penny-studionotes-2

For several years I've been making notes and sketches for a quilt about "regret."  In the last year or so I finalized the design, seen above in a small maquette; the final quilt will be about 60x72."  My interest has been to capture the nature of the feeling of regret, which to me has to do with a missed connection between two people.  My experience of regret has been intensified by the death of people I love--my parents in 2003 and my son in 2004.  Once a person is gone, those missed/failed connections become more salient, and, at the same time, there is no longer a possibility of repair.  No further chance to apologize, or to change a behavior.  Working on this quilt has helped me understand the pull that regret has come to have in my life.  Working on the quilt hasn't eased the pain, but it has helped me live with it. There are still key decisions to be made on the construction of the quilt. Should the black figures be appliqued onto one large backg...

I have started drawing this summer, and am enjoying going out and finding bits of nature to draw.  The different grasses above are from the meadow at my brother's house in Vermont. (Double-click on the image to see more detail.)  I was inspired by an exercise called "Find a Child": "If you have a child of two or three, or can borrow one, let her give you beginning lessons in looking. It takes just a few minutes. Ask the child to come from the front of the house to the back and closely observe her small journey. It will be full of pauses, circling, touching and picking up in order to smell, shake, taste, rub, and scrape. The child's eyes won't leave the ground, and every piece of paper, every scrap, every object along the path will be a new discovery." From Learning by Heart by Jan Steward and Corita Kent (NY: Allworth Press, 2008; first published 1992), p. 14.  I recommend this book highly!  For more on Corita Kent (Sister Corita), look here . Ev...

This quilt is sized down from a pattern by Corey Yoder, published in the May/June 2012 issue of McCall's Quilting.  I love the white of the original , but don't think it's very practical for a baby quilt. I had to make this quilt in a hurry, as the baby arrived five weeks early.  I had all the fabrics on hand, including the diagonal stripe that I've been wanting to use for a binding for a few years.  I was delighted when I finished the top and realized that the colors were just right for the stripe.  I did also try a solid orange for the binding, which gave the quilt a more unified look, but the playfulness of the stripe seemed right for a kid's room. I've also had yardage of some "paint drip" fabric on hand for a while, waiting to be the back of a baby quilt.  I think this works well with the top.  (Thanks, Louise--this was one from your "shop.") I did horizontal line stitching, starting with aqua thread in the ditch on the horizontal seams,...

I love the look of a hand-stitched binding as the finish to a quilt, and I enjoy doing the stitching as a kind of final good-bye to a quilt, having this last chance to slowly pass the whole quilt through my hands.  Unfortunately, my love of hand-sewing eventually led to repetitive-motion injury to my right hand.  I can reduce the pain through exercises prescribed by a physical therapist, but I have also had to radically reduce the time I spend hand sewing. With the time limited, my priorities are appliqué and hand-quilting, with binding in 3rd place.  So, I've been on the search for a method of machine binding that is relatively easy to do, that doesn't stiffen the binding with too much thread, and that looks satisfactory to my eye.  I've finally came up with a method that combines elements from a few different sources.  I think this is it!  I'm giving a tutorial here, and then at the end, I've put links to the other methods I've tried--both to acknowledge...

A few posts ago, I showed four tops in progress on my design wall.  I just finished one of these, a version of Amy Walsh's table runner pattern, "Get in Line," recently published in American Patchwork & Quilting , June 2012.  Amy's version was in silk, a range of blue and green solids--stunning.  My version is a gift for a nursing home resident, for her bedside table, so cotton was definitely in order.  The genius of Amy's pattern is that some of the strips have one fabric only, some two fabrics, and some three.  She suggests improvising size of the portions and placement of the one-piece strips, which I did, but the pattern also includes precise measurements for those who prefer that.  Amy's version used straight-line quilting; I decided to go with a simple (and easy) wavy line in each 1" strip.  Added 5-21-12:  Here's a photo of Amy's from the magazine: More patterns from Amy and others can be found at the pattern company she owns with Jani...

OK, at Lori's request, I'll tell you next about this one of my " four tops ."  I was browsing magazines at JoAnn's a couple of weeks ago, and saw this new magazine on modern quilting, a special issue from Interweave Press: There was one pattern in particular that leaped out at me, "Reflected Wedges" by Jacquie Gehring. I find the wedge shape very appealing.  I haven't used it much, but I did this one baby quilt a while back that is a favorite: The wedge table runner pattern seemed a natural for the Marcia Derse fabrics that I've had in my drawer for about a year; most of these are from her "Third in Line" collection.  I bought about 10 half-yard pieces, mostly choosing because of the printed designs, rather than thinking about colors.  Some day, I'd like to do more printing of fabric (have done a little thermofax screen printing, but that's it), and her designs are inspiring.  But with a half-yard of each, there's plenty to...

My sister Cookie asked for more about this quilt first, so here goes!  This is a small top (about 20x25) that will be my contribution to my quilting guild's biennial challenge for our quilt show.  The idea is that the show organizers set a challenge for guild members, some limitation that will determine this one entry.  (Of course we're all encouraged to submit other quilts as well.)  This year the challenge was to work in a triadic color scheme--that is, three colors that are equally spaced around the color wheel, like red-yellow-blue or green-violet-orange.  I had a stack of solids put aside that I built off a palette taken from flowers in my spring garden: peonies, poppies, and sage. To reduce this to triadic, I took out the deep pink, leaving me with coral, lavender, and sage green for my triad.  So, what to do with these fabrics?  Maybe you'll be interested to see how even a very simple design can involve many steps. I started with an image I love...