It’s not raining anymore but it’s still grey. Finn, a friend, and I made a neighborhood circuit and now I’m ready to stay put and sew.
In another era, I would’ve called this quilt “done” a few iterations ago but this time I’m really enjoying adding little scraps. Balancing the red. Continuing the dark windows. I’m past caring if these add-ons represent improvements or not.
The indigo batch died. No flower or foam. No sheen. Maybe it could’ve been revived but I’m done for now — packed everything up and put it all away.
There’s relief in that, especially since we need to get the house ready for company — one week from today.
I used a piece of the purple-dyed cloth for a moody surround of an old quilted house. The plaid print strips I dyed in indigo maybe ten years ago? The red moon comes from some delicious cotton Nancy sent me a while back.
Mixing machine and hand stitching can be a challenge, mainly due to cloth bubbling. That middle section has six layers though— really tough to hand sew — so I’m gonna keep trying with the Bernina.
Old house, old moon with new roof, cat, and tree. I wanted to express something about chaos, but this comes across as domesticated, cute even.
Maybe this pinboard assemblage has more to say about forces beyond our control?
Not great pictures, but these final two pics reveal finished pieces.
The purple dog (top) is vintage linen dyed by Deb and the tiny moon in the Mountain Quilt is one of Jude’s.
Mountain Quilt includes: strips of the dress I wore to Ken’s sister’s wedding (pale purple with green and red floral), a swatch of one of my mother’s beach cover-ups (black with white dots), plus scraps from four other garments.
The Two Bird Quilt includes: piece of hem from recently purchased dress, chunk of a cotton men’s shirt from Indonesia (roof), strips of two sheer garments purchased in Longmont the week Danny died (to create the tree).
I think it’s apt that I set out to appliqué a cat but it so obviously became a dog.
P.S. Because we finished re-watching all The Great British Baking Show seasons (aka TV Valium), we are now watching The Great British Sewing Bee (Project Runway has jumped the shark into Real Housewife’s territory. Such a shame. Enjoyed that show for many years). The Sewing Bee doesn’t have charming hilarious hosts or quite the engaging structure of the baking show, but it’s good enough.
All of this to say, it cracks me up to hear them say “appliqué.” They pronounce it “AH-PLEEK.”
This thing.
It used to be another thing.
After the photo above was taken, I applied more scraps and also quilted it. Didn’t help.
It’s getting more interesting but instead of adding the hoped for texture and depth at the bottom, the woven strips are distracting. That almost never happens.
Maybe with enough fiddling the piece will get to a point where it looks like something. I don’t know.
I do know that I’ll be machine-anchoring the cut-up quilt bits because those areas are at least four maybe five layers of fabric thick, plus backing and batting. I respect my fingers too much to put myself through that!
Meanwhile, another baby blanket is ready to be given away.
Super duper hot out there. 98 degrees now. Real Feel 107. I watered at 7:30 this morning so that the stream didn’t evaporate. We walked Finn early.
Big tear day. I never know why exactly, although at this point the better question might be on the rare day that I don’t cry, why not?
I’d chop this one up if there were four sensible quadrants, but stuff would be sacrificed and I’m not willing, so chaotic it will remain!
We quilters love to show off the backs of our work, don’t we? MR — I hope that doesn’t make me a “braggy quilter”!
I had fun extending patterning across seam lines with appliqué and stitch (like the flowers and butterflies). I also took the liberty of outlining a house or two to make them more distinct. I’m gonna call this one done.
“Blackbird and the Full Moon.”