Remembering where I'm at!

Half-assembled leaf quilt
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I've got to get going on the leaf quilt again right away. This is one of the last pictures I took of it, although I know I'm further along than this. I think all of the leaves are at least sewn to other leaves but I can't remember whether everything is 100% assembled or not. I think I might have a seam or three to go. Then the border, which is mostly worked out and I think partially sewn together - it will be sort of a chinese coin arrangement.

I've got the back mostly together for the zipper quilt, and I'm thinking I should sort of go in assembly-line fashion on finishing both of them. Once I get the top finished for this one, and figure out about the backing (which shouldn't be as much of a problem, because it's not that big), then I think I will quilt one, quilt the other, sew the bindings onto both of them, and then I can work on whipping bindings down at home at night. That's not really my preferred way to work but I think it will go faster that way, and I'm going to have a time-crunch on my hands if I don't seriously get going. (And I volunteered to babysit the guild's donation quilt at an event this weekend, so there goes several hours of work time.)

Honestly, if I can just get to the quilting stage I will feel much better. It's this dragging along on finishing the tops that's killing me. I think I even know how I'm going to quilt them - fairly randomly, on both of them, but on the zipper quilt I'm going to do more or less what they showed in the book, which was a sort of horizontal, loopy thing. And for the autumn leaves I'm going to try to suggest wind. (Ideally, it should feel like my nice neat pattern is going to blow away any minute!)

And hmm, quilting thread... I haven't even thought much about that. I'm going to have to check and see what kind of variegateds I can find!


Oh, and regarding the zipper quilt, somewhere down in my comments from a couple of weeks ago, there is a comment from Bill and Weeks (who wrote the book it's from) complimenting me on my color choices, which pleases me no end.

Later:
Is it weird that I just abandoned the leaf quilt when it was so close to finished? When I reread what I wrote, it seems kind of odd to me! I can't even really remember why - I think just mostly because I got all involved in the zipper quilt.


And one more thing: for those of you who don't already know this (I didn't!), there's a new Fab Shop Hop starting tomorrow and running all through March.

Blooming

Blooming
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I had this on flickr as "unknown art quilt" so I was pleased to find out the relevant details: Made by Ita Ziv of Israel; entered in the category Art-Abstract, Small at IQF 2005, and winner of a Judge's Choice Award. (I was not quite so pleased to find out that I had it oriented wrong. But all is now corrected.)

There is a nice piece about Ita here (in pdf form), which includes pictures of a number of her quilts.

Ringing the Changes

Ringing the Changes
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Gwenfai Rees Griffiths of Wales; from the exhibit "In the American Tradition IV" at the 2005 International Quilt Festival.

This woman makes some really beautiful quilts; if I have everything tagged properly (and I'm afraid that's a rather big if, although I'm fairly sure I got most of the 2005 ones done right, at least) you should be able to do a tag search on Flickr by her last name and find some more of them.


Anyway, I looked for a ring quilt today on purpose because I wanted to talk about my new Nibelung ring, and I can't resist the pun. No, that doesn't mean I'm singing opera - I was a voice major long ago, as it happens, but you really wouldn't want to hear me try nowadays! A Nibelung ring, in this context, is a nifty little thing my friend Columbine invented several years ago - sort of a predecessor to blogrolls and things like that - which you can use to make a personalized list of sites you like to check on regularly. And since I've been amassing a list of quilt weblogs, I started making up a ring for them. It's not really finished yet but I thought I would share anyway.

My Ring

(Yes, I put myself as the first site on my ring. I have to check and see if I have any new comments, after all!)

Oh. My criteria for this, incidentally, is that I had to be able to find something fairly recent on your site about quilts, without looking very hard. (So probably if it wasn't on the front page, I didn't find it.) It can have stuff about knitting or your cat or Harry Potter or whatever, as long as there's stuff about quilts, too. And if anybody has a site they want to suggest - your own or somebody else's - feel free to put it in the comments, and I'll sort through them later!

Baskets of My Life (detail)

Baskets of My Life (detail)
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Kelly Monroe of Arlington, Texas; winner of an Honorable Mention in the category Art-Whimsical at IQF 2005.

Baskets of My Life - detail #2

Baskets of My Life (detail)
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

(see below for maker's name, etc.)

One more QNM thing

Baskets of My Life
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Kelly Monroe of Arlington, Texas; winner of an Honorable Mention in the category Art-Whimsical at IQF 2005.

This quilt is also in the new QNM, and in fact has been there the last couple of months - they are doing it as a block-of-the-month type thing. It's really adorable when you look at it closely. I have a couple of detail pictures of individual blocks that I will put up too, in case y'all haven't seen it.


Also, Allison Aller posted some great pictures from what I guess was a retreat she went to, and I particularly love the first one here, which was made by Nancy Halpern. It's not at all my normal style or anything, but I love the way it's done.

New Quilters Newsletter (picture #1)

Dad's Lone Star
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Ricky and Richard Tims, Colorado. From IQF 2004.

I always notice when there's a picture in magazines like Quilter's Newsletter of a quilt that I already have a picture of, and in the new issue (April) there are three on the same page. This one is from IQF last year (well, year-before-last, now), and it was made by Ricky Tims and his father. I'm pretty sure his father made the lone star and Ricky made the rest, wouldn't you think? The outer parts look particularly like Ricky's work. (Plus, I've heard Ricky speak in the last couple of years, and I'm pretty sure he talked about his dad deciding to make a lone star.)

(I would also like to point out that the pictures in the magazine are in every case superior to mine, being professional and all. I don't always have the advantage of the good lighting and the best angle, I'm afraid!)

QNM quilt #2 (detail)

Shimmering Foliage (detail)
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

(I had posted the big picture of this one before, so here's the detail.)

QNM quilt #3

Radiant Roses
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

This is Barbara Perrin sitting in front of her quilt Radiant Roses, which won a Master Award for Machine Artistry at IQF 2005. (And QNM notes that this quilt will also be at the Chicago show this spring.)

Radiant Roses (detail)

Radiant Roses (detail)
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

If you click through to a larger version of this, you can see the quilting pretty well.

Unknown art quilt

IMGP1138.JPG
Originally uploaded by smartbroad.

(All it says in the original Flickr entry is "Quilt from the Schweinfurth Art Center Show, Auburn, NY, 2005")

I find this piece oddly fascinating. I guess it's just fabric scraps glued or stitched to a base, but it's got an illusion of depth that makes it hard to tell.

There are more pictures from that show here.

Guild meeting

Sandi Cummings was our speaker at the guild tonight. She does some really nice quilts but I can't say she was a terribly electric speaker. She has a new book which I was tempted to buy, but I am trying to save money right now so I didn't. Somebody recommended it to me just lately, I think. (Except I can't remember who.) It's this one:

Chequerboard Quilt

Chequerboard Quilt
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Kaffe Fassett, Liza Prior Lucy and others. From the "Kaffe Fassett and the Victoria and Albert Quilts" exhibit at the 2005 International Quilt Festival.

You know, Kaffe Fassett does a lot of quilts in that orange/pink/yellow pallette, doesn't he? I never really consciously noticed that. (I like to imagine that I made mine up out of the blue!)

Small news item (unless you're a quilter who lives in N.O., then I bet it doesn't seem small at all): Quilt Channel is reporting that the Quilt Cottage in New Orleans (which is at the corner of Nashville and Magazine) has reopened. We went there the last time we were in New Orleans and really liked it. It's not a huge shop, but it's nice.

Tokyo Quilt Festival

Lots of pictures!!

Official site
Others:
Isobe
Bemused
movinghands

(Thanks to Jerrianne and Carolyn for the links. If anybody knows of any more, let me know!)

God, I'm addicted to quilt pictures, or something. I love this one! Ooh, and this! And this! (I could totally do this all day, but I will stop. At least for now.)

Finished zipper top (at last!)

finished zipper top (at last!)
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

My bad, I posted this on Flickr yesterday and forgot to put it here. After weeks and weeks of saying I was almost finished with the quilt top, this time I really am! Go me! (Now I have two and a half months, more or less, to finish this quilt and the autumn leaf quilt before the quilt show that they've already been entered in - so it's not really like I'm over the hump. Work, work, work.)

(That last was a joke. If I'd work a little more it wouldn't take me so long to get anything finished!)



Later: I forgot to say that I did a lot of unsewing and resewing on that last seam. I really need to make sure I stop when I'm tired, I do bad quilting.

Scraps

zipper scraps
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Preparatory to posting the picture of the zipper top - this is EVERY SINGLE ONE of the leftover 1-1/2x2-1/2" pieces. Obviously, I cut wayyy too many. (If you make one of these, I would recommend that you wait and see how many of the little pieces you need as you go rather than cutting them ahead of time!) Anyway, as I think I mentioned here once before, I sewed these into long strips - as you can see, in any case - and I'm going to incorporate them into the back one way or another. The idea would be to put them between big strips of other fabric, but I haven't actually started working on that part yet.

Dispersion (detail)

Dispersion (detail)
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Carol Taylor of New York; 2nd place winner in the category Art-Abstract, Large at the 2005 International Quilt Festival.

I was looking for a picture I hadn't posted before, and I looked at the "recent activity" page on Flickr, which shows what has been favorited and what has been commented on and so forth - it's always very interesting - and it turns about that quite a number of people have made this picture a favorite in the last few weeks. I like it a lot myself. (Note, though, that the detail picture looks a good bit different than the whole quilt.)


I am now about one seam from finishing the zipper quilt top, incidentally. Or it's actually only part of one seam, even, because I stopped in the middle of it the other night - because I was tired and the blocks weren't matching up and I just didn't care very much right then. I decided it was probably a good idea to wait until later, when I knew I would care again!

Later: I'm adding this to the bottom of this entry rather than adding a new one, so as not to distract from the picture, but - look! Kaffe Fassett napkins! (That link may possibly be a little wonky, because that site seems to be flash-heavy, but if that doesn't take you straight to it, click on "Living Wares" and then it will be among the pictures at the bottom. And yup, the place really is named Mxyplyzyk.)

Quilt of the week

Church-window
Originally uploaded by Bente2005.

("Quilt of the week" because that's about how often I seem to be posting lately. Knowing me, I will probably get on a roll and start posting more frequently again before long!)

Anyway, isn't this nice? If you click through to the original, there's a link to the picture she was working from, too.


I did get some work done on the zipper quilt over the weekend. I had too many other irons in the fire to quite get the quilt top together, but I'm very, very close. I've just got to finish sewing the last few blocks together. I made things more complicated (which is par for the course for me) by starting to sew the leftover small pieces together in strips for the back. I figured I could put the strips between bigger pieces; I think it'll be cute.