Shake and Fall: a journal quilt

    Journal quilts are for memories...often significant events or special occasions. Click photo to enlarge.

    Last week, the Beadsprouts (my beading group of six...a number that fits around our craft tables) headed to New Hampshire to see the beautiful leaves and share a dinner and Presidential Debate together. Part way into our late meal, a bird tried to get into our windows. The bird frantically turned sideways and upside down to penetrate the glass to get to the light. We drew the curtains all around and finally tossed out an unappreciated dinner roll. That was the first piece of excitement.

     Later, our chairs vibrated under us for about 5 to 10 seconds. I forget how we knew the pulsation was an earthquake from Hollis ME, but the bird must have been a harbinger. After getting the big TV to work just in time, we finished the evening watching the debate and continued the next day to enjoy our surroundings, leaf time in Waterville Valley. That was my first earthquake!

Reversible Headbands: multiple choices

     Did you ever wear a headband, or do you have a friend who loves them? I wanted to give granddaughter Erika, seldom seen without a headband, a surprise of more headbands and a chance to design them. Finding grosgrain ribbons about an inch wide was easy. Finding plain headbands (with no teeth) was not so easy. I tried drugstores and department stores.

enlarge to view

            The last time I was in NYC, I stopped at M&J Trimming on 6th Avenue. They and my local Ben Franklin carry a variety of ribbons. Down the street on 6th Avenue, at Fun to Bead or another bead store,  I located the perfect size headbands. These are black which could show through lighter ribbons. At M&J I found white bands, but they graduate in size to larger in the middle, bigger than the ribbons I bought. You only need one headband since the reversible covers slip easily on and off. I used the black.

on the subway in Manhattan...headband with ears on Erika

      I cut the ribbons to about 15.5 inches long and sewed each 1/4" down at ends to the wrong side. I did this to two ribbons. Then, wrong sides together, I sewed the edges with invisible thread just on the long sides leaving the ends open. Sew easy for grandmother fun. I made three quickly and will let Erika design the rest, choosing which two ribbons to sew together.

October Mysteries: crib quit origin

     Do you have some mysteries in your life that need solving? I have a baby quilt that I imagine my grandmother sent to me for my first child and I was too immature to appreciate to protect it. I used this crib blanket daily, washing when needed. I hope I expressed enough gratitude for all the hand stitching, the applique and design, and the multitudinous perfect hand-stitches in the quilting. Until today, I always wondered if she designed it or if it came from a pattern. A quilt from the 30s, was it made for me and saved, or created to send for Jim to have?

      Today I got up early to attend the Cambridge Art Association book group where we discussed Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger. Then I headed out to Lexington for the Rising Star Quilt Show where I ran across and bought an old 80's book Crib Quilts and Other Small Wonders by Woodard and Greenstein. Lo and Behold! The book shows a quilt like mine, one from a private PA collection. I was so excited for a pinch of a lead. Now I am eager to find where the pattern originated. I hope someone can help me so I can do something to relive the experience with my dear Big Mom. 

       I had cleared off the design wall, some more of my little Maine 50th anniversary quickie paintings and journal quilt, in order to hang the stressed but beloved crib quilt. I think the marionette theater must have had quite an influence on me. Click the photos to enlarge!

     
             

Painting in the studio: Landscape memories

     On my 50th birthday, this former English and history teacher went to art school for her 7th life. I painted dawn to dusk daily. Many of my paintings are at my website LindaHicksweb.com. Lately, however, I have been quilting and working in a variety of crafts encouraged by involvement with grandchildren.

     Down in my basement studio, I pulled out some little 4" x 4" canvases and my Winsor Newton Griffin fast-drying alkyd paints. In about 1 1/2 hours I painted three little vignettes from our recent trip to Maine.

      It may look like it, but I just sloshed around the oils with a little turpentine and bits of medium. I then painted skies, trees and grounds while thinking of Maine and some sketches of sites I had seen while on the road. I want to do several more memories until I run out of compositions or moods and then I can quilt them for handwork on road trips.

    Joe wanted me to do a small portrait of grandson. I felt I had just begun; but he told me to stop...it was finished. Hope David doesn't mind looking jaundiced! I am loving being back in the studio while I read The Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucien Freud

Monkey Sees, Monkey Does: a new small quilt plus

    Are you going back to school this busy September;  or are you always learning new things. I try to take some new workshop usually, so I got busy with what Sue Martell and Jo Diggs taught me. The last time I saw Betsy, she asked if I had started making Maine landscapes (I reported on hers August 18) and I took her hint to do a Jo Diggs workshop. Jo Diggs is a master applique landscape fabric artist.

    So I loosely cut out the fabric Sue encouraged me to buy in her sister's shop, and all but copied one of Sue's on the drive to NYC. All I did was layer fabric over muslin and started at the top, adding shapes on, to pin the shapes down. I whipstitched the seam allowances under the main shapes with silk thread that Jo says lies flatter. There are sky, rock, water, tree, plant and sand fabrics available; but you can paint your own white or muslin fabrics with fabric paints so that the fabrics remain soft. I like applique in that you can do it on a car ride or in front of tv news and you don't need a sewing machine. I feel romantic toward hand stitching...all of those little stitches.

     However, when I returned home, I became a monster. I couldn't bear to go slowly...so much to do! Whereas Jo Diggs puts mats around her landscapes, I wanted fabric borders and had to get out a sewing machine to add a twig fabric from The City Quilter. I dug in my bias tape drawer for white and cream. I didn't want machine stitches to show so I used Stitch Witchery on the inner frame and a sewing machine and backside whipstitch on the white outer frame. I messed up a bit (fusible dirtying my borders, messing up my iron) trying to go so fast, but the fabric picture is ok as a memory of trip to Maine on our 50th...not so perfect as Sue's or Jo's,  but one step in learning a new technique.

photo I took of a Jo Diggs landscape...note the reflections 

    

Square spiral: a Reveal Day posting

     If you were asked to design a spiral quilt block, what would you come up with. Below is my offering at Material Mavens. After you try to draw the pattern and color it (it is tricky), I recommend your visit to see, enlarge the photos, and read the explanations given by 12 participants in this international journal quilt group. For my 12" x 12" offering, I wrote:

     Because I am often in a spiral, I felt confident to work with this theme for September. I have earrings galore which have spiral designs. I often feel like a dancer in a spiral; and I like the zany and untraditional that the symbol connotes.

     At a recent quilt show, I obsessed over a seemingly simple spiral block quilt that did not seem to interest others. I casually tried to sketch how to compose the mildly tricky block; so I was pleased to have an excuse to work with the block in detail. All I needed was the two colors of fabrics.

     At the NH Mancuso quilt show, in the last vendor booth which I visited,  there were batik spirals fabrics perfect for the job. I chose colors opposite on the color wheel to hint at, somewhat like yin and yang, the good and the bad spirals in life or the world today. I set the small erratic fabric spirals inside the larger architectural spiral of achieved calm. The back of the quilt is a hand-dyed spiral of a same color which I found in my stash.

Sketching on the road...a new product

     Many times people pack up paints and pens to produce works of art on a vacation; and then they find they never have a chance to use them. As you know, I often stitch Sashiko in the car while listening to a good book on CD as Joe, the car enthusiast drives. For this trip, part of our 50th celebration, I decided I would sketch in the car.

      If you sketch on a trip, I think your memories are more indelible or tangible than when you only take photos. I put a sketchbook, Micron pen .005, water soluable pencils, pencil sharpener and Niji waterbrushes loaded with water in my purse. From the minute we hit the road, I didn't know what to sketch and thought...what the heck...I will sketch anything in front of me without giving it thought!

      Believe me, my sketches look as if I didn't give them any thought. The road goes by FAST and is bumpy! But it was fun to mark the path with pen, then color with watercolor pencils and wet the marks down as well. I don't think this was my favorite sketching solution, but I love having a rough 60 pages of marks and some memory flags to remind me of what to paint when I get to it at home. One should paint her 50th anniversary!  

      After  I wore down the Micron point in Castine, ME, I made the exciting discovery that there are Sharpie fine point pens now that don't bleed through the paper, and more than that, there are Sharpies that come with a retractable fine point so you won't have to look for lost tops under seats in the car! When I couldn't replace some of my Caran d'Arche watercolor pencils in the USA, I found Derwent watercolor pencils in Rockland a surprisingly good substitute. Heavenly. And of course there are different results for sketching on arrival but this was an experiment! Click photos to enlarge.