Memories: Blue on Blue

When the theme was announced for this challenge, "Memories," my immediate thoughts were of family and travel. Fairly quickly I dismissed the idea of making a memory quilt related to family and turned my thoughts toward travel. 

My husband and I are RVers. (International readers might better know an "RV" as a "caravan.") When he retired in 2017, we took a trip we'd dreamed of for decades around the perimeter of the United States. We left our home state of Oregon in September of that year, reaching home again on March 30th of the following year. There were quite a few items on our "bucket lists," including seeing the manatees that live in Florida. It wasn't easy to find them. Even finding them, it wasn't easy to see them in the murky and dark waters where they live. We finally found them at Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park in Florida.

We saw the most delightful prairie dog town at Caprock Canyon State Park in Texas. I like doing animal collages, and so these guys got some serious consideration.

I'll admit this albino squirrel from Florida was tempting too.

Some of our most desirable bucket list items were to be found in New York State. For example, we really wanted to see Niagara Falls:

Another item high on the list was the Statue of Liberty. A friend and native New Yorker encouraged us to take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry for the best view of the Statue of Liberty, and he wasn't wrong. It was thrilling to see Lady Liberty for the first time.

More soberly, we wanted to see the rebuilt World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

As I looked through my pictures, I came across this image of the one commissioned work of art in the memorial museum. It was created by American artist Spencer Finch. When I saw this image, it inspired me to attempt to recreate it in fabric.

For his work, "Trying To Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning," Finch hand-painted 2,983 squares of Fabriano paper — one square in a unique shade of blue for every person killed in the September 11 attacks and in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. 

To create the quotation, I first chose a font and font size, and then printed it onto paper.

That was traced onto a tan solid and hand embroidered using Perle cotton and a stem stitch.

Then I cut ninety 2-1/2 squares of fabric, selecting as many different colors of aquas and blues as I could find in my stash. I'd hoped to make them all different, but some of them are repeats.

When it was all sewn together, I quilted it with a straight-line diagonal grid. This sky fabric was also in my stash, and it seemed the right choice for the quilt back.

When the quilting was finished, it was ready for binding.

Here is my finished quilt, inspired by my original image taken at the museum during our visit. It ended up at 19 x 19 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

I enjoyed making this quilt, and was glad for the excuse to take another tour through the many images shot during our travels. When friends asked us where we were going, I told them we were driving east until we reached the Atlantic Ocean. Then, we turned right and drove to the Gulf of Mexico, where we turned right again. Then we drove to the Pacific Ocean, and turned right again, reaching our home in Oregon, and the end of our trip. It was a journey of over 10,000 miles, and packed with memories. I hope you like my quilt. I'm looking forward to seeing what you all have created for this theme.

The Sea: Gulls Just Want to Have Fun

When "The Sea" theme was announced, I had so many ideas it was hard to narrow it down. I knew right away I wanted to try Karen Eckmeier's "Accidental Landscapes" technique. Her book has been on my shelf for years, but I'd never tried anything from it. Also, I thought it would give me a chance to use some of my grandmother's handmade doilies and dresser scarves in a quilt. 

So, I first settled on this original photograph, taken in Rodanthe, North Carolina, a small town in North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Using a collage technique, I rendered the seagull into fabric to create this quilt. It ended up at 20 x 24 inches.

The background was created using Karen Eckmeier's technique for layering fabrics and giving depth to a landscape. Also, I created some shimmer on the water using Angelina fibers.

As I worked, I remembered a lighthouse fabric I'd picked up during our travels. 

It included the Ocracoke lighthouse, also located in the Outer Banks. We traveled south to see the actual lighthouse.

And so I fussy cut it from the fabric...

 

and included it in the background of the quilt.

The foamy waves were made from my grandmother's hand-crocheted lace. This is something I've wanted to try for a long time.

Then I remembered visiting a fabric shop in Mantea, North Carolina, located in the northern portion of the Outer Banks. We live near the Pacific Coast of the United States, and most of our beaches are rather barren of seashells. The Atlantic Coast is quite different with lots of seashells for the picking. 

When we travel, I visit quilt shops and search for fabrics representative of the area. These regional fabrics are used to make memory quilts. While visiting the quilt shop in Mantea, I purchased a seashell fabric. 

From that, a grouping of shells was fussy cut to add to the lower corner.

Finally, I added in a few friends for the friendly seagull.

There were a few little details to hand-stitch, and my piece was finished.

Digging through my stash for a border and backing fabric, I found this one with waves and fish tails that seemed perfect. 

While I didn't set out for my "sea" themed quilt to represent the Outer Banks of North Carolina, that's where it ended up. It was a very fun project, and hard to walk away from it once I got started. I hope you like my quilt. I'm looking forward to seeing what others came up with for the theme.

A little late - apologies!

Improv

I’m afraid I struggled this time! I decided to try improv circles and found it a bit too tricky!

You can read more about my Portrait of a Polka Dot Lady on my blog HERE.

I am taking this opportunity to let you know I am stepping out of the group. I have enjoyed participating, but have found it hard to make the deadlines. For the last few months I have had problems commenting on Blogger blogs, and investigating why this happened has eaten into valuable stitching time!

I will be popping over to visit of course! This is such an inspirational blog, and I would never have tried so many techniques if I hadn’t been a member here.

Thank you Janine and Catherine for allowing me to take part, it was a great experience!

I wish you all well and look forward to catching up on visiting everyone.

Barbara xx

“What goes around, comes around”

Hi everyone,

Apologies for being late ...... I was going to say, because I was finishing off late into the night last night, which I was, but as you will know by now my naughty computer has let me down today, and I found that, although I am able to edit from my iPad, I wasn’t able to add a photo. Luckily for me Janine was kind enough to offer to add my photo for me. Thank you again, Janine.

~~~~~~~~~~

My piece is called “What goes around, comes around” because as I was stitching around the triangles, heading for the spiral, I couldn’t stop this line from an old proverb entering my head. 

The reason I’ve entitled it so is because all the triangles are from previous projects I’ve worked on, and as such they were “What goes around” with their scraps being used again and again in future ideas. As I stitched the spiral into the centre and then back on itself, and around the triangles again I couldn’t help thinking “comes around”, which although it isn’t the original meaning of the saying seemed so apt for this piece.

I wanted to show a few more photos of the backing, the heading, and how I worked this, but it will have to wait until either we buy a new laptop or the sick one is repaired.

I hope everyone has had a fun day unveiling their quilts and I will be round to visit shortly. I can’t wait to see how everyone else interpreted their “Spiral”.

Barbara x

Unfinished Changes - Barbara

I am afraid I missed the 1st May "Reveal" date for The Endeavourers. 

I had a plan, but my back has been playing up and I've not slept properly for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately this meant I have been so tired I haven't felt like sewing (or standing painting) and this was the week I’d anticipated finishing my quilt! 

Even though I haven't a "finish" to share I thought I'd explain what the title suggested to me:

When I made my first quilt for The Endeavourers I struggled to mix the colours I wanted, and I realised then that a colour chart would have helped so much! My first thought when I read "Change" was that of how paints change when they are mixed, so I decided to paint a quilt colour chart.

I am using calico, and have washed and ironed the fabric a few times before starting to paint, so that hopefully my "mini quilt to be" won't shrink in future washes. I pencilled a grid, and using a fabric pen wrote the paint colours across the top, and again down the left hand side.

Each colour in the left column is then mixed with each of those across the top of the chart in turn.

The outer border is just my practising.

DH put me off my stroke a little when he asked how I was measuring the paint mix! Oops, I hadn't thought too much about that ..... I thought it would be just a dab here and there!

My quilt will end at the pencil line around the colour names. The colours round the outside are where I was using up some of the paint I’d mixed.

Once I finish painting I am intending to machine quilt grid lines and add binding. 

My mini quilt will finish at 16" square.

To summarise, maybe this wasn’t the best time to learn how to use a colour pen, or how to mix paints, but I did have fun experimenting, although it was far more time consuming than I originally thought ..... therefore it could be some time before its finished!

Barbara xx

A Fragile Nature

Hi Everyone,

I really apologise for being so late posting, and, even now, I can only show you a flimsy!

When I saw our subject was “Nature” I knew I had this photo I’d taken in our garden .....

which I wanted to interpret into a quilt. I wasn't sure how, until I happened to see a photograph of a hibernating dormouse on the WWF website! I had visions of said dormouse dreaming of its food ..... and I checked they do eat berries and flowers, although whether my plant is the right type I don’t know.

I tentatively drew pictures from both photographs onto tracing paper, outlined them with a black pen, and then, with the help of a light box (a rather Heath Robinson affair of a tupperware box and small torch, torch held in place in the box with some drafting tape, and box held together with an elastic band!) pencilled the pictures onto calico (oops I said muslin in my original description .... I mis-spoke!).

Previously I had only painted fabric with Acrylic paints, and then it was only because I needed fabric of a specific tone to go with whatever project I was working on.

For this project I started with a “new to me” idea ..... fabric paints, and then decided to paint in the style of watercolours. Not such a clever idea in so many ways! I haven’t even painted watercolours on paper before, but I certainly have more idea “how to” now. I guess it did me a favour, as, if I hadn’t started this project, I think I might never have used the fabric paints and they would probably have eventually just dried up in the cupboard!

I’ve also painted binding for this project as the original fabric I was going to use was much too dark ..... I just hope it looks the way I think it will when it's finished.

I ironed all the fabric after painting so hopefully all the paint should last, only time will tell.

I still need to persuade my sewing machine to let me stitch free motion to embroider my quiltlet, but for now I will put this on hold to consider our next project.

Do visit me, FlashinScissors, to see a few pictures of my process. See you later!!

Happy designing everybody!

Barbara xxx

of The Flashing Scissors 

A late start!

Hello everyone! Nice to meet you all!

When I first saw the title "Nature" I thought "Oh, that will be quite easy" ..... Nah!


I have to admit I had trouble getting started, although I had the idea of working from this photo right from the word go!

I started with ideas of drawing the branch with leaves and berries, but soon realised that including leaves would be too complicated in the time I have left!

I hope you will visit my blog where I am sharing more details with all my blogging friends.

Hugs,

Barbara xxx