back new (to us) species from round the world.  In my head all these things finally came together in this quilt, combining science and adventure.

The story goes...

It is sometime in the 1800s.  The occupant of this cabin, the Scientific Officer of HMS Persevere (Leith), has gone on deck to watch as the tiny South Sea island they have just visited recedes out of view as they head further south.  On his bench are some shells he picked up there, and a piece of Ipomea pes-caprae - named Goat's foot morning glory because of the shape of the leaves - which grows on beaches throughout the world.  Its seeds are dispersed in salt water.  It is not a great discovery as it is already well known but it was beautiful to see and he may paint it later - he is a competent botanical artist.  A Monarch butterfly has found its way on board and will hopefully evade the killing bottle.    The Scientific Officer has been delighted in the last month to receive a letter from his wife, enclosing a studio portrait of his three little girls who he hasn't seen for a year.  He hopes to find more letters from home next time they reach a port visited by packet ships.    He misses his family very much, but until then he will be busy examining rocks and barnacles under his travelling microscope (currently in its box away from the salt air), and writing notes for posterity about beetles of the South Pacific.

Porthole view

Monarch butterfly

A family picture

A real, and a stitched shell

I had a lot of fun making this quilt and imagining the life of its subject has been a hugely therapeutic bit of escapism. Thank you so much Janine for such a lovely prompt!

[Note: Leith is part of Edinburgh where I live, and contains a large port.  The motto of Leith is 'Persevere' - a good motto for the times!  The little Victorian girls in the photograph are actually my great grandmother and her sisters in the 1800s.  The butterfly is a tribute to my grandfather, an entomologist.  I still plan to use a picture of my other great-grandmother as a stand-in for the Scientific Officer's wife, but she is currently in a box somewhere at the back of the attic!  The woman of this era who were not fortunate enough to be adventurers themselves deserve a lot of sympathy and recognition.]

Inspired Challenge

It was challenging to figure out how to use my inspiration fabric, but in the end, I'm very happy with my two projects that came from the fabric given to me by Martha. However, I was so busy thinking and then working on the project, I forgot to take a photo of the inspiration piece before I cut it up. It is present in each project, so you still get to see it.

The fabric sent to me was a little piece of approximately 7" square of text fabric. I taped it to my wall and thought about it for awhile. To begin with, I decided to choose a phrase from the fabric and play with that a bit.

Here's the phrase I chose:

I'm not really sure why "twirling in circles" appealed to me, other than that it reminded me of a line from the movie, You've Got Mail. The scene where Meg Ryan (as Kathleen) talks about the photo of her as a little girl and her mother where they are twirling.

I thought I needed to add a little more challenge to that phrase, so I decided that all my fabric I used had to have circles in the design. The only fabric that had a polka dot design was the background fabric. The only non-circle fabric used was the inspiration fabric, which you can see here:

Of course, I had to use a circle design, so I decided on some curved piecing. I had been wanting to play with the new templates from Jen Carlton Bailly so this was a great project for some creative play. Here's a peek at my finished mini quilt:

This quilt measures 16.5" square. Here's a little closer peek at the circle fabrics:

I had fun with simple big stitching within the circles, around the edges, and then echoed the circles with some machine stitching in a soft gray that matched the background fabric.

I also added a little more stitching between the circles, for more twirling effect.

I used a gray Grunge for the backing fabric, and one of the circle fabrics for the binding.

I wasn't really satisfied that this little mini was an art quilt, and I still had some inspiration fabric left over, so I got the idea for something a little different.

I cut up some of the encouraging words and phrases from the text fabric, and made a little coneflower.

Using a piece of natural Essex linen for the background, I started by stitching the stem with 12 wt thread that matched the color in the inspiration fabric. I drew out the center of the coneflower and stitched it to the stem by machine, using raw edge applique. Then I glue basted the text pieces on separately, stitching each one down by machine, again using raw edge applique. I found a matching scrap of batik fabric that I used for the leaves and added those, using the same method.

I added a fun text fabric for the binding, and a piece of neutral fabric for the back. The quilting is simply straight lines with a matching thread color.

This little quilt is 8" x 20". Both of these little mini quilts will eventually end up on my mini quilt wall. I like them both for different reasons.

This was such a fun challenge. Thank you, Martha, for the fun inspiration fabric!

Wendy

'Wishes': Say it with Flowers

For some reason I found this theme a very difficult one.  I couldn't think how to express it.  I had lots of thoughts about what 'wishes' might be about but none of them would settle into a quilt.  Eventually I set on what I would wish for someone else - happiness.

We often express our hopes and wishes to other people in the form of flowers  - either as a bunch of flowers or as a symbolic bunch of flowers on a card - so this became my plan.   I wanted to make a really jolly, happy and exuberant quilt as my quilts are usually more restrained, and maybe subconsciously I was wishing for a bit of colour at the end of a long grey January!



I was going to add a little banner at the top of the quilt, saying "Be Happy", but when I tried it out I didn't like it and although it would have made the quilt more obviously relevant to the theme artistic vanity won over.

The vase and table cloth are pieced, and the flowers are raw-edge applique, with quilting to make parts of the flowers stand out.  I thought a couple of the flowers needed a bit of extra pop so added buttons to the centres - the largest amount of time was spent in fussing with the composition.   Finally I bound the quilt round a canvas and stapled it in place.  I had a lot of fun making it!

Beggars would ride

It is time to reveal our quilts for this quarter's challenge, and once again I cannot believe how time has flown! This quarter's theme of "Wishes" really taxed my brain.

Early on in my research I came across a Scottish proverb, first recorded in 1628, that said "if wishes were horses, beggars would ride". For some reason the proverb stuck in my head and I kept coming back to it as the basis of my challenge quilt.

So, here is my "Beggars would ride" quilt for this quarter's challenge.

The "Beggars Badges" being tossed from the horse are made from tea light holders and a soft drink can, which were embossed and then die-cut. Beggars Badges did exist in Scotland around the time of the proverb, and there are apparently three examples in Glasgow Museums from Rothesay, which is not too far from home. I was delighted to be able to make that local connection for this quilt.

When I pulled the fabric for this quilt I wanted the colour graduation to represent the progression from town to country that access to a horse would provide. It was a very grey day when I photographed the completed quilt so the photo above is a more true representation of the colours in the final quilt.

The quilting too changes from the almost square grid of cobblestones (seen behind the Beggars Badges) to the fan shaped rolling hills above.

My original intention was to have several, smaller horses galloping across the quilt but I decided that one rearing horse figure had more impact, especially on the back of the quilt that you can see here. The horse is hand-dyed silk appliqued and then raw edge stitched. The mane is machine stitched using three shades of grey thread and the tail is couched grey embroidery cotton and textured embroidery threads.

This Endeavourers Challenge has once again been a joy to take part in. I never know at the start of each quarter quite where the challenge will take me, but I always enjoy the journey! Thanks to Catherine and Janine for organising yet another great challenge.

Head on over to Celtic Thistle Stitches to read more about the making of this quilt

The City Park

The theme selected for this quarterly art quilt challenge was "A Walk in the Park."

I had a few ideas from which to choose. I thought of the saying, "It was a walk in the park." Meaning accomplishing something easily. I wasn't sure I wanted to try to easily do this, so I moved on to the next idea. That was a bird's eye view of a park, a map, showing things that one might find in a park. But what type of park? The final choice was to invite the viewers into the park to imagine for themselves what they might find there. I invite you in to the City Park.

This wall hanging measures 18.5" wide by 20.5" high. It is raw edge appliqued, and includes threadwork on the fountain, the benches, and the entrance arch.

I especially liked stitching the water spraying from the fountain.

I used a cording foot (that I've had for years and never used) and Razzle Dazzle thread by Ricky Tims. It adds the watery sparkle to the fountain. I began on the left side with the stitching and, as you can see, got better by the time I got to the right side.

Thank you for visiting and please look at all the members' quilts for this quarterly challenge.