Summertime

What did you think of when you read the title of this post?  Travel?  Beaches?  Baseball games?  Picnics?  Scenic drives?  Vacation? Floating down a river?  Nice thoughts, but not at my house.  Instead I have been busy using the chain saw to cut big tree limbs into logs, pulling weeds, burning slash, cleaning house, making jam, sculpting the landscape, transplanting.  There is always something that needs to be done.  The only regular thing in my life right now is walking the dog every morning.  Sewing is not.

Why is sewing off the schedule?  I have been working on this quilt for a year now.  I am not tired of doing it, but I guess I needed a break.  I have so many ideas in my head, but I find myself having to do some tedious micro-stippling, black on black on background parts.  Don't get me wrong...I love to quilt, but all the other activities have kept me so tired that it seemed like a break would be a good thing.  It won't last long because I derive such joy from stitching when I am not inundated with all the other things that can only be done now in the summertime.

I love gaillardia and someday may make a quilt featuring one or more.  Heaven knows I have enough photos of them.  I made the following film strip in Photoshop.  Just another way to create.

 Enjoy your summertime.  I wish you no fires or floods, but lots of outdoor fun.

Apologies!

So sorry.  No quilting this week.  I am cleaning up a horrible, ugly mess of tree branches that have piled up over the years.  They are the result of fire mitigation as we live in a dry climate and summer is dangerous for us even though we live up in the mountains.  One to two hours in the morning wielding a chain saw and loppers, building a log stack, and burning the little stuff has left me like a pile of jello by noon.  No sewing under those conditions so I am doing genealogy research.  I don't need a seam ripper for that, just the delete key.

We are enjoying this year's batch of mule deer fawns.  One day the mama left her speckled twins in our care as she went off to forage for awhile.  This is normal behavior and the little ones stay put until mom returns.  Some people think they have been abandoned, but that is not so.  Don't ever try to handle  or "rescue" them.  Instead enjoy them from a distance as a precious gift..

Sew some happy seams this week or enjoy the gifts of summertime.

Block Party Adventure

I am on a roll.  Every new block that requires a design ends up getting changed.  Should I have done some sort of overall design for this quilt?  I keep second guessing myself, but the mosaic-type design and bold colors don't lend themselves to an overall design in my mind.  Maybe I am losing my mind!

Case in point:
I have four turquoise blocks that anchor the corners of the design.  What to do with them?  I came up with a design I liked and I posted it last week, but here it is again.

When I look at it I see some wimpy red feathers and a bunch of pebbles that compete with the feathers.  It looks OK, but I want more than OK.  Yesterday I did a second one and made some changes.  I added mini-spines in each leaf of the feathers and in the process built up the red thread in the main spine.  Wow!  What a difference.  Now the feathers are calling to the eye to look at them.  I quit for the day before doing the pebbles.  Oh my, I like it better without them.  The photo doesn't really show the puff, but now the center is enhanced by a puffy frame.  The design is delicate and bold at the same time.  This block is only 4 inches so the frame isn't huge.  I am going to rip out the pebbles of the first block and do the rest without them. I can always put something in there if I want to.  Maybe it needs another line to echo the outside curve.  Time will tell and I will decide when I can see all four corners finished.

And that, my friends, is how I quilt:  by the seat of my pants with the seam ripper nearby.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you adventurous quilting to keep you fresh.

Stitch or Puff - Evolution of a Design

I have four blocks on this quilt that are turquoise, as opposed to the black and rust of all the other blocks.  I stitched out the design I had drawn.  It had gold quilting in the center in a wavy grid, which I did first.  By the time I finished the rest of the quilting I noticed that the gold didn't even show.  It had no character.  What do do?  I decided to remove the gold stitching from the 2 inch center.  Then I sprayed it with water to relax the fibers.  As I walked by later I noticed the the center of the block now puffed up and looked so pretty, except for the seam down the middle.

Gold removed.  You can see old stitch marks.  Nice puff in the center square. 

  I placed a pin perpendicular to the seam to see what it would look like with four quadrants defined.  Voila!  I liked the puff in four quarters better than the closer stitching that had been there.  So...I stitched two straight, perpendicular lines and then a little, accent line in between, all with gold.  The gold still doesn't show much, but the puff does.  In the right light there is a bit of glitz visible.

Gold stitching in the center.  Puff remains.

TIP:  Sometimes you can't plan ahead, so be open to ideas as they stumble across your quilt.

I don't like the poor backstitching on two of the feathers.  I think I will do them over because they are so visible with the red thread.  Yes, I know!  I am fussy.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you design serendipity.