One of my online quilting friends recently asked a question of her colleagues: whether we’d found adding embellishment had ever actually improved a less successful quilt.  IMHO it doesn’t; any real fixes are those that involve a bit of adding/deleting, unpicking and re-sewing perhaps – but anyway, things to be done before layering, quilting and finishing.  That’s just my opinion though, and there are clearly people out there who’d strongly disagree.

Tidal Shallows 2, 1995, 30inches square. machine embroidered with triple needle metallic thread before assembly and quilting.

Tidal Shallows 1, 1995, 36 inches, entirely beaded with tiny glass beads.

Although I have never gratuitously added glittery charms or doodads, tassels,  shells, teabags and the like, I have extensively embellished several quilts with machine embroidery, typically double or triple needle stitching, and sometimes hand embroidery; but in one notable exception I totally beaded the one directly above, Tidal Shallows 1.  Perhaps I was exhausted after totally beading it, I don’t recall exactly, but I was working on them and another at much the same time, as they all resulted from a coastal holiday to a wonderful part of NW Western Australia.  I feel the quilt was already successfully ‘watery’, although the stronger design of the two, so perhaps that’s why I beaded only that one and didn’t bother beading of further embellishing Tidal Shallows 2.  A viewer of the beaded Tidal Shallows 1 exclaimed “How watery that looks” and so I did feel my decision to go all out and totally bead the quilt  was vindicated – but in no way was it an attempt to improve ‘a less than successful’ quilt.

Cynthia's Quilt - 2000, 90cm x 55cm. Commissioned and owned by Cynthia Harvey Baker of Kojonup Western Australia, this will soon be on its way to Austria, to be exhibited in a collection of Western Australian quilts later this year.

Colour surrounds us, and every day we make choices based on colours, instinctively wanting to make wise choices.  As we take clothes from our wardrobes, the weather, scheduled activities and even our hormones influence colour choices without us thinking of these connections.   At a salad bar, the colour of a food is a factor in choice; and did you know nutritionists have found that the more colours on your plate the better nutritionally balanced your meal’s likely to be ?

When young, most of us learn which colours suit our complexions, developing confidence with colour that stays with us for life.  However others struggle, saying things like “I’m no good with color”; they pay consultants to coordinate wedding details, decorate their homes, and get their personal colours done.  When I was young, all brown clothes made me look ‘washed out’ or ill.  Perhaps because of modern fabric dyes and the aging process, today I can wear more browns;  and as my hair colour changes periodically, that also changes the possibilities!

I have often claimed that in the world of art quilts and from those who teach within it, there is not nearly enough emphasis on design and color compared to the myriad of technical demonstrations and tutorials in magazines, dvds, books, tv, online and real time courses and classes.  Many quilt makers have high skill levels in all the construction techniques required to make wonderful quilts, but can lack ability and/or confidence developing colour schemes for their projects.  Collections of new fabrics appear several times a year in coordinated prints and solids to make copying a project from a magazine possible, but without basic knowledge of just how different colours work together, a quilter assembling her own individual color scheme may not even realize when a quilt shop assistant has helped her make ‘less good’ or even wrong fabric selection.

How colours work together, “colour theory”, is a large area of study by many artists over several centuries,  and it’s a bit daunting for those who find pages of terms and definitions wherever they look for information on working with color.  To help overcome this problem area I teach a one day, non sewing workshop – “Colour Confidence For the Theory Challenged Quilter”.  Using several  different visual sources, students experience several very practical methods of devising a colour scheme that really works.  Towards the end of the workshop, as these results are reviewed, students are introduced to basic color terminology,  colour/hue/tint/shade,  and  monochromatic/complementary/triadic  etc.  with reference to a color wheel.  Without knowing any technical terms these students have already successfully put together viable personal color schemes, and for most this eye opener is enough color information to enable them to continue creating confidently without deeper theoretical study;  for others it is a starting point for further study if they wish to pursue it.  But I think everyone  should  know of these online color resources which have recently appeared out on some of the lists I read :

www.design-seeds.com helpful in finding some basic color schemes from everyday things. http://colorschemedesigner.com an interactive, ie online, color wheel  – a real strength is that schemes are presented as balanced with major and minor colours in different proportions.  http://letschipit.com is an interesting little site by Sherwin Williams, the paint company.  It’s an app that lets you move your mouse over a photo online and it will produce a color card of up to 10 colours from that.  An interesting little ‘how it works’ video, and I was all keen to bring it on, but somehow I could only sign on through facebook, and I chose not to do that.

Cynthia’s Quilt – the colour scheme was developed around several pieces of fabric from her native South Africa that Cynthia wanted included in the work.  It was photographed against a black background.

Two beauties in one day, about 30m from each other – there seemed nothing to connect them except both being so fresh and both down close to the tideline on a long stretch of beach.  The people placing them there must have been present at the same time.

I have collaged them to give a sense of approaching from a distance and then seeing detail up close.  There were quite a number of  bronze 2 and 5 peso coins on the top of these yellow pieces.   The two white things were plates of rice wrapped in cotton wool – obligingly pulled aside by the pigeons thgat had been feasting on the grain as I approached.  I never touch these offrendas as they are called.

The sales of blue candles in this country must be huge.  This offrenda about 30m from the one above was like no other I’d ever seen, in that a root ripped out of the earth somewhere was placed centre front (ie closest to the water, and that hole in the sand where a candle burned)  There was an amount of dirt, too, that I have never seen before.  It was all carefully  laid out on a piece of white fabric.  The vines and flowers were plastic, and no sign of the flowers or leaves that had been removed from the three large stems placed on the sand (pointing to the water?)   With everything weighted down by the dirt, and currently low ‘high’ tides, the site weathered very slowly and remnants of it lasted on the beach for over 10 days.

Finally, I love the very low key simplicity of this one – a round base/paper plate, with some cotton wool showing upper right side, some cooked grain, rice plus corn kernels, and several fresh meringues placed on top.  That’s all folks !

On Dec 5th last year I blogged on a study of a number of different batts available where I was living in Denver at the time, a very new quilter, it was interesrting to me to see how they all worked up given the same fabrics, needle, thread and hands working up the same quilting pattern on each sandwich.

A few days ago I unexpectedly came across them in a suitcase of old stuff while looking for something entirely different.

Each potholder-looking thing is a different brand of batting, various compositions, and all quilted to the same quilting pattern.  On the back of each I wrote various comments about the result, how it handled, and any technical problem eg several bearded fairly markedly.  A useful reference at the time, but battings have come and gone, and I no longer live in the USA,  anyway.

Even if I say so myself, the quilting is of a pretty good standard – which makes the wrinkled one lying on the top very puzzling – on the back of that one I can just make out ‘too much tension’, so what on earth does that all mean?  I can’t remember,  but I was not a total stranger to the technique of quilting several layers of fabric together by a running stitch known as a quilting stitch, and I did all the others just fine.  So, I really don’t think I would have left the piece like that – they were all bound after quilting, and then the grommets put in.  If the tension seemed too tight at the time, as would seem so from my having made a note on the back, why on earth didn’t I undo it?  The batting in that one is wool – so did the samples get wet some time and that one shrink?  Not to my knowledge – wherever it has been we’ve never been flooded out, and, anyway, they’re all clipped toegether, and no cotton batts shrank …. its all very puzzling.  Any suggestions welcome!

House block exchange, 2000

In my early quiltmaking days, 1988-1994,  I belonged to a quilting bee in Denver, CO, where I was living at the time.  The day I joined the group, they made the decision to go ahead with a house block exchange someone had suggested.  With 10 in the group, the idea was to choose a building  block and make 10 blocks the same, one for each member, including ourselves.  The only stipulation was the 12″ height limit – the width could be anything.  We set a date set three months ahead, the first week in january,  on which all blocks were to be finished and brought along to exchange.  Those three months included the busy Christmas/NY season, plus we continued on with the normal monthly block exchange for members in their turn on that list – so by the time we gathered for the exchange day we were all pretty overwhelmed with what had  turned out to be a huge project; everyone took home their blocks, and nothing happened for a couple of years !  Then one day Barb brought along hers, pieced in a square village green arrangement.  That prompted me to get mine out, and this is how I arranged them.  The brown borders are a woodgrain fabric, and I made extra trees in the style of someone’s trees on their block, which helped pull it all together into a kind of streetscape.  An odd mix of architecture styles though!  I can still ‘see’ and ‘hear’ each of the girls whose blocks all express something about them and their individuality. 

Which is mine?  The caramel coloured New England style Saltbox with red door and chimney, second from the upper row right end.  The green-roofed courthouse next to it was made by Janet Jo, a lawyer and quiltmaker who  writes and lectures on legal issues for quilters, makes quilts and dyes fabrics.  On the other side of mine is a rural log cabin/ranch house made be someone whose name escapes me, but who I never met because she  moved away and I took her place in the group.  There are three miniature hand quilted ‘quilts’ hanging on the clothesline in front of her house.  Sandy’s, on the left end of the upper row also has an actual little quilt hanging on a line beside her house.  Sherri’s house is apparently just like the one she grew up in.   Mary Ann, a southern belle from Charleston SC in the bible belt,  did the church.  Barb, who as far as I remember did not have any rural background but had an interest in pioneer furniture and equipment, which probably included barns, did one for the heck of it.   Janet chose a mexican cantina because it was one of the group’s traditions to eat out regularly at a favourite one.  Next to hers is Karen’s – either her childhood home or the first one she lived in as a bride – I don’t quite remember.  Finally, lower right end, we come to Penny’s red schoolhouse.  I think her daughter was a teacher but its a traditional block, anyway.

I think the really, really bright red she used might have brought us all to a screeching halt worrying about how her block could fit in among all the other muted traditional north american colours that were still in vogue then and that everyone else used.   It was 1988, and bright colours were only just appearing.  Eventually I hit on the idea of overspraying the bright red with very watery sandy coloured paint, which toned it down so it looks perfectly in place on the front.  I think someone put Penny’s on the back of hers, but that seemed  sad to me.  Penny was so warm and generous to everyone, and in particular she’d been totally wonderful about the very first block I did in the monthly exchange – which was for her that month.  When we all produced them, mine was the only totally different one – I’d misunderstood what ‘baskets in blue’ really meant, being a naive new quilter and foreign to boot.  “Baskets in blue” was what she asked for.  I had very little idea about all this traditional block stuff I was so newly in contact with.  But  I understood the basket pieces of the pattern were to be one blue.  So I chose a nice darkish blue print for that part.  But I didn’t realise everyone would do the other part of the patern in calico/quilters muslin as tradition dictated, so I naively selected another blue, the palest, tiny weeny little blue print for the background, very pretty.  I felt pleased with the fabrics I found for ‘baskets in blues’.  Plus, as a real newbie wanting to produce something of good enough standard, it took me several goes over the month to get it to come out to the exact measurement she asked for.   So you can imagine my mortification when the blocks were all handed in and mine was the only one with a pale blue background – all the others were cream!  Immediately I offered to make another.  Penny had no idea how generous this offer really was, neither did anyone else then, although I told them a year or two later.  However, Penny, bless her, insisted it would go right in the middle of the front, and so it did.   So, when it came to her bright red schoolhouse block, I knew I simply had to find a way to place it on the front without it totally overwhelming everything around it…a couple of others took my lead and were able to finish their house quilts, too.

Apology -I took the phoot when I was back in our house in Perth a few years ago, and because it is not possible to stand directly in front of the quilt without rigging up a scaffolding above the staircase and walking out onto it, it’s rather lopsided.  But I assure you the quilt is perfectly rectangular. And its a marvellous keepsake of that group.  They were a pretty dynamic lot and I still keep in touch with a couple of them, and although the group continues the membership has changed a lot, perhaps by 100% now, I’m not sure. It’s been a while.  I think in all our moves, so far they are the group I found hardest to leave behind…. so far.