I finished my first landscape quilt Thursday night, in a flurry of hand-stitching. The binding, the hanging sleeve, and the label, the one that identifies it by its title, my name, and the date, all are sewn by hand. I was surprised at how quickly I could stitch all of it.

Then, yesterday, afternoon, I took it, along with two other quilts I had made already, and hung them as part of a show of art quilts at Casa Nueva. I was so excited to be a part of the show–it had rather fallen into my lap. One of the servers at Casa is an art quilter, and she was organizing the show to coincide with the Dairy Barn’s Quilt National show–an annual juried art quilt exhibit where quilters from all over the world can show how they combine tradition with innovation, expanding horizons of the quilt as an art form.

Here are a few photographs to show details from my quilt. It’s hard to see the stitching without looking closely.

And it is hard to see the tiny moose button I added–I have it situated so that the moose looks like he is wading in the shallows across the lake.

I was inspired by the traditions of Japanese landscape art–particularly the works of Hokusai–when I sketched out the design for this quilt. I always liked the way he made the human figures very small in scale, making them details in the landscape, not the focus of the landscape. That was sort of what I was doing when I added the moose–I wanted to give the feeling of a living creature in the landscape, who is there as part of the natural world, but isn’t the focal point of the piece.

I hand-colored the Japanese maple leaves; they were originally greyish-brown and beige, so I added greens, a touch of yellow and highlights of orange and coral. I used Prismacolor colored pencils–after you use them to color on fabric, you iron over it, and this heat-sets the color and makes it permanent.

The quilting on the branches was fun; I liked rendering the details of the bark in stitches–getting the feeling of rough texture with shapes that are by turns undulating and angular in lines that are very close together.

I had a great deal of fun with the water; first of all, I layered three different hand-dyed and batik fabrics to make the basic shape and color of the lake; then I added iridescent blue oil paint in the form of Shiva paintsticks to blend the colors and add shimmering highlights.

Then, using two different threads–a dark blue shimmering rayon and a heavier-weight cotton quilting thread in variegated blues, I quilted straight lines and zigzags to show the movement of wind on water.

And then there were the mountains, which were actually the second part of the landscape I quilted. I loved making the look of rocky crags and outcroppings using multi-colored heavy quilting thread–it really made the mountains come to life.

I had so much fun with this first landscape, I am inspired to make more of them. I love quilting in many different forms, but I had so much fun with this quilt–I worked on it intensely, a little every day for three weeks. I have an idea for another couple of landscapes–deserts, trees, mountains–and even some psychedelic, dream-like visions, and I can’t wait to start another one!

As Susan from the Nelsonville Quilt Company said, “I think you’ve found your calling!”

I’ll take a photograph or two of my quilts hanging at Casa and post them next week! For folks in and around Athens, they will be displayed there for the next month.

And then, Marsha tells me that we are going to be hanging quilts again in July, so I want to make another couple of new pieces by then!

I got invited to display some of my quilts in a local exhibit starting on May 15. I wanted to make something completely new for it, and I had a lot of really beautiful hand-dyed fabrics, so I decided to make a landscape quilt.

The view on the quilt is inspired by bits and pieces of the scenery we saw in New Hampshire while we were there in the fall, although I chose to depict summer instead of fall. I used hand-dyes and batiks for the main fabric choices, but the leaves and the flowers in the foreground are cut from three different Japanese fabrics.

I didn’t like the colors of the leaves, so I hand-colored them with Prismacolor colored pencils, then heat-set the colors with an iron. I also used Shiva paintsticks to add iridescent snow to the mountain peaks, darker green in the foreground and some really lovely highlights on the water of the lake. These oil paints in solid form have to dry for there days, then they, too, can be heat-set to make them permanent. Today, I am going to heat set the oil paints and then sew on a border/frame. Then I can get the backing and batting together and start quilting it!

I’ll post pictures when it is finished!

I have a newly born third cousin, named Claire Marie, and I decided that I wanted to make a quilt for her.

And I was thrilled to hear that the colors of her nursery were not pastel pinky-lilac-minty-sky. They were, instead, deep, vibrant colors–scarlet, deep yellow, true green and bright blue. I was thrilled because I knew the exact fabrics I wanted to use–I wanted to use the fabrics I had used to make one of Kat’s skirts. They are part of a collection of fabrics designed by Deb Strain, called “Fresh” and they include mod-style flowers, graphical flowers, naturalistic butterflies, polka dots, paisleys and hummingbirds, all in brilliant shades of red, orange, yellow and blue.

The design of the quilt was inspired by the traditional “Log Cabin” quilt block, which is constructed of narrow rectangles of fabric sewn around a central square. These individual blocks are arranged in various ways to create a design of stripes, concentric stripes, zig-zags or medallions. This quilt is just one huge modified log cabin block with the centerpiece being a rectangle instead of a square, and all of the surrounding rectangles cut in different widths. I got the idea for this from a recent quilting magazine–I liked the idea, but didn’t like the fabric they used or the execution fo the design–which was quite plain.

The flowers and vines are my addition–they will be appliqued to the quilt top over the next couple of weeks. I like the contrast between the straight, sleek lines of the patchwork and the sinuous curves of the appliques.

I’ll post more pictures as the work progresses.

I promised that I would take some photos of Morganna’s quilt after she came home for Spring Break, so here they are.

This one shows the overall effect, including the backing fabric, which is another batik that has nearly all of the colors of the quilt included in it, except for the black, indigo, clear blue and clear purples. But it looks great with the other fabrics, as you can see.

The thread we chose is multi-colored so in some parts of the quilt, it shows up readily, while in others, it fades into the background, so the quilting is either obvious or subtle, depending on what part of the quilt you are looking at. From the back, it is very subtle.

Here are close-ups so you can see the funky continual line quilting that Susan and I came up with for her to do. Lots of swirlies and spirals and waves with leaves and flowers worked into the design.

These designs thematically echo the flowery, swirly, spirally designs of the various batiks on the quilt top.

As much as I love Susan’s quilting, I want to do more of my own quilting work, because when I free motion on smaller projects, I can do some really pretty stuff. But on large quilts, I am not there yet.

That is, not yet.

My dear friend Amy, who is living between two homes, one here in Athens and one in Stow, Ohio. Once she finishes her PhD in Geography at Kent State, she will be moving back here, but until then, her quilting frame is going to have to be put into storage.

Well, she had me come to her place and give it a go–and she is not kidding–quilting on it is just like drawing. Even without a stitch regulator to keep the stitch length perfectly even, the thing is the next best thing to a long-arm machine. I think that after a couple of evenings’ practice, I should be able to quilt beautiful free-motion continual line-designs.

And bless her, she offered to let me baby sit it for her while she moves–rather than put it all into storage.

So, needless to say, I am cleaning out a place to put it–it is a large bit of equipment–so I can maybe quilt the baby quilt I am making for a new cousin–Claire Marie–all on my own!

This sweet little dress is probably the most complicated garment I have made in years.

Which is sad, because it is really simple!

I made it using this pattern–Little Charmers from Indygo Junction. As is usual, I changed it considerably from the way it was written. The pattern calls for much more fabric, and much less embellishment, and the way the construction is written is somewhat confusing, but as you can see, I muddled through!

And, as you can see, I even made buttonholes, which is really easy using my Bernina 440 QE’s automatic buttonhole foot. Well, in theory, anyway. The truth is, when I first connected the foot and started practicing making buttonholes, the thing didn’t work. It would make one side of the buttonhole and then would refuse to do anything else but make a big knot of thread on the top and bottom of the fabric. Nice.

It turns out that the computer chip in the foot and the computer on my machine, Heidi (yes, I named my sewing machine) were not talking to each other. They were just not on speaking terms, so yesterday, I drove an hour to Lancaster, to get them back to the dealer and they intervened and calibrated the two, so now they get on famously. And they make some pretty awesome buttonholes!

Of course, the upshot of all of this is that I had her at the dealership yesterday, and that was great. After I finished this dress, and did some alterations on that patchwork dress I made Kat last year so that she can still wear it as a top (I took off the velcro strap closure and sewed on rainbow ribbon ties, and I added a bit of rainbow rickrack to the waist to fresh it, and then I let out the straps a bit) I did a tiny bit of quilting for a plush zombie rabbit Britney is making, and lo and behold, the little oilcan graphic that indicates Heidi has reached her 100, 000 mile mark and needs to go in for a professional oiling and cleaning popped up and started flashing.

I was like, “Girl, why didn’t you tell me this while I had you there already?”

So, back she goes tomorrow. Silly machine.

But at least I got the dress done. When I tried to do the buttonholes on Friday night and they wouldn’t work, I nearly cried from frustration! But, it all went well. The dealership happened to still be open and I called and described the problem and they knew right away what was happening and told me to bring everyone in the next day and I could have it fixed in no time. And that is how it all worked.

While we were there, Britney and I saw a lovely vintage sewing machine from 1969, cabinet and all accessories included, sitting on the floor. It is in perfect working order and is the cleanest vintage piece I have ever seen. The owner of the shop, who also fixes old machines said he doubted that the woman ever used it–and that he hardly had to do anything but clean and oil it.

It is for sale and since he couldn’t get parts for Gram’s old machine to fix it, I am tempted.

Since I have to go back on Monday anyway, I will thread it up and see how it works, and I might pick it up for Morganna and Britney to use. Britney is very interested in learning to use a machine and Morganna is somewhat interested, so we will see what happens.