Going in Circles

We left home to run a few errands and I grabbed some quilts.  The day wasn’t especially light filled, but I’ve learned that if I don’t have a camera and quilts, the perfect stage presents itself.  

We visited Seventh Street Salvage in their downtown location…and what did we see but a cart sitting in front of circles?  Well, well, well….I just happened to have a few circles in the car.

Even though I had written about 108, I wanted a photo of it in an outdoor setting.  I had grabbed it and a couple of other quilts with circles and thrown them in the car.  

After we did our shopping inside (the garlic/olive artisan bread is delicious, by the way), we got permission to snap some photos and brought out the quilts.

I love the stars in the circles, the repetition of them in mass (like quilt blocks that way), and I am descended from Wheelers, so there’s that, too.  The stars in the circles are impressive, as well.  I may need to find some quilts with stars to bring back to this spot.  And, make a quilt with stars inside circles???? oh, my, the ideas just won’t stop!

The lone magenta quilt is one I haven’t written about before, Going in Circles.  In 2018, our guild’s challenge was “2”.  We were challenged to make a quilt using only 2 fabrics.  As always, I explored several options, experimented with a couple, but decided to do something totally out of my normal “look”. 

I spliced thin strips of a multicolored batik in a modern sort of piecing layout with a Cherrywood solid fabric.  I drew intersecting circles all over, planning to quilt each defined area with a different motif.  But when I got the circles stitched, I liked the clean look of it, so decided just to add some pearls at the intersections.

To continue the clean modern look, I didn’t bind the quilt, instead faced it with more of the graphic batik.  The backing is a hand-dyed fabric in soft muted colors.  

This quilt hangs on a rack in my sewing room and I see it every day.  But writing about it makes me realize that I need to do more of this kind of piecing.  It was fun – and I love the graphic result!  

I’ve written about the quilt in the center, Dots and Vines, before, and linked to it recently.  But in case you missed it, its story is here.

And, the blue dots on brown is my previous post, 108.

Seventh Street Salvage has appeared before in photo shoots, too.  Here, and here.

A note about the photos. My signature appears on most of these photos, but it is a collaborative effort at our house. I have learned to take photos and do a bit of post processing. But sometimes Jim and I swap cameras depending on where we are standing and which lens we need….and sometimes we forget who took what. And now there’s the issue of a new camera whose photos won’t import on his older computer. But I don’t have some of the processing software he has …so on this shoot more than ever, we’ve passed digital images back and forth to make this wall and the quilts impressive! His masterful touch in the digital darkroom makes everything look good!

108

In the last couple of years, I’ve been obsessed with circles. 

One of my explorations dealt with blue and white circles appliquéd to a brown linen tablecloth.  For all these projects, I didn’t count the circles…just made them until I thought I had enough.  I laid the blue circles on the brown linen until I liked their distribution, pinned them in place, and started appliqueing them.  

I wanted to hand quilt this larger piece using the seed stitch.  I love the texture that stitch gives.  I’ve used it on smaller pieces a lot, but wanted to see it on a big piece.  I used Aurifil #12 thread, stitched a double seed stitch overall though only the top and batting.  Then I added a backing layer (a piece of an indigo overdyed linen sheet) and stitched through all three layers with the same thread around the circles. 

I never had a title in mind for this as I worked – I presumed one would come to me.  My working title was “blue circles on brown”.  That could have worked for a final title.  But as I neared the end of the stitching, I decided to count the circles.  107.  That could work..it’s a prime number and I like those.  But, I needed a label on the back.  If that label was a circle, I’d have a total of 108.  108 has meaning in my life and I love for the quilt title to have meaning.  

I grew up in Turner County.  During the years I was learning to drive, our county’s number was 108.  So, the title of this quilt was born.  

Between 1957 and 1970, county codes were used as part of an auto’s car tag.  The first numbers on the tag were based on the respective population of the county.  Out of 159 counties in Georgia, my home was 108th in population those years.

Notice that on the label, I used some of the trims I’ve recently dyed with black walnuts.  It’s tempting to “save” those precious bits we made or altered, but I’m in the business of using them.  Here the tatting that took the dye so well borders the 108th circle.  Oh, and the fabric circle is cut from the center of the napkin with the embellished corner.

I made Dots and Vines, which you’ve already seen, stitched some circles on a bit of linen for a scarf, and made these blue circles and appliquéd them to a remnant of a brown linen tablecloth. I have lots of prepared circles waiting to become part of another quilt, too. The post on Dots and Vines is here.

I guess this little brown linen pillow with buttons attached fits the circle category, too.

I’ve referenced my love of the blue and brown connection before. One post describing a rolled up quilt exploration is here. And a sweet little case I found that’s blue and brown and toile and bows is here.

This finished quilt measures 40″ x 60″, a lap quilt for reading or watching tv. And, yes, for napping.

Going Nuts

One of the things I do in the fall is collect acorns.  Every year I find myself coming home with a few perfect specimens after every day’s walk.  I add them to this bowl…eventually it is filled and I admire it through the winter.  In the spring, I throw them out.  In the fall, I begin again.

I don’t know exactly what the fascination is with acorns.  I grew up with pecan trees.  I gathered plenty of those in my childhood.  That was the source of my Christmas money every year.  Oaks and acorns came later in my life….

I’m still collecting acorns this year…but my latest fascination is with walnuts.

A few years ago, I attended a Folk Life Festival at a historic site in Tifton, GA.  Among the many delights there was a woman using walnut and indigo dyes to make the most beautiful yarn.  I was captivated.  From her I learned that walnut doesn’t need a mordant; that you collect the walnuts while in the green hulls; that they must ferment first, then be boiled before you can dye with them.

I followed those instructions and dipped a few things, but it was a lot of trouble.

I’ve experimented with brown commercial dyes before (that post is here) but the walnut gives a more pleasing color to me. I love the surprise of the varying richness based on the fabrics I use and the time it soaks.

This year, I gathered some black walnuts in their husks, put them in a bucket of water, covered it, and began the fermenting process.  After a couple of days, I thought, “I wonder what would happen if I dipped a piece of fabric in there as they fermented.”  A friend had brought me a pretty white cotton napkin and I submerged it among the walnuts.  In a few days, I had a nice bit of brown fabric.

I found another napkin, damask this time, and some laces…added those to the bucket for a few days.  Look at how gorgeous these are!  

I had a few pieces of vintage linen that I wanted to see what happened.  So I cut a few pieces of those, added a worn white cotton tea towel, and a skein of white embroidery floss.  I left these just a couple of days…not wanting to completely obscure the checked pattern in the linens.  Oh, my, I’m loving this!

The images above are before and after of dipped fabrics.

And of course you aren’t surprised that I photographed some of the browns with some blues. Earlier confessions of my love for this color combination are here and here. And, if that’s not enough, type “brown” in the search bar…there are more!

Now in the pot are a few more treasures.  I don’t remember exactly what I put in there, but do know that some old pink rickrack is getting new life.  Stay tuned.

And there are a lot of hickory nuts around here, too. Hmmmm….

As I wrote this and revisited the photos from the Folk Life Festival, I guess that’s what encouraged me to play with indigo dyes, too. There’s a whole category in the sidebar for that!

Quarantined in Eden

A friend called to remind me that I had not yet written about my journal quilt from my time at home during Covid.  She’s right – so here it is.

I’ve kept a daily journal for years.  And I’ve always loved to start an entry with “home all day”.  But with dashing here and there running errands, going to meetings, and just out and about, those at-home days were sometimes hard to find.

In the Spring of 2020, things changed.   Every day was “home all day”.  

Soon I decided a visual record of these days should be part of a Covid journal quilt.  It was easy to review my journal entries and tabulate things.  The legend is included on the quilt…a yellow (his favorite color) backslash for Jim, blue forward slash for me…to clarify our days at home.  I included January and February of 2020 for comparison of our normal days before the pandemic.

My beginning plan was to document the days we were spending at home.  An old linen calendar provided the perfect stitching background.  ( I just happened to have a calendar from 1986 – a year in which the days of the week and dates were the same as 2020 – in my stash.  And later, a 1971 tea towel provided the right day/date combination for 2021.)  

As time went on, I continued to think of other things to include in this journal quilt.  Our time spent working in the yard, playing chess, binge watching tv…all were candidates that made it into the quilt.

I made the blocks not knowing how I would put them together.  I ended up attaching them to a bit of a vintage quilt remnant 10 ½” wide and rolling it up on a stick.  It measures 64” long when stretched out.

The title came from our daughter’s remark when I told her we didn’t mind being at home.  I was feeling guilty that we were actually enjoying the solitude while so many people were frantic that their schedules were disrupted.  She replied “not everyone can be quarantined in Eden.”

I included our days at home through April 2021…past our vaccinations and including many days of “out and about” again.  Since then, the Delta variant has added more days at home.  Maybe I need to find more calendar tea towels…

This was a block made in the process of creating Dots and Vines (story is here). It seemed appropriate to have an image of the virus that started all this.
As I unrolled the quilt to make photos, I found this vintage fabric remnant tucked inside. I planned to add some of these motifs to the quilt. As usual, it’s never really finished. (This remnant is from a little girl’s dress I found in a thrift store.)

The Orange Season

This is the time of year for orange.  It’s not always my favorite color, but it complements the hue that is at the top of my list.  

The quilt behind this pumpkin is one made by my dear friend, Mary Ellen. It’s wonderful all times of the year, but it is perfect with this orange pumpkin!
This quilt is Heaven in a Wildflower, a challenge quilt.. A post about it is here.

I have quilts about with orange in them that come out to play this time of year.  And I can’t resist buying a few pumpkins.

On a recent trip to Butterflies in Bloom at the Briar Patch, orange was the color of the day.  Some of these shots look like they want to play on a quilt.

And you might not be surprised to learn that I have some orange fabrics scattered about in my playroom, oops…I mean my sewing room these days.  It just seems right.

This is a block from the Bird Dance quilt by Sue Spargo…no, I haven’t written about this one yet. I will.

As I thought about gathering these orange images, I looked around and saw that I’ve sewn on orange a lot..and not just pumpkins.

Withered and Brown

Ya’ll know I love brown.  My grandmother’s tea leaf pattern china with its brown and white scheme, all kinds of treenware (usually a shade of brown), and vintage linens (often with a bit of brown stain somewhere) bring brown into view everyday. Oh, and my brown cows stroll around in the breakfast room.

I like brown plants, too.   I see beauty in the fading stage of a flower’s life as well as in the emerging beauty seen in spring.  So this time of year brings even more brown into my camera lens.

Some recent photos celebrate the fading stage. Enjoy some brown! 

This hummingbird doesn’t mind that its perch is drooping and brown.  He can still rest quite comfortably here.

 

This withering zinnia is the same color combination as Granny’s china and my creamer cows.
A Pearl Crescent finds something to like on this even more withered zinnia.

This praying mantis caught a ride on the “trash can to the street journey” one day and I brought him home to the porch.
Pink is never my favorite color, but the withering pink here captured my attention.
This red zinnia is aging (aren’t we all?) but look at the color scheme revealed! I see French General red fabrics with their companion browns and grays.

My sewing basket has a brown collection in it, too.  A long-term project at hand right now is one with brown irregular hexagons.  I’m hand piecing them with a modified English Paper Piecing process…I remove the paper before stitching them together.

Some plants in my yard are confused.  As I write this and share the glories of withering plants, I have three fresh-from-the-earth Queen Anne’s Lace plants scattered in the garden.  One is blooming delightfully now; others are ready to bloom. It’s like they are reminding me that “green is beautiful, too.” Yes, it is!

I’ve written about the beauty of brown before. Type “brown” in the search box in the sidebar and you’ll find more.

Paducah Journal Quilt

Keeping a journal gives meaning to life. Reading old journals makes one pause to examine the life. Making a journal in cloth creates a quilt with a story.

2017 was a busy year for travel…we first spent three weeks driving to Arizona and back, made this pilgrimage to Paducah, then traveled to Florida to photograph nesting birds in their season.  West, north, south…a lot of miles for two people who love to stay at home. I didn’t document all those trips in cloth, but on the trip to Paducah I had such a plan in mind.

Jim and I have been to the spring quilt show hosted by the American Quilters’ Society several times. We enjoy the spectacle of the quilts, the people, the food, the music shops, the antique stores, the riverfront, the Land Between the Lakes and other picturesque environs.

The background of this quilt is mostly linen.  Included in the quilt is a bit of every piece of fabric I bought on that trip. (For quilters reading this who haven’t been to a big show like this one, it’s a shopper’s paradise.  Every major quilt vendor is there: designers, pattern makers, fabric companies, sewing machine makers, thread companies, merchants of accessory tools, and many quilt shops are represented.)

On the far right, the melons beneath the star are Indiana Homestead hand-dyed cottons, the hexagons to the left of them are Japanese woven fabrics.  In the left border, the colorful triangles are my beloved Cherrywood hand-dyed cottons.  Other purchases show up in the schoolhouse, the stars, and in the square-within-a-square blocks throughout the quilt.  Shot cotton fabrics are used in the dark areas of the border.

There were crows everywhere we went on this trip, so they got a block.

I love the blue barns in Kentucky, the chapel at Patti’s 1880’s Settlement, the vintage indigo clothing in Bell Buckle.  I found a way to include all of them in the quilt.

On our way north, we spent a night in Mentone, Alabama and took a side trip to Bell Buckle, Tennessee. Our route home included a night in Berea, Kentucky.  We fell in love with this place in 1990 on a trip to Ohio and wanted to revisit it.  We then traveled through gorgeous countryside toward Waynesville, NC for our next night’s stay.  We had lunch in one of the most beautiful small towns in America, Bardstown, Ky, and had to agree with that evaluation.  Buttons on the map designate overnight stays.

Most of the quilt was free-motion quilted on my Juki.  But quilting linen is a different experience from quilting cotton fabrics.  The overdyed linen I used for the skies in the barn and chapel blocks was lightweight and would have wanted to pucker, I feared.  So I quilted those blocks by hand.  I added color to the ocean areas of the maps with watercolor and painted the date and initials with a fabric ink.  So I pieced, appliquéd, painted, embroidered, assembled and quilted by hand and by machine…like 52 Tuesdays, I tried everything!

The label is a vintage doily attached with many vintage buttons.

The finished quilt measures 49″ x 54″. I used wool batting and 50 wt cotton thread for quilting.

Patricia Hampl, writer and memoirist, says “to write about one’s life is to live it twice.”  True.  But to make a quilt about a memory if to live it again and again…every time I see an image in a journal quilt, I remember the experience behind it.  

Earlier related posts include these….just click on blue underlined word to go to that blogpost.

The trip out West that preceded this junket north.

The stop in Bell Buckle, TN and fascination with vintage indigo textiles.

The 2017 quilt show in Paducah with photos of winning quilts and vendors.

Work on the Paducah Journal Quit in progress.

It’s Challenge Season

Our guild’s annual challenge quilts are due in November.  I’m getting ready to start on mine. Yes, I know it’s almost October. The topic is announced in February and I’m often not sure what I’m doing until late October.  Not that I haven’t been thinking about it, I have.  I think of it ALL THE TIME once the topic is announced…collect zillions of ideas, plan several carefully, pin images to a secret Pinterest board, select some fabrics, draw some sketches, maybe even start a few projects that end up scrapped.  But the serious work of making that quilt is often a last minute thing.

This year’s challenge is to make a quilt that reflects some aspect of one’s childhood. The memory of being a little girl. So many fun images come to mind…easy things to piece, like a hopscotch grid. Some ideas are more difficult to depict in cloth. But the fun is in remembering and in making an image of that memory.

One member of guild made her Little Girl quilt really early…as soon as the idea went out.  But she couldn’t keep the secret.  She took it for Show and Tell in the spring of this year and resigned herself to making another one as the November meeting approached.  That may be my issue, too….the inability to keep a secret.  Maybe that’s why I don’t start earlier.

Marie enjoyed playing in her mother’s button box when she was a little girl – so she dipped into her mother’s sewing memorabilia and creating this quilt, Exploring the Button Box.

I have dozens of ideas for my Little Girl challenge…but one keeps nagging me.  The hardest to implement in fabric is the one I can’t stop thinking about….of course.  It’s a secret, so I can’t reveal more now…

One of my earlier challenge quilts was little-girl themed.  in 2010, the challenge title was Bushels of Baskets.  Though I love basket quilts and have made plenty of those, I chose in 2010 to do something different…I made this doll, Annie Ruth, and let her hold a sweet little handmade basket I had bought at a local craft fair.  She still oversees the activities in my sewing room.  Perhaps she will inspire brave new Little Girl ideas in the next few weeks.

You know I love to make quilt labels that extend the interest from the front of the quilt to the back. But a label doesn’t have to be a separate design element. On Annie Ruth, I just wrote the pertinent information on her backside.

As this year’s challenge leader, I have other duties – making appropriate winner’s ribbons and prizes – so I have lots of opportunities to express my Little Girl ideas. I’ve been working on those ribbons and having a blast doing it!

Dirt Roads

On our most recent ride about, we found ourselves in Pitts, Ga with cameras in hand to photograph sunflowers and old buildings.  We did that…and bought goodies from Oliver Farm, too.  Sunflower oil, okra flour, brown rice grits were among our purchases.

The sunflowers didn’t disappoint…and the old buildings served as great backdrops for the quilts that went for the ride. 

But it was the dirt that thrilled me. I got right out in the field with the sunflowers.  The blooms were as high as my head and about the size of my head, too.  But the dirt …oh, the dirt!  We were in a county neighboring the one where I grew up.  And the dirt in the coastal plain region is very different from that of the piedmont where we now live. This is the dirt that I used to make mud pies and gopher houses and embed in my skinned knees.

I didn’t have to take off my shoes to know exactly how that dirt would feel between my toes.  Those little rocks of limonite mixed with the sand speak home to me.  Hopscotch, skidding bicycle tires, carving a trail with a stick…all those memories are tied to this dirt.

We succeeded in photographing sunflowers and old buildings, but found other treasures, too. 

In a cypress habitat, we found some other interesting vegetation to shoot, but it was the road that entranced me. That dirt again…oh, and the beehives!

Jim has always said he can feel his blood pressure drop when we visit Turner County.  Well, there’s that; life is slower.  But these dirt roads just feel like Sunday afternoon drives and going to visit relatives.

My Daddy farmed before I came along…so he walked behind a mule in dirt like this.  Barefooted.  Yes.  He plowed without shoes.  I can understand why.  I wanted to take my shoes off and walk out in a field.  I didn’t. But maybe next time….

Oliver Farm has self guided tours where you can read about the old buildings in Pitts, Ga, and find your way to fields of sunflowers in all stages, a cypress habitat, and lots of fresh air.

Painting on Fabric

As promised in the last post, I have outlined the processes I use to paint and write on fabric. 

In the many examples you’ve seen with blue overalls painted on a black and white photo, I’ve used various products and processes.  Depending on the size of the project, the fabrics being used, the paints and markers at hand (perhaps in a specific color I need), and the mood I’m in, the process changes.  Also, as time goes on, I learn of new products and incorporate them into my repertoire.

For the photos on art quilts:  once the image is printed on the fabric, I leave the fabric adhered to the freezer paper to act as a stabilizer.  In the photo above, I’m using Neocolor II  water soluble crayons and a paintbrush.  I make a puddle of the crayon on a corner of parchment paper, then apply the paint with a small brush.  I use a very small amount of water if I want the color to “stay within the lines”.  

In the case of the oceans on the map in the photo above, I used the same watercolors, but used more water so the color flowed.  Note:  this is on a fairly rough linen fabric with a loose weave – it behaves oh so differently from quilting cottons. As always, testing first is very important.

In Walker’s Pasture, I don’t even recall what paint product I used, but I’m including it to show why I sometimes paint.  My original intent here was to appliqué the windmill’s framework – but the scale was so small that I looked for another way.  So I used the freezer paper template I had created to mark its outline, then inked it in with something…

An example of painting on an otherwise traditional quilt is in the Christmas Garden quilt above.  I wanted my initials and date on the front, and the phrase Mistletoe and Holly, to be relatively small.  A result of painting gave a transparency to the letters, letting the details of the background fabric show through.  You don’t get that with appliqué.

The selection of markers for the Christmas quilt was quite complex.  I went to a local art supply store and bought one of every type of “fabric-safe” marker available in red.  I came home and tested each, recording the results in my sketchbook; before and after washing.  I ended up using a Prismacolor marker.  You can zoom in on the photos above to see my notes about each.

Since that experience, I’ve learned about Fabrico markers by Tsukineko and now have them in multiple colors.  Their fine tip is great for outlining the shape…the thicker one fills in nicely.  

To transfer words to fabric, I sometimes just write freehand.  I did that on A Tree Grows in Gondor – using a mixture of Sharpies and Pigma Micron Pens.  I wanted different weights and thicknesses, hoping to convey the idea that different hands wrote the quotes.

Lettering in a large format is not my forte…so when I want larger words or numerals, I print them first on paper, then trace them to the fabric using my lightbox.  I outline the figures with a fine paintbrush or marker, then fill them with a larger brush or tip.  Above is a photo of the Christmas quilt on the lightbox.  

When filling in such a design, I use sandpaper, freezer paper, or a silicon baking sheet as stabilizer. Above, you see that I used the margins of the photo on fabric to test the colors I was contemplating.

Though it isn’t necessary with all markers and paints, I usually set the color using a dry iron and pressing cloths after the paint has dried.  For one thing, I can’t remember which products instruct me to do that and which ones don’t.  Safe is better than sorry.

Note:  I have not yet written about the Christmas quilt or the journal quilt (the one with the Gulf and Atlantic painted).  

Some of these markers are available locally, others from online vendors.  I don’t know where I bought some of them; it’s been so long since I’ve been shopping, things have changed…Google is your friend to locate sources for these.