sewing saturday working toward finishes

more to come!

This week I've loved being in the studio

I'm kind of obsessed with the  lattice quilt and made a lot more blocks.
I had my art quilt group meeting on Wednesday and had many interesting discussions about art and quilting, and got to see what my group members are making with fabric. There is a lot of mixed media going on right now, with layering of paper, paint, threads. I showed  progress with my SW piece and quilting.

I spent some time going through a few boxes of squirreled away ufo's and supplies, and it felt good to see some things again, happy they made the move.

I began to research ideas for this year's Halloween quilt... last year I did a sort of enormous dresden and this year I'm drawn to doing more of those, or a big traditional block quilt using lots of fabrics.

So on with the show!

Two insights this week on my lattice quilt were, if I'm cutting up a square into two triangles, then I could use two triangles from my scrap boxes!  I want the two halves to match as all the others do, so it would need to be two matching triangles for this quilt. I thought I might have a box  of triangles and found it. Sure enough someone had started a block similar to mine but given me the triangles, I suppose as there were dozens of the perfect cut triangle pairs already cut so all I needed was to find two matching ones.

see? never throw anything away!

Then I began to wonder, should I use these? Maybe I'd need them later.
Now this is an illness.
I said to myself, "self,  first they aren't precious, they are already cut and you need about 150 more blocks, what project could come up that you couldn't cut others for? they are already old but washed.
So I took them into the project!
 Good sense won out!

groups of ten blocks finished

Some of the prints have four cut out triangles that could be used to border something but I still took two for this project (I'm trying to not repeat any fabric in my lattice)

groups of ten ready to be chain pieced

The second revelation was to quilt it by check allowing me to sew the top together now. I have never done that, because, I'm a quilter. I planned to quilt in big sections and was planning for that.
However,
 I thought of all the time it would take to layer this, making a pieced backing, and the struggle to just quilt a king sized piece on my little machine. I could do it, and have done it, but... not right now. This quilt can be done with an all over design, it's busy with prints, and I won't risk hurting my back pushing and pulling it. I have others in sections to do that to, but this time, this one time, I want to have a longarm quilter do for me.

there was relief when I accepted that fact.
I have a lot of art quilts in progress that a longarm person couldn't do, because I know what the  quilting should be and will need to do it. Quilts made from my heart, original works that have a message I need to stitch in.

16" X 20" (the painted part is 7" X 9")

so I quilted my little southwest quilt to show my group.
It took more care as it's small.

I didn't want to show much of the stitching lines as it's so small and intricate, I didn't want to take away from the piecing, so I matched thread colors, used thin cotton 2 play broder threads,  and stitched in the ditch. 17 pieces in a 4" square! , so I chose areas to quilt around,

 I did straight line echo quilting in areas, I did a bit of programmed stitched suns in one 3/4" sash, spirals in another. I did measured sun rays through the curved geese at the top, and free motion sun emblems in blocks.

The painted section, the reason this got made at all, threw me.... where to quilt on sketched lines? I pulled out the only sparkly thread, a yellow metallic Madeira to create cloud lines, and a flat thin 50 wt 2 ply Broder cotton thread in medium purple to stitch along the mesa's. I might add more but might not.

lighting is off from my images, sorry bout that!

The aspen trunks are barely stitched on, allowing them to fray a bit, and stand out a bit, I love that they are the impression of trees with out leaves, with out limbs.

can you see the sparkly threads in the sky? see the sketched dashes that remain unquilted?

Now it needs a navy blue tiny 1/8" binding, and beads. I have set aside turquoise and agates to bead on as accents.
What did I learn?
Paint larger pieces next time for more impact
it's hard to stitch over sketches and line drawings as quilting adds more lines
it takes time to stitch in the ditch but it's effective texture to accent piecing
use my hand dyed cloth as it's very satisfying to work with, stop storing it for later
you never know what piece will turn out to be a favorite, so do good work on all of them, but don't over work them, allow for error showing the hand of the maker because it gives a piece character.

Linking to
Midweek makers wednesdays
http://emsscrapbag.
design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts
lovelaughquilt.mondays