Returning to my poor, neglected blog

 

Apologia: Last weekend marked the hellish return of my trigeminal neuralgia symptoms and I've asked my doctor to refer me to the surgeon in Winston-Salem who does laser surgery to bring relief from the pain.  This is as bad as it's ever been.  Everything seems to trigger the pain--toothpaste, talking, chewing. drinking cold water, walking, touching the right side of my face, etc.  Saturday, I mostly sat on the porch and tried not to move, but Sunday, I was tired of giving into the pain and decided to do some work in the studio and reactive this poor, sad blog of mine.  The baby quilt above is for the new baby of the couple who owns our favorite Indian restaurant.  I finished piecing it on Sunday.

  Dan and Steph left on Friday after a wonderful extended visit.  Anna was able to come for the long July 4th weekend and it was terrific being together with our entire family for my  66th birthday.  Anna made me a delicious and beautiful cake and we all enjoyed our meal at Lucky 32, an excellent Greensboro restaurant with fabulous catfish.

Jim is greatly improved in health.  The brace and the walker are gone, but he relies on a cane.  He is getting himself around to therapy and school and generally looking and feeling more himself.

Safety Pin Studio has seen the usual number of baby quilts as well as a t-shirt quilt for my cousin, Lynn, and the repair and quilting of an antique quilt top of hers.  Anna's new apartment sports new curtains, too.  Dan and Steph's quilt was finally finished so that they had it on their bed here during their visit and then took it back to Canada with them.

My cousin's antique quilt top was in rough shape, but since I had some experience restoring antique textiles, I repaired everything first. The poor baby below had to be completely backed with cotton to save it.  I suggested that quilting the top would help to preserve it.  Using all 100% cotton (thread, backing fabric, batting), I sandwiched  and quilted it very lightly by hand.

The weather was cooperative, so I was able to baste it on the screened porch.

My cousin knew something about the history of the quilt, so I created a label on the back to preserve that information as well.  The block pattern was churn dash, so I made a little block of my own for the label.

The t-shirts that my cousin had collected over the years were very rich visually and made a very fun quilt. Making t-shirt quilts interesting presents a challenge because it is tempting to cut them uniformly in size which means you end up with lots of empty space and the thing becomes so heavy you can hardly move it.  I'm a fan of cutting the designs out closely.  I stabilize all the shirt pieces with a woven, iron-on interfacing which makes sewing regular cotton fabric to them easier. The differences in size can be dealt with by adding pieces of patchwork.

Bloggers Quilt Festival: "Curiouser and curiouser" --A quilt begins

Welcome to the third Bloggers Quilt Festival. I've participated in both of Amy's other two festivals. My first original quilt was the subject of the first post and, in the second festival post, I shared a quilt I made for my husband. Regular readers of my blog know that I've spent lots of time this spring making two, large quilts for my daughter and her best friend who are both brides this year. Rather than go back over that ground, I decided to share the beginnings of a brand new quilt for the third festival post. I'll be updating this post throughout the week as this new quilt takes shape, so please come back to see how it's progressing.

Over the years, I've found that my best ideas for quilts come from a confluence of things, a sudden mashup, if you will. This idea came from buying some new rubber stamps, lots of visual stimulation from the 1960's retro fabric designs in the quilt shops and online, hearing the old Jefferson Airplane song, "White Rabbit" on NPR, and my love of Lewis Carroll's Alice books.



I have owned these two books longer than any others in my collection. My parents read them to me when I was tiny and I have always adored the Tenniel illustrations. Since the copyright on them has expired, all of the rubber stamp companies are taking full advantage.



Here's part of my rubber stash.



Black and white are figuring strongly in this quilt. I am envisioning a sort of op art, fractured surface, interrupted with partial stamped images.



Little bursts of color will peek through the black and white areas.


http://www.johntenniel.com/view_art.php?art_id=1409&min=0&max=10000000

Composition will be strictly improvisational, but inspired by Tenniel. I'm planning on calling the quilt, "Curiouser and curiouser" because I've always loved that phrase from the book.

10:00pm Friday update


I have eliminated several fabrics. Here are all the fabrics for the front.



The two end fabrics were used as the color inspirations.



The wonderful black on white fabric that reminds me of psychedelic rabbit holes will be a wide border and the tone on tone gray op art geometric will be a thinner border. A very thin black strip will separate them.



This fantastic Alexander Henry fabric called "mocca" will be the back with the other two fabrics used as the label.

Saturday 22 May 10:00am update


The solid black and white fabrics are all pima cottons. Here are the first stamped strips.



All the strips are being cut free without using a ruler. Here are the first few pieced together. I think I'll go back and take more off that yellow on the left side. I learned all of these improvisational piecing techniques in working with Nancy Crow, so I won't be sharing specifics. Treat yourself and take a class with her some day. I cannot say enough good things about her.

Saturday 1:00pm update





The first set of strips.




Second set of strips.



First two cuts and the chess board begins.

Saturday 4:00pm update


Here's the top pieced without borders.




A detail of one of the Alice stamps.

Saturday 9:30pm update



The top is finished. Color was needed between the two borders, so I opted for the red with multicolored circles instead of the black and white small dotted fabric. I'll work on the back and the label tomorrow. Sweet dreams everyone.

Sunday 23 May 10:30am update


Experimenting with the layout for the label. I'm using my new typeswriter stamps for the first time.



This is the test stamp. I iron freezer paper to the back of the label to stabilize the fabric when I write or stamp on it.



The basic label is finished. I iron it to set the ink and then add a border.



The back with the label set in is finished. Now I will sandwich the quilt.

Final update: Monday 24 May 9:15pm


The center is pin basted and the borders are thread basted. Quilting will have to wait until Anna and Matt's quilt is done. I'm guessing you'll see this one as a finished piece around the middle of July. Thanks for visiting and participating in the festival.
"Good times," as the Delicious Dish ladies say.