Reach for the Moon

There are quite a few little tidbits for you this morning. I figured I start with my own work since I'm going to talk about last night's guild meeting and show you some pictures of the quilts of Janet Fogg. Since her work is exquisite, I figured I'd show you mine first...you know, as a warm up...so you don't keel over from euphoric ecstasy. So I would say feast your eyes here, but these are my quilts we're talking about. Let's be a little bit reductionist and just have a little snack for your eyes.

First, I finished up the latest stitchery for the Vintage Tin quilt.

And with that completed, I was ready to make the next stitcheries for the Gardener's Journal quilt. I wanted to try out the Sulky ink transfer pens that allow you to trace embroidery designs onto paper and then iron them onto your fabric. Thanks to Dana who sent me this link from Connecting Threads about them. If you scroll down, you can see a little tutorial about how they work. Also, there's a nice review of them here from Mary Corbet's Needle 'n Thread. I ordered the four-pack of colors from Amazon, but they come in eight colors in all.

These next images are the next two embroidery motifs for the Gardener's Journal quilt. While the pens worked very well insofar as the tracing and ironing was concerned, I was not at all happy with the thickness of the line I ended up with.

I was very concerned that my embroidery floss would not cover it, and it won't. 

I showed it to Mike to get his reaction. He seemed not to notice that the brown line was showing until I pointed it out to him. I'm going to stitch on this a little more, but I strongly suspect that I'm going to have to redo these. I don't think I'll be happy with this if I continue on.

There may be a solution to this problem, however. I experimented with using a very light touch with the pens, and I believe it is possible to get a narrower line with them. (In fact, the Sulky website recommends this for a lighter line.) I'm also going to see if a finer point exists. Just now I did a short search and didn't find any fine point pens, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I'll keep experimenting and looking. 

My current problem is that I'm getting close to running out of the background fabric that I've used in all the embroidered blocks for the quilt, and I can scarcely afford to waste any. My next move is to cut the fabric for the largest remaining embroidered blocks. If I run out, I can substitute something similar and it won't show as much on the smaller pieces. I'm not terribly concerned about having to use a different fabric, but I'd like to stay consistent if I can. I have some scraps from another project that would make a good substitution.

So with that done, I moved onto the Duluth Trees wall hanging. Thank you to all of you who responded to my request for a "design consultation" regarding the moon over the trees. The overwhelming consensus was to add the moon, and so I did. I experimented with a couple of other cream and yellow fabrics, but I was afraid any color other than gray or white was going to end up looking like the sun. With those dark blue backgrounds, I am pretty convinced this is a night scene. So then I asked Mike to help me choose a spot in my mottled silvery gray fabric that looked like the surface of the moon, and I think we hit on it.

I wish you could see that fabric in person because it has just a slight silvery sheen to it. It almost looks as if it is emitting light from within, and when I put it on the quilt, it actually seemed to light up the design. So, all in all, I'm pretty happy with how this is looking. I might decide to add the tiniest of hot fix crystals to this and put a few stars in the sky. What do you think? In general, I think too many crystals can make a quilt look gaudy, and so I would want to be careful not to overdo it. Also, if I put them on and don't like them, they are easy enough to remove.

Last evening I attended the Westside Quilter's Guild meeting. I attended this meeting once before quite some time ago, and I was impressed at the energy and enthusiasm in the room. It was quite a distance for me to drive, however, and so I didn't return. They've moved their location now, and so I decided to give it another try. In fact, I joined up last night. The membership year begins again in July, and so it was my little way of disciplining myself to keep going at least for several months. When I attended the first meeting, I met up with Sue H. who blogs at Alderwood Quilts. She was there again last night and approached me during the break. We chatted quite a bit about the guild, and it was nice to see a friendly face there. (Hi, Sue!) Also, I know another woman there. Her husband and my husband used to work together, and so we met at a few "company functions". 

I continue to be impressed with all the guild is doing, and the women were certainly friendly enough. I like the new location if for no other reason than its comfy chairs! Gotta have a comfy place to sit when you're corralled for 2+ hours, right? So, slow-to-warm-up me is holding out hope that this will end up being the guild of my dreams, but it's too soon for me to say that I love it. I'll keep going for the next several months, and hopefully it'll become more comfortable with time.

For now, I really loved seeing the quilts of Janet Fogg, who was last night's speaker. She explained to us that she was one of seven children and that her mother died when she was just 11 years of age. Prior to her mother's death, her father had purchased a brand new sewing machine for her mother, and the sewing machine sat unused afterward. Janet claimed it as her own, although she did not know how to sew, and her life as an artist and quilter began from that point. She started a quilters' book club, and I really loved this idea. Her club chose three books per year, which they read and discussed like any conventional book club. Then, they took the idea further by making quilts inspired by the story. Most (perhaps all) of the quilts she showed us during her trunk show were inspired by books. If you click on this link, you can see a good sampling of her body of work, along with the stories that inspired them.

Here are just a few of the quilts that were on display last night. They aren't the best pictures since this introvert was sitting in the back of the room and avoided using flash which would, of course, have drawn attention. This first one is called Kitty Corner and was inspired by a cat from the Harry Potter books. (I'll just say that I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, nor have I seen more than just snips of the films. I know...I'm a cultural derelict.) Her quilts also utilized appropriate traditional quilt blocks. This first one uses the "Puss in the Corner" block. 

Keep in mind as you look at these that they are almost exclusively pieced! Almost no applique whatsoever! The only time she used applique was when she didn't want to cut into a beautiful piece of hand-dyed fabric, and so she appliqued the design element over the fabric rather than cutting the fabric to fit the element. (I hope that makes sense.) I can't remember all the stories behind these quilts, but they are all available on her website at the link I gave you up above.

I think this was my favorite, called Bear on a Trail and inspired by the book, Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose. The book is about the Lewis & Clark expedition and features the traditional Snails Trail and Rising Star blocks. Yes, the bear is pieced.

This next one is called Our Lady of the Lake and features a Madonna and child on a single giant Lady of the Lake quilt block. The dark lines are needle-turn applique.

This next one is called Woody and the Seashell and has an interesting story behind it. 

There were many, many quilts on display last night, and I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the meeting. I strongly encourage you to click on the link I've given you and see the rest of Janet's stunning work.

So that's about all I have for you today. Today is a swimming day, and so I'll be taking off in a couple of hours to go do my workout. I've been doing enough swimming that it is worming its way into my weekly routine...a good thing. I still need to finish the top-stitching on my Duluth Trees quilt, and then I'll be making a quilt sandwich to get on with quilting the strawberry table runner...my ALYOF goal for the month.

I hope you have a lovely day today!