This quilt is from IQF 2005; I don't currently have the maker's name but I will see if I can find it. Anyway, don't you think this is nice & summery? It looks like heat.
So here's the progress on the pink-&-cranberry exchange. It's going slow, but it is making progress. I did get a little more done after this picture was taken - the third block was still in pieces here, for one thing. I also replaced the center, because I didn't think the lighter one looked as good.
I partly changed blocks from the original one I was going to make because I thought this one would be easier, and it is, but it's still not quite as easy as I thought. Sewing the subunits together usually takes a while because the "side" star units - the ones with the gold - tend not to come out just right. The points tend to want to come out with no seam allowance and that's not going to work!
The blue sailboat is my mother's Friendship Bee exchange block. The part you see is solids, and then it's doing to have an indigo blue batik printed with koi underneath the boat. (That's what serves as the water, I guess!)
This is a journal quilt from IQF 2005, so that means it's 8-1/2x11" - she packed a good bit of detail into that sun. It's the first day of summer (I think) so I thought I would post something summery.
Quilt above made by Kathy Curry of Colorado. From the Tactile Architecture exhibit at IQF 2005.
I can't believe I've never put up a picture of this quilt before. It's one of my favorites. (Although maybe it's because it's not all that great of a picture. A little fuzzy.)
I have two quilt projects right now with deadlines attached to them - the cranberry-pink block exchange, due early September, and a small autumn leaf quilt for the person who won Dante's raffle. I think I said I would have that one done in 3 months, so that's... September, too. Eek. I gotta get to work.
The quilt above is tribute to Juarez murder victims, made by Sabrina Zarco and shown at IQF 2004.
So, I have had it in my head for a while to do something in a Day of the Dead theme. I'm really drawn to that style. I want to do something more or less in the vein of Sabrina Zarco's work - in this case that mostly means bright colors and lots of embellishment. I even went so far as to order stuff for it. (From the way-cool Manto Fev.)
But I hadn't really figured out what I was doing, specifically - not at all. For one thing, it makes me feel like a little bit of a fraud. I'm not hispanic, and even though in this part of Texas I'm around hispanic people and hispanic culture all the time, to one degree or another - and have been all my life - still, nobody I grew up with celebrated "Dia de los Muertos" - or if they did, they didn't talk about it much, anyway. It wasn't until I moved to Austin in the late 70s that I saw much of this style.
What I needed was a way to make this thing mine, and I think I've figured it out, at least partially. My grandmother - the last of my grandparents - died last month, at 92. It was hardly unexpected, since she had Alzheimer's and several other major health problems, but it made me think about incorporating my grandparents, all of them, into a quilt. I'm thinking now that this will probably involve pictures. It's something personal that's in keeping with the spirit of the thing.
(This seems to be the way I work - I have a bunch of disconnected ideas floating around my head, and every once in a while a couple of them bump into each other and make something new!)
Now I just have to find time to actually do it.
Here is my most recent try at the exchange block. I don't know if I said before that I found out a couple of weeks ago that we could use gold ("dull gold" - to be specific) as well as pink, cranberry and green. And that seems to have helped. This is still a very very pink block, but I like it. I'm still tinkering with fabrics, though - for one thing, I don't think I have enough to do 12 blocks exactly like this!
I really like this - it's from Moda's new "Tinseltime" collection by Arrin Turnmire. (That link is a pdf, if it makes any difference to you!) I have been mulling over the difference between prints I like and prints I don't, and it's really hard to put my finger on the difference. (This may be a future blog post, with examples!) Anyway, I do like this one, whatever the reason is.
Shown at the 2006 Lakeview Quilters Guild's Mayfest quilt show.
