Quilting on the Edge

Time-Out at Mount Dora Florida January 31. 2009

This looks like a great spot to have tea with a good friend! It's in a little restaurant in downtown Clermont Florida.  We met a couple friends of ours for a few days visiting Mount Dora Florida, and since Karen and I are quilters, we took a side trip to Clermont  where there was a quilt shop.  We stopped in a small local restaurant to have coffee while we were waiting for the stores to open.  This is the table in their front window! I told Karen if we were alone, we'd have to sit right there and sip our tea or coffee.  I took a photo and here it is!  Good idea for other small eateries.  

Modern Bed Quilt: January 27, 2009

Here is the latest bed size quilt I completed......it is for my oldest and his wife's new home in Michigan.  They wanted contemporary, so I chose a pattern with bold lines, strong design, and bold color.  I hand quilted the blocks, and free motion machine quilted around the outside triangles and border. It looks even better than I imagined now that I see it in their room with black furniture!  

Creative Limbo: January 25, 2009

Sometimes right after I finish a project or two I enter a phase I call creative limbo.....sort of like a time out where I'm not sure what I want to do next but it's brewing, I can tell by the way I feel.  Some sense of anxiety, looking around at my fabrics and other supplies....sort of sense of urgency that I want to get started on something but I'm not sure exactly what.  I've been looking at recent photos I've taken while out and about and thought I'd post a few. This first one is of a walkway area by some house that had a few shadows cast over the stones.  The different shapes attracted me.   Then there's the one you see here.  This is a light globe by another house with plants growing up around it.  I took it at an odd angle.  It reminds me of weeds growing up around the world.   I'm pretty sure this will be a quilt someday.  It has a sense of mystery to me. What about the cracked pavement in the background? 

This next photo is of concrete debris scattered in someone's yard.  I'm in a challenge to make a small quilt using a photo of urban decay as the inspiration.......isolating a section of a photo for the quilt. I'll probaby do this project next as it has a deadline.  Still haven't decided exactly what I'll do though.

And this last photo is of tire treads in a sandy parking lot.  Not sure what I was thinking, but I was attracted to the pattern.  This is one of the ways I get ideas for my art quilts....taking lots of photos.  I think that even if I never make anything that resembles a photo I've taken, all the photos are now in my collective source of inspiration, and one way or another, a part of them enters my work down the line somewhere.

Door Quilt: Part II

  This is an addition to my previous post about making the door quilt.  This photo is of the quilt actually hanging in my son's office.......this photo is much better than the one I previously posted.....the tan door makes it more interesting than the white door in my place.  We're all thrilled with it!

Quilt for the Door: Warmth, Privacy, or Art? January 16, 2009

Here's a project I just completed for one of my sons.  He asked for a quilt to cover the door of his office........the door has some transparent squares that prohibit complete privacy. I was excited to design and make this quilt for him.........it is about 23 by 67 inches.  Here you see it hanging on a bedroom door in my place.......it's hung by a dowel placed on a couple of 3M hooks which hold it stable and straight.   Joel's a runner, so this quilt I call "the Chase" was made reminding me of the highschool cross country meets I attended many years ago......Fabrics calling to mind the earth, fall skies, footsteps, runner's heads, and turning leaves at these events.  Here's a closeup view of the quilting on it:This is random free motion quilting with a variegated thread showing turns and corners and paths, again going with the runner's theme.  Altho this will suit his needs, I realized this door quilt could also be used for temperature control over  a doorway.  and just plain home decor.  So this is sort of a three in one project.........warmth, privacy and even art.  I see another one of these in my own future for a door in my home........I can imagine a project such as this at the end of a hallway over a door to a spare room.  Or something like that.  Always new uses for quilts..........besides the one's our grandma's taught us.

Art Quilts: Experiments with Watercolors Jan. 14, 2009

  I'm in an experimental phase it seems.  I think I may be procrastinating from doing some projects that I am stuck on.  But at the same time, I think keeping my creative mind active will allow me to eventually get where I want to go.  Anyway, here is a piece of fusible interfacing that I painted with watercolors this morning.  The fusible remained intact on the back even though it was wet from the paints.  I'm imagining uses such as cutting it into shapes and fusing it on an art quilt. It is transparent to some degree, and may allow fabrics underneath to shadow through visibly.  For now, I just have it and like the idea.  Here's another neat thing that happened as a result of the first experiment:    this is the parchment paper I had underneath the fusible interfacing while I was applying the watercolors.  I was so eager to try the colors on the interfacing, I just grabbed something to put under it and absorb the paint, and here's what I created.  Sort of a bonus. The second piece, in some ways is more interesting than the first. If you turn the photo, you see a different look as below.  This direction reminds me a lot of a sunset on water.......the little glints of light are seen in the yellow and oranges on the wavy water.  Do you see that too?I'm thinking it might be nice to glue this piece to some heavy paper and make notecards from it, or not as the case may be.  What would you do with it?  I almost hate to cut it up!  Enough procrastinating......... or maybe not...... LOL 

Art Quilts: More Inspiration January 13, 2008

Seagrape Leaves are large waxy type almost circular leaves found everywhere here on Anna Maria Island.  They are thick, with large veins.  They're the type of leaves than you can hear being blown about across the yard. They turn red, then green, then brown as they drop off their branches. The plants make great privacy screens.......they can grow really tall like a tree, or be kept the size of a shrub. I took a closeup photo of seagrape leaves a while back and here's the photo I came up with after photo editing.  Don't ask me to do it again, as I was just using different filters and adjustments until I came up with this image and then saved it. In this photo the leaves seem transparent, and they are really thick in real life. This photo also has depth......as if you are looking beyond the front darker leaves into a space of light where they leaves are transparent, yet visible as if layered.  This too would create a nice art quilt.  One of the things I enjoy so much about quilt art is that there are many facets of this one interest.........so if today, you don't feel like sewing, you can spend time designing.  Or buying fabrics.  Or taking photos for the future.  Or combining photos.  There are so many "substeps" to a final creation, that you can always be doing something toward your creation, even if you don't go near a sewing machine or needle and thread.  and then other days, I just gotta sew!!!  

Art Quilts: Finding Inspiraton Jan. 11, 2009

  What do you think of this photo?  This is an example of one of the ways I look for inspiration to make new quilts.  I take a lot of photos, especially now that I have an iphone and my camera is always right there when I walk or bike or go anyplace really.  Any cell phone with a camera would do.   The original photo was of a yard landscaped with these pilings arranged around the lawn in a front yard. I took the photo about a year ago.   A quick trip to my photo software the other day allowed me to alter the photo with different filters, and this is the result of  that alteration, one I decided to keep in my file.  I haven't made anything from this idea, maybe I never will, but it just adds to my store of ideas.  In this case, I like the translucent nature of the pilings, the colors, and the overall feel of this new photo. Sometimes I take a small notecard or piece of paper, cut out a two or three inch square in the middle of it, and use that "window" to place over different sections of a photograph to isolate one section that I'd like to turn into a quilt.  You don't have to consider the whole photo, just some small section.   You can buy different size mats for frames to use in the same way.........I just can't seem to find my mats when I want them, so I just make my own window.  I have seen over the years that an idea that is discarded today may be perfect months from now........I'm always amazed at that.  It's just like buying fabric.......I'll pick up a remnant here and there, or even buy yardage, and one day it is exactly what I need for a project.  It's as if my mind know that in six or eight months, I'll need that certain fabric.  So I have finally learned that there is a method to all this picture taking and fabric stashing.   I just don't know at the moment what it is for, but that doesn't mean I never will.  I just don't know YET.  This works for many of the small quilts I make as well.  It's interesting how some of them turn out to be perfect to give to someone else for a certain reason.........I like to think that I make all my quilts for someone, I just don't always know who it is at the time I'm making them.  And sometimes, I'm lucky enough to find out who it is for and mail it off to them.  I love when that happens!

Seaside Journal: Favorites Jan. 6, 2009

Time to return to my photos of favorite things about our place here on Anna Maria Island.  Perhaps you've seen or heard of this expression which accompanies this picture:  "We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing".  I purchased this photo with that expression on it several years ago and framed it to hang in our home here as a reminder to play more.  The older women in her bathing suit with the inner tube is just great, isn't it?  I can testify that as we have spent parts of our retirement here, we have found ourselves turning more or more to activities of our younger days, some as if we discovered them for the first time.  Biking is an almost daily activity........whether for pleasure or to run an errand, or for daily exercise.  My mate has flown kites on the beach...and loves his scooter to ride about the island.  Sometimes I accompany him on the scooter and we visit area preserves and parks. I have dyed and painted fabrics for my quilts.  The list goes on, but the idea is that we have embraced our lives and our time here to include plenty of time to do fun things that we would have had little time for in the past.  On Anna Maria Island there are many of us older folks doing the same.........early in the morning Gulf Drive is littered with people running, walking, biking.........most for fitness I suspect.  But age is not a barrier to any activity.  That is so refreshing to see.  There is a great feeling of vitality here, and I'm happy to be a part of it. Hope you find some time to play today...it will keep you young, regardless of your age.

Sunrise January 1, 2009

  Here is a photo of sunrise through the window of my sewing studio. It's the first for the new year 2009.  There's a lot of promise in that scene.  For today, and maybe even for the whole year ahead.  I watched the New Years' Eve celebrations on television last night, but it seems to me the New Year should be celebrated at the onset of sunrise wherever you happen to be.  It's our first look at our new year, on the first day of that new year.  Here's the sunrise I have been given to see this morning about seven AM.  It's a beauty and I'm glad I didn't miss it.  Happy New Year 2009!