Happy Halloween

 

It's that time of year again when pumpkins glow, leaves are flying in the air and rustling in the wind as winter approaches. 

 

Quite a few years ago while quilting on this lovely hand dyed sateen, above, I came back to my machine and discovered many small Dracula type bats looking at me.  I had not noticed them when I washed/pressed the fabric, or cut it and layered it, or even when quilting the feathers, but all of a sudden..........there they were! 

 

I had to make a decision whether to quilt background over them, or give them their space.  Not wanting to tempt fate, I decided to outline quilt them and let them have their fun emerging from the bottom feathers with glee and ghoulishness, ha.  I named the small quilt "Batzbelow" in their honor and so far all is well.  They stay in the quilt, stored in the back room.

 

Last week we got a new furnace and AC unit as our old ones were starting to fail with metal fatigue and old age, much like me I think.  Oliver had a hard day, lots of banging and clanging, new duct work, two efficient competent guys going up and down noisy stairs and in and out of the house all day. 

 

He worried for about a week now that they were either a) still in the basement waiting to spring a surprise on him, or b) across the street working on the new roof over there.  Everything is now quiet, toasty warm, fabulous.  Even my fingers are warm!  Oliver's toe pads and nose are PINK.  High efficiency heat is VERY nice! 

 

Can't wait to try the new AC that is 5' tall (really) and the highest efficiency rating and cooling capacity sized for our house that we could get.  I hope next summer I will be cool and dry and calm and fabulous instead of hot and sweaty and grouchy and no energy.  That is yet to be seen of course.

 

Hope you are enjoying the turn of seasons.  Below, a photo of "Joy Remembered," a quilt I made last year for the AAQI Celebrity Auction.  This year's quilt, "Return to Provence," will be available in this same auction in November.  Please visit www.alzquilts.org to see all the quilts made by fantastic people to help raise funds to fight this terrible disease.   I'll post some photos of it this week so you can think about it before the auction ends. 

 

 

Detail "Joy Remembered"

 

 

 

Have fun this Halloween, and if you are like me you better not buy Reese's peanut butter cups for the trick or treaters as there will be leftovers and they are not to be resisted.

 

Keep quilting!  Your work gets better every day,

Diane

 

Return to Provence

 

 

"Return to Provence" ~ Diane Gaudynski 2013

 

The entire quilt, above, is 14 3/4" square, quilted with YLI #100 silk thread on gold silk dupioni, Pellon Legacy wool batt.  The designs are based on my miniature quilt, A Visit to Provence.  Below is a detail so you can see scale:

 

 

Although the motifs are small, it was fun to quilt.  The backgrounds were time consuming as always, but in miniature even more so.  However, I like the finished result and will let you know when this available for bidding for the AAQI Celebrity Invitational Auction this fall.

 

Because I hadn't quilted much in over a year, just some samples, I didn't know if the ease and fluidity of it would be there, or would I struggle and make errors.  I think if you have machine quilted for a long enough time so that you don't have to think about it as you quilt, so that it is a natural process for you, it will be part of muscle memory and the slightest nudge to your brain will wake all that up and you will be back quilting as you were before. 

 

If you are a beginner and stop for long periods, you will probably have to do some re-learning and practice to get back to where you were.  It's something that is different for everyone, some seem so natural at it right away, and some struggle and practice but eventually master free motion.  Know yourself, what works for you. 

 

I highly recommend working on real quilts right away, not practicing forever.  I did that, never worried I'd ruin a quilt, planned each one to use techniques I could do and tried at least one new thing in each so I could build my skills and the variety of quilting techniques I could do on each top.

 

One invaluable tool for me has always been layering a prototype, and quilting on that first.  The same fabrics/batt/backing as in the real quilt in a big enough sample so I can really warm up and get the feel of the quilt, choose thread colors, practice a few motifs before I switch to the real quilt.

 

Below is my prototype that I knew was sorely needed for this new piece.  I began by doing a few freehand feathers that would be the size for the outer wreath, getting those familiar and smooth, with several shades of thread so I could see what looked best to me. 

 

 

The first quilting I did is right at the bottom, and I used chartreuse thread.  It looks fine, but......to me it looks like the blue marker I used for parts of the marked areas didn't wash out completely and stained the thread.  No matter how I looked at it that's how it appeared in my eyes, and I wondered if others would think, whoa, she used gold thread and the marker didn't come out!

 

The other objection to the chartreuse thread was these feathers have backtracking, two lines of stitching right on top of one another, and the green was so much more noticeable in these areas when compared to the next bit of sample feathers I quilted in matching gold silk thread.

 

Because I wanted this quilt to be classic, I decided to use the gold thread.

Then I experimented with gold Sparkle thread, a blend of fine gold metallic and gold #100 silk.  I liked it but it was fraying.  I used a larger needle, a #80 Jersey ball point, and all was well.  I liked it with one row of echo, then Sparkle, then back to silk.  Of course I tried out many variations of this! 

 

Later I tried some colored pencils and shaded the quilting a bit, but decided in the end I liked it without better.  Again, more classic.  You can see a bit of the shading on the rabbit in the prototype.

 

All this left me forgetting to be tense about my quilting; in fact, I didn't even think about it.  I was focused on the color of thread, how the machine was working, everything else except my quilting.  Because of this I believe I was so relaxed that my quilting was as good as it has ever been.  Compared to some I did for the original quilt in '03 on that prototype, it is better quilting. 

 

That made me feel so optimistic and relaxed, I started on the real quilt, knowing I would use the prototype space to do a few clamshells, try out the other backgrounds and motifs before doing them on this miniature.

 

The backing of the quilt is cotton, a Moda fabric from the Wuthering Heights collection, in a dusty teal floral.  I used gold silk thread in the bobbin as well so the shadowing of the gold on teal makes for a very pretty quilt back, below.

 

 

 

While I was quilting I noticed the fan was blowing the silk thread out of the first vital guide, right before the tension discs.  I attached a small pin, below, and threaded that to keep it in line.  Worked perfectly, plus I was cool with the breeze gently fanning my face.

 

 

Soon I'll post some tips for quilting that I think are something to keep in mind.  The biggest tip?  Keep quilting....your work gets better every day!

Diane