Color choices again

In my new year to-do list was another swipe at the Carol Doak paper pieced star patterns. I decided to use this fun polka dot black fabric as the background for several that will become ... well, I don't know how big a quilt. Maybe it will be 16 blocks [they're 12x12] with stripping. Or maybe it will grow to 20 blocks. It partly depends on whether I have enough of the background fabric.
I seem to be very much in a black and red period the last year or so. These blocks will be predominantly shades of red with other colors as seems right. Color has been my bugaboo ever since I started doing the quilts from her Fifty Fabulous Stars book. I consider it a good exercise in understanding what works and what doesn't.
Some of these four stars have had other iterations -- well, just a quarter not the whole thing. The problem seems to be that when fabrics are spread out for consideration the variations in tone [or is it hue?] seem marked and dramatic. But when I sew them into these relatively small bits, all kind of bunched together in the middle of the star they blend rather than contrast. I love the fact that fabrics blend in quilts, it's one of my favorite things about quilting. But in these stars I want a different effect and I have a lot of difficulty deciding which fabric to use.
This is not exactly the start of something big, but definitely it will grow bigger. Just half a square at a time while I work on other slow projects as well, approaching them in the same piece by piece manner.

OH, my gosh! I just looked at these pictures, despite having had these squares pinned to my design wall, I see the light yellowish diamonds in the top star are wrongly placed in three out of eight instances. Will I redo it? You gotta be kidding. It is said that the Amish quilters used to deliberately sew in a mistake so as not to challenge God's perfection. And I've always said God's got nothing to worry about from me; I can make imperfections without even knowing it.

Quiltie

In a moment of having having fun, I made this little piece, known in some circles as a "quiltie" for a swap. I mailed it today to a young woman who likes skulls and pirate flags and Day of the Dead symbolism. This is not that. I hope she also has a sense of humor because I think the Laurel Burch cat is very funny. [The fabric is on the back as well].

Then I used by selvage technique to add borders. That's it, quick and dirty. It makes me smile. And I miss the talented Ms. Burch who died last year, much too young. She designed very special cats as well as other things.

Influences

I'm mainly working on blocks that will go into various quilts. As I work I mull about enjoying block quilts more than freely designed ones, although I make them occasionally. Sometimes I like what I come up with but often I feel I'm not very good at it, basically because it doesn't come naturally.

Yesterday afternoon I had another experience here in my new home town, of trying to find a house where a gathering was being held. The grid system is almost nonexistent here on Cape Cod; towns were laid out long before the Midwest, where I grew up, had even been discovered, let alone surveyed in neat mile square parcels which were then subdivided into 40 acre increments. How satisfying it can be to know that as you drive a country road, you'll come to a right angle road every mile! The towns and cities are also neatly gridded for the most part. Also, Manhattan, where I lived for nearly a third of my life is gridded north of Greenwich Village. To find the house I was looking for became an exercise in cul de sacs and winding roads -- that was difficult at twilight. Finding my way back to a known highway in the dark was almost as difficult. Fortunately a light layer of snow had fallen so there were tire marks to help me scout my path.

Since quilting is, for me, purely for my own pleasure, I will continue making mostly block quilts. They do get more complicated, like the Doak stars I'm making, still the lines are straight, I'm not doing circles and meanders. I know I'll challenge myself now and then with something abstract or needing curving lines -- it's good to break out of habits every so often. I must admit that deep in my heart, I'm a rather square person.

Winter Trees

Trees, and birds, are going to be the theme of a dozen journal quilts I make this year, one per month. Mostly, I think it will be the trees, but of course birds are wonderful too and they live in trees [mostly]. I made a small trees-in-a-blizzard quilt -- what the cutesy artsy people call a "quiltie" -- which was an interesting trial run but not what I had in mind, quite. I may try the same idea only differently. Then I'll post both at the same time. Since trees change with the seasons, as do the birds that are around to inhabit their branches, the journal quilts will go through the changes of the year. It's a snowy winter so far so trees and snow are calling. Actually part of the reason I'm posting this rather prematurely is I really wanted a change of photograph -- not that there's anything wrong with the chicken below, only that it's not mine. And as a record of how the creative mind works, it's naked trees and snow my semi-subconscious is playing around visualizing.

Short addenda while it's on my mind: what is this I find among people on some web sites who write about "addie" for "envies" [addresses for envelopes] and other baby talk? Is the computer infantilizing us?

Neat Things People Have Given Me

Tis the season when new treasures arrive and I am lucky to have talented, artistic friends who send me their handiwork. I'm very fond of this chicken with her sparkling crown of jewels, very much under-pricing the worth of her personal handicraft. It was quilted and embellished by Felicity.

Jenn sent this heart which she quilted. It is the ideal decoration for Valentine's as people where in the apartment comlex I live like to do special things on their doors for the various holidays.

This stained glass candle holder was made specifically to match my red coffee table and looks wonderful when the room is darker and the flame makes the ruby bright and beautiful. It was made by my professional glass making son-in-law who may have had a bit of assistance by daugther Rachel.


Not a handmade item but that rarity in my life, the gift of a book that is just right. I tell people not to give me books because my taste is both eclectic and persnickety. But this book about leaves is beautiful, full of fascinating information. And timely as I have just decided to make a set of monthly journal quilts this year. The theme will be birds and trees. How many ways can I find to depict trees? A single leaf is one possibility. Whatever I chose it can be biologically accurate!
What a wonderful holiday season, even including a truly white Christmas.

Bump in the Night

Hibernation called early, my eyes kept closing as I read in bed. The weekend's snowstorm was essentially over but the wind was busy rearranging the mini drifts and it crept in around the windows wherever it could. I bearishly burrowed beneath the duvet and slept. A CRASH!

Was it a dream? Was it out in the hall? Upstairs in the neighbor's apartment? Did a picture fall off the wall? Did outside doors were locked, I wasn't worried about an intruder and I don't believe in ghosts. I did not imagine it. Something fell. I was not going to go back to sleep until I investigated. I turned on a hallway light that illuminated enough everywhere except the pantry. No, I didn't see anything on the floor that shouldn't have been there. If it was the Christmas wrappings/etal, on a high pantry shelf they could wait until morning. That's what it probably was, I decided. Eventually back to bed But wide awake, of course. Hungry but only because I'm thinking about dieting and I refuse to eat in the middle of the night. Remember past bumps in the night, some scarier but none dangerous -- snow or ice sliding off a roof, cat knocking over a vase. Eventually back to sleep.

In the morning, discovery. Yes, a picture propped on the top of a bookcase fell five feet down just behind the table. Glass not broken, nothing displaced. The other picture beside it remained in place. So did the large glass vase on the other side. Why do such things happen? Some kind of engineer would give me some kind of answer, I suppose. The superstitious would look for omens. I replaced it. The morning has dawned with sun sparkling the lightly sculpted snow. The photo on this post is a window coated with snow during the storm, quickly melted but caught looking ghostly.

Winter, oh, yes, indeed

The "dawn came up like thunder," as Kipling wrote. But very shortly thereafter the clouds crept up "on little cat's feet," as Sandburg wrote about fog, and then the snow blew in, thinly but persistently so that it is whiting everything. Not the big fluffy stuff; the little, insidious stuff that travels on a cold wind. This is winter, no point in complaining, after all it's January in New England. Those in the midwest where it's much worse may well envy this paltry problem. It's the kind of evening to get into cuddly warm clothes -- and remember to be glad to have them, knowing many in the world are inadequately clothed or housed -- and to read something interesting. Which is precisely what I plan to do. I began a collection of Rushdie short stories last night so I am transported to India until the next segment which take place in the West.

I have long wanted to do a year of journal quilts [I did a year of daily 4x6s but that was a special year that demanded special memorializing]. I began a swap and enticed fourteen people to join me. I want to experiment with ways of showing "Tree". I have a number of ideas already. In the not too distant future I will set about finding how to represent one of the "naked" trees I photographed in Central Park a couple of winters ago. I think not the grand and enormous elms but a smaller tree. How to do it is eating at the edge of my mind, along with characters from a novel who have to somehow sort out their lives and reach a concluding moment. I love to give the brain orders to work on a problem on its own while I'm busy doing things of lesser importance: eating dinner, blogging, etc. It feels as if the year is off to a good start with plenty of things to keep me busy and humming.