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.

Printing on Fabric

One of my favorite types of story quilts is to print a vintage photo on fabric and enhance it with stitch and color. I’m frequently asked to describe the printing process I use.  Here it is – I use an inkjet printer, by the way.

Commercially prepared fabric is available for purchase and I’ve used several of them.  In the photo above, you can see that I wrote the names of some projects where I used each type.  That reminds me of how that product worked and if I want to use it again.  Some proved to be difficult to stitch though by hand, so I reserve those for machine stitching only.

Government Bird Going for a Ride is printed on silk.

If I plan to transfer a color photo and do all stitching by machine, I love to use the prepared silk fabric.  It produces clear images with brilliant colors, and quilts up beautifully.

When I am transferring a vintage photo like the one in Four Brothers, above, I like the vintage look of an old piece of cotton or linen, so I prepare my own fabric.

A good source of linen is a vintage tablecloth (stained and ragged is okay) or napkins.  This photo shows what a bargain such napkins can be.  For $5, I bought six linen napkins, each larger than an 8 ½” x 11” sheet of paper.  This is less expensive than the packages of prepared fabric.  

First, I press the fabric (here I used a piece of a linen bedsheet – gray, so you can see the paper against it), then cut a piece about 9’ x 12” ( a bit larger is okay).

There are many brands of freezer paper sheets available, I have used many and have no preference – this is just what I have on hand today.  I know I can cut my own sheets of freezer paper to 8 ½” x 11” from a roll; I find the precut sheets to be easier to handle.

I iron the freezer paper (shiny side down) to the fabric.

Using a ruler and rotary cutter, I trim the fabric exactly along the edge of the paper.  A sharp blade helps prevent ragged edges – I don’t want loose threads to get caught in my printer.

I load the fabric on the freezer paper “carrier” sheet into my printer, taking care to be sure that the fabric side will be receiving the ink.  I often print black and white images (even if the original photo is color) to give a vintage feel – then highlight some feature by painting it.

Here is a “man in overalls” fresh from the printer tray.

I sometimes put more than one photo on a page, depending on the desired finished size of my photo. 

I paint the selected portion of the photo while the fabric is still adhered to the freezer paper.  This adds stability and seems to help prevent bleeding. I use some of the surround space to test my paint or markers, as you see above.

I use the same process to print words on fabric. Yes, that’s printing on linen that’s been overdyed with indigo.

In my next post(s), I’ll discuss my painting and quilting processes for these art quilts.

The story of the quilt pictured at the top of the post, the man with the bicycle, is here.

Photos Tell Stories

I love to find old photos of people I don’t know.  Pictures tell stories, and y’all know I love stories.

One of my story quilts, Sprinster Sisters, stitched and embellished.

I’m preparing a presentation for my quilt guild on techniques used in textile collage.  One of my methods is to print photos on fabric, stitch a collage, then write a story to accompany it.

In getting ready for this part of my class, I went through my collection of photos picked up at garage sales and antique stores, and my imagination took off!

A “bad” photo…double exposure and such, but, man, can’t you tell this child is happy to be in her arms?

In my fabric collages, if I use photos of people I know, I feel obliged to stick to the truth.  I’m careful not to use an image without permission, and I strive to get the facts.  Those efforts take time.  If the photo tells a great story, or conveys a special memory, it’s worth it.

But, I do love to use a photo of unknown persons and tell my imaginative story. In those cases, the story evolves as I stitch this person, and it’s pure fun-writing fiction is a blast!

The photos I’m sharing here instantly brought adventures to mind…I can’t wait to print them and play with them.  One in particular is mind-boggling.  

It’s this family of four – printed as an 8” x 10” and mounted on a backer-board.  I saw it in an antique store over several visits, and finally couldn’t resist it.  The reason I was so intrigued is that the woman looks to be strange.  I know what I thought…but only verbalized it to Jim…he knows I have some off the wall ideas and wouldn’t think I had “lost it”.  

Some sewing friends came to visit, saw this in my sewing room, and one gal exclaimed, “That woman is DEAD!.”  “That’s what I thought,” I replied.  My friend went on to educate me about the Victorian era custom of taking a family photo ‘one last time’ after someone had died.  I then began to read about it and learned, that, indeed, it was a relatively common practice.

So, what do you think?  I think this might be the case … and my imagination goes so many places… about the physical limitations the corpse would present to the photographer.  And, the expression on the face of the little girl on the right tells me she may be traumatized for a long, long time.

Note: Some of the old photos I’ve shared here are not always of the highest resolution – but the quality is good enough to print on fabric, then paint and embellish – and that’s my process.

And the bride at the top? Don’t you think she has a story to tell? I’ve actually written the story…waiting to share it with you once I had it printed on cloth…gotta get busy.

The Queen is Retiring

I’ve written about my quilting sister, Tess, many times.  She is our guild’s Challenge Queen, Ribbon Queen, and Creative Genius of Quilting.  She has motivated all of us to be better at what we are doing, to try new things, and to enjoy the act of quiltmaking.

After coming up with twenty-five glorious ideas for our guild’s challenges, she has decided to retire from that role.  Her shoes are unfillable – not that her feet are big – but her store of ideas and her sense of humor that has led to such interesting titles for our challenges will be a hard act to follow.

Not only have her titles and descriptions been interesting, the ribbons she makes for the winners are always perfect.  Take for example, the ones above for our most recent Something Feathered challenge.  And here are a couple of others:

For the “Let’s Strip” Challenge, we had to use strips of fabric in some way in the quilt. Tess made the ribbons from strips, too.
In The “Charmed, I’m Sure” Challenge, Tess required that each fabric in the quilt be unique (a traditional quilt pattern with that requirement was called a “charm” quilt. So her ribbons were comprised of fabrics each used only once.

At the conclusion of most recent meeting, our president presented Queen Tess with a quilt made by guild members to show her our appreciation for all her hard work.  The quilt has 25 blocks, one representing each of the challenges led by Tess.  As she viewed the quilt, Tess could immediately recognize some of the challenges and she was heard to exclaim, “oh, that’s the Brown Bag challenge”, and “I remember baskets, and log cabins, and oh, there’s the fans!”  

The label on the back memorializes her status as Queen Tess.  I didn’t get a photo, but the label is in the shape of a crown.

I’m not sure what that next act will be…our guild is yet to decide.  Will we continue the annual challenge?  Will we have one leader?  Will we rotate the leadership about the guild?  Will a committee determine the challenge each year?  Will the winner of one year decide on the challenge for the next?  

In the aftermath of the meeting, Tess was already wrapped in the love of her quilting sisters.

In the absence of a volunteer in the immediate future (at a time when the guild wasn’t meeting because of Covid), I agreed to plan the challenge for 2021.  That doesn’t mean I’m locked into it forever…all the aforementioned possibilities need to be considered.  But doing it once shows me how challenging it is to think of everything to plan a challenge…to get the details right, to communicate it to all, and to inspire people to participate. Really, it’s more fun to participate in making a quilt following Tess’s guidelines.  But, I do understand that she’s ready to sit back and watch…and make the quilt that takes home the blue ribbon – without having had to make the ribbons.