Thank You Quilts

Sometimes someone does something for you that’s so special, you need a special thank you for them. I’ve done these little thank you quilts several times over the years for extraordinary acts of kindness. They are fun to do, and usually just take a couple of evenings to complete. I try to include something that relates to the event.

Here’s a thank you for my BF, who came and took care of me following my knee surgery. She brought her accu-cutter with the hexagon molds for me to play with. She tried to encourage me to play with my wool. She encouraged me to try playing with my beads. (Pretty much none of this worked at the time, probably thanks to the excellent 🙂 pain medications that I was on.)

And here’s the thank you quilt that I made for Cindy, at Alden Lane Nursery, after she had me as the guest quilter. I included the umbrellas and ombre clothespin decorations that she used to decorate the greenhouse where my quilts were hung. Cindy first noticed my work when I entered a quilt the year before that had 2 inch squares embroidered on it, so of course I used some of my squares and embroidered them.

These are some of the funnest projects I’ve worked on. Next time you need a special thank you, try making one of these instead of searching through those so expensive greeting cards at the store!

Art Quilt Tahoe

It was a kind of spur of the moment kind of decision. I read something somewhere about going on a retreat, and that made me look up Art Quilt Tahoe, and I saw a teacher I had never heard of, and I loved her work. She was working with silk gauze, and I have been thinking about working with silk organza for quiet a while, so… I signed up!

First, let me just sing the praises of the teacher, Michelle Mischkulnig. She was a lovely person, with a great sense of humor, and gave individual attention to every person in class. I think this made for a great class atmosphere, and I have never been in a class so full of nice people!

Michelle had a definitive project for us to work on, and provided a kit with most of the materials needed. Well before the retreat started, she sent us an email so that we could choose the colors of silk gauze that we wanted to work with. Here’s the colors that I chose.

Michelle had us lay out our gauze on a base of muslin, with a layer of batting below that. And then we added accents of silk top (unspun silk.)

Then we covered the whole thing with a piece of water soluble something or other, and machine quilted the heck out of it. I think we drew our design on there first. The dark brown spots on there is some wool felt that I added to define the branch. The quilting took all of the first day, and much of the second day. She had us mark an X through the leaves that we would remove. (Oh, and I added a bird to mine)

Then we cut out the leaves.

And somehow, by magic, we used water soluble fusible and we stitched madly and created see-through leaves.

And then we took it outside and squished it around in soapy water, and ta da! All the fusible melted away, and there was our composition!

THEN, we used another piece of silk, and more fusible stuff, and we painted leaves.

And then we embellished them with yarn and velvet and felt, and then carefully cut them out and sewed them on to our piece.

And here is what my piece looked like at the end of day four.  (We also made those “3D” leaves out of more felt and sewed them onto the main piece.) I made my bird out of silk and velvet and some silk gauze.

I tend to get tired and then negative at quilting retreats. So I was very happy to see that when I got home and put this piece on my design wall, I actually like it. There is a lot more I want to add to it, including adding more details to the bird.

I think you can see that there were a lot of techniques taught in this class, many of which I had never done before. I would thoroughly recommend taking a class from Michelle if the opportunity ever presented itself. She is from Australia, and she said she does not have plans to come back to the states next year. So just keep her in mind, in case her name pops up, and sign up for her class!

 

Easily Distracted

Because of various influences–a blogger friend who wrote about English paper piecing and the quilts of Lucy Boston (I ordered the book,) my BF, who took a class on English paper piecing, and so was talking about hexies, and a closet cleaning episode, where I discovered a treasure box filled with a lot of little hexies from a long forgotten project, I started putting some hexagons together.

The whole time I am working on these, I enjoy the project, but of course it goes slowly, so I wonder what I am doing and if it will end up as anything at all.

Sometimes you just have to try. And sometimes you have to give yourself permission to do “stupid sewing” that might not lead directly to anything, but might just be the inspiration you need for the Next. Great. Project. 🙂