Material Obsession

Gee's Bend Aussie Visit

Five years ago while visiting my old stomping ground in NYC I chanced upon a book at the American Fold Art Museum, The Quilts of Gee's Bend.  Since then I have been haunted by the glorious spirit of these women and their quilts.  They are big news now with a show that has been hung in some of the most prestigious museums of the US.  Their unique history as six and seventh generation former slaves, sequestered in a secluded environment known as Gee's Bend, Alabama has given them a unique quilting perspective.  Their materials are whatever they can find as expressed by my favorite quote about them, "Chance is their creative director."  The quilts are fascinating in their haphazard depiction of standard blocks and their wonderful solutions to the age old problem of running out of a fabric...These wonderful women are quilting from the heart and are not one bit concerned about the size of the binding or the quilting stitch.  They quilt with wild abandon and the result is pure joy. 
Deborah Sargaet of Creative LIving Media, or as most of us know her as the publisher of Down Under Quilts Magazine, has organized to bring 60 of these quilts to Australia as part of the Quilt Indulgence Festival to be held at Cantebary Race track starting 31 of October.   Do whatever you can to get to this show as it promises to deliver on an emotional as well as inspirational level.  more on this later but we hope to see you there and hear all about what you think!  Enjoy this lucky opportunity! kathy

Tree House Memories

The school holidays are but a memory now, as are the carefree days of our youth.  Sam, my 12 year old, and his friends built this tree fort and for a few days all food and drinks were pulled up in a bowl.  It  reminded me of when I was a kid.  My "bestest friend ever" and I found a tree house and whiled away sooo many hours up there talking about who knows what now.  However, reality sets in and once back at school  Sam  needed some prodding for more "discipline" and "routine" in his life.  After enjoying the sounds of muffled chatter from the tree house for hours on end over the break, I discovered he had a lengthy report due!! Shock horror set in as I realized he had "wasted" so much time playing.
This last minute work ethic is getting old I told him and then I suggested he learn from my example and do the hard stuff first and what you want to do later, when you can enjoy, worry free some down time. He looked at me and simply explained that the reason he doesn't do that is because, "YOU are OLD and I am 12!"  Choking back something that was either tears or laughter, not sure which, I left the room.  Said so simply, It is so true.  He deserves to be carefree and full of the youthful haphazard enjoyment of life.

Those of us that have a creative outlet can revisit the days of this youthful, spirited fun.  We can feel the surges of excitement created before our eyes as we play with color and design.  Last week we had lots of creative time playing  in the shop.  For example, on Tuesday night we got to see Kim's Gypsy Kisses near completion.  This is what we love to see, our patterns interpreted and re-presented as someone else's.   It is looking gorgeous.
Megan is also nearing completion of her big project.  You've seen it before but it is worth seeing again...

We like crawling around on the floor at MO!  Again we see an idea that has been done before but here it is obviously a very personal interpretation of Grandma' Flower Garden. 
Michele has been working on a cot quilt and it is also coming up rather nicely with cute animals and lively colors...
 In the Stash Management class we have Deidre who has an enormous bag of brightly colored homespun fabrics she has collected and now wants to use.  What better inspiration is there than an Amish quilt.  This one nearly jumps off the wall in it's fresh interpretation of an age old beauty!
There was all kinds of spirited  energy sharing going on in all the classes.  Some things are in bits and pieces while we review sashing options.  As you can see, there are three quite different options here that can all be worked to make this scrappy pinwheel quilt come to life...
Sometimes we only need a few options and sometimes there are many to review...Here we have Helen, working WAY OUTSIDE her comfort zone but over the last few weeks she has achieved great success and this version of PopStars is starting to take on a super shimmer and deserves applause already!

Melissa has finished her version of PopStars which is glorious!
Melissa doesn't need any help as she is off and running enthusiastically all over the shop sharing her wild and carefree spirit.
Bundle has decided to foundation piece an un-bearably cute rug! (dad joke! dad joke!)
  Watch out for those claws!
 Julianne is another one that loves to take an idea and run with it!  This lovely scrap quilt is done with scrappy sashing and just eats up stashed scraps.  Julianne however took the idea and added scrappy stars which look fantastic.  All this and four kids under 9!  Since this one was well on the way Julianne has brought in these cute little Japanese dolls and is using them as the center for the Queen of the May block.
Michele O. is just back from a wonderful holiday in Europe with her family and as a result was able to get stuck straight into a project which is already looking fantastic. This one is also using scraps from her stash and a bit of a hot little Alexander Henry spot which perfectly ties together all the Kaffe fabrics.

In the spirit of an enthusiastic patchworker, I'd just like to thank these quilters for willingly sharing their work with us and by so doing with anyone that reads this blog.  We appreciate the openness and generous spirit in which these photos are able to be taken.  I often sit here at the computer and imagine all the gals (and guys out there) that aren't able to find a source of insprirational community and both Sarah and I hope you find it here.  Ideas are just a thought, it's the making it yours in your own colors or patterns that is the pleasure we all seek.  And afterall, aren't the best memories  those of playing with our friends while sharing what we love...Thanks for sharing to all of you...it wouldn't be any fun all alone. kathy

Garden Party Time

It is finally spring and the world bursts into colour around here!  However, earlier this year as we settled into winter, I had a fun opportunity to co-design a quilt with one of my favorite inspirational textile designers, Anna Marie Horner. The plan was co-design the quilt for Quilters Companion magazine using the gorgeous Garden Party line.  Yeah, I know!!!! How EXCITE ME!
Although it would have been wonderful to visit Anna Maria's fabulous studio and enjoy her company while deciding what to do we made do with the internet.  Messages passed back and forth with photos of scribbled design ideas and then we finally decided that (amidst all her preparation for the Portland Spring market) Anna Maria would make the background and I would add the garden upon receipt.  We had a tight magazine deadline so we worked at a furious pace. 
We decided after lots of option review to go with flowers (of course)...
set on a pieced background that resembed the shadowy layered background of a day in the garden.
The process was great fun as we worked through each stage of the design process.  Anna Maria made three background sections of brick shapes in rows which were the earthy darks, warming mediums and then light for the sky of the setting for the party. While she was doing that I merrily made the flowers with a wedge ruler and set them aside until the background arrived.   Each flower is machine blanket stitched onto the background.  Since there were three separate sections to the background this was easy to accomplish.  We also decided on a meandering stem to tie it all together.
As you may have noticed, creating enough contrast to make the flowers show up in the garden was the challenge so with a bit of rearranging and fiddling with each fabric in the range it all came together in a garden of delight.  Light went on darks, warms on cools etc.  In the end the flowers grew in and out of the background, just like in real life.  Full of perfect imperfections!
Ok! Great! The quilt top is finished in three sections and it's time to think about quilting.  Now I am a beginning machine quitler (having only just taken Kim Bradley's machine quilting class) but with a little beginners luck and a lack of fear of the unknown I set about to quiting the three sections of the quilt.  The quilt is very organic so I concentrated on the leaf shapes and flowing, growing lines that Kim taught us and before I knew it the sections were quilted.  A bit of embellishing with perle 8 cotton where needed and Voila!
Once the three sections were quilted I sewed them together and covered the seam on the back with a strip of fabric to cover the joins.  (SO much easier to do machine quilting this way instead of having to manage the entire quilt in my machine).  Even in three stages it was back breaking work as I got more and more hunched over the machine.  I need more practice at staying relaxed while quilting on the machine.
The magazine is out now and kits are selling fast in the Garden Party line.  Many heartfelt hanks to Anna Maria, my favorite pen pal designer for playing in the garden with me!!!
The concept of applique on pieced backgrounds was so fun it had to be shared so we did it with the Cut Loose quilters recently with a variety of design interpretations.  Cath chose a softer color range and a semi-randomly pieced background ...
Cheryl chose to applique her brightly colored flowers onto a black and white lattice style background.

And Sheena used bits and pieces of vintage fabrics combined with modern ones with a bit of Garden Party on the side.
This concept really is fun to play with and is not without built in challenges.  It's great for using up scraps and even better for that lost forgotten quilt top that needed just a bit more on top!  The best games are those where the rules can be bent and personality can be expressed.  Have a go and show us what you can do!  It is most appropriate to note that this garden theme is coming out just as the world bursts into bloom around us!  How glorious is spring and sharing colorful things! Have a great weekend in the garden!!!!  kathy

Pulling Seams

Life just isn't perfect.  Why does the silver lining have to have a cloud? I struggle with the concept that with all good things there is a bit of bad.  As a quilter, life imitates art so obviously.  Sometimes we are stitching it all together with wonderful results and then sometimes...despite our efforts, well it's the reverse. I have been on a good roll having finished six quilt tops this month.  The retreat got me started and then it was all systems go as ideas and time all started working together. The scrappy quilt is ready to get basted and then quilted... and so is the chook yard.  AND, in a very impulsive weekend I finally got to use the fat quarter bundle that Sarah bought me in Portland of the Sierra range.  Got to Love folk art birds. (and oh yeah, I think those are a bit of "country" colors sneaking into the pile...Sarah using batik, me country colors...dogs and cats playing together!) .The the other nighwhat seemed to be going oh so well went oh so wrong.  I was disregarding what I knew was a hard rule and was sewing long strips of fabric together merrily thinking, "OH Yeah, I'm pinning and doing this without following procedure...OH Yeah, I'm so good, I'm soooo coool!"  Suffice to say I have spent the last two nights unpicking my wonky seams!  ALWAYS measure the lengths, match the ends and middles and then pin through the strips or borders. It is much better learning from the mistakes of others. 
Seams can also be emotional.  The boys in year 12 still have their month of exams to go before they graduate from high school.  However, last  week John and I watched our son walk across the stage of his high school for the last time in recognition of his last day of classes and signalling the end of his formal high school education. 
Struggling to control a myriad of emotions I watched as each boy walked across the stage and then stood before us as we listened to their many achievements while at the college.  There were 145 boys, each one made special, each one revered before their peers as cheers, foot stomping and even a few standing ovations were performed by the cohort and as their younger brothers watched... awaiting their turn to step up to be the leaders of the school.  
When it was Oscar's turn I was overwhelmed by this, the first step in his new life and also the unraveling of our family unit.  Soon, after exams I can no longer expect him home for dinner, among other things like even be included in conversations about important things in his life.  That now, it was his turn to take the wheel and drive the car of his own future.  SOB.  What was revealed however was how lucky he has been to be part of this compassionate school community within a world so full of turmoil and what wonderful tools he has learned to help cope with what he finds from here.     These boys have learned to respect each other for any number of reasons from "Oscar Doughty loves his sport..." to captains of the chess team, drama, cadets, music, tai kwon do and all the rest.   What an exciting moment it is to realize our children are no longer just ours but rather part of something greater.  Of course, when all the speeches, videos and prayers were fiinished we ran, not walked to a bar and ceremoniuosly partied together until 3:00am!  I was overwhelmed one final time by the realization that I was in a place where my feet stuck to the floor (with my first born son!) and the urge to jump up and dance was undeniable!
As I unpick miles of stitches it becomes clear that what looks like is coming apart is actually making way for something better.  Remind me of that when he takes off for LA in November...I'll need more than a good unpicker then. all the best. k