Mining a source of inspiration to create a new quilt: Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2010

Welcome to the Blogger's Quilt Festival, Fall 2010.  Because I had such good response to my spring post for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, I've decided to follow a similar plan of updating my original post as I construct a new piece during the fall festival. My inspiration again comes from Wonderland's Alice.  This time, rather than the images of John Tenniel, it comes from the words of Lewis Carroll.

The quote appears in the first chapter of Through the Looking Glass and comes from the Red King.  I love the concept of the pencil being uncontrollable, having a will of its own.  I have some vague mental images rolling around in my head involving mark-making on fabric with different size pens combined with lots of black, white, and grey fabrics with graphic designs. Like many quilters, I fight against the urge to "go literal" with an image. I don't want to make a quilt that features the image of a giant pencil ! ( Elizabeth Barton has a great post about this, by the way.  You can check it out here.)  My imaginings center much more on the writings of this pencil Lewis Carroll talks about.  What do "all manner of things that I don't intend"  actually look like? Here's some of the fabric with graphic images.

The fabrics with pencil and pen designs will probably show up on the back or in the binding, but who knows?

Here's a look at the first constructions using some new millennium fabric.

This piece will be improvisationally pieced on an intuitive basis and we will see where it leads over the days of the festival.  Thanks for reading and I hope you will check back as I update this post.

Update: Friday, 29 October 9:40PM

I made a trip to Hobby Lobby today for more marking tools and stencils.

This is the beginning of a white on black letter.

Here it is on the background fabric.  As the components start to appear, I am getting a clearer idea of what the whole might look like.

Update: Saturday, 30 October 12:45PM

This is not a composition, but rather just some of the elements grouped together for a picture.  I'm really pleased with the look of things so far.  Back to Safety Pin Studio!

Update: Saturday, 30 October 4:00PM

I've decided to do all the letters in the alphabet but in different fonts and cases.  Here's my "i" unit that I printed with typewriter font rubber stamps. The back of the fabric is stabilized with freezer paper that I iron on and then pull off once it's stamped.

Here are the units so far.  There's going to be another repeated letter unit for the "e."

Update: Sunday, 31 October 7:45AM

Good Halloween morning to all of you festival visitors.  Here are my next two "repeater" elements.  The wonderful black fabric that the "e's" are on was designed and made by Laura Wasilowski.  I've been hoarding it for years and now I'm thrilled to use it in this quilt.

Now that the composition is coming together, the shapes of the various elements is being dictated by where I need to fill in an open space.  I like this kind of creative problem-solving.  Today shouldn't be as interrupted as Saturday was, and I'm hoping to get close to finishing the front.  More later.  Now, it's back to the studio.

Update: Sunday, 31 October 9:00AM

I'm constantly moving the elements around and now that I see this photo, I can see another move I want to make.  Back I go to Safety Pin Studio.

Update: Sunday, 31 October 1:40PM

Nothing is sewn together yet, but I think this composition will work. There's more Laura Wasilowski fabric in the "y" repeater element.  I'm thinking a grey first border and then some of the white on black fabric with cursive writing all over it for the second border.    I used the black on cream fabric with print letters to fill in the spaces between elements. 

I'm taking a little lunch break and then back to work.

Update: Sunday 31 October 8:30PM

Here's the top sewn together with a grey border.  One border is going to be enough, I think.  

The border fabric is by Debra Lunn and Michael Mrowka for Robert Kaufman. It's an oldie from my stash.  I will use the white on black cursive writing fabric for bias binding.  Quilted Librarian is out for tonight.

Update: Tuesday, 2 November 8:30PM

This is the beginning of the title block.  I'm using my typewriter font rubber stamps on fabric that's been stabilized with freezer paper on the back.

There's nearly enough pencil fabric for the back.  The black on white cursive writing fabric may work around the edges.

Quilted Librarian goes mobile!

I've finally gotten around to uploading some social networking apps for my iPhone so I can go mobile. This won't be my preferred form of posting, because it's too hard to type, but great to have in place. Thank you BlogWriter Lite.  Happy weekend.

Blogger's Quilt Festival, Fall 2010

The ever amazing Amy is doing it again: the best online quilt festival ever for the fourth time.  I'm very excited to participate again.  Come back on the 29th of October for the start of the fun.  You can click back to my old posts using these links:
Festival #1 post
Festival #2 post
Festival #3 post

Thanks, Amy.  You rock.

Jim's New Woobie: Finishing touches

This is the large half hoop when I was just about finished quilting Jim's new woobie yesterday afternoon.  It was a little cool on the porch, so I was happy to have the quilt resting on my legs.

I made the continuous bias binding earlier in the week.  I use my Viking with the walking foot to sew on binding. Here's a link to a tutorial on continuous bias binding.

Here's the front side of the tag...

...and the back. I sew the tags to the back above the binding line of quilting and then turn the binding down and hand sew it to secure the tag. I've made several tags lately.  See this post and this one.

Here's a little detail of the binding and the hand quilting.

Fall color and a look at the remodeling

I'm having a Jane Brocket kind of color and domestic artist day.  Jim bought me these wonderful zinnias at the Farmer's Market and the colors are just intoxicating. We went for vegetables, but he knows how I love flowers.

The vegetables are cut up and ready to go into the pot as I poach a whole chicken.  We will have the breast meat tonight and I will make chicken and noodles for my lunches next week with the broth and the dark meat.

This is a little look at the bathroom remodeling.  They started with the guest bathroom.  This is the new porcelain tile floor.  Was I glad to see the last of that ugly linoleum! I had them use tile rather than wood mop boards.

This is the same view with the new vanity in place as well as the high profile/ecologically friendly toilet. You can see what the wall color will be, too.   The new lights should go in on Monday and then they will tear out our bathroom.  Quilted Librarian out to finish quilting Jim's new woobie.

Pennants on display

Here are the pennants on display.  It was tough to get a good picture without reflections.

A memory of Mae and her mother

Some of Jim's mother's things that she had intended for us arrived this week.  This is a work bag that belonged to Mae's mother, Anna (the namesake of our Anna).  It was always in Mom's bedroom taking pride of place right by the door.  I never got to meet the first Anna, but did speak to her on the telephone shortly before her death.  She knew that Jim and I were engaged and seemed pleased and was very sweet to me.

This is a wonderful old photo of the first Anna and I can definitely see our Anna's resemblance to her.  She was also a needlewoman and that's one of the reasons I will particularly cherish this memento.  Thanks, Mom.

Jim's woobie quilt: quilting update

Jim's new woobie quilt is about halfway quilted.  I'm using the large half hoop on the edges.  We've had gorgeous weather this weekend and I've spent every moment I could hand quilting on the screened porch. I spent some time this afternoon helping to drop the Piedmont Quilters Guild show and both of my quits are safely back home.  I got some nice comments from the judge, but no ribbons.  I'm planning a new quilt for the spring PAQA-South show.  That should be a better venue for my type of work.  I hope you are all enjoying some lovely October weather.