Harmony on the Homefront: a Material Mavens quilt

    My friend, Alice, founded an international 12" x 12" art quilt group blog, Material Mavens. I had given her a book for her birthday about a similar group which lit a fire in her. She is quite the organizer.

     Our first challenge was to make a quilt about "harmony." On September 15, we all revealed our quilts and a new theme was chosen for the next two months.

Home Harmony

        My journal quilt design developed this way:  Three things happened at once. My accuquilt cutter arrived. Joe and I were babysitting the grandchildren while their parents moved their home to another state.  I needed to think "harmony."

       I was excited to try the cutting machine and placed an inexpensive blended roll of batiks into the chopper to get numerous triangles and many squares of two sizes. In creating the quilt, I limited myself to what was available in this particular stash of batiks.

       Off and on, the children concentrated to make houses of squares and rectangles. They had "house" on the mind and organized a tabletop of multi-colored homes (small square and triangle on big square as in the center).  Harmony, however imperfect (I put the house on in the wrong direction) prevailed in several directions. This two-sided quilt is an homage to that time, the youngsters' design, and my new helper, the fabric cutting machine.

Snappy Bags inspire at my Journal Quilt Connection

   Last night the Journal Quilt Connection met to show the journal quilts we had been working on since summer. At the end of the meeting, Rita showed about 15 very graphic snappy bags she had made. I forgot to take a photo, but today I searched on-line for a pattern.  I had to make one. Her bags are better!

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      I found that Nancy has posted a tutorial at her Tattered Garden blog, and a school in Utah has written up the directions.

     So, taking it easy today, I whipped up a  snappy bag. They are so clever. You merely pull on the tabs on both sides to open and they snap back to close! Click on the colored links in the paragraph above for instructions to try one!

School for learning: a journal quilt

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   The Journal Quilt Connection meets this week. I needed to make a quilt with a school theme, one quite appropriate for September. I just couldn't get started. I thought of my upcoming trip for a reunion with friends with whom I began elementary school  in Amarillo. The grandchildren were starting new schools in their new state. I wondered about new courses for everyone, my boys in NYC and Joe and myself.
   I was blocked. But to get started, I set out a sky background over batting and cut the two to 14" x 14." That would be the big sky of Amarillo, the Southwest and memories of school, first through 12th grade.
    Blank. I brought in Kaffe Fassett fabric pencils. Buying my school supplies (pencils and paper) was so exciting back in the 40's. I wasn't interested in clothes, just drawing. Where to put the pencils? I found black board fabric and sweet memories of lettering. But how to compose?
    The 9/11 tenth anniversary memorials were on tv and my piece came together. I ironed Wonder Under to the fabrics and cut them out, ironed them on, and quilted them to the batting. The backing was put on at the end and brought around the sides and stitched as I watched the memorials on television or listened on the radio.

Lettering Headers: fabric penmanship

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      The Material Mavens, my talented Texas 12" x 12" quilt group, was inspired by Jamie Fingal Designs' lettering at her blog. We wrote her for advice. The generous quilter she is, Jamie sent advice. Each in our group has been given a letter to fashion for our moniker at our MM blog. I drew the L.

      Listening to President Obama's wonderful Jobs Act talk to Congress, I cut and ironed away. I was assigned an L which I found on my computer software. I printed it, traced and cut it out a little bit bigger to fit onto a 4" x 5" piece of fabric. At first it looked too skinny. I traced the letter onto the back of freezer paper and cut out the letter.

      I didn't know what colors to choose among my fabrics but I thought a more solid pattern should be the letter. Something wider in design would be the background. It is good I made two choices since I now see one of mine resembles Andrea's lined fabric background.  On the piece of letter fabric I ironed Wonder Under to the back, ironed on the freezer paper L, and then cut out the letter to iron on the chosen background.

      I now see Jamie uses different colors for background and letter. I must learn to prepare more thoroughly, but I got the letters made and will send them off in the mail to Alice in Texas where she will assemble all our letters to spell out Material Mavens.  Be sure to visit Jamie's blog Twisted Sister!  

      

Bead Crochet patchwork bracelet

   Often regarding a craft, I say, "It is so easy to do!" Not so with bead crochet. I always say it is the most difficult craft I have ever learned.

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    However, it is a very portable craft. On vacations, in meetings, and waiting for appointments, it is relaxing to have something involving small motor skills. 

    For my birthday Nancy made a patchwork crocheted beaded bracelet that I had admired. I wanted to make more since I am so into quilting these days. The patchwork is a 6-around pattern. This diamond pattern is found in many crochet bead books and on-line but you can create any pattern.

    It is good to start learning by stringing 6 different colors, repeatedly, on a topstitch thread and we Beadsprouts use Gutterman's 30m thread, a size 10 or 11 crochet needle, glass seed beads, a bead blanket made of a cut-up Velux blanket, a long wide-eyed needle, and a good light with magnifier. Sitting in the sun helps to see. There are wonderful books with techniques and YouTube demos on-line. Gradually you can expand to work in silver and gold, pop-up and other beads to vary. Below I have included the patchwork pattern.

    I was excited by the craft six years ago when Anna mentioned that she and her friends each made a segment for a necklace for the birthday girl in their group. The Beadsprouts were soon to follow. In this pattern for the patchwork bracelet, B stands for the background color. Vary the colors As and Cs. Usually 42 to 44 inches is a good length. String the beads, wind them around the thread spool, put them in an eyeglass case and you are ready to roll. 

ABBCBB

AABCCB

BABBCB  

Vineyard Landscapes: a future journal quilt

   If Martha's Vineyard survived the hurricane, my beading friends and I will go to the island for our annual retreat. We each take a surprise craft to busy our hands at downtime. In the past, we have beaded glasses, flatware and tops of tins, decorated candles, cards and felt flowers, put our world in a bottle of sand. But this time, I could not think of a single craft I was interested in. I went to the fabric store for inspiration and bought too much work.

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     In art you find good things happen from mistakes. I have decided we will fuse and stitch individual landscape quilts. When you teach, you learn. I made white cardboard frames, 10"x 10" on the outside and 8" x 8" on the inside, so each beader can design within limits. I ironed Wonder Under to 10 pieces of color for each of the six of us; and all that is needed is to iron the shapes we cut out onto the background piece.

     I also cut larger "sand" backing (the bottom piece) that can fold over the sides to bind the mini-quilts when the quilting is finished. The second sand piece up in the photo is the background to which the beaders will fashion and fuse their cut-outs with an iron:  grass, foliage, trees, rocks, sand, sea, sky, people, umbrellas...wherever inspiration leads. The background with their toppings will be spray-basted or pinned to the batting which I cut for each artist; and decorative stitching can begin for accents and interest. 

     For a design, the beaders can go abstract, look at watercolors of a Vineyard scene they have painted from the window, follow a favorite Vineyard photo, or work from their imagination. I might hint at the hurricane. I can't wait to see what they will do. In the meantime, I need to gather fabric scissors, needles and thread, pins, embroidery thread and needles, sketch paper and permanent markers. The ladies should have beads on hand to further embellish.

Note:  August 27 and Sept 4,  2011 blogs for other get-away bead crafts. Click bead in Labels and scroll down.

Dyeing for fun: a play date for grownups

    Nothing like a play date for this blogger, especially with clever art quilter Susan. We had been talking about how we were not going to get into dyeing fabrics for our art quilts, but we found two simple ways to do it, neither requiring rinsing or breathing loose pigments.
    Susan ordered several bottles of Adirondak color spray ink, put drop cloths on the floor and table, set up a drying rack and a back screen. We squeezed the water from and laid presoaked white cloths, silk, cotton, and white on whites on papers in the protected area, picked up bottles in analogous colors and sprayed. Then we squished the fabrics in the palms of our rubber-gloved hands and hung them on a rack to dry.
    I had taken some Createx air brush paints that you also do not need to wring dry or rinse . We folded dry PDF cloth (prepared for dyeing) into different origami types of configurations as one does in tie-dye, then bound the pieces with rubber bands. We laid them on another piece of fabric and squirted transparent air brush paints into the folds of the fabrics. Then we put the fabric into plastic bags for an overnight rest. In the morning we will see our results, drying them further and ironing to soften. Marquetta Bell-Johnson in her Hand-Dyed Quilts book recommended using these paints.

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    Before going over to Susan's, I collected materials and ran across a Better Homes and Gardens magazine article to remind me I had once before dyed fabric, back in January 1978. Our family created simple crayon batik pictures and I sewed the panels together for a window treatment.