quilting – Page 13 – Daily Fiber

Finally Finished Friday

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Laura Kate

Starting back in January with some musings over passed-along weaving samples, today I celebrate the finish of a fiber object unlike anything I have done before.

Margaret Howard wove her samples on a small loom that she kept at the family’s summer house in northwestern Wisconsin. When I first saw them, I felt that these pieces could be compiled into a cohesive fiber object. As I began working with them, my mind traveled to the little cottage on the edge of the lake with the big stone fireplace. What might it have been like for Margaret, to do this work, at that place?

Before long, my own experience while visiting that same cottage began to overlay the story of Margaret in my imagination.

The resulting quilt is a consolidation of her history, my experience and skills, fabric from assorted cast-off shirts, fabric from my mother’s stash, and prompts from the 2022 Stay-at-home round robin quilt challenge.

The little cottage is represented by the center block.

It holds the heart of the Shell Lake story.

Each corner block on the quilt represents some aspect of the experience a trip to the lake house may bring. Let’s go there now.

To reach the cottage, one travels through a piney wood along paths lined with ferns.

Crossing an ancient and overgrown tennis court, the visitor encounters the path to the lake. Turn right and follow the dazzling rays of sunshine to get there.

As the day turns to dusk, all camp visitors are again drawn to the lakeshore, where the sun is saluted before it disappears over the horizon. Sunsets at the lake are relaxed, and sometimes, if you are lucky, meditative.

When the air becomes chilly, a fire will warm the body. While fires on the beach are jolly, often the stone fireplace is brought to life, usually in the cool morning hours.

Here is a final look, showing the fabric chosen as the backing.

This little flower print has no special association with the Shell Lake story. I simply thought that the colors just looked nice.

I truly enjoyed making this quilt, and am a little sorry that the work is done.

And so ends the tale of a weaver, a fiber artist, and the quilt that grew from their intersection. Where will this object end up? I am not sure, but at some point soon, it will be released into the world. Fifty years from now, perhaps another artist will have something to add to its story,

quilting

WIP Wednesday: Shell Lake Quilt

Posted on June 15, 2022 by Laura Kate

For the past two weeks I have been laboring slowly but surely over this quilt. The first week was spent sewing blocks together and sandwiching the quilt. Because I plan to do the quilting in sections, I assembled the quilt in three pieces.

I dithered about for what seemed like forever to come up with a quilting plan. Many hours were spent viewing various classes on Craftsy. Christa Watson’ class “The Quilters Path” is one that gave me some guidance.

https://www.craftsy.com/product/the-quilters-path-plan-it-stitch-it-quilt-it-dvd-streaming/

By Monday, I had come up with a plan.

I started with the Around the world block. First I worked stitch-in-the-ditch every three inches to stabilize the section. Next came the free motion pattern. All of those straight lines needed to be softened and quilted down.

I worked gentle curves across the straight lines.

What remained to be quilted in this block were two large sections of background fabric, including the part with the whirligig. Christa’s all-over motif of loops with random flowers and leaves came to the rescue.

Here is a photograph of the completed sections of an adjoining block.

This is very pleasing to my eye. Having now completely quilted one of the three pieces, I feel that I will likely finish the other two by week end. Then I can move on to final assembly, binding and the Big Reveal!

hand embroidery, quilting

Re-entry

Posted on May 29, 2022 by Laura Kate

Last Wednesday, the husband and I returned from a very long journey. Over 13 days we drove over 3,000 miles, traveling through nine states. The climax of the trip was three days spent in Ohio, assisting my five siblings in sorting the parents’ household good in preparation for distribution and sale. It’s hard to describe the physical and emotional energy exhausted during that effort, so I won’t try. I wish I could show you a lot of great photographs from the trip, but I didn’t manage to get any worth sharing.

Back here in Oklahoma, it took me a few days to settle back into my normal life. The last few were spent working on hand embroidery of the Shell Lake quilt blocks. It was a good choice for my re-entry, because I could do it slowly while listening to podcasts and drinking lots of coffee. I think that I am done, but not sure. To give me some perspective on my work, I have photographed and posted each block. Let me know if you think the woven sections have enough stitches.

CENTER BLOCK

FOREST BLOCK

FIRE BLOCK

LAKE BLOCK

SKY BLOCK

On another topic, I have brought home a few UFO projects from my mother’s stash that I promised various people that I would finish. My plan is to post about each one as I work through them. If you’re not a fan of sewing and quilting, don’t jump ship yet. I will be continuing to explore watercolor painting, drawing and knitting in the coming months.

hand embroidery, quilting

WIP Wednesday: Hand Embroidery

Posted on April 20, 2022 by Laura Kate

It’s been a while since I shared progress on the Howard Wabi-Sabi quilt. For this Work In Progress post, I’m showing how I hand-quilted a few of the vintage weaves that were used in this object.

After much consideration, I decided that it was OK to sew on (aka deface) someone else’s work. This change of heart came after I was in Madison recently, where I asked my daughter to show me more samples of Margaret Howard’s work.

Oh my. There was so much of it. Huge plastic bins filled to overflowing. Several samples were woven with the same motifs found in the pieces I was using in my quilt. Perhaps each piece was not that precious to the maker. They were woven, perhaps for practice, perhaps for auditioning alternative color choices.

When I picked up my quilt blocks again, it was clear to me that my stitching could accomplish its task of quilting down the batting and backing while also reinforcing the existing weave patterns. To my mind, this is enough to honor the maker.

Today I am showing two blocks with embroidery finished.

Center Block before:

Center Block after

Fire Block before:

Fire Block after:

I’m aware that the differences appear subtle in the photographs. But in person, the embroidery stitches bring some color variation and texture that was lacking.

Thanks to Amanda for adding her embroidery to the work, which jump-started my own efforts.

quilting

Stay at Home Round Robin – Final Round

Posted on February 24, 2022 by Laura Kate

It’s time to put the final touches on the 2022 Stay at Home Round Robin quilts. Our quilting friend Chris has chosen Shoo-fly blocks this week.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/32776/posts/3844524934

After observing how she built it and how it is used, I am totally on-board. Here is where I am with my quilt after the end of the fifth round.

To summarize, I made five blocks built around vintage weaves and organized them in a Nine-Patch configuration. That leaves space for four in-between blocks. A few weeks back, I decided that I could create transitions between the corner blocks with Around The World strip-pieced blocks. The thought of connecting all of the elements in this manner inspired and delighted me.

And of course, it leaves room for the Shoo-fly blocks.

The more I look at the shoo-fly, the more I think of it as a symbol. To work this into my design, a shoo-fly will be placed at each cardinal point of the compass:

North, east, south, west.

Let’s get these made!

First come the half-square triangle. I made four in each of my primary fabrics.

I liked Chris’s design, where the middle row was half the width of the other two rows, so I made my blocks the same. The center block will give us the “sign,” telling where we are headed.

In this photo you see four blocks, including the center block, the fire block and the two transition blocks that are finished.

I have cut my background fabric an extra two inches bigger in the transition blocks. Eventually I will add enough background fabric to the edges of the corner blocks to level up the quilt. This will bring the finished piece up to 62 inches square.

If all goes well, I will have the whole thing pieced together quite soon.

To see the other round robin quilts, go to the linky party:

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/e9a2be034cae4219b07c3c7300b4c6eb