One of six children, I was raised by a busy mom, who instilled in me a love of fabric. Though I learned to sew and knit at a young age, it was the arrival of my first grandchild that pushed me into action. A long-time knitter, I am now ready to explore all things fiber.
Today I have a progress report on my quilt inspired by a medieval manuscript.
Here is the center of the quilt. It is formed by the four corners of each four-by-four block. Upon first seeing that blank white diamond, I knew that it would work beautifully for a God’s Eye. After practicing on scrap fabric, I wove the centerpiece design into place. The four arms of the weaving are gold satin cording which I couched into place. The weft yarns are a combination of cotton embroidery twist and wool fingering weight yarn leftover from many a sock project.
I think it balances the four creation paintings beautifully.
Here are the quadrants of the piece at this point.
Now I can begin quilting. To start, I will stitch into the seamlines of all pieces. (AKA stich-in-the-ditch.) Next will come the free motion quilting. I have something special in mind for the light color patches which will involve more colorwork.
This week I practiced drawing and painting sandhill cranes in flight
This study will be part of a larger landscape that I am planning. I used cerulean and phthalo blues, raw sienna, burnt sienna, yellow ochre and a bit of Payne’s gray on Arches cold press paper. My reference photo appeared on the MPR website and was taken by Ben Hovland.
Last May I was engaged in the task of clearing out my mother’s sewing room. It was a sad but wondrous one. Almost forty years of accumulated objects, tools, machines and materials were stashed in every closet and corner of a tiny room. These included dozens of unfinished objects which were hidden in other rooms. In one closet I found draped over a hanger, rows of scrappy blocks – about sixty of them. She must have worked on this quilt over a period of years. It seemed very close to completion, so I brought it home with the idea of finishing it.
As I spread out all of the rows and loose blocks, I noticed that many blocks were not squared up. Some blocks were bigger than others. Some rows looked fine, others much shorter. (??.) Stymied by this discovery, I put the quilt away.
Now it is January and time for another Stay at Home Round Robin project. Led by Quilting Gail, this game is played by starting with a block, and then adding rows to it as clues (suggestions) are revealed weekly. I decided to get the scrappy blocks out and do something with them.
I disassembled some rows and organized the blocks by size and value. After a bit of pondering, I concluded that supporting fabrics for this quilt needed to be neutral solids. Purchasing a range of grays, I added a bright yellow batik print from my stash.
My plan is to create a value gradation starting from the center and working outward. The bright yellow will serve as a unifying sparkle for the design. Getting started, I chose four blocks that contained mostly pale colors.
To unify these four, I removed one corner from each, sewed on a triangle of yellow and assembled the blocks into a square.
My finished block will measure 15 inches. It is positioned on point to emphasize the many triangles that seem to catch the eye.
Now let’s hope the SAHHR team doesn’t throw me any CURVES!
To learn more about Stay at Home Round Robin 2023 and to play along, here is your link.
I have been spending time with pencils this week. The first sketch is a study for a watercolor landscape that I am planning.
This next drawing, still unfinished, is based on a sketch I made of Henry last month.
FORTEEN CANDLES
I transferred lines from my preliminary sketch onto toned pastel paper, then built up layers of graphite. A little chalk pencils brightens up the flames.
This rusty car was our assignment at the art association open studio last Wednesday. I think I got a pretty good likeness of the photograph. The hardest part was deciding when to stop.
I used a palette of raw sienna, burnt sienna, cerulean blue, cobalt blue and ultramarine blue. Painted on Fabriano Studio cold press paper.
Daily Fiber 