I made some progress on the weather challenge quilt today.  While I love hand applique, I can't say that prepping the pieces is my favorite part of the job.  Today I prepped the leaves and the sepals.  OK, I confess that I had to look up the name of those green, leaflike things at the base of a flower.  Sepals - nice.

I pulled out all of my green fabrics and finally went with a fabric that is barely green - more blue-gray with a little violet in it.  I think it will make the leaves and stem look the way they might on a rainy day.  So far, they look like green beans.  I'm really worried about getting the points on the ends of these ever-so-slender leaves.

I was pleased to use my Christmas gift from my friend Andrea: the numbered pins.  I admired them at a guild retreat, and she remembered and got them for me.  Isn't she swell?  The pins match the numbers on my sketch.

I don't want to tell you how long I wrestled with the bud.  I'm still not sure that I'm satisfied with the sepals.  The fabric wanted to ravel at that inside point, and I think I sacrificed the outside points to fight it into place.  I may make a new one tomorrow.  (My camera seems to want to make this distinctly lavender fabric look pink.)

I cut out the large flower as one piece, but I think it looks like a big lump.  Tomorrow I'll make four separate petals and build the flower that way.  (Look at that!  The flower is the same fabric as the bud, and it looks lavender.  Makes no sense!)

I always reply to people who tell me that they wouldn't have the patience to make a quilt that it doesn't require patience if you love it.  Well, I still love it, but I have to admit that it's requiring some patience today.

I suppose that I am one of about half a million bloggers who have made a resolution to return to blogging in 2015.  Maybe I'll be the one to keep it up.

I think I'll jump right in with what I'm working on now.  My guild's yearly challenge in coming up in April.  I'm quite sure that no one in the guild pays any attention to my blog, so I think I can post photos here.  The theme this time is "Weather."  I've decided to make a wall hanging based on the title of an old children's book, "Where Does the Butterfly Go When It Rains?"

Here is a sketch I drew on graph paper from a photo I found online.

I was most worried about creating the butterfly, because if I couldn't pull that off, the whole thing would be a bust.  I've worked for two days on it.  I decided to hand applique the blue lines and embroider the rest in black on a soft yellow cotton.  I'll cut out about 1/4 inch around it all and hand applique it to the background.

I'm using a lovely navy batik for the background, green for the grass and leaves, and a soft lavender (which, unfortunately looks pink in the photo) for the flower and bud.  I'll scatter some small white flowers in the grass.

The diagonal lines in the sketch will be hand quilted lines of rain.  I bought some tiny navy/iridescent beads to put into about every fifth stitch of quilting to make raindrops and some clear/iridescent beads for the edges of the butterfly's wings and to sew scattered in the grass.

I'm not worried about the stems, leaves, and flowers, but I really don't have a good plan yet for the grassy area.  I'm thinking maybe a mix of applique and embroidery again.  I love a good, scary project.

I've been traveling a bit - to a wonderful quilt retreat with online friends and to a family event in Vermont, so the sewing I've been doing is mostly adding hanging sleeves and labels to the quilts I'm putting into our guild show.

I did take advantage of the trip to Vermont to go to the Shelburne Museum.  There were two quilt exhibits.  I spent a lot of time in the textile building with about 30 of the quilts from their permanent collection of about 800.  I loved the variety and was impressed by the strong documentation. 

This was the featured quilt.  It is a beauty, but I noticed that the border on the right is clearly farther from the quilt top than the right border.  If you look at the stems of the roses, you can see that they are carefully curved to form a symmetrical pattern - that falls apart with the top left rose!  Two pretty obvious mistakes, and yet this quilt stopped traffic as people walked through the textile display.  It's a good lesson.

I thought this was an interesting use of silk neckties.  I'm not usually a fan of necktie quilts, but this one is quite elegant.

The second exhibit was all star quilts - mostly Bethlehem stars - just donated as a group.

I was shocked that only two of the almost forty quilts were attributed to the maker.  All others were by "unknown."  For Pete's sake, label your quilts!

This one, by an unknown Odawa Indian woman was just amazing.  The applique was made to look like the porcupine quill work of her tribe.

I had a chance to visit  the Morris Museum in NJ and was wandering around their extensive collection of vintage music boxes and automatons when I discovered these two musical sewing boxes. You can see the gorgeous sewing tools in the open one, but the information on the closed one said that it contained scissors, a thimble, a needle, and an EAR SPOON for collecting earwax to rub on the thread to make it go through the eye of the needle easier! (There was also a quilt exhibit, but, honestly, this trumped that in my mind.)

I love the beautiful golden tools.  Wonder what the bottle is for.  Medicinal spirits??

 

I so wanted to be able to open this to see the earwax spoon!

The Christmas house mini is finally finished.  I think it's cheerful and hope that lots of people try to win it in the upcoming raffle at our guild quilt show.  Since I just finished it, I am very aware of its imperfections.  Looking at the photo, I see that it isn't square.  How can that be??  I squared it just before I added the binding, and carefully stitched the binding on with a quarter inch seam.  I think I'll have to fool with it a bit more.  Darn!

I've been doing some planning and sample-making for a quilt workshop at the Bethlehem (PA) Area Public Library on November 1.  The program coordinator asked for a gift-making workshop for adults.  She has a few others for other Saturdays in November, including jewelry making.  I needed something that could be made completely by hand in two hours and given as a gift.  I may have participants who've never sewed before.  I decided on a mat for a candle or mug.  Here are my two samples.

 

The first uses Christmasy fabrics.  It is quilted simply with a button sewn in the center.  This serves two purposes: 1) To make a quick finish for those who have had enough and want to take home a finished product; and 2) To have a quick fix for covering wonky matches at the center point.  The second can be used year-round and includes hand quilting.  If anyone is having fun with the stitching and wants to do some decorative stitching at home.  I'll give a mini-lesson on hand quilting and send them home with a needle and thread.

I chose the half-square triangles because they allow for some design work.  I'll precut dozens of triangles, and each participant can use anywhere from two to eight fabrics.  I've made these cardboard pieces to show the different ways that the four squares can be placed.

How this goes will very much depend on who signs up.  We will take up to fifteen participants.  The program coordinator is a lapsed quilter and will stay to help.  I've also lined up two young women who are new to quilting to help with knots, both making them and untangling them, as well as answering questions and helping participants to use the rotary cutter to make the backing squares.

I'll take some photos of the event and post them here in November.  It's my first time teaching quilting to adults.  I've done a bit with kids, who are either very precise or wildly wonky and either stick with it or wander off.  Adults may be more easily frustrated or unhappy with their work.  I'll let you know.

Last weekend I went to Quilt Odyssey in Hershey, PA.  I couldn't believe the number of hand-quilted pieces in the show!  It's a small show, very juried, so each quilt is quite wonderful.  I spent an afternoon looking at the quilts and then went back for a few hours two days later to see them all again.

This mini (12"x12") won a blue ribbon.  Even standing in front of it, I couldn't get my head around the size of the work.  I left a little piece of the sign in the picture to give some size perspective.

My favorite quilt there was this gorgeous flower medallion - all hand appliqued and hand quilted.  There was some dimensional work on it, and I especially loved the lily of the valley.  I know that I will use this technique someday.

I took two classes: one called Happy Villages with Karen Eckmeier.  It was very freeing.  She is a clear teacher who also allows tremendous freedom.  Here are all of the things that I NEVER do that I'm doing in this quilt - not planning ahead, gluing, adding whimsical touches, using tulle, having raw edges.  Fun!  You can see that it is just halfway finished, but it will have to sit on the pile for a while, since I have work to do for the show in October.

The other class was in longarm quilting.  It was way over my head.  There were few students, and they were all quite experienced.  For a while, I tried to fake it, but then I decided to see what I could learn on my actual level.  It was a class on filling small spaces, and the two simple techniques I improved were echoing and making the same design to the right and left.  It turned out to be very useful.

Can you believe that I agreed to teach a little workshop at a local library in November?  It will be a two-hour Saturday program as part of their Homemade Holiday Gifts series.  I'm working on some samples that can be made by beginners, by hand, in two hours.  Don't know if this is possible.  I'll post my samples next time.

My quilt studio has become a bag factory.  I've been churning them out.  I now have fourteen completed for my guild's boutique and for gifts.  I can't say that it was boring, since each was made with different fabric, or at least different linings.  I'm quite pleased with them all.  They're about ten inches tall, a useful size.

 

I did like that I was able to use a lot of fabrics that I've bought because they had wonderfully bold patterns and then wondered how on earth I would use a fat quarter of the fabric in a quilt.  

On the other hand, making these bags has kept me from the work of making quilts.  AND now I'm heading for Quilt Odyssey at Hershey, where I have signed up for yet another class to make a wall hanging that will be someone else's design, not my own.  

I took a very pleasant scrap quilt class at my guild a couple of weeks ago and didn't even make the first block.  I enjoyed the color theory information but recognized that I would not be making that particular quilt.  I don't want to stop learning, but I need to make my own quilts.  Sooner, rather than later.