New Landscape Quilts
This has been another busy weekend. Friday was our 26th wedding anniversary! It's hard to believe we've been married that long, but according the the calendar, we have. Since we moved here a year ago we only have a few friends who we feel comfortable enough to ask to babysit for us and they were all working at our church helping with the photographers who were taking family photos for a new church directory. So we took the girls with us out to dinner after we had our family photo taken. We took the girls out with us last year too as we had only been in town 3 weeks on our 25th anniversary. I keep talking about going on a cruise for our anniversary one year, but that has never happened. What with adopting a child every 7-8 years of our married life, there is never the time or the money to do something that extravagant. Maybe one day.
Saturday there was a craft festival at the fairgrounds so we loaded up the girls and spent several hours gazing at all the fun crafts and weaving our way through the hundreds if not thousands of people there. There were only 3-4 quilters there that I talked to. I doubt there were more than 6 booths that had quilts for sale. I did get some contacts made with quilt shops in the local area so that was good.
We happened to come across an Indian woman who was selling native Indian costumes - I'm talking about India here, not native American Indians. I always zero in on people from India since 2 of my children are from Calcutta, India. Our oldest daughter has outgrown all of her Indian clothing so we bought her a Sari. It's a dark blue with gold trim. The woman showed me how to wrap the sari around Hannah so we could dress her up in it again. I learned how to wrap a Sari several years ago, but I had forgotten how. This Sari is long enough that Hannah will be able to wear it into her adulthood.
In the afternoon I chose fabrics for 2 more landscape quilts and cut out the pieces to ready them for the freezer paper templates. One of the designs is an ocean/beach scene that I drew from a combination of ocean photos I have. The 2nd is from a photo I have of Bryce Canyon. I had drafted the patterns a couple of months ago but just now got around to chosing fabrics.
Today I woke up with a horrible headache and really didn't do much other than try to find something to make me more comfortable. Alternating Tylenol with Motrin, hot showers, laying down, sitting up, walking....nothing seemed to help. It was just one of those headaches that had to run it's course.
I started feeling better late in the evening and felt like I had wasted a day. I don't like to be idle and have to be doing something all the time. When I finally started feeling better I headed down to the studio and worked on a 3rd quilt I'm designing. It's a landscape quilt of the Grand Canyon made from a photo I took back in 2006. It's one I've been procrastinating on since I couldn't figure out how to get the depth that I wanted. I finally figured out how to draw it so I could use my layering and glue-basting technique, and I picked out fabrics from my stash - many were new fabrics I had just bought last week. I cut enough fabric for 2 tops, both will be 8 1/2 x 11". I'll use the first one as a trial piece to check color and depth and then adjust fabrics in the second one as needed.
There are 25 pieces in this quilt which is the most I've designed in a landscape quilt before. I like to simplify my designs to keep the pieces down to 12-15 at the most especially for these smaller quilts. But with the Grand Canyon I wanted to replicate the photo as closely as I could instead of doing a whimsical interpretation of it which is what most of my landscape quilts are. I think this one will benefit from some embellishment, perhaps fabric paint, dyes, or markers along with some thread painting.
Tomorrow homeschooling will take center stage. We have 5 caterpillars that have turned into chrysalids this weekend and we're studying about butterflies and their life cycle along with our rivers and ponds unit. We have a busy school day planned tomorrow so quilting will be secondary. Hopefully I will get some photos taken tomorrow of the quilts in progress. I couldn't handle the camera and flash today with this headache.
Susan
Saturday there was a craft festival at the fairgrounds so we loaded up the girls and spent several hours gazing at all the fun crafts and weaving our way through the hundreds if not thousands of people there. There were only 3-4 quilters there that I talked to. I doubt there were more than 6 booths that had quilts for sale. I did get some contacts made with quilt shops in the local area so that was good.
We happened to come across an Indian woman who was selling native Indian costumes - I'm talking about India here, not native American Indians. I always zero in on people from India since 2 of my children are from Calcutta, India. Our oldest daughter has outgrown all of her Indian clothing so we bought her a Sari. It's a dark blue with gold trim. The woman showed me how to wrap the sari around Hannah so we could dress her up in it again. I learned how to wrap a Sari several years ago, but I had forgotten how. This Sari is long enough that Hannah will be able to wear it into her adulthood.
In the afternoon I chose fabrics for 2 more landscape quilts and cut out the pieces to ready them for the freezer paper templates. One of the designs is an ocean/beach scene that I drew from a combination of ocean photos I have. The 2nd is from a photo I have of Bryce Canyon. I had drafted the patterns a couple of months ago but just now got around to chosing fabrics.
Today I woke up with a horrible headache and really didn't do much other than try to find something to make me more comfortable. Alternating Tylenol with Motrin, hot showers, laying down, sitting up, walking....nothing seemed to help. It was just one of those headaches that had to run it's course.
I started feeling better late in the evening and felt like I had wasted a day. I don't like to be idle and have to be doing something all the time. When I finally started feeling better I headed down to the studio and worked on a 3rd quilt I'm designing. It's a landscape quilt of the Grand Canyon made from a photo I took back in 2006. It's one I've been procrastinating on since I couldn't figure out how to get the depth that I wanted. I finally figured out how to draw it so I could use my layering and glue-basting technique, and I picked out fabrics from my stash - many were new fabrics I had just bought last week. I cut enough fabric for 2 tops, both will be 8 1/2 x 11". I'll use the first one as a trial piece to check color and depth and then adjust fabrics in the second one as needed.
There are 25 pieces in this quilt which is the most I've designed in a landscape quilt before. I like to simplify my designs to keep the pieces down to 12-15 at the most especially for these smaller quilts. But with the Grand Canyon I wanted to replicate the photo as closely as I could instead of doing a whimsical interpretation of it which is what most of my landscape quilts are. I think this one will benefit from some embellishment, perhaps fabric paint, dyes, or markers along with some thread painting.
Tomorrow homeschooling will take center stage. We have 5 caterpillars that have turned into chrysalids this weekend and we're studying about butterflies and their life cycle along with our rivers and ponds unit. We have a busy school day planned tomorrow so quilting will be secondary. Hopefully I will get some photos taken tomorrow of the quilts in progress. I couldn't handle the camera and flash today with this headache.
Susan
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