penny-studionotes-2

Deciding on the quilting of the quilt is one of the most challenging aspects of quilting for me. Here's a small hanging (20 x 27) I worked on last week. I sometimes think that putting more stitching on a top is ruining it. Here's the top before stitching: When I showed Mary Beth this top along with another one with small rectangles, she suggested trying out some decorative stitching in the black borders. I was putting off trying something out, but then Kay asked if I would donate something for a raffle at her place of work, Brockton Family and Community Services , and I offered this quilt. Knowing now that "Waves" would be in a raffle, and so would go to someone I don't know, I was freed up to experiment. I tried out some hand embroidery with a lovely, heavy silk thread. First I did some a traditional "open cretan" stitch in turquoise and green. Then I decided to try out something wavy in the borders. I let some thread fall onto the black, and ...

I was in Phoenix this past weekend visiting my sister, and we went to three quilt shops, looking for more fabric to fill in the palette for "Shelter." I was able to find a large range of turquoise/aqua fabrics, a fair amount of cobalt/royal blue and rusty red. I found just a couple of black batiks, with the rest silk and polyesters. I've include some non-cotton in each color, looking to add a little shimmer to the curved strip-piecing that I'll be doing for each swath of color. Here's the thinking behind this quilt, from a description I wrote to Mary Beth in January 2006: The shelter quilt is a sequel to the "Loss" quilt that I started at Design Camp in 2005. That quilt was about David's and my experience of loss--of the brightness of Jeremy's life in ours and then the stark emptiness of our future without him. (Photo here .) As I worked through this expression of our experience of loss, I found myself thinking something like: Our future is...

For many years, this desk was the focal point of my study, the place where I wrote books , where I did my scholarship. The laptop sat on the pull-out typing return, at the perfect height for a short person like me. This desk held current notes and drafts of my research projects. Another skinny desk went off in an "el," to the right of the typing return; this second desk held materials related to the classes I was teaching, as well as bills and letters. The room was filled with books and files connected to my job, to my professional life. It was a good place to work. After my son's death in 2004, the study no longer pulled me in. The part of my life connected to research fell away. In the midst of a quilting design workshop I took in June 2005, an idea took shape: I could turn my study into a studio. Talking with Amy D. at breakfast, I tentatively told her about this idea. "Penny, that's huge!" I was so grateful for her understanding of what the sh...