Challenge Quilt

Challenge quilt.

I have been involved with a Quilting Guild this year.  Trying to keep up with their projects has kept me very busy.   One of the projects this year was a challenge quilt.  A challenge quilt is when everyone is given one theme or idea and told to go make a quilt.  It is always interesting to see that there can be so many different ways to present a single idea.  

A previous quilt exploring random patterns.

The challenge title was "What's in a Name?"  The basic idea was that you selected some combination of the beginning letter of each of your names: first, middle, maiden, last, nicknames, or multiple middle or last names.  Once you had your initials selected you headed for the paint chip aisle at the local hardware store.  You searched through all the colorful paint chips until you found paint chip colors that corresponded to your initials.  Then you had to sort through those until you found some that could co-ordinate enough to make a quilt.  Then you searched through your fabric stash or went shopping for fabrics in or near those colors.  Then you made a quilt from them.

There were a few rules for the challenge.  The size rule was very liberal.  The perimeter of the quilt could be anywhere from 44 to 140 inches.  The shape of the quilt was open to interpretation.  It could be any shape:  round, square, rectangular, or free form.  You could also add other colors of fabric as needed to make the quilt.  And finally, if you had a quilt already made and you could match the colors of your paint chips, that quilt was acceptable.  You did not have to make a new quilt.  Some of the ladies chose that route.  Being new to the Guild, and having made only a few quilts, I made a new quilt.

Generally, I hand quilt.  However, I have been so tied up with other quilting projects that I decided to machine sew this one.  I have so many quilting projects in play at the moment that I was feeling a little stressed about getting the challenge quilt completed in time.  Besides that, we will be on the road again soon, and the quilting will be sitting at home while I am busy elsewhere.  So this is one of my few machine quilts.

The paint chip colors I selected were Classic Red, Lemon Twist, and Jamaica Bay.  I added and orange and purple just to make the quilt more colorful.  Then I had to decide on a design.  The color, Jamaica Bay was the key here.  I grew up in a beach resort area.  My teenage memories were of blue sky, bright sunshine, colorful sailboat sails, and brightly colored flags fluttering in the breeze.  I wanted to incorporate those ideas into the quilt.  That is why I chose such bright colors.  I did not want to make a picture or landscape quilt, but I did want those memories to be in it.

I decided that rather than make something with a pieced geometric design that I would explore randomness.  This would be my third quilt where I have explored what happens when you let random patterns emerge.  I had five colors.  I assigned each color a number.  Purple was numbered one through four.  Jamaica Bay was five through eight.  Orange was numbered nine through twelve.  Yellow was thirteen through sixteen.  Classic Red was seventeen through twenty.  Then I rolled at twenty sided die.  Whatever number came up was the color of the piece that I sewed onto the strip. Each strip was five pieces long.  Most of the strips were cut at four and a half inches long (11.43 cm long by 1 inch (2.54 cm) wide.  Then I threw in a few shorter pieces and some that were not well cut just to mix it up a bit.

I only had two other rules.  There could be no more than two of the same color on one strip.  On strips sewn next to each other there could be no more than three of the same color next to each other. These rules kept large strips of color from becoming solid dividing lines or large blocks of color from taking over significant portions of the quilt.  So with all this in mind, I started rolling the die and piecing my strips together.  As soon as two strips were completed they were sewn together. Then another strip was made and sewn on.  There was no judging whether this strip went better next to another strip unless it violated the rules above.  If it did, I removed the strip causing the problem and rolled the die to choose another color.  It was all random.  And this is the small quilt that emerged from that.

When held with the long edges lengthwise, it appears to be a series of streaks.  It reminded me a lot of some of the photos I take on my road trips.  The photos I post on my blog of the road trips are the ones that came out crisp and sharp.  You don't see the shots that I missed, where they are blurred as we go speeding by in the car.  This quilt reminds me of those blurred images. 

In my younger years, time seemed to pass more slowly.  I had all the time in the world.  Now that I am older, time seems to pass much more quickly.  The day, is gone in a flash.  A week is over before it seems like it should have begun.  Months fly by and I am not sure where they went.  And Christmas seems like it was just here, but now I must begin to get ready or it will be here again before I know it.  And then this quilt, built on the colors of memories, appears out of randomness.  To me it represents the blur of memories moving past.  I guess you could say that the quilt represents memories moving at the speed of life.

Check back next time for a post on a different project.

Paper Spiral Project Completed

Where I ended the project.

Not long ago I had blogged about a project I was doing that ended up taking much longer than I thought.  I am officially declaring the project finished, although I could have gone on much longer.  I had seen a spiral paper project on Pintrest and decided to try one for myself.  If you want information on how I made this project, scroll back a few blog post for one titled "An Object Lesson in Crafting."  It really is too much work to repeat all that here.  Besides detailing the way I made the item, it also talks about how I should have estimated the time it would take to make the craft and since I did not, how surprised I was at the amount of time involved.

Center of the bowl.

Before I completed the project I added another layer of time involvement.  My original intention was to make the colored spirals create a spiral effect around the vase (or as it turned out to be - a bowl).  At some point I realized that I had started with too large a stripe of color.  If I wanted something that would spiral around in a recognizable way, that the item would have to be as tall as an umbrella stand.  I abandoned that idea and started over with attempting to make spiral with the stripe being only the width of a single paper spiral. 

Original pattern.

So, I cut apart what I had already glued together with a craft knife.  It did not take very long.  Then I glued the spirals around the base in a new pattern.  The new pattern looked better, but all in all, it was just a paper project with no real purpose.  I worked the pattern until I ran out of one of the colors of spirals.  I was not so enthused about the project that I felt like making more of the paper spirals so I decided that this was the final stopping point.

The project is colorful, but I really can't think it is anything more than a passing fancy.  It is too colorful for most adult spaces.  The bowl is really not suitable as a catch-all for a younger child's room. The paper spirals can be pulled apart much too easily.  The individual spirals could present a chocking hazard. 

All in all, this project was just about making something colorful.  I would have to say that rolling the paper into spirals was a great "fidget" project while watching television.  Now that it is finished, I am ready to go on to a more serious crafting project.  Just before starting the spiral paper project I had been developing an idea for a large doll.  I was somewhat ambivalent about that project because I had just recently completed a doll.  Now that I have had a break, I am more than ready to get on with a doll project.  

Update on The Star and Leaf Quilt.

Star and Leaf quilt 

I had said that this blog post would have an update on one of my long term projects.  Most of my projects so far this year have been textile projects.  It seems like I have been working on the Star and Leaf Quilt project for a very long time.  I ran into a problem, and I had to set the quilt aside until I was able to fix it.

The problem was that I was in a hurry at one point and when I went to snip a thread, I snipped the fabric on one of the leaves.  I was so mad at myself!  Wouldn't you know it, that was the one fabric that I did not have enough of to make another leaf.  I tried to repair it, but the fix was worse than the snip.  I considered trying to cover the snipped area, but things just were not working out right.  I finally decided that the only thing to do was try to order new material.  That way I only had to replace one leaf.  Fortunately, I was able to find some of the exact material online.  Now that the material has arrived, a leaf has been cut out and appliqued onto the quilt.  I must say it was much easier to applique a leaf on a single layer of fabric.  Trying to applique it on a quilt that is already sandwiched together and pinned is much harder.  I think it took six or seven hours just to get that leaf back into place.  To me, it does not look as nicely done as the other leaves, but I am not sure that anyone else would notice it.

A friend of mind had suggested that before she went to all the trouble of replacing a leaf that she would have sewn a bumble bee on it or something.  I had considered it, but decided that it would have changed the focus of the quilt from leaves to bees.  Because one bee, would have just been a bit weird.  Sometimes I want what I want, even if it is inconvenient.

After some time off, for traveling, I am back to quilting.  The 12 inch squares are large and it takes a long time to quilt them.  I figure at least six hours of quilting per square.  I have completed seven squares so far, so I am about a third of the way through.   I hope to be able to complete at least two squares this week.  Slowly but surely the quilt is coming together.  I hope to have it completed by fall.

The quilt is not my only quilting project.  I have the top of a smaller quilt almost completed.  When I go to my quilting guild's sit and sew I need something to work on, so I have been  putting together another quilt there and quilting on the Star and Leaf quilt at home.  (It is too much trouble to drag my quilting frame around.)  Pretty soon, I will have another project that needs to be quilted.  I think I will have that quilt top completed this week, so I may have another quilt to show you soon.

I am also making progress on my spiral paper vase.  I will have new photos to show you on the next blog post.

Cabin Trip - May 2017

My husband and I made a trip to the cabin in May.  I just have not had a chance to post the photos until now.  The end of May was very busy for us.   The trip started for us as many seem to do, with rain forecast for nearly every day we planned to be up there.  It was sunny when we started out, but by the time the mountains came into view, we could begin to see the clouds were building. However, it remained dry for the drive up there.  We had great views of sunny fields where the hay was being gathered and the next crops were being planted.  This year there is going to be a lot of corn planted.  I could see acres of it.

This trip up, the rain came mostly at night.  It did not just rain, it poured torrential downpours for hours.  Then, by morning, the storms cleared out, leaving everything dripping wet and fresh.  It was a relief to see the rain.  Although the storms could be scary, we were happy to see it rain.  Last year, the summer was dry and there was a forest fire nearby.  We were fortunate that the cabins in our area survived.  For now, the streams are full and roaring and the vegetation is lush.  I hope it will stay that way.

The moist conditions have spawned a lot of mushrooms and fungi.  There is some type of fungi growing on a tree up near the spring box.  It is hard to judge the size of the fungi in a photo, but the largest of these mushrooms is about the size of a dinner plate.  I think it has at least doubled in size since we were up there in April.  You can see that the top mushroom is starting to show some rot due to it holding water in the depression in the center.  However, the upper mushroom is sheltering the lower two and they are continuing to grow larger.

Since there is so much moisture up there at the moment moss is also growing.  The large rock in the photo is covered with moss.  I don't remember it having that much on it in some time.  When my brother and I were children, we used to pretend this rock was a canoe.  We would spend hours on imaginary adventures canoeing on the river.  I always enjoy seeing it when we drive up.  It brings back many good memories.  It also lets me know that the cabin is just around the bend in the road.  It is a welcome sight after a long drive.

We took a walk down to the old house and back up through the woods.  The rhododendrons were blooming.  I am glad we were able to be up here while they were out.  The blossoms do not last long. Speaking of blossoms, there was a tree blooming at the edge of our yard.  It had thousands of blossoms on it and they fell all over the yard.  There were so many that by the end of the week it looked like that part of the yard was covered with snow.  After looking it up when I came home, it appears that the tree is a black locust.  I don't think I had seen that tree in bloom before.

Some of our trip was spent helping a family member with some work.  After that, we started on this years project, which is replacing the floor upstairs.  We thought that we were pretty much finished with cabin upgrades, but then we found that the underlayment upstairs was crumbling.  It is possible that someone upstairs could step on it and step right through it and through the brand new wood slat ceiling we had installed downstairs.  So we hauled up some plywood and got to work.  We did not get too far, because my husband strained some muscles in his hand.  We had to leave it for another trip.  I hope we will be able to complete the floor this year.  It will take multiple trips to finish up there.  Other than the floor, I think we are going to leave the upstairs alone.  We have spent years working on the cabin.  We need some relax time.  Yes, I know, famous last words.  I had to laugh the other day.  I was listening to the radio and a caller was saying he was going to his beach house.  The radio host said he was envious.  The caller told him not to be because all he ever did there was work on the house.  I know exactly what he means.

Now that I am home again, I hope to have some new blog posts on a more regular basis.  I have some updates on some of my long term projects.  They are taking a long time to complete, but at least progress is being made.  Check back Thursday for the latest on one of the projects.