What I'm Reading Wednesday - 1/4/12

Before I get to the books, I need to show you this picture. After posting the picture of the star quilt on the design wall, I got to wondering if that were the best configuration. So, I reversed the direction of the diamonds, and I like this a lot more. What do you think?

I'll have to do some experimenting with setting squares, etc. Now, I have creativity flowing again!!

As for what I've been reading... Well, I did a lot of Christmas knitting, and that cut into reading time. I spent about three weeks reading Jacquelyn Mitchard's Twelve Times Blessed. I gave up about three-quarters of the way through. Now, I LOVE this lady's books, but the main character in this book just kept making really stupid decisions and saying really crazy relationship-destroying things, and I finally just got to a point where reading the book upset me to the point of mild depression. When I start dreading reading a book that is supposed to be relaxing, it's time to pull out the bookmark and put the book aside. If anyone out there has read this book and thinks that I should finish reading it through, please let me know.

For my parish's book club selection in January, we are reading Elizabeth Johnson's The Quest for the Living God. This appears to be a college freshman level introductory theology book that has been strongly criticized by the American bishops. When I get through reading this book, I intend to read the bishops' statements very carefully. I am about halfway through the book, and it is well written and would be easily accessible to anyone who looking for a basic introduction to the great currents of contemporary Christian theology. Her chapter on the post-Holocaust theology that emerged in the 1940s-1960s is a lovely complement to Karen Armstrong's chapter about the development of Jewish theology in the 20th century in her book A History of God.

Finally, I have to show you why I've been typing this all hunched over on a folding chair.

The lines of authority in this house are very clearly delineated.....

Cone Nebula Quilt - Editing

When I had the Cone Nebula quilt laid out on the grass last June, I saw this weird polygon:

Today, I put on the ironing board and started auditioning fixes. Here's a close-up of the problem:

Here are several different auditions of possible fixes:

I ended up redoing two blocks and not swapping in the pink/orange piece at the lower right. Here is the final view of the polygon:

I think it looks softer, more organic, and less angular.

Speaking of softer, when I overdyed the backing for the quilt last weekend, I also dyed a jersey dress in the leftover dye. This was a prepared-for-dyeing dress I purchased from Dharma Trading this summer. I spent all week looking at this dress, trying to decide if I liked it:

I had a friend stop over on Saturday, and she talked about how good the color looked with my hair, etc. She did suggest that I dress it up a bit, and after auditioning several different neck treatments, I ended up with this:

Here's a close-up:

I had a piece of pink silk cording that I threaded into a piece of lace. I opened the shoulder seams of the dress and sewed the threaded lace into the seams. I then sewed the lace on to the neckline, right next to the binding. I'm looking forward to wearing this dress.

Finally, the requisite picture of the Brat Cat, this one of her looking cute while requesting cuddles:

This is a creature who would never draw blood from a dearly loved human.... yeah, until the day after this picture got taken!

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 12

My oldest nephew graduated from high school last weekend, and there was a nice party the day before. He's made a lot of really big decisions already, and we'll be offering our auntly/uncly support at various events this summer. As I said to his mother, "He's plunging headfirst into adulthood." What a nice young man he's become!

In any event, I went into the sewing room about 12:45p on Sunday and at 6:45 I pinned this to the design wall:

It was quite a moment when I was sewing together that last block (which is the upper left block with orange, yellow, purple, and black). I really agonized about the pink diamond in the upper right. At first, I put some bright pink there, then I put the Fossil Fern pink, and finally, I used the back side of the Fossil Fern pink. (Fossil Fern is a line of fabric.)

Here is the third column:

And....... heeeeeere is the whole thing (with the third column lying next to but not sewn to the first two columns:

I dragged my husband outside, and he gasped and pronounced it "beautiful". I know that I learned so much from the process of putting this together. It will be quilted by a friend who has a long-arm quilting business. I will show you the preparation process in coming weeks. For reference, here's the inspiration photo:

There is a part of me that wants to make other quilts, using different techniques, from this picture. I have a couple of ideas, perhaps incorporating those tissues I painted back in April. This may end up being a real journey of discovery.

Within the next month I will have a dyeing day, and I will also be making some small items that will serve as giveaways at the quilt guild's three-day weekend of workshops at the end of July. It's going to be a full summer. I will post pictures as I go along.

The Brat just now reminded me that she helped yesterday. I was getting way too distracted by the peanut butter granola, so she gladly took over the bowl from me.

I had to move it off the mini ironing board so that she wouldn't accidentally burn herself. Just to show you that she's been cute since she was a kitten, here's a photo I have on the bulletin board over the mini ironing board:

(That is drying rack on which she is climbing.)

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 10

Before you read my post, please go to the Yarn Harlot's blog and read her post of May 12. Wow. I almost cried as I read this post because there is so much basic truth in there about setting priorities and getting real. I titled my blog very deliberately because it feels sometimes as though I am juggling so many things. Last evening, after a long afternoon of sewing and pressing, my right wrist was hurting. I sat in the living room with Hubby dearest and watched the cartoon programs on Fox ("The Simpsons," "Bob's Burgers," and "Family Guy" for those who watch emotionally engaging programming on Sunday evenings instead) and did no knitting, no spinning, no reading, and no guilt. Sometimes, you just need to turn off.

However, I did have a very productive weekend with the Cone Nebula Quilt, and here we see Section 10 (the last section in the left hand column) being laid out.

What I did was look at the lowest sections of all three columns, and then I projected down from the section right above Section 10 and drew fabrics from that section down into Section 10. I also looked at the lowest done section in the middle column and projected which fabrics would flow into the lowest section of that column and how they should work with the fabrics in Section 10. I didn't have quite enough of either the blue dotted fabric or the black fabric with pink and orange dots to fill both sections; however, when I flowed them together, I have enough. I think that section sparkles.

As I was working along, I did have a helper:

The Brat Cat looks so proud of herself, doesn't she? Anyway, I got the section all sewn together and then noticed this:

I have been trying very hard to fool the viewer's eye. I don't want people looking at this quilt and saying, "Oh, a kaleidoscope quilt! How interesting!" I want people to see the colors and shapes. So, when I see a corner like this, I need to camouflage it. Here's a test:

See how that softens that "blocky" feeling? Here's how it looks in context:

While I was working along on this, Hubby Dearest stopped in to chat with me about some stuff, and he and the Brat Cat had a conversation of their own:

That bureau on which she's sprawled sits just inside the sewing room door, and a cat sitting on it can see into the bedroom and down the stairs. It also holds fabric yardage, but that's clearly less important.

After I finished Section 10, I sewed it to the other three sections in Column 1. I had to get the step ladder and pin it up in the stairwell. Please try to look past the railing (with its chili pepper lights). Here's the top of the column:

and the bottom of the column:

As we stood in the living room, looking up and admiring this, I saw a pretty glaring error, but the error is hidden by the railings in these pictures. There's a small triangle in one of the green areas that is just plain wrong. I'm going to study it and see if judicious use of Prismacolor pencils or a dab of fabric paint might solve the problem - or else I could spend the half hour it would take to remove the one wrong piece, insert another, etc. - or else I could spend a lifetime being irritated at the mistake.

I hope you have a good week of it. I do try to post more often, but I'd rather post something interesting once a week than something blah more regularly.

UFO No More!!

I am SO thrilled. I first got the idea for this finished object almost four years ago when I snapped this picture:

Yes, the Brat Cat claimed the rose trellis as her turf (we were still living in the house), and I said, "Oh, that is darling!" and took lots of pictures. Then, last summer I took a workshop in turning a photo into abstract art. I worked with this photo and with a shot of the Burnside Bridge at the Antietam battlefield. (I still want to create a quilt from that photo. That's a story for another day, though.)

Anyway, here is the quilt. It's about 18" x 30".

Pardon me, but I totally LOVE this quilt. It has been so much fun to work with. Let me show you my favorite parts (as I type this, the subject of the quilt is draped across the top of my chair, purring):

I was cutting out the flattened circle for the face when I realized that if I positioned the pattern piece right, I could get flowers in the right places.... Isn't that cool? The final embellishment I put on this quilt were the whiskers. I found some sparkly acrylic thread at the store, it was then a question of figuring out HOW to do the whiskers. I got the idea to knot the thread about two inches in, put the needle in at one side of the nose, pull it out the other side, and then knot there. Those are not beads you're seeing at the nose, but knots. For the eye whiskers, the knots are all between the layers.

Those little ribbon roses? Well, six years after my mother's death, I was finally clearing the last of her sewing stuff I would never use when I came across these roses.... hmmmm..... So, it's a little bit of three-dimensional fun in an unexpected place. Also, in these pictures, you can see the several weeks' worth of handstitching to get some subtle color into the blue background.

Anyone who has ever come to my home in the last few years has met the Brat Cat - she is very sociable and very definitely a "self." Her tail is very expressive, and getting that curve right consumed an hour one afternoon.

So, this quilt shows perseverance, attention to detail, found objects, a tangible memory of our house, a tribute to my mother, and a representation of the personality of the alpha creature in our house. Hubby Dearest likes it so much that he's already hung it up where he can see it from his favorite chair - the ultimate compliment.