A Home for Sadie

This week will be a different sort of week for Frances Quilts

For the last few months, I have been working sporadically on a quilt that I started two years ago. I wanted to wait until it was finished before I showed you the process

I finished it this weekend so now I can share the whole story.

The inspiration started with this picture of a Saddle-Billed Stork I took it when we were in Mozambique in June 2019…..

As soon as we returned home, I enlarged the photo and did the fiber collage…..

But she needed a background, and I couldn’t decide what to do. I knew that I wanted to do something pretty fancy but was so confused about what it would be!!

I painted a background.……

but I knew that it needed something else.

I played with thread painting, hoping to attain a meadow appearance…….

…….but there was no way to get to what I envisioned.

Last summer, I worked through the process of making thread lace, using the technique on my Botero flower garden quilt……..

Back in January, I played around with making thread ~~lace~~ grass, and was pleased with how it looked…..

Then my crazy Spring hit and here we are in August. One thing became patently obvious…..

IT IS TIME TO FINISH THIS QUILT!!!!

So……a full two years after I started this quilt, I am ready to show you the results!!

Over the next three days, I am going to show the process of making the thread grass. On day four, we will look at dyeing and using cheesecloth.

Day five will be dedicated to thread-painting the top and day 6 will talk about the quilting process.

SO…..it will be a FUN week…..get ready for a wild ride!!

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Jungle Frog….

It has been over a month since I posted a “Travel Log” quilt and the next one in line is a fun quilt that was also a guild challenge.

Let me give you the background……

In 2011, Michael and I spent 5 weeks in China while he lectured around the country. The final week was spent in the “Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanic Gardens”. This is a gorgeous place and I spent many fun hours taking photos of the flowers and foliage…..

We also returned there in 2018 and I had a marvelous time photographing the area. If you are interested…..

Photograph, Work, Rest, Repeat….

But…back to the quilt…..

Not long after we returned to the US, our guild issued a challenge to make a quilt that was 40-inches square, and had complimentary colors!!

I asked my scientist husband about his thoughts and he mentioned that there were some frogs that were green with red eyes. THAT sounded interesting, but I wasn’t sure that a 40-inch frog would do it!!

Then I started thinking about the photos that I had taken and began planning a jungle theme.

My first step was to clear off my design wall and mark out a 40-inch square…..

I then started printing out photos and outlines of jungle motifs. Some were from my photos and some from the internet, and the quilt started to grow….

At this point, I decided that there was more than enough to work with and I switched to fabric……

….and the quilt grew and grew…..

The frog was added…..

…and a red beaded flower….

I LOVED the final quilt…….

It is a SWEET reminder of a fun trip to the tropics of southern China!!

It’s Who You Travel With….

Back in 2016, my guild issued a Self-Portrait challenge that eventually turned into a Travel-Log Quilt.

The parameters of the challenge were that it had to….

be a self-portrait
have overall diameter of 80 inches
have a discernable patch of red

As I thought about who I was, I realized that I……..AM….A…..TRAVELER!!! And, I wanted the quilt to somehow represent that fact.

We had a photo that had been taken of us when we were in Italy in 2010, visiting the city of Gaeta. If you want to read about the day…..

A Day in Gaeta

One of the favorite things that Michael and I enjoy when we are traveling is to walk hand-in-hand and enjoy the sights. This is the inspiration photo…..

I started out by tinting the photo to Black & white and enhancing the red in my shirt…..

Next, I needed something to go around the photo, and a “Trip Around the World” block seemed appropriate…..

But, it wasn’t quite big enough so I needed to add a border……or two!!

I love this quote which has been attributed to many different people, but my favorite rendition of it is this…..

That saying proved to be the perfect finish to this fun quilt…..

Let’s travel some more….

For those of you who are new to my blog, I have been working in a series called “Travel Log Quilts”. These are art pieces that were based on places that Michael and I have traveled.

I had been consistently posting about them but realized that I had lost that thread….apparently almost a year ago!!! That is a long time with no travel!!

So, let’s get back to some trips ….starting in my favorite city of Rome!!

The story goes back to 2010 when Michael and I spent 2 months in Italy, with one month in an apartment in Rome!!

No, this wasn’t the apartment, but one of my favorite corners of the city!!!

But first, I have to return to the last guild meeting that I attended prior to the trip. At that meeting, it was announced that our next guild challenge was going to be based on our upcoming quilt show…..”Hot Threads, Cool Quilts”!! The quilt needed to follow the theme but had to have some sort of three-dimensional embellishments.

So, with that in mind, we arrived in Rome. We had two favorite pastimes in the city…..drinking espresso and eating gelato!!!

One very HOT and one very COOL…….

Say, wasn’t that the name of the challenge!!!

When I got home, I started playing with photos from the trip, tinting each one in either a warm tone or a cool tone.

I constructed a basic layout…..

….and started making a paper quilt, determining the needed size of the photos as I went…..

I still needed to add the embellishment. Wasn’t it good that I had collected gelato spoons as we ate our way thru Rome!!!…..

I heated a needle in a flame and poked a hole in the handle of each spoon and then sewed them loosely onto the bottom border…..

On the side borders, I quilted faux spoon shapes and considered the quilt finished, calling it “Hot Espresso, Cool Gelato”!!!

It is a fun memory of an amazing month in Rome!!

A long time coming….

This week I was able to mark another item off of my task board…..

…and it has been a LONG time coming!!!

I started this quilt back in 2011 after a trip to China. HERE is the original post about that quilt. The post is aptly titled “Congratulations Mrs. Arnold…. it’s a boring quilt”!!

Then, after sitting for 8 years, I decided to make it unboring!! You can read that post here…..

So all that was left was the quilting. Easy right??

If it was so easy, why has it taken me 2 years to get it done? That is a question for the ages!!

Early on in the process, I started with the straight line quilting in the bamboo and was happy with what I had done…..

After a bit of hesitation, I decided to quilt the striped borders simply….

And then I got stuck again!!!

How was I going to quilt the outside border?? I thought and thought about it and actually started quilting a few designs that I didn’t like and picked out.

THEN….I was listening to an Angela Walters video and she made the profound statement…..”If you are not going to SEE the quilting, then don’t spend a lot of time on it”!!

WOW. That was a refreshing thought and you would definitely NOT see the quilting in that outside border!!

So, wavy parallel lines it was….

I even got lazy and used my sit-down long arm to put the facing on!! The only thing that I did differently was that I put my left hand behind the needle and used it to pull the fabric thru……

And boom….just like that it was finished!!

This has definitely been one of those projects that was in my “too-hard” basket and boy does it feel good to have it done!!!