Search Results for: dream quilt

The name came to me as I was hanging it up to begin tacking it… Dream Quilt.  But I’m going to have to think about why.  I can’t completely explain it yet, but I know it’s the right name.  I keep seeing those images of the ballerinas and kittens fading in and out of the fabric surrounding them, like little portals to another world.

I got the quilt put together and all ready to be tacked.

Now, Jon and I are taking the afternoon off, we going to see The Irishmen…  

It’s been two weeks since I’ve worked in my studio.  I always wonder a  bit if I’ll be able to do it again when I’m away so long.

I had plans.

Linda asked if I could make her a few quilts for Christmas Gifts.  I’ve made quilts and pillows for Linda before.  I like working with her.

I had a dream about the colors I would use on the first one.  They came in the form of a thin weaving that someone had made and was showing me. Mustard, black, red and light blue.   A good place to start.

But  Monday I was in my studio cleaning up and I when I was done I was left with a pile of scraps. I didn’t think about it, I just started sewing.  It felt right so I went with it.

But when I got done, the dragonflies seemed stuffy to me, stuck in Victorian colors.  I wanted to free them so I found the blue fabric with pink and red, an old flour sack from the collection of flour sack fabric that Susan gave to me.

It seemed the antithesis of square I had pieced together.

And then the collage pieces, the most contemporary fabric of it all, yet it fit right in with the dragonfly patch and the 1930s flour sacks.

That was as far as I got yesterday, but I kept at it today.

It felt so good to be back in my studio working.  And I mixed those fabric’s up to make a  statement of how compatible contrary can be and to catch and keep the eye looking.

And when every piece of fabric I laid down on the floor next the quilt  started to look like a circus, I went with solid brown.

And that’s where I left it tonight.  I can’t wait to get back in my studio tomorrow and see what happens next.

What a dream, Jon’s “Care Agreement.”  Today, after going with Jon to his Pulminolgist appointment  I fulfilled my part of the agreement by spending some uninterrupted hours in my studio.

First I cleaned up a bit.  I had to.

There was too much fabric on my work table, so there was barely a table.  But more than that, I had to air out my studio, give it the same fresh start I gave myself by taking a walk in the woods before going to work.

I can’t go from practical to creative without a transition.  My brain doesn’t work that way.

After the clean-up, I eased into work by making a few more squares for the quilt I started weeks ago.

Wendy, who has a couple of my quilts said she was interested in it, but she wants it big. “Only if it feels right for you,” she emailed me.  That’s what makes me want to try.  Wendy gets the creative process.

So I’ll try and see what happens.  I can already imagine it, but that doesn’t mean what I’m seeing now is what it will be.

My instinct was to come up with a system for how the pieces would go together.  But when I tried my ideas I didn’t like the way they looked.  How many different ways can all these small pieces be put together?  I have no idea, but I do know I could spend the rest of my life trying to figure out what looks best.

So I thought of the Dada movement, started during WWI when Duchamp and the other artists tossed scraps of paper in the air and made art from where they landed.  The war made them give up on any thoughts that there might be any reason in the world, so they left their art, like life,  to chance.

Instead of thinking about how they could relate to each other,  I just started lining up the squares I made into one big square. From the picture I took of them, it looks like there are two missing.

So I’ll make two more and then look it over, making sure there’s nothing about the way the squares are that bothers me. I do imagine I’ll make a few adjustments.

Then I’ll start sewing them together, adding a few pieces of fabric here and there to make them fit together.

After that, who knows…

I did get my Tree quilt finished today.  Going out to breakfast and shipping out my potholders took up most of my morning, but I went back to my studio after dinner and was able to finish tacking it.  Now I only have to stitch the title, my initials and the date on the bottom.

My Tree Quilt is already sold.

Fate was kind enough to pose with both the front and back of the quilt as it hung from the beam in my studio while I tacked it with a sage-colored yarn.

I laid down on my studio floor to stretch out my neck and shoulders which always ache when I tack the highest and lowest part of a quilt. As I turned my head in one direction and the rest of my body in the other, there was Bud looking at me on the other side of the quilt. By the time I got a picture of him, he was gazing off into the distance.  Probably dreaming of a chipmunk.

It was too dark to get a good picture of my quilt tonight, so I’ll post a photo of it, all done,  in the morning.

I spent part of the day working on my potholders but saved some time in the afternoon to work on my  Summer Quilt. 

I’m beginning by pairing up the embroidered pieces with the patchwork squares I put together the other day.  Dragonfly came easy, then I worked on the Sailboat piece.

For me, the sailboat piece feels dreamy and exotic while the dragonfly feels soothing and restful.

It feels like a good start and I’m looking forward to getting back into the studio on Monday.

I got Ellen’s email this morning.  Would it be possible for me to make her two quilts before Christmas?

No, I thought as I read her email, there is no way.

But then, “no” is often my first reaction to a new idea.  And not always the best one.  I’ve learned to give ideas time.  To not only think them through but let them settle, then see how they feel.

I’ve made a lot of quilts for Ellen.  She’s a good person to work with.  She gives me a sense of colors and a feeling about the person the quilt is for then leaves the rest up to me.

Ellen bought my lastest quilt, Dream Quilt.  I’m was just waiting for the special thick wool batting, that she likes in her quilts,  to come from Minnesota so I could finish it for her.

And that was one of the things that I initially thought would make finishing two quilts for Ellen before Christmas impossible.  It takes about two weeks just to get the batting.

But the more I thought of the idea, the more I softened to it.  Ellen wanted the quilts as gifts for two of her children’s partners who she just learned would be coming to her house for Christmas.  It’s a really thoughtful and loving gift.

Also, knowing I’d be making and selling two quilts in the next ten days was appealing.

So I decided, if I could get the batting in time, I’d make the quilts.

And it turns out that I can. So I started working on the first quilt for Ellen this afternoon.   I got far enough along to get me focused.  I usually don’t work on the weekends, but I’ll be in my studio tomorrow and on Sunday too.

When I told Jon about what I was doing, a big grin spread across his face.  “You’re going to love it,” he said.  “You’ll be in your studio and everything else will fall away.”  I smiled.  I knew just what he meant.  This isn’t a time of thinking and wondering, it’s a time of doing.  For the next week, I’ll have a single creative purpose to focus on.

It will be like my very own quilt Marathon.

I was making my quilt called Dragon when I got the email from Wendy.  She and her husband had lost everything they owned in one of the recent fires in California.  Now they were living in a mobile home, traveling around, looking for a new place to live.

Wendy asked if the next time a I had a quilt for sale if I could let her know.  The quilt she bought from me was lost with everything else.

I told her about Dragon, but it was too big.  So Wendy sent me the dimensions of the bed in her mobile home.

This morning I pulled up a picture of Wendy’s quilt “Swirling Circles of Color“.  She said loved the colors in the quilt.

As when I was making a new quilt for Ellen, whose quilt shrunk when it was washed (it had wool batting, as opposed the cotton batting I usually use) I wasn’t trying to replicate the quilt.  Not that it would even be possible to do, but I was trying to get the feeling of the quilt and it’s colors.

For Wendy’s quilt I began by pulling together scraps of blues, oranges, reds and greens.  The black and white birds came from a placemat, not the “right” colors, but perfect in their flight.  I started sewing them all together.

When I got stuck, I looked thought the few Mola’s I still had in my stash.  I had used one of these hand-made textiles in Wendy’s “Circles” Quilt.

When I saw the pattern on the red, orange and maroon  Mola, I got a chill.

When I first started quilting, I made two quilts called Migration Quilt I and II.  The design was a squared off spiral, like the four spirals in the Mola.  Migration is, in essence, what Wendy and her husband are now living.

I reworked the patchwork squares I had made, to border the Mola.

As I looked down at the beginnings of the quilt, laying on my studio floor, I thought of putting a line of solid color around the square, but instead I immediately saw the quilt reaching out in the four directions. It did not want to be contained.

I’ve never had such a clear vision so early in making a quilt.

I added the next round of fabric, but then got stuck again.  Unsure of what I do next, I decided I had done enough for the day.  As if I used up all my creative energy in visualizing the direction the quilt would take.

When I go to bed tonight, I’m going to ask for a dream, to help me understand what to do next.  I don’t expect to see the quilt anymore clearly than I already have.  But I do expect to have a clear enough head in the morning, to not let me get in the way of doing what comes next.