My how time flies!

My gosh!
Time flies when you're having fun!
Feels like just yesterday my boyfriend Drew asked me to marry him. Three months after we met. Standing in the doorway while my labradaughter Chelsea was in the back yard taking a break.
We met at a contra dance.
The first card I ever gave him said, Love is like dancing, when you find the right partner it's easy.
We married after one year almost to the day of meeting and went to a contra dance after the reception.

 

Here we are 21 years later, through all the ups and downs of life, we are each other's best friend. 

We still like each other, and as one of my valentine quilts says, he's the one I want to tell my stories to at the end of the day. 

We make each other laugh. 

We support each other. 

 We fit together. 

We are thankful. 

necessity is the (valentine gift) of invention

 Those of you who know me, know I make a Valentine quilt every year for Mr. Not Afraid of Color and I.
The top photo is the quilt in progress, background chosen, appliques on, stamped and painted. Waiting quilting now.
Sometimes the V-day quilt gets done a bit after the day... life gets in the way.

So last weekend we went to a Festival near DC.
We had the best time and danced our tootsies off.

DH asked if I could make a dance bag to hold his shoes so they won't get scuffed or dirty other stuff in the larger dance bag.

I had the last of the guitar flannel, the fabric I taught my 17 year old nephew to make a pillow case on, the fabric I used for dh's mug rugs, and thought it might just be enough.


I've never made anything like this. I didn't let that stop me!
The scrap of flannel was about 11" by 24" and the black notes flannel was 6" by 24"
Perfect.
Flannel frays badly so all seams needed to be finished off. I'll try and remember how I made this.

I know one can buy shoe bags but not shoe bags for dancers... so here goes...

I folded the white piece RST and seamed with a 1/4th in seam to within an inch of the top, backstitching.

I cut the black into two 6" X 12" pieces, hemmed the short ends simply by folding over twice and stitching.
Then I folded each one in half lengthwise, seamed the long edge and turned the finished tube RS out.
I now had two of these tubes.

Fold one side of the bag out of the way.

I placed the tube down on the table, laid the raw edge of the bag about quarter inch down from the tube edge and sewed a seam. When this seam is opened up, the finished tube edge covers the raw bag edge.
Topstitch this finishing it off.
Repeat on the other side.
Sew about an inch down from the very top of the black to form a tunnel for a shoe lace to go thru.

All the way across, then turn and come back along the other tube's tunnel until the shoelace ends are together.
Overhand knot.
Voila! It's a drawstring!

The tubes are free, open on the sides but all edges are finished so they don't fray.

The shoes are in there and my work to find a gift for my beloved is done! One he actually needs and will use. Win Win!

Love is a Choice

Love is a Choice (c) LAPaylor 2014

This is our 20th Valentines day. 20 years of the happiness and glee of finding a mate, of knowing that mate loves you too. We'll be married for 20 years this July as we knew within months that we'd like to go through life arm in arm. We met at a dance, and enjoy the closeness and still prefer to dance with each other.

please do not pin, copyright 2014 LAPaylor

I like to write. I want to write more and more every day. I want to express myself through words and fabric. I wrote the poem, decided on fonts and layout, printed it onto fabric then painted over it. The edges are turned, cording applied and appliqued onto the finished quilt.

I often put my quilted women in clothing I wish I could wear! I might be able to pull off this skirt. I did an underskirt of red with a lace overlay and a ribbon tie.

  Drew is wearing jeans as usual, but poetic license allowed me to do them with sparkle fabric! Shhhh! Don't tell him!
The fabric under our feet was textured yellow but not enough. I placed a stencil down and sponged gold metallic textile paint (Seta shimmer) over with almost a dry brush technique. Very effective, no? 

 More words, this time in ribbon from from the scrap booking section.

I really didn't want too much quilting. I used metallic YLI gold thread, Sulky halogram in red, Sulky rayon in blue and tan. I did a mix of echo and free-motion quilting, letting my spirit guide me as I went.

I don't like the planning of things.



When Drew saw it last night in it's  final stages, I asked what he thought.
 My engineering husband thoughtfully said, "it's good. Why crows?"
He is a man of few words.
I said, I wanted to use them, they are enjoying life dancing in red high heeled shoes! 

Of course.
love, LeeAnna

V-day three

Violet Valentine Vase (c) LAPaylor

 Ahh, my Valentine for the year 2000. Seems like yesterday...
The flowers are done without fusible, a technique I use in so many situations. They are imaginary but remind me of flowers I like. I don't let reality get in my way too often.

 Here is a closer detail shot showing the layering and arranging that goes on.
I obviously liked metallic thread from the start. Actually I used old time metallic thread with cotton through the eye of my hand quilting needle on my third bed quilt back in the 80's. Hard core!

I love flowers, and find their colors infinitely deep and mysterious. I study them, seeing shades of yellow, gold, orange, pink and white in a seemingly yellow flower. It is exciting.

 The free motion quilting is boring now, but at the time it was different from the calm meandering being done by people saying you may not cross over a line. This quilt was exhibited widely at the time, and won many awards, introducing me to a lot of people, and the guide for many classes teaching the fanciful flower technique. Most people in class finish in one or two days, so it's a fast one to do. I show others done with this technique in lectures as well.

I took the little chandelier ornaments that hung on the pink Christmas tree, and hung them from stuff on the mantle for February.

I am currently working on this year's quilt. I printed out the haiku, love it, but the ink didn't set on the fabric well this time. I tried painting over it, but now it might be too messy looking. I need to get a move on, y'all.
I am drawn to the Olympics curling and skating coverage though...
LeeAnna

V-day Hearts and Flowers

Ten Years of Growth (c) LAPaylor  50" X 50"

This is the 10 year V-Day quilt. Please forgive my photography skills, this quilt hangs flat, square, and is vibrantly colored but it's a gray day here. The quilt hangs in the dining room, so we never get to see it (snort)
We so seldom eat in the dining room. Mostly because we are tired and eat while watching a show, plates teetering on laps within poodle sight lines,  but also because I am incapable of keeping the dining room table cleared off.
Long ago DH attached a decorative curtain rod to the middle of the dining room wall so I could display our quilts in rotation. This one went up and has stayed up for years because I still just love it.
 I also have curtain rods in two other rooms for a rotating quilt show. It's funny, I can change out a quilt while the poodle is out patrolling for chipmunks and he notices the new one when he comes in!

In the moments when I want to sew but don't know what to sew, I turn often to my collection of 2 inch squares.More about that in my series on "What to sew when you don't know what to sew" starting soon.

I arranged the squares and did a heart vine border to indicate growth over the years. I used lots of scraps again, and I'm beginning to see a love of scraps here... (stroking chin)
My intro to quilting was a grandmother who made-do with clothing scraps and turned them into useful works of art. I loved her yellow scrap quilt so much I decorated my dorm room around it. It was not left to me unfortunately.



So there is today's V-Day quilt.I won't be showing all 20 of them, but hope they make you smile, and consider working in series. I have grown as an artist by working more originally over the years, by the desire to interpret some event or feeling in my work. I encourage people to show a part of themselves in their quilts. It makes them more engaging to observe and much more satisfying to make, n'est pas?
Love, LeeAnna
don't forget to check out other V-day quilts and look at the labels on the side for topics that might just make you laugh.

V-day post one

Listen to your heart (c) LAPaylor  9" X 12"

 I have made 19 Valentines quilts over the years, one for each year we've been together. I missed one year because of circumstances and my husband asked tentatively "does this mean something?" So sweet.

This quilt was way into the process, and I was having a lot of physical challenges that year as well as my beloved Bernina shut down totally because she needed to go to the hospital for a mother board replacement.
So on this year's quilt I experimented with inktense pencils on fabric. I took a piece of white fabric, sketched out my image and then dampened it.
It bled in a charming way. Then I inked in the words with pens.

I used snow-dyed fabric  which I had learned to do that year as a border. It is minimally quilted as I was borrowing a friend's machine and not used to how it worked, so I basically couched some cording, feather stitched with gold thread, went around the image, and called it a day. The hearts were some iron on T-shirt embellishments I had never tried before but they worked like a dream!

Each year's quilt is approached differently. One year I might document something we experienced, another  I try new techniques,  and others I might just have fun. Some of the quilts are quite tiny, most are larger,  one is twin sized.
I hope to show you a few of them over the next few days. See another V-Day quilt In This Post Right Here!

All of them are made with love and appreciation for my relationship with Drew. In any good relationship it feels like you just met, while also feeling like you've been together forever.
 This year's quilt is in the design phase and might be a mix of my poetry, a collage and use some technique I want to explore. Stay tuned for more. ( if you want to see them all in person and hear about working in a series with funny stories, I will come share them with your group)
For now, share the love
LeeAnna