Bells, Baths and Bidets

Several people have commented on the quilt that is shown on the right side of my blog so thought I would show you a larger photo and tell you the story….you know that every good quilt has a story that goes along with it…….

In 1998, our family spent 10 days in Italy, including 3 days in Rome. When we first walked into our hotel we heard a Church bell ringing LOUDLY, so Michael and the kids both ran to the window to look out…..

This is what they saw…….this tower was extremely close to the hotel and right on our level……

As any good tourist does, the next stop in the hotel room was to check out the bathroom. This one interested us in several ways……..

Michael noticed the curtainless shower, Brian and Jenny (then 12 and 11) noticed the Bidet (something they had not seen before) and I noticed the cool tile on the wall…..

Much to B&J’s shame, I whipped out my tracing paper and made a tracing of this wonderfully designed tile.

After I got home, I graphed out the design and tried to figure out how to piece it with mostly straight lines. Here is the graphic that I finally used……

And here is the final project…….
It is a fun reminder of a great trip to Rome.

On a comic note, I have since contacted the hotel to see if the tiles were still in place and, if so, could they take a better photo and send to me. Needless to say, I have had no response from them, although I am sure that they talk about the crazy American lady!!!! We are spending a month in Rome in 2010, and I am planning a trip back to Hotel Miami and check it out for myself!!!!

The joys of quilting with a group!!!

Even though I have been very remiss about writing on the blog, I have been fairly busy in the last week with quilting.

I am continuing to work on the Portugal Stairs quilt that I started 2 weeks ago. I had gotten stuck on it and knew that it needed “something”, but I couldn’t figure out what. So, yesterday I took it to my Bee and, of course, they immediately saw the problem and gave me tons of suggestions. I went into the group being frustrated with it and not wanting to work on it, and now I cant wait to get back to it.

I have also been working on a Charity quilt that will be given to a local Relay for Life event. The basic blocks were made by our guild members, and I started working at putting it together. Once again, I knew that it wasn’t exactly right and, once again, the bee was there to rescue me. As we worked on the design wall, someone said….”what if we put it on point”, and that was the answer. It completely changed the look of the blocks and I am excited about working on it some more.

Last Saturday, my friend Deb asked me if I could help her out of a time jam by quilting a small wallhanging that she was trying to get made for a class sample. This is the first time that I have ever quilted a piece for another quilter, and I found that I was really nervous to start it, but once I got going it was a lot of fun to do. The nicest comment that she made was that I must have been reading her mind because it was quilted in the exact way that she had thought about.

Finally, I worked on one more quilt……it is being donated to a local cancer center and they will raffle it for funding. The fabrics came from a woman’s stash that was left to the center and these particular ones were a kit that she had bought but never started. I began by cutting the strips that were required by the kit, but the charity group then decided that we weren’t really happy with how they would look, so I went home, got onto Electric Quilt, and came up with another design that would use the strips that we had already cut.

After I had pieced a bunch of the blocks, I realized that it was “too much of the same thing” and decided to insert a red sashing strip and then add more blocks to the outside of the sash. At this point I took it back to the charity group and Nancy suggested that we add a “piano key” border. She took care of that, Ellen quilted it and we presented it to the Center board the next week. Here is the finished product……

Something New

After yesterday’s rant about creativity, I spent a lovely morning with my friend Anita H. and had a wonderful time talking about (and showing off) our various projects. I always come away from my visits with her with LOTS of new ideas to try.

I then toddled off to Barnes and Noble for lunch and to look at some books on drawing and painting. After spending a couple of hours getting inspired, I flew home and got out the Set-A-Color paints that I had bought on clearance a few weeks ago.

My first step was to take 2 fat quarters of PFD fabric and lay them out side by side. I then wet one of them and started adding colors of paint. I added streaks of color to the wet piece and blocks of color to the dry one.

The dry one ended up with a lot of white areas, so I took a blue paint and diluted it down a lot and then did a color wash over the colored splotches. I also added some extra water to the splotches to see if I could get them to run a bit….that part didn’t really work.

After they dried, I tool some stamps that I had on hand and used Elmer’s Gel glue to stamp a resist onto the fabric (I left the splotchy one for another day). I started out spreading the glue onto the stamp using a foam brush but quickly realized that my fingers worked better.

After I had tried a lot of different stamp designs, I added some glue lines and dots to finish off the piece. The biggest problem that I had was that, once the glue dried, I could not easily tell where I had already stamped.

After the glue had dried completely (hastened by the 90 degree afternoon heat and my hair dryer), I prepared to do a color wash over the top of the dyed piece.

I was planning to use Set-A-Color paints, but the dark purple that I wanted to use was fairly thick (remember I bought them on clearance) and would have to be diluted, so I decided instead to use a Dyna-Flow paint that was already very thin.

After the purple paint dried, I washed the piece in very warm water, soaking out all of the glue.

The resulting piece is a fun example and I am pleased with my first efforts. I have learned a few things…..

Firstly, I used too many different kinds of flower stamps. It would have looked more cohesive if I had stuck to only a few.

Secondly, the red paint was too different in color from the others as it tends to stick out more.

For my next try, I want to do basically the same thing, but use several different colors in the final wash and see if it will get a batik look.

Anyway…..lots of fun!!!

Thoughts about creativity

I have been thinking a lot about creativity in the past few days. The reason for this is that I have completed several projects recently, including a charity quilt that turned out MUCH better than I expected…..I forgot to photograph it but will put one on in the next couple of weeks.

Also, this time of year is a slower one for my profession and I am actually looking at having time to quilt and I cant decide where to head with it.

When we were in Portugal in early June, I took lots of photos of stairs….some just simple, short staircases, some long and windy and some even circular. As I have thought about these photos I am realizing that I would love to try a series of quilts using stairs. BUT, the bottom line here, is that I am scared to start it!!!!

WHAT IF I CANT DO IT?????

I have been trying to look thru some of my older, forgotten books and came across one by Andrea Balosky called “Transitions…Unlocking the Creative Quilter Within” (published in 1996). It does not contain any patterns or instructions, although it does have a nice selection of quilts to get your creative juices flowing. Instead, it has lots of pages of text where the author is doing her best to motivate you to get up and get going. There are wonderful tips and lots of “you can do it” pep talk.

As I have read thru her steps to creativity, I have realized that I already do many of these earlier steps, including recognizing inspiration and researching the idea. But I am intimidated by the later steps including “inviting impulse and intuition” and “playing”..,…really….I’m allowed to play???

However, I love Phase Three…. “Just Do IT”…..I think that she had that idea long before Nike took it as their slogan.

I recently read a quote by Walt Disney that said “The best way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing”. So, my goal for this weekend is to just BEGIN!!! Stop cleaning my studio, refolding my fabrics, cutting my scraps…..and just BEGIN.

Hopefully I will have something to report at the end of the weekend…..but if not, there is always next weekend!!!

Thanks for reading my ramblings!!!

Happy Fourth of July!!!

This is a quilt that I made several years ago to celebrate the month of July.

I have a wall in my entry way that has a special place for 30-36 inch square quilts, and I try to change them each month. I also have pie safe (which holds many of my quilts) that was built especially for that area and I put various nick-knacks on top for each month. Here is a photo of what it looks like this month…..

This quilt was made from a pattern found in a now unknown book, but it was for a 66 inch square quilt, so I cut the dimensions in half to get my finished product.

My biggest memory of this quilt was that my sewing machine was acting up and I spent MUCH of my time re-piecing the areas where there were birds-nests on the back.