Sunday, September 5, 2010

Nelson


Quilt No. 73
September 2010

Meet Nelson - the Library Cat. Since he is displayed in a library window where both his front and back can be viewed, so he was constructed as a double-sided quilt.

To create Nelson’s sleeping place, I photographed a stack of medical books and recreated them in fabric. Fonts and their colours were selected in Microsoft Word to closely resemble those on the actual books. The letters were printed out on printable iron-on fabric. Each letter was cut out individually, a testimony to what a super sharp pair of tiny scissors can do. The lettering for the Merck Manual was printed out as whole.

Nelson’s welcoming backside features the page edge view of the back of his stack of books. His cat toy doubles as the quilt label.

To read more of Nelson's story and to find other Library Cats see Half Nelson.




Thursday, August 5, 2010

Half Nelson


All wrestling puns aside, this is indeed a half Nelson, since he is currently an “in process” quilt. This is Nelson’s front section, and when I unite it with his back section, plus a cozy stack of medical books upon which to sleep, he will become a full Nelson. So don’t worry about those pesky frayed edges – they will disappear in the seam allowances when Nelson is finished. Chances are he won’t even wake up.

Nelson is destined to become a Library Cat, and will take up residence in the window beside the door of the staff library at Timmins & District Hospital. He will take his place in history with all the cats that dwell in libraries around the world. Most of them are real living, breathing cats, but as you can see, Nelson is special, since he is flannelette. He won’t ever cause librarians to fret over the changing of his litter box. Nelson has adopted his very fine name from one of the most common and beloved medical library texts, the Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics.

You can meet lots of other Library Cats all over the world by going to
http://www.ironfrog.com/catsmap.html


But you won’t find Nelson there. At least, not yet.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Summer Vacation

Quilt No. 71
March 2010

I did a brief session at the guild on how to dye fabric with Setacolor dyes. I was worried about taking dye into a room where we would be showing finished quilts, so I kept my demonstration very small, using a 10x14 inch piece of fabric placed on a cookie sheet. We left the fabric to complete its dying/bleeding process on the top shelf of our library cupboard.

During our next guild meeting I pulled out the fabric, and we all admired it. Then came the inevitable question, “So what are you going to do with it?” Do? I had thought my commitment was fulfilled with the passing around of the dyed fabric. Suddenly it had the feel of an unfinished recipe. Sure the ingredients were there – but where was the completed dish?

It seemed to me that there were all ready far too many in-progress quilts floating around my quilting table. I would let myself turn the dyed piece into a quilt only if I could do it quickly. I decided to machine quilt it, since the sun was begging for the addition of flames. But what to add to this weird sunset? I thought about silhouettes, working my way through and discarding the most obvious ones, such as crows, gulls, herons, humans, palm trees, and horses. That left space ships. And so here you see a space ship bearing a friendly alien - an alien who is relaxing on his summer vacation.

Quilt Notes

The piece was sandwiched with Fusible Warm Fleece. It made the machine quilting with rayon thread surprisingly easy. A silk tie rescued from Value Village was used for the space ship and the binding.

Monday, March 8, 2010

My Mother's Prayer

Quilt No. 70
March 2010
Quilters are often plagued by UFO’s. They lurk around and slop buckets of guilt on us. But unlike the usual kind of UFO’s, which are Unidentified, Fly around, and probably house aliens with questionable intentions, the UFO’s that dog quilters are more benign. They consist of all those projects that got launched but haven’t yet reached the Nirvana of completion. They are UnFinished Objects. And they are mostly alien free.

My Mother’s Prayer is a UFO of a sort. Sometime around 1948 or 1949 my mother completed a cross stitch of the prayer, Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep. She was a young, busy mother at the time, and somehow this piece of embroidery never made it into any sort of frame that would allow it to be displayed. As Mom went on with other endeavors, other crafts, and other children, the piece got buried deeper and deeper, and was largely forgotten. Every few years she would come across it as it languished in a dresser drawer or a cedar chest. It followed her wherever she lived. I can’t even say exactly when it passed into my hands. I followed suit and stashed it in a drawer.

Recently, at quilt guild, a friend loaned me a book about making existing linens and embroidered pieces into quilted wall hangings. Eventually I connected the dots and realized that I could finally release my mother’s prayer from decades of seclusion and end its “UFO” status.
Quilt Notes

I found an off-white cotton that matched the embroidered piece reasonably well and added borders to make it larger. The outline and details of each embroidered child has been hand quilted. Likewise, the outline of each letter of every word has also been hand quilted. My initial vision for this quilt was one that included extensive quilting on the border. I spent a massive amount of timing trying to achieve that goal. When I finished it, I could see that this did not compliment the detailed embroidery - it ended up competing with it! I stared at it for weeks, trying to convince myself that it looked great. Or acceptable. Or vaguely okay. I finally gave in to reality. The quilting on the border had to be removed. Eventually I settled on an un-quilted border with a scalloped edge.