Vintage CQ...Flower #2

The leaves could have been a little smaller, as they cover just a bit too much of the black space.
But I have 28 more flowers to go, so I think I'll hang on to this one anyway!

Meanwhile, the gardens are flourishing. The two shots below clearly demonstrate the "his" and "hers" approach Robert and I each take to growing things.
It's no wonder we have separate gardens!

Mine is cottage-like, improvisational and spontaneous, planned but then the plans get overtaken by new growth and crazy ideas.

Robert's approach is precise. In the foreground, left to right, are the pepper, basil, eggplant, and melon beds, with the background having (also left to right) onions, carrots, the tomato plantation, and a wild patch of last year's Shirley Poppies and leeks, which I insisted he keep.

Yin and yang...it makes the world go round, doesn't it?

Vintage CQ...Flower #1

My first flower has bloomed on the central star of a wheel block.
I enjoyed creating just a small motif to fit the space.

Each one will be a tiny vignette...

The next seven months are going to be very busy for me, and I will not be able to blog about what I am up to! But I am very excited about this project that has come my way....

So my posts are going to be more spare for the next several months...I do plan on keeping on posting about the Vintage CQ, albeit at a slower pace.
And there will be garden news, and I'll be writing about my upcoming trip in August to Lincoln, NE and the International Quilt Study Center and Nebraska State Historical Society's exhibits on crazy quilts...I'll post some shots from my beloved Michillinda in July, too.

Of course I'll be keeping up with all of you, too.... ;-)
How could I not?

Vintage CQ...Wheel Blocks' Seams Stitched

I got some stitching done on the wheel blocks in Cleveland last week and on the planes going to and fro across the country.
It was enough to give me a wee reality check on my plans for the size of this quilt.

I think I am going to downsize...;-)
I can capture the feel of the original quilt and also merrily discover my own interpretation of it, without having to make it so large.

I decided to use the same stitches and types of thread throughout this central section of the quilt, so as not to distract from the nice geometry with too much clutter.

A fly stitch between the triangles, and a blanket stitch around the four-pointed stars...that was it.
For the fly stitching I am using 2 ply silk floss from Vicki Clayton. The button hole is of Stef Francis silk perle from Maureen Greason's Vintage Acquisitions.

Here is how they look pinned to my design wall.

I am going to add one more row of four blocks along the bottom.
When these are sewn together, of course there will be the flystitching to do along the seams between the blocks as well.

The black stars are so eager to have their three-dimensional flowers embellished in their centers...
Soon now!

In the meantime, the garden grew so much while I was away.
And we had our first harvest dinner the night after I returned home! Snap peas, celery, onion, spinach, garlic, basil, oregano....all fresh from the garden, with a handful of strawberries for desert! Sooooo good.

This new hod was made in Maine and purchased from Territorial Seed.
It feels wonderful in my hands as I load it up...it's going to get so much use this summer!

Terrie Mangat's "Labor Day Fireworks"

I've just returned from Case Western University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio where I've been visiting a very dear relative. I cannot give enough praise to the Medical Intensive Care Unit there...they've been voted the best MICU in the country for five years in a row and I saw firsthand why that is so.

My days were spent mostly in the room of my loved one (who is starting to do better, thank God)...but taking a break to go downstairs to the cafeteria, I would pass this extraordinary quilt each day.
By the end of my time there the quilt had become a most exciting old friend, and a true source of comfort and inspiration.

Here is its description:

I have long known about this quilt and also have been a huge fan of Terrie Mangat's for years. As you will learn below, she was influenced by someone who has meant a great deal to me in my own crazy quilting life....so I felt a special kinship to this piece and it brought me joy every day I was at the hospital.

(It is behind plexiglass...I tried to get as little reflection as possible in my photos.)

The thing with Terrie is that she was a pioneer of the fearless use of materials and processes in her quilts. While the art quilt world has been profoundly affected by her early use of embellishments, of course we know that crazy quilters had been embellishing for a century before Terrie started doing it.
But Terrie was one of the first to totally abandon any conventional aesthetic of embellishment on quilts. I doubt she considers her work crazy quilting at all....
...but I do. Her use of all kinds of fabrics, her deliberate but spontaneous piecing, her wild but focused use of embellishment, continually developing her surface: all mean crazy quilting to me.
Of course, she paints over the whole thing as part of her process, and that makes her unique.

Let's take a closer look.

She has pieced the foundation, added sequined appliques, painted over that....

Sometimes she has applied the sequins directly into the wet paint. After the paint dried she added more stitching and what looks like puff paint lines to depict the firework's trails of smoke.
Truly, how cool is this?!

Those green glass beads along the top were stuck on into wet glitter glue. I so love how she painted right over the velvet....

She used zippers.
She used pipe cleaners.
The white sequins are sewn over what looks like a pieces of a cut up sweater, and I can somehow imagine Terrie peeling off what she was wearing that day, and rabidly cutting it up because it was just right for the background of the white sequins...

It is the volcanic energy combined with the long term commitment of time for all the handwork involved that compells me so.

You can read more about Terrie in one of the fantastic "Save Our Stories" collection of interviews of quilters (numbering more than 900 now) on the website of the Alliance For American Quilts here.
In that interview you will learn that an early influence on her was our own Martha Green, crazy quilter extraordinaire and a huge inspiration to me. They were friends in Oklahoma City back in the 1970's.
"Yeah, Terrie and I go way back..." Martha told me when I asked her about this.

Terrie's own website is here.

I mentally thanked Terrie every time I walked by this quilt, for its gorgeous blast of energetic freedom. It's just exactly what is appropriate and needed in a hospital setting.....

Vintage CQ...Wheel Blocks Finished

Wouldn't you know it took about getting half the blocks done before I figured out the ideal pinning placement?

This made the sewing quite easy.

Which is not to say that these blocks are especially accurate. My goal is to line up all the corners that make up the centers of the wheels, and "let the chips fall" where the black points all connect.

There will no doubt be some nice decorative buttons sewn over where each of the black points meet. ;-)

These are all trimmed and the edges zig zag stitched, and pinned to the design wall.
The black won't dominate so much once each diamond gets its floral motif sewn into its center, and the rest of the colorful blocks surround this center section.

I'll be leaving soon on a family visit, and don't expect to be back for a week or so....I won't be posting between now and then.
But I should get some of these seams in the wheels embellished!
Happy stitching, everybody.....

See you later.....

New Project:..the Vintage CQ

For quite some time I have wanted to work with the design from an actual vintage crazy quilt, only updating it with fresh colors, fabrics, and embellishments. When I saw a picture of the following quilt, I knew it was the One for me.

I can't remember where I first saw it...maybe one of you will?
Anyway, I love the combination of crazy piecing and sane quilt piecing as well, the randomness and definite design. (My pet theory is that the woman who made this was also a sane quilter, not just picking up on the huge fad of crazy quilting.)

So as with all my large quilt projects, I start with my block blanks up on the design wall.

I like the proportions of the blocks a lot.
I don't have the border up there yet, as one of my good friends still has to come up with a piecing diagram for me. It looks kind of tricky.

I decided to start with the wheels in the center section.
Not wanting to piece those funny black diamonds, I came up with a true "cheater" version of the little 5" blocks, one that has the advantage of no bulky seam allowances too. This will come in handy when I am embroidering all those nice black diamond areas...it's nice and flat under them.

Each block is roughly laid out with pre-sewn half-square triangles.

I only need to square up one of the four corners.

Then I adjusted the lay-out, just barely overlapped them, and ran a zig zag down the center seams.

I was off and running....

...while getting reacquainted with my stash, which was really fun.

Next is to applique those black diamond shapes, which will turn these blocks into wheels.

I started with the exact finished shape cut out of freezer paper.
I ironed it onto the black dupioni silk and cut it out with roughly 1/4" extra seam allowance.

Using the freezer paper as a guide, I ironed under the extra fabric. Then I peeled off the freezer paper.

I pinned on my shape and machine appliqued it in place using a fine black thread in a narrow zig zag stitch.
This is not exact...but all these seams will be covered by little stitching, and this is supposed to look vintage, not 21st Century Quilt Police Perfect.

You can see the wheels starting to emerge.
When all the blocks are trimmed and sewn together this will look quite cohesive.

But I am not planning on assembling them right away.
I personally feel that part of what adds to the "vintage" look in crazy quilting is the way each block has been worked on independently, and then all the blocks are joined together in the end.

In recent projects, like the Spring CQ, I've been exploring the look you get when you assemble the entire top first...it has a more controlled, unified look. But this time I just want to be able to grab a stack of little blocks and add seam treatments any which way, "working the stack", as Martha Green would say. It's perfect stitching work for under the trees next to the hammock! Or on an airplane....and is the kind of project that can be interrupted and taken up again, not necessarily pursued in one sustained effort.

Before I start any embroidering, I do think I will piece the rest of the quilt blocks (not counting the already dreaded border). But first I have 20 more diamond shapes to go....