Hey!

I'm quilting again! But, kind of only because I signed up for a course. This bad boy was whipped up over the last three days, and hoo boy am I tired. I'd like to try to get it entirely pieced and then sandwiched and basted before my next course, which will tackle free-motion quilting.

It's a kind of sampler thing, and it's quite busy-looking (as so much of my output tends to be, quilt-wise), but it'll be good to practice free-motion quilting on, and I feel like one could really stare at it for a while. Is that a measure of good design? I don't know.

Confluence!

I subscribe to Quilting Arts Magazine, and four times a year get something in the mail to look closely at, think about, and feel completely intimidated by. I mean, yow. This stuff is so good. It's so sophisticated and complex and beautiful and completely out of my league. It's inspiring in an abstract way (create! create! create!) and depressing in a concrete way (how the hell am I supposed to do that?).

Well, I realized yesterday that maybe the fact that I steadfastly refuse to paint, soddering-iron/burn, use silks (or rather search out silks because the stores I go to only sell "commercial" fabrics), use fuseable backing, machine quilt, dye, or stamp has something to do with it.

Indeed I may be on to something here. I've been hedging on the whole machine-quilting thing for several months now, mostly because I would need to buy a new foot for my machine, but I will do that soon. The other stuff, especially painting, dyeing, and burning, I'm still not keen on at all.

I've found two new things that I'm going to try out. The first is needle felting, which is perfect because 1) it's kind of oddball - not a lot of people in the knitting or quilting world seem to do it, so there might be room for innovation, and 2) it offers a whole new way for me to injure myself painfully.

The second thing is Translucent Liquid Sculpey. This could potentially solve the problems with a series of quilts I started designing a couple years ago, but then put aside for lack of confidence in my ability to create the effect I'm looking for. NOW, though. Soon's I get my hands on a toaster oven to dedicate to cooking up polymers, watch out.

I keep saying to myself that as soon as I have x number of finished quilts, I'll go around town and see if I can display them in places. The number keeps going up, and I recently decided that I'd do it once Tree Quilt is finished (hahahaha), but maybe one of these days I will stick to a realistic proclamation.

Also, so you know, I have indeed been quilting. It's just that I've been quilting on Huhu wela loa a ula, which is symmetrical, and hand-quilting is still very slow-going for me and so I would be showing you the same thing over and over again, and probably in poor light at that.

Shapes.

This is not a great picture. Most of my pictures suck, because they are taken well after the natural light has left.



But you get the idea. I vascillate from being very pleased to displeased with this one. I like looking at it, though, which I guess could be the deciding factor.

Serious posting problems, please don't flog me

Hi! I can't publish right now on the main page, so I'm trying to publish here, in case you intrepid readers check by. So, I've e-mailed support about it and am praying not to be disqualified from NaBloPoMo at 12:00am on November 2. Wish me luck, or send me healthy ftp-vibes!

Sketch Quilt #3

Full quilt:


Detail:

WIP: Stitchface, Sketch Quilt #2

Nothing says "archival quality" like a dip in orange juice.



This is Sketch Quilt #2.

On stitchface, the beading around the tree is done and I'm not really sure where to go next. I'm happy not to have run out of beads. Usually I'm terribly careful about them, searching until I find whatever I've dropped and not dropping too much. But this time, every time I turned around I was knocking the tube over, beads taking flight. It must have something to do with the scale of this thing -- it's huge, relative to everything else i've done. I can't even imagine how people make queen-sized bed quilts.

WIP: Stitchface

Okay, wow. I have a lot to report. Because much of it involves backtracking and pictures, I've been dreading writing this post, but we are moving forward again. So.

Despite the basting session that crippled me, the layers shifted as I was beading the edges of the quilt (hi-ya!):



So I de-beaded most of what I'd done and am re-doing. The key seems to be folding the edges in like a fan, NOT like a cinnamon roll. Beading without my hand right next to the row of beads is out of the question, so like a fan it will have to be. It seems to be working a bit better:



During the low period between realizing I'd need to (to borrow a knitting term because I like the violence of it even though it's technically inaccurate) rip the beads and actually ripping the beads, I did this:



In one hour. I think I'll end up doing more of these sketch quilts.