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| Can you find the quilt top amongst bits and pieces of future quilts? |
I've made progress on the tidying of the studio, partly because the landlord is sending out someone to do a building inspection (and seriously would not be able to inspect upstairs otherwise) and partly because the blocks for the baby quilt are sewn together and ready for layering, if only my work table was cleared. Honestly, the state of my studio was so bad that I had to find a spot on the floor to lay out the blocks, and spent many days walking over the completed top in my stocking feet to reach my laptop. Certainly couldn't let the rental inspectors do that, if they could even get past the piles around the studio door. I've got so much up on the design wall that it's not usable for anything else but decided the quilt top would have to go up there anyway. What do you think?
I found some of my late friend's hand-dyed "one of a kind" fabrics for the backing. At 48" x 48", the top is too big for a single piece of backing, so the largest piece gets an addition along one side.
And the addition along the bottom needs its own addition along one side to be wide enough. The three different pieces of hand-dyed are not a perfect match but similar enough to work, and pick up the blues and deep purples in the prints in the top. I've never been known to use colors and prints typically thought of as appropriate for baby quilts - pastels in blues and pinks, cute animal motifs and the like. Nope, I tend to go with what I usually work with in my other quilts, and the recipients don't seem to mind!
I've often referred to these cleanings of the studio as archaeological digs and this time was no different. The bathroom where I do my stamping and art journaling was particularly bad, and as I was collecting and storing stamps, stencils and papers, I came across things not just forgotten but that I didn't even remember buying. I thought I had most of it fairly organized, but there's a real problem with out of sight out of mind with a lot of it. I'm not sure how to make it better. Maybe I just need to do more of that sort of thing so I am familiar with what I have to work with and where it is.
As for the rest of the studio, some things did get put away, but I fear the bulk of what I did was rearrange and relocate what was on the work table to a different surface, often the floor. In some ways, it wasn't as bad as I thought, not quite so much stuff on there as I remembered, and I was able to organize and stack the bits and pieces of several on-going projects that had gotten lost in the fray. Best of all (and in some ways, saddest of all), I ran across several magazines open to ideas for quilting this current top (or was it the previous baby quilt?), plus some articles pulled from other magazines with additional underwater motifs - perfect timing but boy would I have been upset had I found all this AFTER quilting the top! I also found a group of magazines I'd put with a dvd, all info I remember thinking was what I needed to dive into thread sketching (which is on my list for this year), and which could now join a notebook (located elsewhere of course) that I'd started while watching some videos on the subject.
All this sorting and sifting reminded me once again of how many resources I have at my fingertips, if only I remember having them and can find them when needed. I think of myself as an organized person, or at least someone who likes to organize things. But my interests have become so far ranging that parts of my creative life escape organization and memory. My sketching and art journaling is a good example. I did take time to make the concertina sketchbook for my "sit and pivot" homework, knowing I had a pad of fairly large watercolor paper in the closet. What I'd forgotten was that I also had three, count 'em, three other pads of varying sizes and kinds of drawing paper slipped in next to it. Here I've been buying different sketchbooks, searching for the perfect size and type of paper for my needs when I had plenty of paper to make my own. Well, I've learned a lot from those pre-made sketchbooks, and now my memory is jogged that I have what I need to make my own, including this custom-size concertina!
Hmmm - guess this update wasn't that quick . . .
5 comments:
Love the quilt design! Do you mind if I steal it? I've been trying to think of a way to showcase my bits and pieces of Indian brocades against a dark background, and these contained strips would work perfectly for that project!
Steal away! I actually stole the idea from a photo of a kit I saw in a catalog, and changed the colors from pastels on a white background to this and altered one part of the pattern I didn't care for. As they say, Steal like an artist!
I too was struck by the exciting opportunities I saw for your grid design…….a very good inspiration piece.
I hear ya about the ongoing chore of organizing. I can only work in disarray for a short period of time before I have to stop and put everything except essentials for the current project out of sight. Days of multi-tasking are getting fewer and fewer at my age!
And here I thought my sewing room was a mess!!! I remember looking for a pair of scissors for months. Finally I bought a new pair and then I found them! I was doing some embroidery (probably the blanket stitches for my mom’s bear outfits) and I put them in the box with the embroidery thread. Never thought to look there.
Your quilt came out really well. Love the colors and the grid.
Mary, I admire your ability to put away projects and not totally forget them as you sharpen your focus on a single one. I suppose thought, that my piles on the table and floor are no better based on the things I find at the bottom of them when I do eventually get around to checking them out for the next thing to work on. Oh, so THAT'S where that is, followed by, I don't remember what I was going to do with this. ;-)
Chris, I enjoyed your story of the missing scissors - I often out-think myself on "logical" places to put thing, unable in some cases to retrace my thought process. But I also had a machine foot that was nowhere to be found for long enough that I decided it must have fallen into the wastebasket by the machine, even though I searched it thoroughly. It was a foot I didn't use often but was kinda nice but not necessary to have for certain jobs so I put off replacing it. Turns out it wasn't the wastebasket it had fallen into, but the folds of some fabric that had gone back into the stash. I still can't understand exactly how that happened, but I was thrilled and amused when I found it.
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