Corn and Beans

That is the title of this piece. My daughter said I should quilt the yellow parts so they look like corn. Then the title of the old quilt pattern, Corn and Beans came into my head and I haven’t been able to get it out! Turns out this is just what I needed for the Metamorphosis challenge on my Yahoo group, Fiberarts Connection. The idea is to take a traditional quilt block, pattern etc. and take inpisration from it for something totally new. I decided I would quilt this in such a way to represent my interpretation of Corn and Beans.

I still need to finish the edges. There is  one thing I am not happy about with this piece, I have some shadowing of the seam allowances in the upper left corner in the yellow.  You can see what I mean here:

It actually looks worse here than in person. The flash from the camera really emphasizes it. I quilted this section last and never noticed this until I had this area under the light of the machine. In person, it is very faint. So I will likely leave it as is. I learned a big lesson here though about watching those seam allowances!

This is the first time I quilted in “pebbles” or circles. I didnt think it was that much fun to do but I do like the effect. I like heavily quilted pieces and I need to come up with new ways to accomplish that. This is another option for me.

I think I will leave it hanging on the design wall for a few days to see if there is anything I can think of to fix the shadowing before I face it.

Our new furnace is getting installed tomorrow. That means I have to heat up the house real hot before they come as I won’t have any heat until they are finished.I have a small space heater for my sewing room so I think I will use it as an excuse to hang out there all day .  Maybe I will get some more auctions started on e-Bay. I have a bunch ending tomorrow night and I like to have them overlap by a bit. Here is a link in case anyone is interested in some vintage sewing machine stuff:

http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/sweigak

Hope your area of the country is warmer than mine! Stay safe out there.

Perspective

It has been a tough week areound here, car bills, found out we need a new furnace, kid broke her cello bow and DH and I quite sick in the midst of it all.

Last night though, I took a meal over to a family here in town. I never met them before, the dad pastors a small church. He has leukemia and has weeks to live. Mom and three young kids all have diabetes, the fourth child has Juvenile rhematoid arthritis. I think I have problems….nothing I am dealing with, even a possible layoff for DH, is anywhere near what they are dealing with and have ahead of them.

I am humbled and amazed at their faith and strength. Such beautiful people.  I am wondering how I can put the emotions I feel into a journal quilt. I don’t know where to begin. And can it even be done? Can a journal quilt hold all of this?

DH is off to the car show for the day with the kids. I am off to ponder things I know I cannot resolve in my own mind. Somehow that doesn’t keep me from trying.

Here is a small quilt I made a while back called Perspective. The quilt has raised tucks with a different color on each side. As it is hung on the wall, the piece looks different depending on the angle you look at it.

Perspective – SOLD

My Sanctuary

I have so enjoyed looking at the pictures people from the QA list have posted of their work areas.  I have been working at cleaning and reorgainizing some and decided to share pictures of my sanctuary. It is my happy place . I’ll start at the door and work my way around the room.

My Bernina 155 in an Arrow folding table.

The wire basket units are from my favorite store, IKEA. The set is called ANTONIUS. I still need to go through all of these baskets and weed out the fabric I don’t want to keep and refold the rest. I like using a flip and fold for that.

This is my embroidery corner. I keep my old latop connected to my Singer CE-200. The drawers hold more thread, fusibles, interfacing, templates, beads, machine accessories for the serger and embroidery machine. In the foreground is my main worktable. It is 6 feet long.

The white cabinets hold my serger and Singer IZEK machines, magazines, books, machine parts, and paperwork stuff. On top of the cabinets are my vintage toy sewing machines. Most of these I collected when we lived in France. We didn’t have any bathroom storage and very little in the way of kitchen cabinets there so we bought these tall white storage units then. When we came back to the US, I got them .

The closet has bolts of fabric, batting, quite a few vintage Singer sewing machines, more bins of fabric that wouldn’t fit in the wire baskets (oops!), and pretty much everything else that I do not know what to do with!

This is my design wall made from foam insulation and covered with the back side of a flanel table cloth. The ironing table was a gift from my dad. It was originally a lab table from an old biology classroom. I covered it with a couple layers of Warm & Natural and then a length of ironing board fabric from Jo-Anns. I LOVE it. The basket in the corner holds scissors, rotary cutters, small rulers etc.

This is my most often used machine, my 1955 Singer Model 201. It will take any thread without complaint. I can sew through a tin can as easily as fine fabrics. It is the best $25 I have ever spent! The “clotheslines” are actually curtain hanging wires from IKEA. They come with great little clip/hook dealies so you can easily clip up works in progress or small finished pieces. I LOVE this. I got the idea from another brilliant blogger, Cheryl at muppin.com. Thanks Cheryl!

My room is in our finished basement. It is usually nice and quiet. Often when I am working, one or another of my kids will show up. We’ve had a lot of serious talks in this room!

Thanks for taking a tour with me!

My Links are gone….

and I don’t know where to find them! In the mean time, here is a link to my e-Bay auctions as some have wondered:

http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/sweigak

Now back to WordPress forum to try to find some answers on widgets.  Hmmmm…..

Raven Postcards

I joined the postcard challenge to celebrate the 200th Birthday of Edgar Allen Poe. Here are my two entries:

I used silver leaf paint on the edges of the first one and gold on the second. The second is done with Shiva paint sticks. They are okay, not  earth shattering by any stretch but at least I can say I got them done before the deadline.

Happy Birthday Edgar!

I am still working at cleaning out and simplifying my life. As such I spent some time putting more stuf up on E-Bay. They have gotten expensive but it is still a good way to find good homes for my sewing colectables. There is a link at the side of this page if you are interested.

Until next time…

Decision Time

A few days I wrote about a piece I was working on. I had pieced strips that I intended to recut for another ladder quilt but I liked the stripped pieces so much that I didn’t know if I should continue with the original plan or not! After several days of these bits up on the design board, I decided to put this together without recutting. I rearranged a bit and decided to set in a corner to make it all fit. I think it also made it more interesting. Here is the top:

I did a bit of machine quilting practice and felt that I had to make something usable out of my practice piece so I made this little bag today. It is about 9 inches long and maybe 4 inches wide. I don’t know what I will do with it though.

I also machine quilted a top that I posted a few days ago. I hate the way it turned out! What was I thinking??? I used a light to dark gray varigated thread. I did a terrible job here and I do not like the way I decided to quilt this. I am NOT picking this all out. Trying to figure out what I could do to redeem this ugly thing!

Any ideas?

Back to cleaning out the sewing room and listing some more vintage items on eBay. See my link on the side if you are interested. Have a great weekend everyone!

I did it!

I just entered my second juried quilt show,  Sacred Threads. I have wanted to enter something in this show ever since I first heard about it 2 years ago.  I entered my first juried show, My Life in Black and White Revisited, just last fall.  I learned a lot about entering just by doing it.

I was bummed this morning hearing that today was the last day to enter the Sacred Threads show as I didn’t think I had anything worthy of entering. I decided to look through my stuff anyway and picked out two quilts. Everyone on the QA list said the online registering was very easy so I got out the camera and decided to try, even at this late date.  I may not get in but even going through the entering process is a great learning experience. I don’t mind spending $20 to support this show as the theme is near and dear to my heart.

Here are my two entries (the photos I sent are better than this but these load faster):

JusticeThe Long Dark Night of the Soul

 

The Long Dark Night of the Soul

 Now time to get to work while waiting to hear!

Thanks and another WIP

I wanted to say thanks to everyone who sent e-mails and left comments about my last post. I haven’t come to any hard and fast conclusions but I think Myrna’s comment said it best for me. She said, “The reason that we like the work of certain artist is because their work contains elements of our style. It makes sense. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be drawn to them. ” I think I agree with this.

I may get back to that piece tomorrow but in the mean time, I was reminded of this piece that I started quite a while ago.

This is turned 90 degrees from what I had originally planned. Just today I thought, what if….. so I turned it and think I like it better this way. I may finish it now. I was ready to throw it away before. Have to think about how to quilt it.

I did a bit of sketching tonight. More ladder ideas. I need to sew tomorrow. I am going to start substitute teaching soon and that will seriously cut into my available sewing time so I need to take advantage of the time I have now.

Have a great day!

Hmmmm…..now what?

This picture shows some bits I worked on last weekend. These pieces were freely cut with my rotary cutter and pieced back together. I had intended to cut them again and work this into a new ladder piece. But, I like them like this! I am very pleased with the randomness and slight curves in the strips. Cutting without measuring or using a straight edge is still tough for me and I think partly why I like this is that it is proves to myself that I can do this. I used the chocolate brown with some leftover pieces from the strips sets and think it works well with the yellow and green.

So now what to do? Do I sew this together or get back to cutting?

Another thing bothers me here: this reminds me of some pieces by other quilters I admire. I am not trying to copy them, but I do want to explore working with this kind of cutting and piecing. Am I infringing when I explore similar ways of working? I have read about people taking Nancy Crow’s workshops and she has people make certain strip sets and then recut and combine them in other ways. This is a method she uses and teaches. I love her work. (Some day, I would LOVE to take one of her classes.) If I do this, am I copying her way of working or is it really my art? How can I get beyond this to something entirely new of my own creation if I don’t work through making pieces with the very basics of making strip sets because I am afraid my work will look like someone elses?

I thought I was happily sewing last weekend  but what I really did was open a can of worms in my own mind. Maybe that will be the title of this piece if I ever decide where to go from here.

Comments and thoughts are welcome.

New Ladder Piece Finished

I accomplished just a wee bit artwise over the Christmas break. I just finished this small piece:

Ladders #4 Private Collection

It measures just about 13″ x 14″ or so and is machine quilted with a varigated tan thread. The fabrics are my hand dyes. I had been quilting these pieces within each small section and wasn’t sure I would like an “overall” kind of quilting but I think it works here. In case you were wondering, the pic is taken straight on and your eyes are not going bad, it is not completely square. This is one more small step on my way out of the “need to be perfect and measure everything mold.”

Here is another little bit of my work for the holidays:

These lovely tootsies belong to my three daughters. I made them all socks for Christmas. Not exactly art but it proves I did SOMETHING over the break! I also knit several hats and a couple pair of mittens. I love knitting and wish my hands would let me do more of it. I need to learn continental knitting as it is supposed to be easier on your hands. Someday!