On this glorious February 14, we spent the day celebrating things and places we love. We did some antiquing near Fayettevile and in Woodbury, traveled backroads all the way, had lunch at The Blackbird Cafe.
Vignettes with hearts were on display everywhere, whetting my appetite for things I’d like to do next year.
I found a few treasures to inspire me…most of them blue and brown. No surprise there. Brought home a few of them, you see.
The tree is up, the Santas are waiting. And in the world of the internet, elves are busy building something new.
My website is undergoing some changes and may not be available at times in the coming days…but it will be back. Frustration with technical issues has almost brought me to decide to stop blogging. But, no. I’ve decided to move to a new platform.
I’ve questioned my motives for writing a blog. Many sites you see are powered by the desire to sell something. I started with that in mind when I wrote a book about a quilt, but I quickly learned that I didn’t like selling. I do like sharing.
Sharing stories. Sharing quilts. Sharing photos. Sharing the joys that come to a small-town southern girl who sees an old lady in the mirror.
We revisited Slow Exposures this weekend. Slow Exposures is a “juried exhibition celebrating photography of the rural south” (from their website, here). I wrote about it after our first visit to the exhibit in 2018.
As is always the case when we spend the day with these photographs, we feel inspired.
Sometimes it’s the techniques used in processing the photos, sometimes it’s the way the photos are displayed, sometimes it’s the subject matter. This year, I was entranced by blue.
Two pairs of artists in the PopUp venues were working with cyanotypes. A cyanotype uses paper (or fabric or wood) that’s been treated with chemicals which are light sensitive. Laying an image on the paper, then exposing it to sunlight produces an image. Having done some of this myself with fabric, I’m intrigued by the new spin on things when other people do it.
Ashely Jones and Danea Males shared their work in the popup Some Kind of Blue. Their work included cyanotype images on paper and on wood.
In the Out of Town popup, Elizabeth Limbaugh and Tara Stallworth Lee had collaborated to share their interpretations of Alabama images. They had photographic diptychs, collages, and cyanotype prints.
Elizabeth is the one of the pair who works with the cyanotypes and she and I shared our love of the process and techniques we’ve used.
Elizabeth is on instagram @ewlfotografee
I loved learning about the encaustic process used with photos on our initial visit to Slow Exposures. This year another artist was exploring that process with vintage photos. I was intrigued since I love collecting old photos of known and unknown people to populate my stories in cloth.
So now I’m at home contemplating new ways to make and include cyanotypes and photographs in my textiles.
I’m still here; sewing, just not posting…but here’s some stitching to share.
I have long admired the quilting work of Cindy Needham. Many times, she enhances her amazing quilting with fresh water pearls.
I needed a purse for my grandson’s wedding, had a bit of cotton fabric I had dipped in the walnut dyepot…it matched my shoes exactly.
So I gathered a few of Cindy’s stencils I had purchased, reread her instructions, and modified a zippered bag tutorial from Jenny Doane at Missouri Star Quilts.
What better way to spend rainy afternoons than playing with fabric?
We had a lot of rain last week, so I was inside the house more than usual in the summertime.
After weeks and months of working on big projects with other peoples’ styles and color choices in mind, I took a break to play.
I pulled out some pieces I had overdyed in walnut or indigo and combined them with others lying around.
Bits of vintage fabric in browns and blues, some fun improvisational embroidery, and I had a little pillow. I used simple straight stitches, seed stitches, and a few fly stitches to embellish the pieces in the log cabin block.
A quick little project is always rewarding and the stitching is soul soothing. I love my little chairs – now they all need pillows. I’ve assembled some smaller blocks for pincushions, too.
Note: Since this post was published, I’ve been asked about the quilt in the background. Here is a photo of the full quilt. And an earlier blog post here described its construction. This earlier post was when I only posted one photo per blog – but more on this is coming soon.
People often ask, “how long does it take to make a quilt?” There’s usually no way to answer that…but this one was 20 years in the making. I pieced the blocks long ago, pulled them out in February and presented the quilt as a gift early in May.
I learned a lot about quilting at the turn of the century watching the then HGTV series, Simply Quilts. On that show, a line of fabric designed by Susan Branch was featured with this pieced combination of Lemoyne Stars and half-Lemoyne stars. I was entranced. Entranced by Susan Branch’s art work, by the fabric, by the star pattern.
I bought the line of fabric in fat quarters, downloaded the show’s pattern, and began piecing stars by hand. They were lovely. I enjoyed many hours of piecing the stars while visiting with family and friends.
Then they sat in a box for years. Many years. I had memories of laying out the blocks on the design wall, labeling their position in a spreadsheet array, and putting them aside. I thought it was a failed project because the white background fabric was so thin that it wouldn’t work to assemble them.
I opened the box earlier this year to learn that I was wrong. I had put them away because the solid white blocks were the wrong size to connect with the stars. Whether I read the directions incorrectly, pieced incorrectly, or whether there was an error in the instructions, I don’t know. Fortunately the solid blocks were too big, not too small. All the stars were consistently the same size, so I just trimmed the solid blocks to fit and stitched them together. They went together perfectly. Well, there are a few less than perfect points…but let’s chalk that up to an inexperienced piecer stitching them by hand.
Twenty years of experience gave me the knowledge I needed to make the blocks work.
As I thought about a quilting design, the obvious was to quilt feathered wreaths in the open spaces. That seemed too pretentious to me for these fun fabrics. I wanted a curvy design to contrast with the pointy stars. So I stitched an overall vine in green thread, then echoed it in a fine white thread. I like the result.
I called this one Celebration. It was given to a family member who had reason to celebrate…but I was celebrating the completion of a big UFO! I considered calling it WooHoo, but went with the more discreet name.
The quilt measures 80” square. I’m pleased with the green vines on back and front, echoed with a finer thread in white. The green is a 30wt cotton thread. The white is a 100 wt silk.
The on-location photos were taken at a rescued country store, Mildred’s, in Houston County.
I made lots of new friends at our recent guild quilt show. Two of them, Flo and Jan, invited me to visit their Prayers and Squares group at one of their meetings. I went this past Sunday and was touched by the love they are stitching together.
I had heard of Prayers and Squares before; I have a friend who is a cancer survivor. Faye had received a loving gift of a quilt from a group during her time of healing. I didnt realize there was an international organization involved.
Prayers & Squares is an interfaith outreach organization thatcombines the gift of prayer with the gift of a hand-tied quilt. That statement is from their website, here. Begun in 1992 in California, their website now lists thousands of chapters worldwide. I visited with the one at Hopewell United Methodist Church near Milledgeville, chapter #1241.
This group of eleven women meets monthly. On the day I visited, they were celebrating their fifth anniversary as a Prayers and Squares chapter, and they were putting finishing touches on their quilt #170.
The emphasis is on the prayers, not the squares. Each of the quilts is tied, not stitched, to secure the layers of love. Each knot represents a prayer.
Not all of the members are quilters outside of this group. Flo, who learned of the organization and started this chapter, says that some people said, Id like to help, but I dont know how to sew. Her reply was, can you pin, can you cut, can you tie a knot? All skills are welcomed.
Especially welcomed in this group was the talent for organization possessed by Patty. A retired helicopter pilot, Patty used her military-like precision to ensure efficient work habits. Every quilt has a design sheet specifying each step of the project. Projects are carefully labeled with whats to be done next. Zippered bags hold projects at every stage of development – so when the group meets to work, each person just picks up a packet and proceeds to the next step. Patty has since moved away, but her presence is felt with every quilt this group makes.
I wrote earlier about a quilt I made for a friend, Every Stitch a Prayer. That experience ties me to these women who meet to sew and pray for someone in need every month.
If you want to know more about this organization, perhaps joining a chapter near you, or even starting another group, check out the website at prayerquilt.org.
I love Queen Annes Lace. Every year I get excited to see it emerging in our yard. Im always intrigued to see where it decides to show up.
I scatter some seeds and sometimes they actually germinate and I have blooms where I intended. But there are many more along the edges of the flower beds, in the cracks in the driveway and between brick pavers.
This year, there are more clumps than ever, and several of those are growing along the picket fence in the back.
I decided to pose the quilt Annie Maes Lace with this years blooms. It was a dreary day yesterday, but I snapped a few photos anyway.
I wrote about Annie Mae’s Lace back in 2016. I was only posting one photo per blogpost back then, but the details of the making of the quilt are fully explained. Click here to read that post.
I’ve written about Queen Anne’s Lace before – a story about it during quarantine is here.
Another quilt with a sunprinted image of Queen Anne’s Lace is GBI Blues. That quilt and its story is here.
More sunprinted images (including some Queen Anne’s Lace) are assembled on my design wall right now. And, there are more in a box waiting to become something…
Remember the really pretty tatting I dipped in the walnut dye? I wanted it darker, began doing some research and learned about iron water. We have plenty of rusty nails around here, so soaking them in a jar with vinegar and water was not a complicated process.
I had attempted some rust dyeing in the past with less than spectacular results. But I hadnt mixed iron water with the walnut dyed fabric.
Below are images from baths in the iron water only, and some things dyed in walnut dye, then iron water.
I am very pleased with the results of this combo soaking in the walnut dye, then dipping in the iron water. Lesson learned: make more iron water. I had experimented with a small quantity, so only small pieces resulted from this trial. But more, more, more, to come .
The recent blog post on walnut dyeing is here…if you missed it or want to refresh your memory on the before and after images from only a walnut bath.
I love pottery. To think that people dig clay out of the ground, manipulate it and decorate it, and make something functional and beautiful just boggles the mind.
We went to a local exhibit of pottery this week. An annual exhibit and sale, Fired Works features the work of 150 artists and is always a treat.
We dont need any pottery; our collection is certainly adequate but we love to go to this event every year, so off we went. And, yes, we did buy some.
Most of our collection is of the Southern folk art genre, but the whimsical pieces delight me, too.
As we examined the beautiful pots on display in this beautiful facility, I was constantly seeing images that related to quilt making. The captions on each photo explain some of my thinking.