Dynamic Design, Part 2

This wall quilt is a perfect example of how designs evolve.  With this one, I was lucky because so many of the parameters were already fixed. I used a bunch of scraps from Bali Fabrications and the colors were as you see them.  

First, I made all these squares with contrasting centers. I was going to place them lightest to dark. I did have vague ideas about a sun in the corner because I just had a few bright scraps.  But when I was done with all the squares and began to assemble them, the effect was too static.  Somehow, it felt muddy instead of the natural feeling I wanted.

So I took it apart.  I don’t remember if every square had been sewn, but my goal was to infuse light and twinkle and a more magical feel.  At first, I tried using small yellow squares, or strips, but that was awkward.  The heavy feeling was coming from those conventional squares.  Then I chopped off a little corner of a square and filled it in with a bright scrap and Voila!.  That gave it motion and filtered light, and a little softer magical feel.  It’s the perfect little quilt for a lot of small spaces. Like all design, and all projects really, a series of small decisions.

Dynamic Design

 A family friend, the Amazing Amber, who can make art from anything, asked me for some design advice for a wall quilt.  Of course I love to talk about design.   Just as a general thing, talking ideas will probably yield inspiration.  When people see my quilts, they ask me is, “How do you get those ideas?”

Whatever you are working on, be it a dance, a song or a computer program, the design process is much the same.  But I’m about quilts, so here’s what I think works for me.

My interest in quilts is a constant preoccupation.  In the back of my mind, I’m always collecting bits and images to use in a quilt.  They stick to me like lint.  Often, it’s a simple thing, like the perfect gold streak in a salmon sky.  Or I may brood on an idea for a long time, like the joy of a small school with kids playing in the yard. The list of people, places, and things I can steal for my quilt is endless.

Then, one day, these bits begin to join hands.  Maybe I can make something wonderful out of all of them. I may start looking in my mind stash for other things I can use, like colors or effects.  I audition these ideas on my design wall, or lay them out on my bed, and I’m up and running.  

So the bits are there waiting to become a quilt.  It may help you to have a little time, quiet and space.  Dolly Parton said that she has to escape to an isolated cabin in the hills to write new songs.  Hopefully, the quilt will begin to talk to you.  You’ll start to see how these elements go together.  Genius will strike. Or not, in which case you start again or put it aside until the creative wave sweeps along again.  I find a small glass of wine helps, but if that doesn't produce a genius idea, you don't mind.

Sock Hop

I love this quilt so much!  Tom and I were living in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1994 and he had bought a Bernina sewing machine for me.  My simple Singer had died and I’d been barely conversant with those simple mechanics, so I was pretty intimidated by this fancy import.

Tom had to go on a business trip, and I fooled with the Bernina until I could do a few simple things.  Mostly I was thrilled with satin stitching.

Since I love the scrap quilts best of all, I made these simple blocks for about 12 hours straight.  I was obsessed enough to go on to a border made of one-inch squares and trim made of triangles.  It ended up being 92" x 82" and containing a total of 3,500 pieces.

The back is my all time favorite fabric.  It looks like graffiti on an old train and says ”Hip Hop How Ya Doin" and “You’re Unbelievable.”   There is also a poem I wrote on the back that says:

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I Scream, You Scream

When I worked for Bali Fabrications, an importer of batiks in the SF Bay area, I made this quilt from their batiks for their booth at a quilt show.  The quilting was done bySandy Klop.  Each cone has an antique red button for the cherry on top.  Anything to play with buttons and glitz! 

 The poem around the perimeter reads:

“Chocolate for breakfast, and Mocha Nut for lunch

Chocolate Chip for dinner, topped with Fudgie Ripple Crunch

Mud Pie cures the blues and then I’m such a loving wife

Eating ice cream levels out the Rocky Road of life”

I wrote the poem in fabric ink, which I wouldn't do again.  I think it will damage the fabric over time.  

What a luxury to use all the beautiful batiks.  

After the quilt show, Patchwork Quilts magazine featured the quilt in a piece they did about Ice Cream quilts.

 

Later, the Ice Cream Cone quilt was included in Georgia Bonesteel’s book “Quiltmaking Legacy.”

 

My Sunbonnet Sue

My mother taught me to sew when I was about 10. She lost her mother when she was 5, and was raised by her dad and older brothers on their small farm.  Her dad taught in a little one-room school, but all in all, they lived in typical depression era not-quite-poverty.  I saw the farmhouse when I was little and I found it shockingly plain and small.  Mom's three or four dresses had fit on a few nails in the wall.  Her kindly stepmother had been raised in poverty and had nothing to teach about the niceties of housekeeping.

So after high school, Mom went to live with a beloved aunt in St. Louis.  The family lived in a big brick house in a nice neighborhood.  They ran a funeral home out of the house, not unusual in those days, so the aunt was a veritable Martha Stewart.  They often served refreshments (to the living) and the aunt taught Mom all the household arts, including sewing. Later, Mom taught me and my sister how to sew clothes and make quilts from the scraps.  

I think she became a whole new person in her years in St. Louis.  Her real name was Anna Eliza, usually called Annie.  After she moved, she only used the name Ann Elizabeth.  She thought her real name was old fashioned so she told people the Eliza on her birth certificate was an abbreviation for Elizabeth.

This is an early quilt, designed and sewn by me and quilted by my mom. I used to embroider linens as gifts for her and they were badly worn.  I added a few pieces from flea markets to make my version of the old Sunbonnet Sue. The whole thing was done by hand, including the quilting done by my mother.

I don’t know why the quilts I make often get so big!  This one is