free motion quilting – Page 3

Four Brothers

The man on the far right…what’s that he’s holding in his hand? That’s my grandfather, here with three of his brothers. When I find a photo in which he is included, I’m always intrigued by how the photo was taken, since he was usually the one behind the camera.

I recently wrote about the coincidence that both my husband and I had maternal grandfathers who were professional photographers. Sometimes we can find a cable in the photo leading to a remote shutter release. Those were available from as early as 1918 in advertisements like this one found here.

In this case, zooming and examining (you can click on any image to enlarge it) reveals no cable, and in the 1940’s when this photo was probably taken, there was no timer built in to cameras as we have now. However, my Grandfather did have a son who helped him with his photography business by that time. Homer, Jr. went to work in the darkroom at age 7, in 1935. It is likely that he, Jr., is the one taking this photo. And, GrandDaddy is probably holding the remnants of a cigar.

I printed this photo on fabric from a vintage linen tablecloth, painted some elements, layered it on wool batting, and stitched around the figures with silk thread. It is layered on cotton fabric, a layer of old burlap, and then on an old quilt remnant. The resulting piece measures 14” x 17”.

The process of stitching these photos sometimes yields as interesting an image on the back as on the front. Here you see what one viewer considered the shadows of these brothers.

Man With Bicycle, 1905

Homer Carter and Homer Youngblood were both professional photographers in the early part of the twentieth century. In our house, we have a lot of photos taken by these two men who, to our knowledge, never met.

Homer Carter was the father of Sadie, my mother-in-law. Homer Youngblood was the father of Cleo, my mother. Interesting, don’t you think?

This serendipitous happening means that we have some images on hand that were made with the best photographic equipment available at the time, and printed on quality paper. Perfect for scanning and printing on fabric, I think.

This photo of an unidentified gentleman of the early 1900’s was compelling to me. He was a client of Jim’s grandfather. I printed his image on a remnant of a vintage linen tablecloth, painted the bicycle red, and quilted the layers with silk thread. Free motion quilting gives dimension to the man and the bicycle with wool batting underneath.

The image is layered on a denim remnant, hand stitched with a Kantha stitch using red embroidery floss. All is then layered and attached to a scrap of an old tattered quilt.

The label is written on a piece of an old man’s handkerchief.

Studying a Master

At the urging of my friend Priscilla, Jim and I took a road trip today to Newnan, Ga. Selections from Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry’s body of work are on display there. This amazing quiltmaker’s work has always intrigued me, so we hit the road.

Our route was along backroads, as usual for us, and we included some antiquing and enjoying other parts of the day, but the purpose and highlight was studying some 43 pieces of Caryl’s work. We were almost the only ones there, photography was allowed, so we took our time. I read every word of her descriptions, studying the weight and fiber content of thread, marveling at the stitches she used and noting the color choices in each space.

Like many quiltmakers, Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry began making traditional quilts with commercial fabrics. Over the years, her style developed using her hand-dyed fabrics, then a line of commercial Gradations fabric that she designed. Some of her work is abstract, but all is full of meaning. And the girl knows her mathematics!

Some of the work was familiar to me as signature Caryl Bryer Fallert – like the feather studies, the Fibonacci series, and her dancers. Others, specifically the pictorial ones, were surprising to me that they were hers. Each piece was interesting in its own way. I learned a lot from the experience, but being able to take close up photos of the quilting designs meant that I will learn from her work over and over again.

There’s something about seeing a quilt in person that makes it worth the trip. Technology allows us to learn a lot online, to study excellent professional photos that inform us of details, and even to take classes from experts. I’m familiar with Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry’s work though those technologies. But the tactile nature of fabric means that any distance from a piece of fiber art diminishes the intimacy of the art form. So being close enough to touch (even though I didn’t dare) brings that back into the experience.

I’ve seen some of Caryl’s work in shows in the past, but today at my leisure, I examined a variety of her works spanning forty years of quilt making. Wow.

The Donald Nixon Center for the Performing and Visual Arts is currently “Forty Years of Light and Motion” through February 17. Their website is here if you want details. And Caryl’s website is here if you want to read more about her.

All photos are of Caryl Bryer Fallert’s work on display at the Nixon Center in Newnan, GA.

Pomegranates and Poinsettias

For many years I decorated for Christmas using my Grandmother’s basket quilt she made in 1890 (that story is here). When I started quilting, I longed to make my own holiday quilt. Now one of the first steps in decorating our house for Christmas is to swap out the fall quilts for red and green ones.

I love to sew with red and green fabrics during this time of the year so I often start a new project for my sewing serenity during the season. In the days of Christmas 2008, I began work on what became Pomegranates and Poinsettias. I was spending quite a bit of time with my mother-in-law, Sadie, during a time of failing health for her.

She loved helping me decide which red fabric should be used for a particular bloom, which green should be used for stems and leaves. She loved the sampler background (as does everyone else who sees this quilt), and when I decided to add buttons for the berries, she giggled like a little girl. Imagine, putting BUTTONS on a quilt.
That was something her mother had never done! This piece was finished in June 2009 and has been the focal point on a wall in our house every Christmas since. It is based the Holly Threads pattern by Need’l Love. Mine finishes at 44″ square.

Galadrielle

It’s a beautiful fall day, the sky is blue, gingko leaves are at their peak of golden, so we head to the cemetery. Isn’t that what all families do on a glorious day? They do if they live where we do and have a more than 200 acres of serene beauty to stroll.

Rose Hill Cemetery was established in 1840 on 65 acres of land along the banks of the Ocmulgee River. In 1887, another 125 acres of adjacent land was devoted to Riverside Cemetery. Both of these were designed by highly respected landscape architects and were intended to be used as a park as well as a solemn final resting place for citizens. Continuing that tradition, both of these cemeteries are now part of the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail, a walking, biking, communing-with-nature space which we treasure.

So, with camera and crayons in hand, we headed out the door. We had walked these trails and admired the art of the cemetery before I became acquainted with the art of Susan Lenz. Finding her work answered the question, “how can this beauty be incorporated into a quilt?” So now I am prepared with fabric and crayons, just in case.

My latest art quilt is the result of last Saturday’s stroll. Jim took the photo of Galadrielle, an angel at the foot of Duane Allman’s grave. I printed it on vintage linen fabric, added some stitching though layers of wool batting, more vintage linen, raw silk, and an indigo-dyed remnant of an old quilt. A few buttons and a bit of angelic lace came out of my treasure bins for this project.

I used free motion machine stitching to define the shape of Galadrielle and add dimension and detail. Hand stitching was used everywhere else. Some unknown sewist had done some hand stitching on the remnant I used as the base. Her hand quilting and cross stitch has a new life. The worn quilt has been cut up and used in several of my favorite pieces. I’m loving the blue ones best! I wonder if this unknown colleague did her hand stitching while visiting with friends, or perhaps while listening to the television (or radio, in her day) as I do.

The quilt finishes at 14” x 23”.

Country Boy in Overalls

Marie’s birthday was looming and I had heard her say she loved my Man in Overalls. I knew there was a photo of her brother John wearing overalls, so my gift-giving plans were in motion.

John loved riding his tractor and wearing his overalls. A country boy at heart for all of his 64 years, he represents what men in overalls convey to me: honesty, integrity, and a strong work ethic. Add a dog and the country boy takes on a loving and playful nature.

The photo I used for the art quilt was taken by his brother Kemp, and features John with his three-legged dog, Precious.

The photo is printed on cotton fabric, free motion machine quilted with cotton thread and wool batting. The brown layer is linen and all is hand stitched to a vintage quilt remnant as its base. The label is written on a scrap of vintage linen that was made blue when Marie and I played in the indigo dye vat one hot summer day. The finished piece measures 12” x 16”.

One earlier photo shows young John and Kemp on the farm. Another shows Marie flanked by her loving brothers and includes their dog Skippy.

A Tree Grows in Gondor

I’m still working on my guild’s quilt challenge for 2016. It’s almost done, and there is nearly a week to spare! I mentioned it here.

Working on this project has me thinking about how much I’ve learned from the guild’s challenge over the years. It seems like a good time to document some of those design processes. I’ve shared some challenge quilts earlier, but here’s another.

In 2008, the challenge was “trees”. The quilt had to contain at least one tree, pieced or appliquéd, and a bit of orange somewhere. A few years prior, I had been enchanted by the white tree against a blue sky prominent in the Lord of the Rings movie Return of the King. I’m sure the tree in the movie was a Sycamore, and that must have added to my determination to create this image in cloth.

I chose a brilliant blue hand-dyed fabric from Cherrywood as the background, inserting a narrow inner border of another hand-dyed fabric which included many colors, including orange. Wanting to include a little interest on the “bark” of the white tree, I researched quotes about trees and facts about trees.

This photo shows the background pinned to the design wall with my paper pattern drawn. That pattern was transferred to white Kona fabric, then the handwriting began. Sandpaper underneath the fabric helps to keep the fabric from slipping. I used Sharpies and Pigma Micron pens.

Once the words were pressed to make them permanent, I used needleturn appliqué to fix the tree to the background. In the areas of white where the blue background fabric showed through, I added a lining layer of white fabric.

Cotton batting was used and all quilting was hand-guided, freemotion stitching. Only the griffins on either side of the trunk were marked, all other quilting was spontaneous. Most used a matching blue cotton thread (50 weight, 2 ply), but some variegated thread was added in a few places for interest.

The quilt finishes at 40” x 62”.

Information on the label is sunprinted.

Commonly Uncommon

The Common Yellowthroat Warbler is not commonly seen by the average homeowner. He’s not a “yard bird”, he lives in the swamp. He likes briars, damp brushy places, weeds, or grass going along country roads (that explains why I like him so much). This species is a year-round resident in our part of Georgia.

Despite his bright feathers, this fellow is hard to spot, flitting about busily as he does. This tiny bird is picturesque, though. So it’s worth the effort to capture his image on film, uh, on a flash card.

These birds don’t come to feeders much, preferring grasshoppers, beetles, spiders over seeds. According to the iBird Pro app, they love sugar water, fruit, and pieces of nuts. That may be worth investigating, but water seems to be a big factor in their habitat. They are most often found near streams, swamps, and marshes.

Jim captured this shot in a remote area near the Ocmulgee River. I printed it on silk fabric, layered it on wool batting, and stitched the background densely. As in Swamp Bird, I stitched with silk thread in closely spaced parallel lines. Then I added a bit of black and white, a yellow fabric frame, and attached it to an old quilt remnant.

I used a lot of Jude Hill’s invisible baste stitch to secure everything without penetrating the final layer of the quilt on the back. I added beads stitched by hand, and made a label from an old doily. 100 weight silk thread was used for machine quilting, 60 weight cotton for the handwork.

The finished piece measures 20” x 16”.

I’ve noticed lately that even though I’ve been designing these pieces by starting from the center and working outward, and beginning with different sized photos or vintage motif, these pieces all seem to end up the same size. I wonder why.

Challenging Quilting

Our guild’s challenge quilt is due in three weeks. It’s secret until then, so I can’t show photos of it now, but I can say I’m excited about what I’m doing. Tess, our Challenge Queen, gives us the annual specifications in February with the deadline being our November meeting. I typically think about it, research photos and patterns, basically collecting thoughts until October or so when I have no choice but to make something.

There are years when I’ve started early, but I often aborted the first plan. There have been exceptions; occasions when I started earlier than usual, stayed focused on a project that took a lot of time, and brought it to completion ahead of schedule. But several have been done the week before the due date.

On the single occasion when I completed the project early, I really disliked the quilt and abandoned the idea of using it as my entry. The challenge in 2013 was “ Dare to be Square” or something like that. Tess always comes up with catchy titles. The rule was that the quilt must be pieced (no appliqué!) and every piece must be a square. In October, I sprang into panic mode, grabbed a half-yard cut of a bold fish print by Brandon Mably, some hand-dyed fabrics of similar colors, and started cutting squares.

I cut the largest square I could from the focus print (20” finished. (I know – it must have been a generous half-yard cut)), then cut smaller squares from the fish fabric and the others. 20” finished was a nice measure to use as the reference. It was easy to patch together units using 1”, 2”, 4”, 5”, 10” components.

As the project grew on the design wall, I had fun finishing a fish. Where one had been cut off, I could find missing components of that fellow somewhere else in the smaller squares and place it close by to make his image extend into the other spaces. I even discovered a batik striped fabric that mimicked the background of Mably’s fish and inserted that.

As the “squarequarium” grew on my design wall, I began imagining quilting lines. I could stitch even more of the missing parts of fish bodies, add bubbles in the water, and enhance fish fins and tails. Oh, my, how fun was that?

I sewed quickly to get the piecing done, layered it with cotton batting, and began dancing with my sewing machine. I used some heavy threads on some of the solid spaces, enjoyed stitching lots of free-motion quilting motifs, and especially enjoyed adding the octopus and starfish.

Even after all that, things looked a little “flat”. Eyes. Fish have prominent eyes. So out came the wool, a circle cutter, some buttons, and voila!

A solid blue fabric on the back made the stitching details noticeable. Susan said she liked the back of this quilt better than the front. So for her next birthday, I stitched a fish on blue fabric for her beach house.

This quilt does not contain colors in my house or colors I particularly enjoy using in a quilt. But I love this finished product because seeing it reminds me how much fun a challenge can be.

I called this finished project “Sea Squared.” Some of my math colleagues will notice the reference to a project we worked on for years. The finished size is 40” x 34”.

This year the challenge requires at least three fan blocks, and some yellow fabric. The finished size is prescribed this time: 36” square. My first reaction was “I’m not a fan of the fan block,” but in my research I’ve certainly learned a lot about those historic blocks and their reinterpretations through the years. As a friend said yesterday, “I love our challenges. They force us to think about things differently.” Indeed.

Update: A later post revealed my entry in the fan block challenge. It is here.

Spinster Sisters

Neither of them ever married. This photo was taken sometime around 1912. They were 18 and 15 at the time. Within ten years, their mother would be confined to a wheelchair, their older sister would die in childbirth, leaving two young daughters to their care.

The family was rich in acreage, but World War I and the boll weevil meant cash was in short supply, and these two women contributed financially to the household.

The older of the two earned teaching credentials, sometimes living with families in distant communities (ten miles from home) and sending money home. The younger ran the household as the orphaned nieces and younger sister grew up.

They saw women get the right to vote, lived through the Great Depression, and World War II. There were adventures, too: travel with an eccentric millionaire, letters from faraway lands, and a barnstorming adventure. Charles Lindberg did fly in Georgia, was he the pilot?

During WWII, the teacher was offered “script” as her paycheck (a promise for money from the state someday), so she traveled further to work in a naval ordinance plant. The younger worked as a switchboard operator and in so doing, connected many families to news of their beloved ones. She was the first in town to get the word that the war was over, running down the stairs of the downtown office to spread the news.

As they laid their parents to rest and saw their young charges grow up and establish lives of their own, they continued to hold their shares of the land together, hiring others to farm the land while they moved to town. They lived together until the death of the younger from breast cancer at age 49. A few years later, the older would face the same diagnosis, but her treatment would be successful. She would live her life productively until the age of 91.

These women were a big part of my childhood. From them I learned that life is to be lived fully and to be enjoyed on a daily basis. It may be hard to meet responsibilities in front of you, but complaints don’t help; just get the job done with a smile on your face.

Because of them, I am not surprised to read the ‘revelation’ that spinster does not have to be a derogatory term. In the later Middle Ages, the term spinster was first used. Then, it denoted a person who spins yarn and therefore has a marketable skill. Memories of these sisters convey the modern interpretation of” a woman who can live independently and doesn’t need a man to be happy.”

Details of quilt: A vintage photo (circa 1912) of two unmarried sisters was printed on a remnant of a vintage linen tablecloth. Hand-guided, free-motion machine quilting was used to add detail, lace collars and beading were added with hand stitching. The linen background for the photo was attached to a vintage linen log cabin quilt made from silk. A vintage cotton doily was used for the label.

Hand stitching on the piece was completed while demonstrating work at the Georgia National Fair. The quilt finishes at 16” x 20”.

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