One more string quilt

                   (112x152cm)

The theme, of course, is Confinement. Though I hate being told to stay home or die, it has been a productive month, and I thank my lucky stars that I am an obsessive stitcher and maker! Please stay well, all of you.

 

 

Update, December 2020. I’ve never been convinced by that manic central medallion, so I did something radical and kind of thrilling, and removed it! Pulled out the section’s hand stitching (easier than I thought), and lifted the central rectangle right off the front. Basted its replacement in the vacated spot, and restitched– easy peasy! I think I’ll rename it, “The days are getting longer…”

String quilt (aka “the colorful one”)

“Social Distancing” has been the order of the spring, and for me this has meant the imperative of retreating to my studio, closing the door, and drifting off to some other dimension–how lucky is that? Here is my latest quilt–the many days of hand stitching of front to back finally finished!

                                   (111x125c)

Before now, I had never really noticed, let alone tried making, a “string quilt”,  typically constructed of one inch strips of fabric, which you stitch to each other, or onto a piece of paper to stabilize them. Once your paper-backed blocks are assembled, you rip off the paper backing.

Below is the back of one of the blocks, with most of the paper removed along the stitched “dotted lines”. Most of the scrap paper around here is misprinted music..it pleases me when both my Muses show up for work on the same project!

and here is the front of one of the blocks….

Detail of front hand stitched to back (with a layer of cotton batting in between)….

My original idea for this quilt was to make isolated blocks, socially distanced (get it?), but I got over that, and surrendered to the joy of combining colors. You can do so much with a fairly limited palette and a one inch strips rule!

 

 

My three biggest quilts

Seriously big, for a hand stitcher…and suddenly there is the winter, gone!

124x165c

141x171c

130x174c

 

 

A slide show of small quilt experiments

I have kept my nose to the grindstone this past year, exploring the world of piecing, stitching, quilting, improv!  Here are some of the small pieces I’ve made to see “what would happen if….”, to try out some new tricks, colors, and attitudes, to have some fun, to think about presentation. This slide show is their first “public” outing, and I am looking forward to seeing which ones still interest me after their long hibernation!…

I will make a second slideshow for BIG, once the wind dies down and I can photograph the larger pieces outside.

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Is there a quilter in the house?

I have spent nearly a year and a half obsessed with quilting. It all started with a cluster of babies born to our nieces and nephews, and I thought, “Baby quilts? I can do this! Just take a piece of cloth and sew it to another piece of cloth, and voila! Baby present, without ever ‘casting on’!” It was fun: first there were strip quilts, aka “popcorn quilts: you start making them and you just can’t stop!” Fun for a while, but after the initial buzz, it does get a little repetitive.

But it’s exciting putting colors together, and you are learning how to finish the edges, and getting really good at threading bobbins. Maybe if you tried turning a corner with the strips? By now I was working my way through Myrna’s stash of fabric, and going easy on my shrinking supply of hand painted cloth. The Blue Period!

(Three mamas were kind enough to send me photos for my scrapbook!)

By the time we learned that we were going to be granted a final grandchild ourselves, I knew the drill, but I was running out of fabric… how hard it is finding plain colored cotton here without cute little froggies and daisies and duckies! I managed to gather some primary colors, but when I put them together they were noisy, and I had to reign them in with white paint. That was a little scary, but I think it did the job….

The next quilt was supposed to be a reading puzzle for Emma’s big brother. I’m not sure anyone figured out what it said or how clever it was, but I had a hell of a time fitting those angles and tucking in raw edges. This is when I remembered You Tube!

A quick search of the Internet revealed the tried and true layouts –the medallion, in which you start from the center and build out; the grid. There are delightful swinging jazzy variants of both that make your heart sing (see The Quilters of Gee’s Bend); and then there are the others. I wanted jazzy/improvised, but, please, without the Gee’s Bend poverty. How easy it looks!

This “medallion” seemed like such a daring departure then, however mild it seems to me a year later. It was kind of thrilling using irregular strips, and surprise color changes. (Hey! You do what you can with a limited palette.) This quilt was the first to have its whole surface plastered with hand stitching. I hadn’t realized you were supposed to do that! but I do enjoy the  s  l  o   w    s  t  i  t  c  h  i  n  g  , after the manic combining of colors in the first phase. It was at this point that I decided I’d better make another fifteen quilts, and figure out how this quilting thing works once and for all.

The next quilts investigate the grid, and timidly approach curvy lines, which twenty or more You Tube Tutorials were just waiting to teach me. (Blessings on you, You Tube!)

 

After working obsessively on this bunch,  I really needed to come up for air…it was time for something with a severely limited palette, lots of negative space– lots of space, period. But then the result looked so blank that I scribbled all over it…. and though I planned to do as few running stitches as possible, I seem to be hooked on the dense texture, and couldn’t stop….

But that’s OK, “There are no mistakes”.

 

Next, a dip into the more regimented world of triangles and diamonds…

and then what felt like a relatively freed-up composition, featuring two yards of striped cloth I found in Roma.

Then two with cloth I scribbled on with discharge dyes, a process in which you remove rather than add color. I will probably experiment more with that….

 

and finally, the current quilt, which I thought was finished, but which I continue to stitch. Once you fall for texture, it seems there is no turning back!

And there we have it–the whole year that has passed since I last posted here! (I am better at Instagram these days; you can find me at betsylahaussois.) It has been a single-minded and happy year, and I will continue to explore this quilting thing. I have completely fallen for the Improv Quilt approach–no planning, no precision– just begin, and react to what you see before you. I see that there is a Big Quilting Industry out there, designing color ways and selling patterns and special gadgets and frames, but they are not for me. I will continue to court the serendipitous scrap, and joyously take risks that are not life-threatening, but life-enhancing!