Autumn Birds

 The challenge was to make a quilt that meant autumn to me.  I found this fabric of marsh birds.  They are not geese, I'm not quite sure what they are meant to be, but for me the fabric captures the feeling of autumn.  The film is over-exposed and the actual mini quilt (about 12x12) is darker.  There is hand quilting around the birds and within the grasses

These are my visitors.  I believe most of them have left.  There are only four here. Sometimes we've had as many as 35 on the lawn at the same time.  It is the season to fly south and the majority of them may be on their way.  I suppose they will run into the hurricane that is blowing up the East Coast.   My theory is that most go to the Chesapeake Bay area for the winter.  I hope they find safety to sit out the storm if they are between here and there.  Although they make a mess of the lawn with their leavings, I enjoy having them here.  I even enjoy their honking approaches and very much enjoy their sure-footed landings.

Guild Speaker

The speaker today at the Bayberry Quilters' Guild meeting was, "one of us" and I can't imagine what I did with my program, but I cannot find my program and so can't give her the credit she deserves.

She has been quilting a long time and has become very, very skillful .  She
enjoys using border prints and fussy cuting them to get new patterns in her work.  This is obvious in the quilt above that she calls "Nine Card Trick.  Her work is meticulous and has a professional patina as can be seen in these two examples.  The second is a bargello technique used for a long thing wall hanging -- or it could be a table runner.







The secret which bothers me somewhat is that she uses fabrics from specific lines so that she knows the blend beautifully.  Nothing wrong with that  and an excellent ploy, especially if the purpose is commercial.  I think the uninitiated are easily impressed with carefully graduated colors.  I must admit this, to me, is  like Hallmark cards with rhyming verses.  Too simple, too unsurprising, too pat.  Yet, the quilts were all very attractive.   A dilemma for the quilter. There are many lines of well matched fabrics.  If they speak to your sensibility, why not use them and take the confusion out of buying your fabrics? 

Well, to each her own.  My work is far less perfect and also not strikingly successful or artistic.  But I love the challenges.  Sometimes I even learn something about color and print.  I took the top pictures because I've always loved the "card trick" pattern  - with four cards  - and I've never made one. I think the time is coming to make one, maybe, I'll l do some fussy cutting ... but I don't know.  It will depend on how I feel the day I get started.

Autumn Outdoors and In

A very cold evening about a week ago was the impetus to turn trees golden and, a few red -- and amount of autumn color I have not seen before here on the Cape since the last three autumns have been warm and trees didn't turn until well into November, although they had turned "off Cape". We are protected by the surrounding water. I'm enjoying a display of color every time I drive somewhere.

Many people in this apartment complex do some decorating just outside their doors for various seasons.  Marilyn who lives at the end of my hall is an enthusiastic decorator and must have a big closet full of seasonal items.  The "witch" is harmlessly captured but her legs and feet wouldn't fit into the chest -  nor her hat and broomstick. 

This is an "over 50" housing complex so we don't have children coming around trick or treating.  Frankly, I'm glad. I have a "grumpy old lady" attitude about kids and their greed for candy -- as if they didn't have more than enough candy normally.  The uptick in tacky junk to "decorate" with at all holidays is very distasteful to me and the Halloween stuff is among the worst.  Ugly skeletons, witches, spiders and spider webs, ghosts of various sorts ...  No thanks.  Real pumpkins mostly, I think, are products of local farmers so I don't mind that these people make a little money.  And I'm happy to see that a lot of Jack-o-lanterns are actually drawn on the pumpkin with markers or paint -- giving the "artist" the ability to be orginal and sometimes witty. 

Sleeping people

On my other blog, I was just writing about the article on sleep in today's NYTimes. Then I remembered that I have this quilt hanging in my bathroom. It was among my first attempts to make an art quilt. The nine photographs were transferred to fabric. The background fabric is from a sheet that says "sleep" all over it. I have always been touched by people who sleep in public, especially the homeless people who sleep on park benches. I included other photos of sleepers: there is a boy sleeping on a haystack-- he is in Sikkim--who reminded me of the nursery rhyme "Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn, the are in the meadow, the cows are in the corn. Where's the little boy who looks after the sleep? He's under a haystack, fast asleep." There is a woman on a street in Calcutta, and two of my grandchildren sprawled on a bed safely indoors. I love the man in the lower right corner, a city worker sleeping on Fifth Avenue at noon on the recently laid concrete oblivious to all the workers and shoppers and taxis within feet of him.

The Same but Different

I made two different examples of this zig-zag block this week.  The top one will be used when I write up directions for making October's BOM for the Bayberry Quilt Guild.  The black and white one, with two different fabrics -- although the lighting makes it look like three -- was for a swap of black and white blocks.  I like the black and white one  and I think I'll make one more.  I haven't received the black and white block from that swap yet but when I do I will have a total of twenty 12.5x12.5 blocks -- not all of them black and white -- and will decide what to use as stripping, possibly a black-on-black fabric, or possibly another color and have a top made.  I may decide not to quit it but give it unquilted to a charity that is willing to receive tops and then do the quilting.   This would make me happy because I really don't enjoy the quilting step in larger quilts. And heaven knows I don't NEED more bed sized quits.

The Big and the Small

I love these Tang Dynesty horses!  Seven or eight years ago I saw a large exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Tang Dynesty sculptured horsse, mostly in bronze, and many drawings from that period as well.  They were powerful and lifelike. 

Within a few weeks I received a package from a quilting friend who often purchased more of a fabric than she actually needed for a project and then, knowing she would not use it again, she sent me the remnants because she know I am basically a scrap quilter.  In the package were thirteen squares cut from the fabric you see here with the Tang horses and their handlers.  After a while I made this wall hanging which is one of three or four that I rotate above my piano.  It's obviously a nine-patch.  So I still had four squares which I put away and have not used until the past week when I was in a swap that called for a quiltie on an "oriental" theme.  Ah, a chance to share my Tang horses with someone else. So I made the little quiltie you see here and have sent it off.  And, while thinking about it, I took down the quilt that was over my piano and rehung the one you see above.  It's one of my favorites.

Big quilt done, smal one too

I'm having slow internet problems so no picture -- it takes too long and I'm not patient enough.  I finally finished the scrap strip quilt yesterday after thinking for three weeks, "just another day".  Did I occasionally mention that quilting always takes longer than you think?  Did I also mention how labor intensive quilting is?  Both true in spades. The quilt looks not very different from the picture a couple or three posts ago -- just more of the same.

And did I mention that I love scrap quilts?  Mine are what I call TRUE scrap quilts -- they are made from every kind of scrap that's come my way over a few years. Therefore my quilts aren't all in one color family, aren' t of one tonal family. They are some of this, some of that, prints, plains, stripes, dots, dyes, tone on tone, you name it.  And they are not all from my projects.  In swapping people have sent me strips and sometimes scraps. Some kinds of scraps are irresistible to me at the guild's "free table" so not all the fabrics in my scrap quilts have sentimental value and I don't necessarily know where they came from -- except the ones that I've used in major projects. Those I never forget. There's a motto, When life gives you scraps, make a quilt.  Mostly life does give us scraps. At least if you are interested in many things and not at all single minded about what you are involved with and what kind of people you meet.  It's all a scrap quilt and I love it. Right now the nights are a little too warm for this big quilt which is actually four layers instead of three since the scraps were sewn onto foundation pieces.  But soon I'm going to be sleeping under it and will have washed and put away my pastel summer quilt.