The Day

I’m calling it the day on the Whatever quilt. I think. Although I am enjoying the mixed media quilting journey very much, I find it hard to decide when I have reached my destination. It’s all about finding balance, only adding what will improve the quilt, connecting all the elements and making it into a whole. Sounds easy, but it’s not.

I got working on that last layer yesterday, all the pent up frustration from the past 3 weeks just waiting to be stitched out, anxious to see how my new and somewhat fever induced plan would work out. Well, it didn’t. The first attempt at creating little hints of vegetation crashed and burned, and so did the second.

 The huge spool of raspberry t-shirt-yarn that I had envisioned being perfectly transferred into beautiful straws was way too chunky against all the delicate sheer fabrics and simply had to go. That’s all right, I am sure I will find a use for it later, and also the rest of the raspberry stuff that did not make the cut this time.

The third attempt, however, was successful, and soon after eagerly stitched onto the quilt.

Then it was button time, and the plan of adding lots and lots of buttons was adjusted to adding just lots of buttons. To keep the button arrangement seemingly random, I spread them out on the quilt and used glass head pins to keep them in place while hand stitching them onto the quilt.

By the end of the day my fingers were really sore. Pulling pearl cotton floss through layers and layers of heavily quilted fabrics does that to you.

The rubber needle-pulling-thingie wasn’t in my hand sewing kit, so I went looking for a balloon in the kitchen junk drawer. There were no balloons, but I found a roll of band aid. It worked like a charm, just fold it around the needle, and your grip will be so much better. I wish I had thought about it sooner, before my fingers got so sore.

Now it’s time to hand stitch the hanging sleeve and label to the back of the quilt. I just need to make really, really sure, yet again, that it’s finished as adding anything afterwards will be difficult.

Thanks for stopping by!

Mush weeks

Hi there! I am still here, a little worse for the wear, but otherwise in quite good shape. Thank you so much for your well wishes and concerned emails wondering how I was doing. Here's a little recap.

I had pneumonia. I got exhausted. I got antibiotics. I got an inhaler. It was no fun. I picked up a secondary infection, and instead of killing two birds with one (antibiotic) stone, they seemed to feed off of each other. I got new antibiotics. I got nauseous. I got exhausted. It was no fun.

I have been eating crap, watching crap, and feeling crap. For the last week and a half I have been able to be up and about for about an hour a day, doing fun things like doctor’s visits, homeopath’s visits, physical therapist’s visits, pharmacy visits, and the always exhilarating grocery shopping. I go to watch grandson graduate from kindergarten which was totally awesome. I was able to keep up with the eldest grandson's regular scheduled sun spreading visits, but not with the one year old. Poor little fellow, he could not understand why he could not come with us.

I finished my 19 days of antibiotics on Tuesday. I take vitamin C, zinc and probiotics to boost my immune system, I take 2 homeopathic medicines to drain my lungs and get some energy, I use the inhaler to breathe better, I do exercises at my physical therapist’s to drain my lungs and I have my ears full of little needles. Lots of fun.

I have been spending the full 3 weeks on the couch and I have been watching my hair grow and the telly. All day, every day. I have watched grown women trying wedding dresses, whining about being daddy’s little princess. I have watched women hoarding 743 lip balms and 432 hot sauces because they were free. I have watched reruns. I have watched reruns of reruns. I have watched reruns of reruns of reruns. Seriously, the hair thing was the most interesting, especially since I have been wearing it straight while I’m waiting to go to the hair dresser. Fascinating, right. No wonder my brain feels like mush.

But, come mush or come shine, I am determined to get back to my Whatever quilt this week. The supplies for the last layer is sitting right here, waiting for me. I'm adding raspberry details, love raspberry. With 3 weeks lost work wise, I won’t be able to make the deadline for the Architectural Challenge, but I can live with that. Not finishing the Whatever Quilt is however not an option, but first I need to rest for a while. Writing on the computer is surprisingly hard work.

I’ll feel better tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bag pipe

I have pneumonia and will be out for a while. I will be back when my chest does not feel like a bagpipe player is sitting on it anymore. It neither feels nor sounds pleasant. Until then I'll be spending my days in a semi-upright position, drinking lots of fluids.

Time flies when you're having fun..

Button up

The next, and hopefully last, layer on the Whatever Quilt will be buttons. I don't know how many times I have arranged and rearranged them, but the only pleasing result so far was when I randomly spread them out. There's no way I can copy that as I didn't take any pictures. 

Adding a few white and/or black buttons to the mix might spice it up a little. No matter how much the different colours and sizes show on a close up, the mix looks rather blah from afar.

For now I'll just have to enjoy looking at them sitting in their little vintage saucer, maybe do a test of which coloured embroidery floss to use. I'm thinking raspberry pink, I love raspberry pink.

Maybe I should try spreading them out just one more time today.. 

Whisper

Some quilts are just whispering,

inviting you in to hear their stories.

The Whatever quilt is a rather personal journey,

soft spoken and bold.

Text printed onto ExtravOrganza silk organza sheets on a backdrop of soft orange dots to be stitched onto the almost finished quilt. I have left them until now so that they may fray and disintegrate simply by getting handled.

They have been pinned, glued and stitched down with sheer thread. The whispers should be safe now.

Hear that sound? That’s me exhaling. Progress, finally!

Another day, another challenge

If you have been around here for a while, you know that I love a good challenge. In fact, I often come up with challenges for myself just because they inspire me so much. It’s rarely the finished project that is the carrot, but the process itself, figuring out how to solve a problem, make do, whatever the challenge is, it’s fun.

When Victoria posted a new challenge on the 15 minutes play blog, I was in before I had read through the whole post. It might have something to do with the need of distraction from my fear of finishing the Whatever quilt, but more likely it was the theme that drew me in. Architecture Challenge, imagine all the possibilities! You can read about the challenge here.

I have been through several ideas for inspirational pictures. The first that popped in my head was a picture I took at the Canary Islands a couple of years ago. I loved the rounded shape of the white stairs against the red.

Looking at it now, the picture itself was not as great as I remembered (are they ever?), so I moved on to my favourite architect and favourite building – Casa Batllô by Antoni Gaudi (none of the following pictures of the building are mine). On my first visit to Barcelona we only got to see the exterior, which by all means is simply amazing

 

 

but when I happened to stroll by on my second visit there years later, the building, at the time owned by an insurance company I think, was open to the public as part of the celebrations of the 150 year anniversary of Gaudi’s birth. It was the most amazing feeling walking around in the house I had read so much about about in my Gaudi books, looking at all the details everywhere. I was surprised to see all the clever and highly decorative solutions to simple things like ventilation and light shafts. I bet yours look nothing like this.

Wouldn’t it be the perfect inspiration for a quilt! I thought so, but then I remembered we are to use made fabrics in the quilt and somehow that did not work with what I had in my head. You can read more about the building here.

Having spent too much time browsing through Google Images, in the end I landed close to home, at a trade school near where we live. The building is a couple of years old and I still haven’t been inside even though I was following the building process eagerly. The façade is very modern and striking, and would fit perfectly for this challenge.

I want to use this opportunity to experiment with free-form-but-not-improvisational piecing, so as a first exercise I made a rough sketch, just catching how the light and shadows and angles create dept.

Next I did another sketch focusing more on proportions and angles.

I think I’ll use this as a blueprint. I just need to finish the Whatever quilt first, oh where, oh where did that inspiration go...

Resting, resting

I woke up this morning eager to start on the tasks of the day. A few hours later, and I am done with the main task which has been hanging over my head for weeks, and I’ve run out of steam. Now I’m resting.

Last week was a busy one; lots of early mornings and fun days with grandboys including a few unscheduled sick days, and no matter how much I appreciate those days, I don’t do much else when they are here, including rest. We do however enjoy things like these

 

 

and of course painting.

I had a go at the painted frame from this post, but it turned out really bad so I was happy I could just wash the paint right off. I’m still thinking I want to add collage, so I hadn’t bothered prepping it for paint.

We drove up to the cabin on Saturday and spent almost a full 24 hours there. It was windy and wet, but still very enjoyable and very quiet and peaceful. I got to rearrange my craft drawer which I have been filling up with odds and ends and what seems like quite an extensive collection of different paints.

We also played around with taking pictures through the holes in one of the Hama bead creations. Cool, huh!

And of course rainy day soccer (10 minutes outdoors and the rest indoors) and board games. I think this would be our equivalent to Snakes and ladders.

Time to rest up before the next task on my list, have a wonderful Monday!

Vishy voshy vision

I had a vision. I would add perfect little splashes of colour to the Whatever quilt by adding diluted ink drop by drop. I could see them in my mind, spreading out through the layers and the excess getting soaked up by the bottom cotton fabric layer. Sounds perfect, right?

Well. I don't have that vision any more. Thank goodness I made a little test piece first. The ink did not behave gracefully at all, not making much of a mark on the organza layer.

That being said, ink blobs could be fun on a different project, so I'm adding it to the growing list of mix-it-up options.

This is not my first time being wrong-visioned. Most of the time it doesn't even matter, I can work with whatever result I get, but when the project is to be in a show, I'll make a test cloth. This is the test cloth for The Reef of Re quilt. It has all the layers and has been somewhat quilted.

 

See all the black seams and dots and lines? That's where I have been testing different decorative stitching, markers, stamping and inking. Only the ink dots made it to the quilt, the rest of the ideas were archived. I did not think all the techniques would work, but I had to try them out anyway. When good ideas can go wrong, bad ideas could go right, right?

Some test cloths are worth finishing, but this one is being used for ongoing testing, the last one being yarn couching zig zag settings. 0,5 mm difference really does matter.

After a sunny and rather warm week, Saturday is nothing like that. Oh well, we'll figure out something to do, grandson is well and life is good.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!