Thing-a-day.com

So we bought this amazing piece of property, ten acres, two years ago with the plan to build in a few years. It is in the north Georgia Mountains, on a ridge surrounded 360 degrees by mountains. Our entire north view (which is what you want in the south) is protected. It’s less than 1/4 mile from a scenic overlook. Magical place.

Problem is no house plan worked for us and it. So, as usual, I did it myself. Started from scarth three times to get it right. My plan has been vetted by a house designer and most every detail has been researched and decided, so tomorrow we are meeting with the builder to give him a fat package of plans, photos, drawings, etc. so he can cost it out.

The design part has been full of elation and dread (”How the heck am I going to figure out a window plan?”) creative highs and paralysis. But I’ve been there done that so many times in my life (cried during breaks when I filmed my first TV show, “What made me think I wanted to do this?” a number of awards later and many hours of taping I’m so glad I forged through the scariness.) that I bit the bullet and kept going. No nial had been struck yet, I figured.

 It’s funny though how everything distills itself into the same thing. I am a quilt designer, with 30 books to my credit. I have stopped saying it to those who know me, but truly everything comes down to designing and making a quilt. The inspiration comes. You make a first sketch, rehearse fabric, stop, start, backwards, forwards. then start sewing. it goes along swimmingly and then you get stuck. You leave it on your design board and walk by it for days, “Please tell me what you want to be?” It does; you just have to be patient and open to it, and trusting. Sound familiar? Everything in life is like making a quilt.

And the more you exercise that creative muscle the better you get at it. (Thing-a-day!)

Although, then you step out on another limb and wobble precariously. Like having the nerve to design a house.

Here are the plan and supporting materaiss, plus my mockups for the stairs and cabinet handles all ready to go to the builder tomorrow. And the quilt–still in prgress as is the house design. The quilt has been my way of letting the house speak.

P.S. Appropriately enough, the center of the house is an aviary.

I started cutting out pieces for a “Plain Spoken” quilt from the Modern Quilt Workshop. I really like this book, it’s so inspiring. This quilt is going to be a gift to my friend Cara’s almost-born baby boy.  The picture is a little blurry.  But my camera batter was on the way out for the night so, here it is.

I also worked some more on crocheting, but I don’t have any pictures of that. I decided I was finished with the circle-based hyperbolic plane and started one from a straight piece of crocheting. I think I didn’t follow the instructions all the way, or maybe I just need to keep going, because what I have is more of a spiral than a beautiful, undulating hyperbolic surface. I’m going to be trying again in a few days, I have an idea of what to do differently.

I have this quilt from my grandmother-in-law that I keep meaning to hang, but I didn’t have any quilt hangers until the other day.  I stumbled upon some unfinished ones, and decided this morning that some black paint is just what they needed.

It’s not the best paint job, but people won’t be looking too close at them.  They’ll be looking at the quilt instead.

And speaking of painting, my paper beads are drying faster than expected.  I let them out for some sunshine in the afternoon and hopefully they’ll be dry enough by tomorrow to start painting.

For my ‘thing’ today, I added the pink “laces” and yellow buttons to this small 17 inch square quilt I made for this challenge. The saddle shoes are mine and they are some fifty-three or -four years old now… does that make them antiques or just collectibles? The phrase ‘hocks and who nows’ was my kidspeak way of echoing my mother’s command to “Get your socks and shoes now.”

I wanted to see how it would look if I used the layout from two days ago, but instead of just two fabrics I used charms.  I don’t have photos of my charms, so I just used the color fill tool in Paint to get an idea of how it would look.  I would use my lighter charms in the center and the darkest ones on the outside.

This one ended up pretty, but a little too traditional-looking for me.

One more ring of pentagons on my son’s quilt completed…

I wrote up a tutorial on how to make a quilt I made almost a year ago.

You can find the tutorial here.

I’m still on a blue & chartreuse streak. 

This one is composed of two of the blocks from yesterday’s “quilt,” alternated with each other (no sashing this time).  Then I added a sawtooth border using the same fabrics.

More blues.  This is just a sampler of blocks, each made out of 16 pieces.  The individual pieces are all either squares or half-square triangles. 

I’ve actually got 25 of these blocks designed (well, some are designed - many are classics, like Anna’s Choice and the Old Maid’s Puzzle) but I’m only using 16 of them here.  I eventually want to make a Dear-Jane-like quilt out of these blocks (complete with border triangles).  I was thinking that blues on chartreuse would look good, but actually the patterns don’t always show up as well as I was hoping.  I’ll have to try this again with some different fabrics.

I call it “The Blues”:

Another layout with those Civil War fabrics…

For yesterday and today: I made a quilted throw! This is actually a belated valentines gift for my man friend. (Although also kind of for me, because I am always cold at his house) The top picture shows the whole thing, with the applique. The bottom shows the mitred corners, the neatest I have ever made. (It has to count for yesterday too, because I did all the edging or binding or whatever you want to call it yesterday, and it took a LOT of ironing. The fabric is Belinda cotton from IKEA, and I love using it to edge things because it is so easy to tell if you’re making straight edges. It also reminds me of atoms. SCIENCE!)

I’m happy with how this turned out. The fabric I used was already quilted–green on one side, pink on the other. This means that this is really a cheaty-quilt. A friend had it in her fabric stash, and gave it to me because she didn’t think she would ever use it. She, in turn, had gotten it from her mom, who didn’t think SHE would ever use it. I’d like to think that this fabric is happy to have finally found its destiny. And I had some left, so I think I will make a quilted bag of some kind.

With some imaginative work, this project also happens to fit the weekly themes of “reversal” (it’s reversible, one side is pink the other green) and “something for home.” However I can’t take credit for this, as I just saw the themes AFTER I posted the project. Serendipitous theme compliance!

I decided to try that same log cabin layout with some Civil War fabrics:

Here is a log cabin varation in red and blue paisleys:

I added yet another row to the background of my house study bird quilt today. Now it’s ready for the applique!

Instead of making a virtual quilt today, I decided to do some work on a real one.  I completed the third “ring” of pentagons today.

This is a charm quilt of pentagons using all red fabrics.  I started with my lightest fabrics in the center, and am using progressively darker ones in rings around the center four.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today I made this postcard using recycled material - foil, ribbon, packaging plastic. After weaving the ribbon together, I stitched it onto a piece of packaging plastic. The packaging material is 1/4 inch thick, with lots of trapped air bubbles… worked great for giving the heart a quilted look. I wrapped the foil onto a scrap of poster board and stitched around the edges.