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stuck

Summer has been about being outside, being with family, enjoying Lake Michigan, sailing, camping, and more. Fall has been about new rhythms in my volunteer work. Art quilts – on the back burner!

Partly, this is because I have been enjoying other things. Partly, I’m stuck. I started a series of 15″ quilts using this gorgeous color scheme that I love, but I simply got stuck. Nothing seemed to work right. Here’s where my 15’s are now.

The rhythm of these quilts feels like scratchy static. Love the fabrics. Love the ideas in my head about infrastructure, support, movement, life. Not showing up in my designs.

The fall colors have been beautiful in Michigan and I keep seeing beautiful juxtapositions in my head. With a little more time for sewing, I’ll get back into the swing of it. But, for now, I’m working at getting rid of the static and finding the images.

In the mean time, I planted these fall into winter planters which are working much better than my fiber art.

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Stash busting quilting

Our family is a sewing family. My grandma was a seamstress and excelled at upholstery. My mom sewed our clothes growing up. Me, well I avoided sewing class. I couldn’t be bothered with finicky sewing. When my daughter Kelsey wanted to learn how to sew, we found a class at the The Quilting Season and Kelsey enjoyed making this quilt. Her grandma became her expert sewing consultant.

Kelsey’s first quilt

Then I took a class in art quilting from Sue Holdaway-Heys and found a sewing niche that I could enjoy. Trekking to various fabric stores with me, my daughters enjoyed picking up their own fat quarters while mom was shopping for fabric. Fast forward ten years and they have impressive fabric stashes, but maybe not quite to their taste as young women. This summer both daughters were home and we started a quilt from their stashes. With the healthy infusion of more low volume fabrics, we sat down over Thanksgiving and I asked everyone to design one 12.5×12.5 block for me. A couple of hours later and some excellent conversation later we had this taped to our dining room wall. Wow!

Thanksgiving weekend designing

 More strips, more blocks, and voila!

the daughters with the finished quilt top
all wrapped up
ready to sandwich
We had a blast putting this together and I can’t wait to get it finished. It is destined for someone special who I’m sure will enjoy all these fabrics that Kelsey and Taylor picked out so long ago.
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Pinwheel Beach

I designed this pinwheel quilt back in March and its design didn’t come together easily. In the end, I incorporated some of the new fabric I printed for the fabric swap at Maze & Vale along with a printed blessing in the lower right corner. Originally I wanted more of a sense of trees with autumn reds beginning coming down to a serene reflection in the water. Colors wouldn’t flow with more green in the palette, so I simplified and went with more blue. The final design ended up a bit more conservative than I was hoping for, but I have to admit that I simply love the colors. Each pinwheel block looked complete on its own as I pieced the top and the khaki gray top-stitching ties it all together in an earthy way.
Now, to pick a color thread for quilting – I think vertical lines about 3/4 ” apart. Rust? And, traditional binding or a clean edge? If binding, a dark edge or blue edge or rust edge? Hmmm.

The blessing in the lower right corner:

A Blessing of Solitude May you recognize in your life the presence, power and light of your soul.May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the façade of your life there is something beautiful, good and eternal happening.May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.

John O’Donohue (1956-2008) (from Anam Cara)

(See the post here for a little more about this blessing.)