penny-studionotes-2

I recently finished up a version of Carol Friendlander's "Focal" pattern; my version above is 40 x 48". When using a pattern, I am relying on a designer for the basic composition of a quilt.  Much as I enjoy designing my own quilts, I also enjoy taking a break, leaving the major compositional decisions to someone else.  But it never ceases to amaze me how many design decisions still have to be made for a quilt, even when working from a pattern.  In this way, I find it very different from the sewing and knitting I have done since I was a young girl.  Yes, you have to choose the fabric or yarn for those, but that's basically one choice, and then you just follow the pattern.  (I know it's possible to do significant adaptation/alteration of such patterns, but I never have.)  With a quilt, even the choice of fabric is a whole set of choices, as a quilt typically contains at least two fabrics, and often many more than that.  The huge range of choices availab...

About a month ago, I wrote about the runner I planned to make from daiwabo fabric, for the buffet in my dining room; you can see the array of fabrics I started with on that post .  Above, you can see the completed runner, along with a painting of the Hotel de Sens in Paris by our friend Rick Ortner .   The runner was made using Amy Walsh's pattern, "Get in Line" (from American Patchwork & Quilting , June 2012).  Below is a closeup that shows the binding and the quilting:  I used bias strips for the binding, because of needing to go around a couple of curves.  And since the fabric I choose for the binding was a heavy weave, I made it with single-fold rather than double-fold binding.  I haven't used single-fold binding before, but I think I'll choose it again for some projects. The reduced bulk is nice, and it uses up less fabric. Those nice wavy quilting lines are done with a set decorative stitch (rather than free-motion quilting), a stitch that came bu...

I recently finished piecing the shot cotton " Plain Spoken " quilt.  The next step was to figure out what I wanted to do for the quilting.  On an earlier shot cotton quilt , made from just the larger-size rectangles, I machine quilted a grid, and then added hand-quilting with embroidery thread, a simple line inside each rectangle.  I thought of doing similar hand-work on this quilt, so I tried it out on the sample above, right column.  Too boring, and the narrower rectangles needed a different treatment.  I've been wanting to expand my embroidery repertoire, so I decided to play with some embroidery stitching instead (working it through the three layers of top, batting, and backing, so that it serves as quilting as well)--done in the middle and left columns above.  I love how this looks!  So, my plan is to do  vertic al stitch -in-the -ditch in the seams between each column to secure everything, and then to do embroidery in the narrow rectangles (...

Each spring, I look forward to the blossoming of my neighbor's redbud tree, whose pink cloud of flowers I can gaze out upon from my kitchen and study windows.  Today I wanted to spend a little time drawing, so I thought I'd check out the redbud flowers, to see what they looked like close up.  To my great surprise--after 23 years of looking out at this tree--I found that the flowers are not just pink, but have a base of a deep rose color, with pink petals. Often the particular shape of the component part of a flower has come as a surprise to me, when looked at close up, but not before the color.  I am grateful to my relatively new practice of drawing (begun in 2012 and described here ) for making me slow down and look carefully.  There is so much to see. . . It also interests me that in isolating one flower-filled twig of the tree, there is no hint of the cumulative effect of the blossoms on the whole tree.

Here are the 20 colors that I dyed for the group challenge I mentioned yesterday .  Included here are a few pieces made with primaries I haven't used before, Grape (bottom of middle stack), Boysenberry (the middle fabric in the middle stack) and Strong Orange (bottom of right stack).  Before, to get these colors, I would have been mixing some combination of yellow, red, and blue; it's nice to have this quicker way (just one dye in the solution) to get these colors. Then I sorted the piles into the colors requested by each of the participants, adding some other colors from my stash as well, and marking which participant each little stack is for. I look forward to cutting into these fabrics, thinking of each friend as I make a small composition in these different arrays of color.

The first things I worked on when I got back into the dye studio about ten days ago were large pieces for the backs of two quilts.  Above is a light blue and green piece prepared for a queen-sized quilt.  I'm happy with it now, but it took two rounds of dyeing.  No pfd (prepared for dyeing) fabric comes wide enough to make a large one-piece backing, so I used a regular bleached muslin.  I forgot to factor in how much paler the colors turn out on this non-pfd fabric; the first pass, below, was just too light. After I told a couple of people, "If it was for the front, I'd do it again," I realized I should do it again.  This quilt will be on my own bed, and I know I'll be seeing the back as well as the top.  So I overdyed the whole thing with more blue, and I am happy with the results--still light but much more pleasing: Yes, the back will be a nice companion to the top: Now this quilt is ready to baste up, in preparation for the hand-quilting I have planned. ...

It's been a few months since I've been in the dye studio, which is in my basement.  This winter was so cold that the ambient temperature in the basement was about 40F, and even a space heater wasn't enough to get me down there!  But spring is finally here, and also a project that spurs me to dye a bunch of colors.  I'm part of a small group of quilters who get together for a four-day retreat each year in the Chicago area.  We've recently undertaken a challenge:  to make a small work (just sewn, not quilted) for each member of the group, with the colors determined by the recipient but the style/composition determined by the maker.  As the end result, each member will have something in the style of each other person, but in colors of their own choosing.  We can then do what we want with what we've received--perhaps put them together in a quilt, pin them up on a wall, or just keep them in a drawer.  Anyway, having a list of colors requested by nine o...