Tag: cherrywood fabric

Dots and Vines

Yes, I’ve been sewing in this safe-at-home time.  I’ve been busy finishing old abandoned projects as well as exploring new ones.

One of the new things I’ve done is this piece I called Dots and Vines.  Inspired by my grandmother’s quilt on this table in our den, I assembled many many circles appliqued on squares.  

Ollie Jane’s quilt lives on this table most of the year and I continually look at it and think, what a powerful design.  I ought to recreate it.  Finally, I did.

Though it doesn’t look much like her work (nor much like mine, for that matter – it’s rather modern, don’t you think?),  it’s another example of stitching that reflects the love of cloth through generations; a tale that never grows old.

I chose to use Cherrywood handdyed fabrics.  The circles are 1” in diameter, the squares finish at 3”.  I spent many morning hours on the porch stitching these, and many more hours doing the same at night in front of the tv.  Many hours of delicious time thinking and soothing the soul while pulling a threaded needle through cloth.  

There were days when the finished blocks danced all around my design wall, trying to find the right arrangement of color.  Here you see them with several fabrics I considered using as borders.

But the final arrangement has no border.  A nice stripe from Kaffe Fassett’s collection as binding seemed to bring enough closure.

I knew the entire time that I wanted to quilt a meandering vine from variegated thread, so that’s the rest of the title, Dots and Vines, a bit of homage to a book I came to love in college math classes, The Dot and the Line.  I considered August 12, 2020  as its title – that’s the day I finished the quilt and it just happened to be the 225th day of this calendar year.  But that title requires too much explanation in casual conversation, so Dots and Vines it is.

I made many more circle blocks that are waiting another use.  But the 225 that I chose means I have a 45” square finished piece.  I like that size.  It’s good to drape over a chair, take along on a photo ride-about, or use as a table topper.

I continue to stay busy with a variety of things, including nature photography.  But most things are connected to fiber in some way.  Don’t you think it would be interesting to make a textile version of these mushrooms?  I see red thread here.

More about my grandmother’s quilts can be found here and here. Enter “Ollie Jane” in the search box for even more.

Heaven in a Wildflower

It was a glorious fall day and the gingko leaves were turning.  We grabbed cameras, a couple of quilts, and went in search of photo ops.

As we drove around town looking for public access to beautiful trees, Jim was looking at the sky, wanting the contrast of blue skies and golden leaves.

I was looking for a carpet of fallen leaves to blanket my latest quilt creation, Heaven in a Wildflower.

We found both shots through our camera lenses.

My quilt guild’s challenge for 2019 was to be “charming”.  A charm quilt is one in which each piece of fabric is different from all the others.  Traditionally, the pieces are all the same size and shape, such as a tumbler quilt.  But our challenge always encourages us to think in a new way, so I came up with this design.

I selected a piece of an overdyed fabric with fruits and vegetables on it.  I believe it started as an old tablecloth.  The artist who painted it is Wendy Richardson.  I have amassed a collection of beautiful fabrics from Wendy and selected this as the focal point.  I added bits from my Cherrywood hand-dyed fabrics and some woven stripes from a Kaffe Fassett collection, then pieced the selections improvisationally in a modified log cabin layout.  

Those big blocks of solid fabrics needed details that luscious quilting could provide.  I wanted to incorporate a word or phrase in the quilting.  

When I asked Jim for advice about a word or phrase that the painted segment conjured up, I got more than I bargained for.  He came up with a lot of words:  from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence.

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wildflower,
To hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

So intense quilting ensued!  

The challenge specified a perimeter of between 120” and 200”.  My quilt measures 34” x 41”. 

The colors seemed destined as a background for posing gingko leaves.  Mission accomplished!