Category: red

More Red

In the week leading to Valentine’s Day, there is red everywhere.  

A mockingbird is enjoying some holly berries in our yard.

And the nandinas are displaying lots of berries.  Yes, I know they are invasive, and they are bad for the birds, and we clear out some.  But my mother and Jim’s mother both loved their nandinas, so we don’t remove them all.  And the berries this year are big and red.

In my thoughts leading to a GBI Red project, I found these blocks that have a lot of red.  I like a focus block as a start, and sometimes an orphan block sparks an idea. The two blocks on the right are Maggie Bonanomi designs.

I have a couple of these Beligian linen tablecloths with red stripes.  I love red/white/tan as a color combination, so that leads me to see possibilities.

And, there is this.  Red and white is a tried and true combo.  And, in one of our forays through an antique mall, I found this linen tablecloth with embroidered red signatures.  I’d love to know the story behind it.  Was it used at an event like a wedding party, or a going-away party where guests signed the cloth? 

I presume Percival and Marian are husband and wife, but I don’t think they embroidered their names at the occasion.  Did they write their names on the cloth and then someone else did the stitching in red?  Some threads are heavier than others; some stitching is tight, some is loose.  So maybe more than one person did the embroidery – or one person might have varied her stitches to more accurately match the signature.

Interestingly, Jim has an ancestor named Margaret Hudson. We didn’t buy this in the area where his great-grandmother lived, but perhaps the antique dealer did…. Certainly that’s not a unique name, but to find this is quite interesting.

What will I do with this?  I’m not sure…but there’s a story there!

Even the Christmas amaryllis has decided to grace us with red once again…

Cousins

Jane and Susie were not just cousins.  They were first cousins.  They were not just first cousins, they were double-first cousins.  

Their mothers were sisters, their daddies were brothers.  They were two years apart in age, and shared not only all their relatives, more than the average common DNA, but many experiences.  This early photo (about 1940) conveys the closeness they shared.

This photo was taken at the home of their paternal grandparents.  Many family photos were set on this porch, on these steps, actually.  Imagine a Sunday afternoon after church, adults visiting on the porch; maybe other cousins playing in the yard, neighbors dropping by.  These two almost sisters (later, they would have other siblings, but not yet), forging a lifelong bond.

I printed the photo on vintage linen, and added red French knots as buttons on Jane’s dress.  The bow in her hair is a found earring.  

Layering the photo on wool batting before densely quilting the background adds dimension to the girls. The oval “mat” is a vintage linen embroidered placemat layered on commercial quilting fabric. Beneath all this assembly is a layer of thin cotton batting. Shells (repurposed from an old necklace found in a thrift store) were attached using red seed beads to anchor them.  I hand quilted all the layers together using a seed stitch with tatting thread.  This thread is a new discovery for me (found in a bag of sewing supplies from an estate sale).  I’ve never tatted nor made lace, but the size 80 cotton thread created for these crafts is perfect for a lot of the hand stitching I do. 

Note to quilters:  that seed stitch leaves a messy backside, so when I use it, I don’t have the final backing on the quilt.  I attached another layer, the piece with red cross stitch on it, using the invisible baste stitch I learned from Jude Hill.  That’s really a seed stitch, too, with just a dot of thread showing on the top, the longer stitch on the “back” nestled in the batting, not coming through to the other side. 

That backing with red stitching is a section of an old tablecloth.  I found it on an antiquing plunder and was drawn to the cross stitch, of course.  The tablecloth has some stains and had a hole in it – making it less than desirable as a tablecloth.    But I rescued it and put it to work.  It’s very desirable as a component of art quilts!

The final quilt measures 16″ x 23″.

Christmas Quilts on the Farm

We left home on a recent glorious fall day with a camera and some quilts in the car.  We ended up with boxes of notecards showing Jim’s photos of quilts in unexpected places.

The most stunning image to me is this one of Miss Lily’s Baskets on a hayrake.  It was a sunny day, but the magician’s hand in the digital darkroom transformed it into something ethereal.

The same little quilt posed on the mantel in a rustic living room,

and on a chair at an outdoor banquet table.

Another seasonal quilt, Pomegranates and Poinsettias, lounged on a chair in front of poinsettias and a Christmas tree.  A fire in the fireplace was welcome on this cool day.

Small Tree Farm became part of a vignette of tools on the side of a building.  

I love the contradictions in texture:  soft quilted textiles against hard rusty tools.

I love the contradictions in value:  brilliant colors of fabric against old wood faded to gray.


In case you missed them, earlier posts give details of these quilts.  Miss Lily’s Baskets is here.

Pomegranates and Poinsettias is here, and Small Tree Farm hasn’t really been described except on the page of patterns I’ve designed.  Another post about it and its larger companion piece will be forthcoming.

Last year’s post about Christmas quilts is here.  Details of some of these same quilts are included in that post, with photos in different surroundings.  If you are wondering, Mistletoe and Holly, mentioned in last year’s post, isn’t finished, but I’m working on it now – repeating my love of stitching on red and green during this season.

While browsing my photo files for Christmas quilts, I found this image of a commissioned piece I did a few years ago.  I think its colors are well suited for this season, too.

Blue and White and Red

Quick, answer this question:  “What is Sandy’s favorite color?” 

That line brought a big chuckle when I recently asked it at a presentation I was giving.

It’s a little obvious when my work is collected together.

 

 

 

But sometimes I like to add a bit of red and white to the blue, as I did in this piece that’s next on my list of “ready to quilt.”  

I’ve mentioned before that I like to work seasonally.  So a small project I made this year as July 4 approached was this one called Stars in Bloom.  The pattern came from Blackbird Designs, and I interpreted it in cotton and wool. 

The rich red flower petals are various reds from my wool stash, the most prominent being from that red cashmere coat I bought a few years ago.  The vines and leaves and blue stars are cotton fabrics.

 

 

I certainly want the quilt label to be unique.  It’s important to include a label identifying the quilt title, the maker, the date.  A simple rectangular piece of cloth containing this information is better than nothing, but since I began quiltmaking, I’ve enjoyed including elements of the quilt’s design in the label.

Ollie Jane’s Flower Garden has a lily similar to the one on the front of the quilt as its label.  Walker’s Pasture has a miniature photo of the front of the quilt on the label.  Mom and Apple Pie’s label features a flag (an appliqué element from the front – and the label you see at the right).

That said, I may have gone a bit overboard in this small piece.  The combination of hearts and stars on the front led me to include a heart and a star.  It took a big star (well, big relevant to the size of the quilt) to contain the title and my name.  Then an even bigger heart was needed to surround the star. Above, the view of the backside.  Do you think the label is visible?

As has become my custom, I embraced the raw edge on this label.  The star was machine stitched to the heart, then the heart was attached using the “glue stitch” I learned from Jude Hill, hand stitching the label through the quilt back and batting.  As time goes on, the raw edges will fray more, adding to the charm of the back.  Or to the tattered look, depending on your perspective.

More about Stars in Bloom:  This piece finishes at 12” x 17”.  The appliqué is a combination of wool and cotton.  The cotton pieces are hand stitched needle-turn appliqué.  Some hearts are made of felted wool and stitched down with a whip stitch, again by hand.  The quilting is free-motion machine stitching (incorporating some hearts in the design) using silk thread on top and cotton thread in the bobbin.

Mom and Apple Pie

 


A friend visiting in our home said, “what are you working on now?”  I spread this quilt top on the floor in the den.  His comment, “Oh, boy!  That’s just Mom, and Apple Pie, and more, isn’t it?”  I agreed, mentally noting that this project now had a name.


The appliqué for this quilt was done based on patterns from Alma Allen and Barb Adam’s book, Celebration of American Life.  Today most quilt makers change something about the pattern as they work, and almost always change the name to represent their interpretation.

The patterns for the blocks are like those in the pattern except for the lower left block.  I personalized that one, substituting a watermelon slice for their orange, and added some figs, using the broderie perse technique (an age-old method of using designs printed on fabric).  My border and sashing are totally different, too.


The appliqué is something I typically do at night in front of the tv, or when sewing away from home.  One the fabrics are selected and the pieces are prepared, I keep just the supplies for that block (these squares measure 20” on each side) in my sewing basket so the work is portable.  Once all the blocks are finished and sewn together, the big unit is a stay-at-home project.

Another work habit of mine is to select the fabrics at the beginning of a project and set them aside in a basket so they are designated for this quilt and don’t get used in another piece before this is done.  I like to repeat fabrics across the quilt to make the design cohesive, so the same greens used as leaves in one block appear again in several others.  It’s easier to do this if I have a limited selection of fabrics as I prepare each block.  It may take months to complete the appliqué on a big quilt such as this.


I quilted this using 100 weight silk thread, echoing the appliquéd design with stitching lines 1/4” apart.  I refer to hand-guided, freemotion quilting as dancing with my sewing machine, even on a project this large.  This quilt measures  75” x 95”.  I start in the center, working outward block by block on a quilt such as this.  My large table supports the weight and bulk of the quilt as I work.


I don’t normally keep up with the time I spend working on a quilt, but for some reason, I did do that on this one.  The time I spent sitting in the chair pushing the quilt around under the needle while it was moving up and down was 65 hours.  That was spread over 3 months, I think. I work in 30-45 minute intervals and more than two sessions a day is exhausting.  That’s why I have another sewing machine set up so I can be piecing or sewing on something else during those weeks that a big quilt is under the needle.

The finished quilt measures 75” x 95”, covering a queen-sized bed.  It has made a few public appearances, winning ribbons at our local guild show last March, at the Georgia National Fair in Perry last November, and was juried into the AQS Show in Paducah, KY last month.  It is currently en route to the East Cobb Quilt Guild show in Marietta, GA, scheduled for June 8-10.

Miss Lily’s Baskets

 

Miss Lily's basketsThis little quilt is a special treasure.  It was made with strategies I don’t normally employ.  I bought a charm pack of French General fabric (red is not usually my go-to color), came home and started stitching (I often mull over design plans for quite some time before I start cutting and sewing), I appliquéd baskets in front of tv several evenings until it was done, assembled the top and quilted the project all in about a month.

I had drawn the basket pattern for another project using Granny Zee’s scrap bag.  So I pulled out that plastic template, marked a square as the background, another as the basket fabric and started stitching.

As I made baskets, I placed them on the design wall and a color scheme began to emerge.  I played with several arrangements, but saw a light to dark progression forming in the background fabrics while the reverse was happening with the baskets.  I had always been intrigued by some of Judy Dale’s work where she accomplished that and suddenly, it was happening for me.

A neutral little check worked as alternate blocks and a sweet little quilt was born.  Oh, I did add my focus block that I focus block Miss Lily's basketlove…a basket sitting on one square, its
handle on three others.  The handle became a wreath with a perky little red checked bow.

img292 copyThe quilt is named to honor a sweet perky little lady I knew in my childhood.  Miss Lily.  Here she is pictured beside the love of her life, Mr. Charlie.

Details of quilt: finished size:  25” x 31”, wool batting, free-motion machine quilting.  30-weight polyester thread was used to quilt the vine and leaf motif in each alternate block, echoing that with 50-weight, 2 ply cotton thread