New and Old Things

Let’s start with the old. Do you even remember when I started this project? I don’t. But the other day I was cleaning out my closet and I remembered this very large project. I was going to make panels with front and back, and then do that “quilt as you go thing” to put them all together into a very big quilt. The front has 7 inch squares with a one inch border, and my idea was to embroider in all the borders. So I got one out and started embroidering on it again. It takes a long time to embroider each border. So I went back into the closet to see how many panels I had left to do. When I finish this panel, there will be four panels done. AND EIGHT PANELS LEFT TO GO! I was kind of complaining about this to my BF, and she said, why not just put the four panels together into a smaller quilt? Brilliant!! There are other things I’d rather be embroidering.

I finished this next quilt in time for the Intersection of Faith and Arts Conference. It was actually a lot of work to piece together the background, and to embroider all that writing on it. I had thought about doing a series of these, with Biblical blocks in the background, and important (to me) verses on the front. But I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do that again. Well, I had three people comment that they would like to buy this quilt, and so that encouraged me to make the next one. Its always nice to hear that people appreciate your work. (This verse is Matt. 11:28-29 from Eugene Peterson’s The Message.)

I really like making these improv cris-cross blocks. No ruler or rotary cutter necessary! So I made a bunch of samples in case anyone wanted me to teach this. Very fun to make. (And yes, I did square them up at the end so I could easily put borders on them.)

And lastly, I am always so very happy when I get a picture from a workshop participant telling me that she finished her class project! Because, to be honest, I seldom finish workshop projects. I especially love the colorful border that she put on this project. Thank you so much for sharing!

I’m back in the studio finally. I spent half a day cleaning up (yes, still more needs to be done but there’s at least room to move around in there!)

A Finish and a Flub

Remember that very sparkly piece I was working on? The fabric from Joann’s? Well, yes, I finally finished it, and I decided to wash it because the darn black attracts so much lint and dog hair. I should have just worked on brushing that dog hair off. Because, the GOLD washed away in the washing machine!!!

Here’s one close-up. You can see where the steel color is showing through.

There were a few places, like this one, where the gold stayed on better. Anyway, that was a lot of work for all the gold to wash off!

I started this piece a few weeks before Christmas. I saw something like it on the screen at church. French knots, I thought! So all those dots in the sky are french knots. I used quite a few different colored pale threads in 4 sizes–perle cotton size 3, 5, 8, and 12. What I really liked was that I had a dark blue for the sky, and then I also had a piece of dark blue with a lot of little squares on it, which would work for the town. As I neared the end, I decided that I wanted to include the shepherds and  sheep and the angel with her words of good tidings! I used some wool thread that I had bought recently to outline the town and the angel and the shepherds.

To be fair, I googled “french knot sheep” and of course, there were plenty of examples! I was trying to make them too complicated.

The back was a mess, since I went all the way through to quilt the french knots down. So I put a second back on, and quilted a bit to stabilize the whole thing (four layers.) It makes it quite sturdy. I do like this piece a lot.

I forgot to mention that I was teaching Quilted Embroidery again at The Cotton Patch this past Saturday. It was such a nice class of women. They all seemed to enjoy working on their sample piece to learn some simple embroidery stitches. It was a lot of driving in the rain, but I do like driving over to Lafayette–it takes me through the Delta, and it is a very pretty drive.

Ta Da!!

This turned out to be such a fun project! It went well beyond “stupid sewing” 🙂 While I was sewing the little blocks together I noticed a sparkly thread on my sewing table that looked like it went with the blocks. So I thought I might try a meandering thread through the piece. Then I added some black lines and some french knots. Yesterday morning I got up and put a binding on it. Finished, I thought! But then I thought it would be fun to add some words to it. This time, instead of a Bible verse, I wanted to add a saying that a good quilting friend had shared with me. Thanks, Catherine!! I really love this saying.

She was unstoppable. Not because she did not have failures or doubts but because she continued on despite them.       –Beau Taplin

The really finished quilt:

A close-up:

Today I’m planning to get back to some rug hooking, work on my big PEACE rug for a bit, and get the dye studio ready for a session of dying tomorrow. I LOVE a free week!!

Back from Cambria, and What Did I Do?

I had a wonderful time at Cambria Pines Rug Camp. I did bring my blank linen canvas for the rug. Its only a 24″ square rug. I try to vary my large rugs with smaller rugs. I kept looking at my inspiration photos, and decided that I did want the large circle in my rug, so I started with that. And then I added some of my own motifs from a few sketches that I had done. I’m very happy with what I was able to accomplish in four days.

When I came home, I had so many other things to take care of, there was very little time to get into the studio. But I was looking at a blog, and I saw this picture.

I didn’t even know what it was, but I just had the urge to recreate it. So I printed out a copy of the picture and then went through my hand dyed stash to pick out similar colors. For a week I just spent time cutting out rectangles during any little bits of time I had available. And then I finally started assembling them on my design wall. While I was doing this, I kept wondering what this was actually a picture of. So I went back to the blog where I’d found it, and believe it or not, these are garage doors in Lithuania!

At first I couldn’t figure it out. But I went to the photographer’s site, and I think these garage doors are pieced together in a photo. Any which way, I was fascinated by it. I thought about putting in the black and white bits between the doors, but decided against it. I am thinking about embroidering in all the wear lines. And here is what I came up with.

Okay, so I didn’t realize until I was putting this blog post together that I had turned the photograph upside down when I started assembling it. Of course, I can turn it so the blue is on the top, but I kind of like it this way.

I had leftover rectangles, so I decided to try to make a composition myself. I found that my natural inclination is to put pieces on a diagonal. So I kept playing with it and eliminating most of the diagonals. But in the leftovers, there weren’t as many colors, so I’m not sure its worthy. Just leaving it on the design wall for now.

Barb asked an interesting question on my other blog:

Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in hobbies and projects. I’m making quilts, crocheting a scrap- using throw, embroidering, mini weaving, knitting socks, making fabric jewelry, etc etc etc….Do you ever want to throw up your hands or just sit and stare at the piles of projects?

I do have a lot of projects going at one time. But I like that. Before I had carpal tunnel surgery, I knew it was really important to use my hands in different ways, and not just keep repeating the same movements. So that’s how I justified having so many different types of projects going. And sometimes I do get overwhelmed with the projects, so that’s when I very neatly put a project into a project box and put it back into the closet. This week, Barb, when I had so many other things to do, there were a few evenings when I did just sit and stare at my projects. But for the most part, I enjoy knitting or hand stitching in the evenings. If I can’t get into the studio in the morning, most days I’m not going to get much done out there. So I really try to plan my day that way. But last week and this week I have an unusual number of appointments and obligations, so I have resigned myself to not getting much done. Working on that small colorful project that I was basically copying was just right.

Catching Up

Posting on Instagram has been fun. Its easy to take a picture at the end of the day and write a sentence or two about what you’ve been doing. So here’s what I’ve been doing since my last post. My Instagram name is debbyschnabel.

I finished another kantha blanket. This is one I pieced last fall just before I went to Art Quilt Tahoe. I really liked the central tree panel, and just chose some nice fabrics to go along with it. Still needs to be washed and blocked a bit.

Taking a break from embroidering on the Wonderful Counselor quilt. Considering next steps. I think I still need some embroidery in there between the words. And maybe some embroidery in the borders, although I do plan to machine quilt most of the borders.

Close-up of the words. You can see I used the blue disappearing ink quite a bit on this quilt. I did a sample to make sure the ink would come out before I used it on this radiance fabric (hand dyed 50/50 cotton/silk)

Close-ups of some of the embroidery:

I started working consistently on the big PEACE quilt. While it was still on the design wall, I chose 12 spots to put verses and marked those spots with the blue disappearing ink, and chose 12 verses about peace. Its been fun to choose a verse, write it in the spot, and get it embroidered on there. I am hoping that this will be the next quilt I machine quilt.

Right now this quilt is under the Juki. I am taking my time and trying to quilt it nicely. I made it a long time ago, and I still like it.

I got it into my head that I should do another sample quilt from the quilt kits I put together. So fun to make small pieces like this. The small pink triangles are actually the leftover pieces from cutting out the big pink circle! I am teaching Quilted Embroidery at the Cotton Patch on April 21. 

 

And since I finished my kantha blanket and am taking a break from the Wonderful Counselor embroidery, I needed something to work on. Out came the big mitered square blanket. I laid it out on my bed and marked how much larger I want it to be, so at least I now have an ending place in mind. Still a lot to do on it. I’m using bits and pieces of leftover yarns and some of my old handspun yarn too.

Sunday my sister called and asked if I had ever made a jelly roll quilt. Well, once I made a top using hand cut strips, basically the same as a jelly roll. As I talked with her about the math and how to do it, I remembered I had a project box with some leftover strips in it–leftover from the big PEACE quilt. They were cut 1/2 inch finished and 1 1/2 inch finished. Most of the 1/2 inch strips were brights and darks. Most of the 1 1/2 inch strips were neutrals. So I started sewing those together. I couldn’t believe it when I sewed the narrow and wider strips together–they were exactly the same length! So then I did a little math, and realized that there still was not enough for a decent sized quilt. I did some more math, and decided that if I would make some 3 inch finished strips, that would make the quilt big enough. For the 3 inch strips, I used both neutral and bright fabrics. I sewed everything together without planning. And when I finally finished, and threw it on my bed, I was really pleased with how pretty it was. Now I’m just thinking about how to quilt it.

Speaking of quilting, one thing I have been doing lately, is going to Joann’s when they have a sale on (haha, when do they NOT have a sale on,) and buying four or more yards of one fabric so that I have quilt backs for my never-ending box of quilt tops that I have not finished. Since I don’t seem to be too good at selling, I have enjoyed finding places to donate quilts for people that might enjoy them. A young couple I met are working with Afghan refugees that are coming to Sacramento. I told them I could send some quilts to them.

I hope all of you are enjoying your creative time. Just working consistently every day it is surprising how much you can accomplish.

 

A Busy Fun January

I’ve just been doing a variety of fun projects this month. Finishing some very old projects and playing with some new ones. This is a quilt top I finished a LONG time ago. Its so pretty, and I finally made a sandwich and got it quilted and bound. I don’t think you can see, but the squares are put on there raw edge, so there is a bit of raggedness to it, which I think adds to the charm. I know I did this from a pattern, so that’s how I know it was a long time ago.

You all know about my box of 2″ squares, right? Well one day in church I doodled this. It seemed like it might be a fun way to use up some of those squares. But then I realized it might be a bit harder to piece than I imagined. One night I dreamed about it all night (that’s what it seemed like) but by the morning I knew how it needed to be made. So I tried it out. This is about a 16 inch block. I’m thinking about making either 5 or 9 of them to make a big 9 patch throw.

Then I had made all these “sparkly” blocks a long time ago with a lot of hand dyed fabrics and some other commercial fabrics. I had them all put away neatly in a project box. But the thrill was gone. I didn’t really want to make a lot more of these blocks. So I came up with the idea of setting them into a blackish background. Luckily for me, Joann’s had just the right black sparkly fabric.

Its always a bit of a puzzle to piece these things together. It took a couple of days, but finally it was done. I had enough of the sparkly fabrics left in the project box to piece a background together.

My friend who has been working on this home for women recovering from drug addiction (remember I donated a couple of quilts for this) had an open house Saturday. It was fun to see my quilts in the setting.

I finally got out my owl rug hooking and started working on that this week, just to make sure I still knew how to hook loops. I do.

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!

 

Early Morning Inspiration

Before I did Quilting in the Garden, I had started constructing these criss cross blocks. My plan this time was to make a large quilt. I read somewhere that one of the significant things about quilt art was that it could be made on a large scale.

So I made criss cross blocks in my spare time. I made a LOT of criss cross blocks, and kept adding them to the design wall.

Then one day I thought I might have enough to put together into a quilt. But I was flummoxed. They were too crowded and just a mess on the wall. You can see in this picture that I was auditioning some black prints to use as spacers in this quilt.

And then one morning I woke up too early. I didn’t really want to get out of bed, so I got my Kindle Fire and decided to look at quilting blogs. Now, I really don’t have that many quilting blogs bookmarked on my kindle. So its kind of amazing that I got so much inspiration from just looking at two blogs. First I looked at Judy Martin’s blog. I was impressed by the large scale of her quilts, all the wide open white space, AND that she had completely covered the quilt in  hand stitching.

Next I looked at The Silly Boodilly blog, and she happened to have an entry explaining her design process. Mostly I was impressed by the simplicity of the “nine patch” quilt at the end of this piece. (P.S. I LOVE the barn in this post.)

And that’s when I got the idea of how I would construct these criss cross blocks. I would put them  in 20 inch blocks (later changed to 24 inch blocks) to give them more open space and provide a little structure. I used yarn to make a 24″ block on the design wall so I could figure out how to place the criss cross blocks.

Its still a puzzle trying to figure out how to put the blocks together without using any y-seams. But the more you do it, the easier it gets.

I also decided that I would “kantha stitch” all of the background. So when I looked for the background fabric I would use, I had Kona Snow, which is my favorite “white,” and I also had some white backing fabric (108″ wide) from Joann’s, which was a looser weave, and therefore would be easier to stitch through, so that’s the one I chose.

With my new construction decision, I decided against adding the black spacers. The block construction would be enough. I did make a few circle criss cross blocks. Because, you can never have enough circles 🙂 So, here’s how its going:

I am going to make it a 4X3 construction, so the size will be 72 wide by 96 high. That should probably keep me kantha stitching through the winter!

 

Recovery and Creativity

Well, here I am, three weeks post-op already! If you want to read more details about my knee replacement surgery, you can check my other blog. I’m writing several posts detailing my experience in case it might be helpful for someone else considering knee replacement surgery. For the most part, it has all been so much better than I had heard from other people, and I am so grateful for that. The doctor did not know before he actually started the surgery, but it turned out that I only needed a partial knee replacement. Such good news for me in the recovery room!

I thought I’d share here about my creativity (or lack of it!) during my recovery time. You might remember that I was all prepared with four neatly arranged projects for me to choose from while I recuperated. Well, it turns out, none of them worked for me. I didn’t like beading in my lap, and I’d take the other projects out of their boxes and just stare at them. It was too hard to make a decision about where to start, or what color thread to use.

My best friend was here, and she tried to encourage me with various ideas. She had brought practically her whole studio with her 🙂  One of the things she brought was her AccuCut machine. She suggested using a charm pack that she had bought (and that I had admired,) and using that along with some of my reproduction fabrics to make a hexagon quilt. It turns out, that was just what I needed. I like sewing those big hexagons together. And of course, I love choosing fabrics for a new quilt.  Choosing which hexagon to sew to the next hexagon didn’t tax my brain too much.

Here’s the beginning of my fabric choices (you can see the charm pack in there–brighter colors than the rest):

And here it is in progress:

After a while, the only way I know to figure out how a hexagon quilt is progressing is to lay it out and then sew a chain of hexis in a straight line so you will know where the edge is supposed to be.

And here, after 2 1/2 weeks of recovery, which included a lot of exercise, a lot of naps, and a lot of sitting, sewing, and TV watching, is the finished quilt top. It measures 50X70 inches. It will be a nice lap quilt for someone.

This week I have done little bits of sewing on my machine, and even a bit of quilting on the Juki. I still don’t enjoy letting my leg hang down, so have kept those sessions short. I was finally able to start embroidering on one of the projects I had pre-prepared, and soon I will clear off my cutting table/desk and set up a beading station. I am determined to work on my beading!