Flying Geese Exploration

I was just doodling, I promise.

After doing some computer work that required notes my mind was wandering. I had the computer open and a pad of graph paper next to me. Ignoring technology I picked up a pencil and started doodling on the paper. That night I started sewing some quilt blocks.

There isn’t anything fancy or revolutionary about what I doodled or the play I started, but it was relaxing. Knowing my solids scrap bin was overflowing I started there with my fabric. My doodle required contrast so I chose to explore warm/cool contrasts rather than any specific colour. And it’s just play, not a quilt, so I could try different combos and see what happens, right?

The only really shocking thing about this is that I chose to play with precision piecing. Definitely shocking with me. I’m making 2.5” x 4.5” flying geese blocks. Accurate cutting and piecing required. Still mindless, but definitely not improvisational piecing. I’ve got improv in the colour play, so I am still left satisfied.

As is usually the case with play rooted in experimentation it may not always go how you thought. When pairing fabrics to make the flying geese blocks I paid more attention to warm/cool contrasts than value contrasts. It totally works. But then the overall effect isn’t the same as what I initially sketched. My original idea was to effectively have one giant medallion. Without value contrast, however, it was looking like a mess of triangles only, no design visible. So I started sorting the blocks by the cool values. This has potential.

Like most of my quilts this one started with a “let’s see what this does” kind of attitude. If you are a little kid with a stick and a light socket, that means danger. But an adult with some fabric, it only means fun.

Agathe - October Morning Make Finished

Agathe

66” x 74”

Agathe is a German women. She grew up running the fields of her family farm, hands trailing in the grasses as she eyed the woods ahead. She wasn’t allowed in the woods, bad people could be there. The same bad people that loaded the trains they sometimes saw. The same people who knocked on their door at night demanding food. Agathe was still allowed in the fields though, even if her parents insisted she be in their sight at all times. Not until she’d moved to Canada did she really understand their fear. By then she also understood that they gave her freedom from fear by still letting her run the fields on sunny days. All her life she knew to take pleasures in the feel of flowing grass under her hand, of good pastry, of daily sunshine. Even if life isn’t good around you, to look for the simple pleasures.

October 2020 Morning Make is finished. I named her Agathe.

One improv block a day for the month of October. Composing as I went, playing the entire time. Some days the block related to the day before, some days the connections were harder. Each day was about finding a bit of joy, a respite from the daily slog of life in 2020. And at the end of the month I had a finished quilt top!

Fast forward a few months, one afternoon with my girls helping me baste and 8 spools of thread later and I have a finished quilt.

To quilt her I used my walking foot and creating a map of parallel lines. In spots I followed the lines of piecing, in others I went against the flow. There was a lot of starting and stopping, a lot of threads to bury. (This time I was smarter and buried them in spurts as I went while we watched Brooklyn 99.)

It is no secret that I love a contrasting binding, but this time it didn’t feel right. She got the same black binding used in piecing. It’s actually a tone on tone from my Tag Fabric collection. The other two fabrics are a cream solid that I think came from my Baba’s stash because it smelled like her when I pressed it, and a random white solid I found in the closet. The cream is actually more like a pale yellow, which I didn’t realize until the whole top was done. That’s what happens when you do all the sewing in the dark of morning.

Making this quilt really was an escape. From the piecing to the quilting to the binding. It was a respite from daily life, a moment to give myself where the rest of the world melts away. The grass isn’t green here yet, but the hares are giving us smiles. I even had one check things out as I was snapping pics. Life goes on. Life is beautiful. Finding the simple pleasures.

Angular Momentum

Angular Momentum

73” by 68”

My daughter, The Monster, named this quilt. She also helped baste it and held it for the photo shoot. Let me tell you, having teens has its advantages! Another one of those being the ability to sit and sew for extended periods of time without having to wipe a bum, get snacks, or fix the TV. Things sure have changed!

What hasn’t changed, however, is my love for all things Improv. It never will, it is totally my Love Language.

This particular quilt began life as a bit of play in 2017, the summer of 2017. One of the blocks in here actually inspired my Shiver quilt! I finished the quilt top itself in the summer of 2019. And I put the last stitches of the binding in just before the end of 2020. All in all, that’s pretty quick for me!

The entire quilt was an exploration of just a few improv techniques, led by a study in triangles. I made each block of the quilt with only two contrasting solids. I really did not think about how they might all look together, only how the two colours looked side by side. Selections came from my small stash of solids. This meant I was limited to what was on hand. Sometimes blocks are as big as they are because that’s all the fabric I had, sometimes I felt the composition of the block was good so I stopped.

The whole thing ends up being an exploration of positive and negative in colours as well as value. This makes you see different shapes or lines. (Is that a dragon’s tail or a zipper?) Playing with scale within blocks and among the blocks keeps it from feeling same same across the quilt. As does changing up the technique all over. There is so much to see, so much to study as you look at this quilt.

When it came time to quilt this I had a very specific free motion technique in mind. I spent a while doodling it on paper to make sure my brain understood how to make it work. It’s one thing to have the look in mind, quite another to translate it through the needle. Although it was terribly time-consuming, every minute was worth it. I LOVE the way it turned out. You could absolutely scale up this pattern so it isn’t quite so dense.

My go to thread on a quilt like this - multiple colours without a singular story - would be an olive green, but I had none. We’re still staying home so I picked something from my thread stash instead of shopping. Pink it was! I was pleasantly surprised at how well it performs in this quilt, never really being bossy, allowing the texture to be front and centre. The pink I used was Aurifil 2479, really nice medium pink.

For binding, that pink thread definitely influenced the fabric choice. I know a lot of people might have picked a single solid here. Or maybe a black and white stripe. Both would have worked. I also did not have enough of either. Besides, I wasn’t feeling those options anyway. That pink thread inspired me to look in my pink stash and as soon as I rediscovered this stripe I knew it was perfect. Unexpected and bold, but it doesn’t steal all the attention. You know me, I like the contrast on a binding.

The back came together with some panels purchased at a store close-out a handful of years ago and some of my own Tag Fabric. The pink kind of glows here, doesn’t it?

My plan is for this quilt to be a teaching sample, stay tuned for those details. In the meantime, it is already in heavy rotation in the house. My son grabs it when he wakes up in the morning for snuggles with me or the dog. It’s also keeping me warm now that winter truly arrived as I read on the sofa. The whole thing is such a shot of necessary colour right now.

That’s 3 quilts finished in a month! Who am I?

PS

Lest you think I am some kind of a machine, check out the full glamour of quilting literally in the middle of a blanket fort over the Christmas break.

The Slow Comfort of Painting a Quilt

Small comforts.

These days that is what we take, what we can find. Whether that be in the consumption of something, Or, as it would be more likely for readers here, the creation of something.

A cup of tea or a glass of wine, candles lit, a ruler and a quilt book close at hand. Don’t forget my now trusty watercolours. I had no idea when 2020 started they would become familiar, comforting. It took me some time, but I’ve brought them to my quilting. Rather, I’ve brought quilting to the watercolours.

Meditative to make, these paintings are an exploration of traditional quilt patterns. They are significantly more detailed than the cards I made back in September. In a way, they are my opportunity to play with precision piecing without having to actually precision piece. They serve to try out colour combinations, as if I was sewing with solid fabrics, also something I don’t do that often.

I can’t say that I want to go out and make these quilts now. They are comforting to make, but aren’t necessarily inspiring me to sew. At least each one only takes me a few hours to make. Much faster than a quilt with fabric!

Each one starts with a sharp pencil, a block pulled from history, and a ruler. I draw the whole thing with pencil then start painting. Painting is a multi day/evening process as I like to have the paint dry in between. It’s watercolour so I don’t want the paint to bleed. Once the colour is all done I go over the seam lines with a black marker, to highlight them. Without that last step it feels a bit unfinished. Kind of like me adding the quilting stitches to a flimsy.

These aren’t fine art and I have a lot to learn yet, but the comfort it gives me is divine. A quiet, slow moment in a noisy world that wants to reach in and swallow me whole.

And maybe this way I can convince my husband to put a quilt on the wall?!