Momma Says Quilts Speak

Momma Says Quilts Speak

Friday, December 27, 2013

John Gould says "You should start sooner"

Good idea. I gave myself one day to produce a pieced quilt block for a raffle quilt. No one else of our group had time to spare right now and the quilt top needs done, before the end of January so it can be shipped to another group for quilting.
No problem. just one block right?
I started with a Tree of Life pattern and cut several pieces and pieced.. This was a week ago. I didn't get very far when I knew that I needed to scrap that one and put it together with a total new color scheme and fabric plan. BUT I had also realized that I wanted to do that one for myself. A KEEPER.

So checking around my quilt stash, I found some batiks that had the feeling that I wanted, though Batiks can be difficult to use. If you are not careful, Batiks will bind you down to a limited scheme of what you can use

. Over the last couple of years and with some experimentation, I have been able to break out of that mold. I really do not like quilts with --oh, lets say, less than 20 fabrics in them, and I don't like pinned down to what fabric that I want to use. I don't think that people that plan and match their fabrics so carefully do bad work, after all, its really all in the finished product. Does it please YO?. That is about all that is really important unless you are giving it away as a gift or planning it for somebodys decor, taste,  or new house.

That said, several years ago, I started refusing to even thinking of  making quilts for people, for requests, for their taste etc. I told my kids, when I am gone you can pick and choose and do what you will, but life is too short for me to make "decor" for someone else. I want to be free, and you can be free to keep and toss as you will. And likewise, I do not want fabric and materials to tell me what I have to do either. Not all fabrics fit together, of course, but mostly that is dictated by How you use them and WHERE.

Hmm, back tot ht Tree of Life pattern. For me I want something funky, mystical, and  "unseen medievial forest feel with a little Disney thrown in for fun.
 For this group quilt, I wanted strength, bright light, mixed fabrics with moving light and spiritual integrity. I do get carried away-don't I?

I scrapped the first two and half rows of the second effort and then it started coming together. Only now, I am hogging to much of the quilt. Where do I stop? So I first talked to my daughter so that she could counsel me ( how that I knew she would) and try to curb my impulses. Then I called a comrade to give me her slant on what I have and what I can do to it to lift it up, but also to let it rest on its on merit and be released for someone else's endeaver.

Today I ordered another yard of a fabric designed by Angela Walter for Art Gallery Fabrics. It looks almost antique, it looks almost modern. It is a transitional blue that looks slightly greyed but in daylight, it is not greyed at all. Of course, I told :The Fabric Patch  quilt shop that I needed the fabric yesterday- which I did. And please rush.

My battery is dead on my camera so I am using my husbands super camera and I am not a technology whiz, more a technology neanderthal!




These are auditions for a framing fabric.Which brings up another note.
I am in the process of changing my lighting in my sewing room to LED DAYLIGHT Bulbs.
So right now it is a combination of Obama's edict and an upgrade to LED. At 9$ and up apiece it will take a few for me to get it all changed over. The light directly over this set here is 2 LED lights in a ceiling fan and one of those nasty florescent screw in types  with the nightmare taffy  wrap look. Yuck. But, you know, it takes time. Tomorrow when  my artistic eye arrives, hopefully we can have some daylight. But-its 95% humidity out there and mass fogg at 23 degrees right now ---.
Ahh! But there are piles and piles of unironed fabric to  root through. Oh JOY! I do like fondling fabric!
Maybe we will find something in the stash! A treasure hunt!

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