One Quilter's Heritage

I wanted to share my first quilt with all of you. It’s on our bed now, now that we live in a house where we can fairly easily keep the dogs out of the bedrooms. It’s a double wedding ring and the fabric is all commercial cottons in teal, cobalt, blue-violet, purple, red-violet, and magenta. I designed the color ways, the layout and cut all the fabrics. My mother-in-law sewed and I think my sister-in-law may have helped by ironing. The three of us have made a number of quilts together in this way, I design and cut and keep the process moving and the two of them (or maybe the Mennonite grandmas instead of the SIL) keep the assembly line moving.
It’s pretty intense but we’ve made some pretty cool quilts this way and we can come pretty close to making a full bed sized quilt in a day. That’s important since we live in different states and very rarely get together. This quilt was quilted by my mother-in-law and my husband’s Mennonite grandmothers, some of their friends may have added some stitches here and there as well.
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This quilt is one made by my father’s mother. The colors are washed out by direct sunshine, an overcast day would have made better photos. My grandmother was a beautiful Mennonite woman with her ultra conservative dress, a covering with strings and wire rim glasses. She made many beautiful quilts, always with an amazing degree of excellence. Her corners were always perfect and her stitches were tiny and ultra even.

I remember as a child that there was a gathering in Ohio where the quilts were distributed, one for each grandchild. I was the youngest child of her youngest child, and so I got the first choice though I have no idea why they did it that way. I may have been about five or six and when they asked me to choose I pointed immediately at this one. Someone muttered that I had good taste and had chosen the prettiest one. I guess even at that age I responded to colors like these. I have a variety of old quilts, some really amazing examples of Mennonite and Amish artisan design and execution and they are among my very favorite things. I count these quilts along with my heritage as part of my development as an artist and a quilt designer.

Rainbow... Green

Ok, so these are starting to feel a little predictable. Next one gets changed up somehow!
Green... in with the rest of them so far. My design wall is full of lots of wonderful color!

Rainbow Series - Yellow

Well, I’ve gotten a little behind on posting these. I think yellow was next, right? This is the third one in the ROYGBIV series. It’s the yellow one.
Here are the first three together... though in order to crop them it throws off the line that runs through the series. At this point they are only pieced, not quilted and I'm not sure if I'm done or if I'll be adding some other stuff yet. They are hand dyed cotton, linen and white on white fabrics plus a bit of commercial batiks. They are roughly 18 x 18 though the first one is the smallest one and it seems like they get bigger and bigger as I keep working on the series.
If you want to join in the challenge, it's not hard. Just make one small quilt for each color of the rainbow - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Let me know if you decide to play along.

Lucky Me!

I am the winner of a bracelet by the talented Ms Joanna Curley, see her blog here and her photos of the bracelet.

And this is me wearing the delightful little confection! It’s light as a feather, you don’t even know you’re wearing it. It fits me perfectly and came in a cute little gift box. The detail is marvelous and the color… oh YUM! It could not be more perfect for me! Thank you Joanna! What a lovely treat!

Orange

Here is the second one from my Roygbiv series: I’ve made some progress on “Orange” and this one is also about 18 x 18 square pieced. It’s hand dyed cotton, linen and white on white plus some bits of commercial batik. I have sold one piece out of a series in the past and always regretted it, the moment for creating the set had passed and now I’m forever one shy in a series that shouldn’t have been broken up. So I don’t think I’ll be making these available separately, and for a while at least, they will hang in my living room – but maybe talk of such things is premature when I have so much work to do to finish the series.

Next? Yellow!

Want to join the challenge? Create a series of seven small quilts, one for each of the colors listed here: Red, (think Magenta) Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue (think cyan) Indigo and Violet. Post each one as you finish it and please contact me if you're going to join in. I think it will be fun!

Website Update

This is a mixed media piece I made a while back, watercolor, colored pencil, ink and metalic ink on paper. It's now in my bedroom and I love it there.

I have spent some time today working on my website. I spent the afternoon at Oasis Gallery in Harrisonburg, VA where my glass, photography and soap can be found. While I was there I was able to get some work done. There is now content on the painting, cake design, glass, drawing and mixed media pages of my new website. Click here to take a look. It just takes a while to get through all the details of designing a website and getting all the information filled in. You should see my "to do list" now!! I know most people would complete the whole thing and then publish, but I like to work on it as I go because some things just don’t translate very well and require tweaking and experimentation, it is less overwhelming this way. Check it out and if you have problems with the site, please let me know! Feedback is helpful, so please do let me know what you think. Thanks!

Magenta

I’ve started a new quilt series, this one inspired by my quilting hero Melody Johnson. It’s based on the traditional “ROYGBIV” rainbow, otherwise known as Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. I’ll be focusing more on Magenta rather than Red, Cyan rather than Blue and beyond that it should be pretty straight forward. I expect to use this series of seven quilts as the focal point of my living room gallery space when they are complete.

I started out by hand dying and painting a series of cottons, silks and linens. I’m thrilled with how they turned out and have had them laying out on a table in my studio for the better part of a month or so, just waiting for the time and emotional energy to sink myself back into them. May was a difficult month around here. It has been some time since I’ve found “the zone” where the work consumed me and brought me the joy it once did. One of these days the mojo will return, until then I am no less an artist. And so I create.
I’ve started with the Magenta and have an about 18x18 square pieced. This is hand dyed cotton, linen, and white on whites plus some bits of commercial fabric - mostly batik. I am considering all my options at this point so it will be interesting to see where the creative process takes me this time.