Go Gentle Into That Good Night II

This piece was inspired by a long night talk sitting on the beach with my youngest sister who was having a tough time. At the end of the day, the gulf becomes very still and even though it was getting quite dark there was still enough moonlight to give form and substance to the waves. Work remaining to be done: paintsticks, quilting, beading and binding.

Go Gentle Into That Good night I

Losing my dad three years ago was life changing for me. He had a devasting stroke just after he and my mother got to their Florida condo in January. My sister, brother and I drove straight through from Fargo to Florida to help my mom make the final decision and to say our goodbyes Respecting his oft-spoken wishes and living will, we did not permit the doctors to continue life support and after 10 days he passed away quietly. I'm working through my feelings in a series of quilts that represent the 24 hour drive but also the stages of grief. This piece came from our first evening in Florida as we sat on the beach at sunset and I accepted for the first time that he was not going to get better. Work remaining: Quilting and binding.

How to fix a failure.

I have this quilt pinned and ready to quilt but the truth is I don't like it much. I used Ricky Timm's Convergence Quilt technique but I somehow missed the boat. Too much contrast or not enough slices -- whatever the cause it doesn't work in its current incarnation. And I'm not willing to pick it apart and try again. And I'm not going to pitch it because I love the colors and the borders so I'm going to try to ressurect it. I have some vivid hand dyed red fabric that has veining like a close up of flower petals so I'm going to cut out some large hibiscus flowers to applique over the not-quite-nice center panel. If you can't fix it, hide it I always say. 

The second photos is where I intend it to look like when I'm done with it.

Work remaining to be done: Quilt background, threadpaint the hibiscus then raw-edge applique them down. Bead the stamens. Bind.

Kathy's birthday quilt

I had started the practice of making quilts for my nieces and nephews as wedding gifts. My sisters pointed out how unfair it was that they'd have to divorce their husbands and remarry just to get a quilts. Sigh. So I made sister #1 a quilt for her 50th birthday. This is the quilt for sister #2. She loves fantasy so I found a lovely stained glass pattern of a unicorn that I've appliquing onto a simple pieced background. I found I hate piecing bed quilts. Too much math. And you can see how accurate my arithmetic is. After all the cutting and sewing. I started laying it out on my design wall and found that I'm 9 block short. Grr. More cutting and piecing ahead. One life saver tip I read online was to buy a double needle to stitch down the bias tape around the unicorn. It's been tough keeping the stitches straight enough with all those curving pieces in the tail and mane. Work remaining to be done: Piecing more blocks (grrr), stitching down remaining bias tape, quilting, and binding.

City Lights

This quilt was inspired by the view of downtown Minneapolis from my sister's downtown loft. At sunset, the light off the skyscrapers is just luminous. The fabrics are all hand dyed. It's all pieced but I'm a little stalled on whether it needs a border or not. And what to do about the wavy part on the bottom. Right now it's a little top heavy.

Textured fabric

This quilt is an experiment with fabric manipulation. The center panel is given dimension by running cording through quilted channels. I plan to add beading, non-representational embroidery, and other embellishments in the flat areas. On either side I think I'm going to piece folded, crinkled, and shaped fabric bits. Work remaining to be done: Piecing the side panels. Embellishing the center panel. Quilting and binding.

Wool crazy quilt

I'm constitutionally incapable of buying stuff just because. There has to be some sort of immediate use and with fabric that means a WISP. I wanted a crazy quilted lap quilt to snuggle under for our drafty winters but didn't want to have fragile silks and fancy fabrics to stress over. At least that's how I justify buying gorgeous wool. It also gives me a chance to revive my interest in crewel embroidery. 30 years ago I used to do a lot of wool embroidery but kind of lost interest because how many samples and pillow tops does one house need anyway? So far this WISP is limited to a box of cozy hand dyed wools and one completed embroidery. This raspberry spray is from a pattern in Inspiration magazine. Work remaining to be done: Lots and lots of embroidery then crazy piecing the whole thing.

A Mother's Love

I belong to a quilting group called Designing Quilters that has a yearly theme challenge. Two years ago the theme was Motherhood. I had just begun production on a documentary project called Prairie Churches and had been filming a dozen beautiful old Orthodox churches in Manitoba. I found the beautifully decorated interiors -- and especially the icons -- very touching. I printed a copy of a beautiful old Russian Madonna on silk, made her a frame with an onion dome and got busy beading. The piece got to this stage (which wasn't enough beading to suit me) by the project deadline so I mounted it on Tyvex and sewed a backing on. But the minute the show was taken down, I ripped it apart and began adding more beads.

I intend it to be heavily beaded all over to be true to the encrusted icons that adorn the Orthodox churches. This project is my priority because I've worked a trade with a friend. My Madonna piece for one of her exurbant fabric collages. She thinks I'm nuts but since I'm not religious I'd feel funny hanging it in my home and this is going to be too gorgeous to sit on a shelf. She'll be happy in Virginia's madonna collection. Work remaining to be done: More beading. Then backing.

CQ Hearts WISP

This is an accidental Work in Progress. I read about an international crazy quilters' group heart exchange and got all excited about it. I printed off the pattern and went to town turning out hearts. After I'd done 15 of them, I realized the pattern didn't print correctly and I'd made the darn things too small for the project guidelines. That'll teach you to verify the dimension of an Acrobat Reader print job and not assume it's printing to the correct size. Darn. I made several into needle cases but decided to hang on to the rest and make a wall quilt from them. Some day. Thankfully this is a WISP I feel no guilt about since I didn't intend it to be a project. Work remaining to be done: Figure out some kind of background or setting for these hearts. That might lead to the need to finish one more heart.

CQI Roses purse

These pending projects are added to this blogin no particular order.

This project is a crazy quilted purse. I pieced the block for a Rose themed round robin I participated in with four other members of the Crazy Quilt International group. Embellishments were added by each member in turn and then returned to me.

Work remaining to be done: Add a couple of small embellishments to the front flap of the purse, move the lovely lavender rose center top because (unfortunately) it's right where the snap fastener has to go), attached the fabric cover to the purse form I have already created, and line the whole thing.

Family Tree crazy quilt

I'm going to be years finishing this crazy quilt and I'm OK with that. The center panel is a design in an Australian quilting magazine that I've made in silk on a silk velvet background. That is the first and last time I try to applique on velvet. What was I thinking? Everything slipped and puckered and distorted and rippled. I eventually ended up fusing the velvet onto muslin and was able to finally get it to look nice. I plan to embroider the names of my family and ancestors on flowers that will be appliqued on the branches. The crazy quilt blocks around the border are being embellished with motifs that represent events or ideas that are important in my life. There are close ups of some of the blocks on my flickr site.