Full Moon

Full Moon 

Quilt No. 133

October 2020

I can't help but feel that this quilt is a complete cheat.

One of the many fun parts of belonging to a quilt guild is doing the challenges. Recently, we did an “ugly fabric challenge”.  Participants brought in a piece from their stash, something that they considered to be ugly.  A draw ensued and each person received their “ugly” fabric, with no restrictions as to how it was to be used, except that it had to be recognizable in the final piece.  In other words, no over-dyeing or cutting it up into confetti-sized pieces, or using it on the back.  It had to be legit.

Some doozey fabric swatches came in, and since the person who donated each piece was not identified, even the purple fabric that looked so attractive in the 1980’s was game. That one, despite the randomness of the draw, went to the purple-hating quilter. Of course.

The piece I donated was viewed by several quilters as “quite nice” and “not ugly at all”.  There was even a comment of “Gee, I really like that one”. I viewed it with fresh eyes and decided that, yes, it was not nearly as unattractive as I had thought. I started to feel a teensy bit sad that I was letting it go.  Hadn' I once loved that fabric? Later on while combing through a drawer of fabric at home, I found that I had given away the wrong piece, and the one that was truly ugly was still grinning at me from the drawer. 

I was hoping to receive something I could really get my teeth into. But when my name was drawn I got a lovely piece of fabric. How could anyone ever view it as “ugly”?  However, while it was not exactly ugly, it did not easily lend itself to the creation of an art quilt. Doing a landscape scene and using it for a shrub or two seemed inadequate. I couldn't come up with an idea of what type of block quilt I might use it in. So, it was ultimately very challenging, and I could not come up with a single idea.  As the pandemic descended upon us, and guild meetings ceased, my thoughts turned elsewhere and the ugly fabric challenge was completely forgotten. 

Months later the guild reconnected via Zoom. There was no ducking it, the ugly fabric challenge was still on the agenda. With a deadline!  I had to dig down through the piles of UFO’s (Unfinished Objects) and USO’s (Unstarted Objects) that weighed down my quilt table and spilled over onto the floor. The pandemic and all of its uncertainties had not been conducive to creative quilting. But it sure had been conducive to creating a giant mess as I tried to come up with something I could work on (other than masks!) that would pull me out of a grinding feeling of despair.  Eventually, a pregnancy (not mine!) came along to save me, and a baby quilt was needed. As I completed this simple project, I noticed the yellow fabric had befriended the so-called “ugly” fabric in the pile.  It made me think of a rising moon with its pale yet inviting yellow tone.

The baby quilt that "saved" me.

The “ ugly” fabric, while not ugly, faithfully lived up to its ability to challenge.  No style of machine quilting and no thread had any visual effect whatsoever.  Metallic thread, Superior Glitter thread, rayon thread – all were simply eaten up in the lush busy-ness of the fabric.  So be it.  I let it gobble up the quilting and have its way.  

It’s never a good idea to argue with fabric.  And while I felt like I was cheating by having a non-ugly “ugly fabric”, the piece was defiant enough to give me a good challenge.  Mission accomplished!

After the Fire

Quilt No. 124
August 2018

Ah, summer.  Hot weather, such hot weather.  We’re supposed to enjoy a pleasurable wallow in this sweaty scenario, but it can’t all be Popsicles and gallon jugs of sunscreen.  While summer does lend itself to many appealing options for activities, quilting is not always one of them. Often it's just too hot. Of course, you can always take your quilting stuff outside, but it’s usually even hotter out there than it is indoors.  On the plus side, the light is usually better out there, so at least you don’t need to drag your OttLite with you. Forget about the ritual slathering of the sunscreen.  A few dabs of that on a quilt and it will easily collect enough dirt to take first place in the County Mud Pie Contest.

Short of indulging in madness, it’s pretty hard to deny that we are in the grip of climate change.  Each year the extreme weather events notch up a little higher on the scale.  In this summer of 2018, hundreds of forest fires in British Columbia Canada have given that pristine area the worst air quality in the world.  It’s so smoky that tourists can’t even find the mountains.  People are forced to hunker down indoors hugging their air filters.  Two thousand kilometers away in the middle of Canada, Manitoba is sharing that bad air quality thanks to the prevailing winds.  Here in Northern Ontario numerous fires threaten remote communities. Pleas have gone out to forest fire fighters trained in previous seasons to rejoin the effort.  All these brave souls here and in other countries will put their safety on the line to protect communities and populated rural areas.  But not everything can be saved. For decades to come, people will be shocked when driving through these burned over areas, the war zones of climate change.  And while fires have always been a natural part of the life cycle of the forest, it’s still a bitter pill to swallow when we see an area completely spoiled with blackened trunks and exposed rocks. 

I wasn’t actually thinking about how any of this related to quilting when I started the quilt that became After the Fire.  By late June it seemed that every quilt I had started had become too large/hot/sweaty/complicated as I gave in to my usual battle with heat induced Summer Funk. The only way for me to power through this annual take down was to sweep all current projects under the bed and start a new one. At least they could keep the dust bunnies company under there. The enthusiasm of a new project can sometimes bring a full halt to Summer Funk.  But on the down side, pulling together a new bunch of fabric requires soooo many, many watts of heat-releasing brain power. 

To avoid having to sift through drawers and boxes of fabric, I turned to my scrap bag.  My beloved scrap bag has burgeoned into a bloated whale that would scare Captain Ahab out of his socks and into a diaper.  It even has a companion bag that holds all the scraps with fusible ironed on the back. Mixing ready to fuse fabrics with plain fabrics is guaranteed to ruin your iron, your ironing board cover, and your good nature.  Like church and state, the only chance for sanity rests in keeping these things strictly apart.

With no particular idea in mind I pulled out scraps, favouring the blue ones.  Hmm, didn’t these resemble sky and water when laid horizontally in rows.  Next, my eye fell on the wood grain fabrics.  There were only a few narrow strips left, since I’d used these in several other quilts, most notably LM + BD.  What wonderful bare tree trunks these fragments would make…

 

Preliminary fabric layout.

I had also recently acquired several fabrics from a friend’s collection. Her sand coloured fabric was the perfect sand/rock fabric I needed!  I also liked the piece of lace she had saved, and wanted to include it as part of the quilt.  And so…another Scrap Bag Challenge quilt was born.  As it took shape I could see how much it resembled the look of a forest after it had been swept by fire.  When this happens there is a long pause after the trauma of burning and before the green begins to shyly creep back.  Bit by bit life reclaims its territory.  It’s a humbling and patience-inducing experience to watch this process of forest renewal.   

Like real tree trunks, the ones on the quilt have a variety of colours, due to different dyeing sessions for previous quilts.  Here they ended up looking like different tree species.   I used Derwent Inktense Pencils to darken shadows on the left-hand side of the trees, and to enhance the shadows on the ground.  Machine quilting with silver metallic thread added light to the right-hand side of the trunks.  The lace? Well, such a serious topic needed some sort of whimsical element. Lace, like life, will always find a way.

The Fox Gets a New Home

Quilt No. 99

Ahh, the early 1980’s.  They were the Crewel Years.  Every department and craft store had a tantalizing selection of crewel embroidery kits.  It was a welcome change after I’d knitted an ocean of sweaters, a platoon of Christmas stockings, and crafted enough Christmas decorations that, three decades later, I still have too many to display.  

Crewel embroidery kits came complete with everything you needed to finish the project. The cloth was delicately stamped with the picture.  Ample amounts of wool in all required colours was included.  This came in one giant hank, like a horse tail, and the first task was to separate out the medium green from the light green from the very light green.  Sometimes they even threw in very very light green.  Separating the colours could take a whole day and would have my mother and I debating rose vs coral vs fuchsia for hours.  The kit would also include a complete set of detailed instructions on how to make every type of required stitch. No matter how many kits you did, they always came up with novel stitches – herringbone, threaded backstitch, closed featherstitch.  Final details were added in with embroidery floss.  The smaller kits thoughtfully included a little plastic frame so that you could get your project ready for display without that time-wasting trip to the store. 

For those with very dexterous hands and the eyes of a sharp shooter there were also extremely tiny embroidery pictures to complete. These ones used only skinny embroidery floss, which came in a 6-stranded format and often required the use of a single thread-like strand for a particular area.  Those kits required gobs of patience and the same quantity of light as your average hospital operating room.  Such was making of The Fox. 

Sometime in the early 1980’s I gave the completed, plastic-framed fox to my sister.  Years went by, and she subsequently gave it back to me.  The circumstances surrounding both situations elude me.  And, yes, she will be horrified that I don’t remember.  Geez.  I made the fox.  What more does she want?  She will give me the complete fox history, and I, having failed to file away those crucial historical details, will be compelled to believe whatever she tells me. 

Despite his meandering life path, I still liked the fox and was happy to have it back in my possession, even in its dated plastic frame.  I threw that away.  I cut around the fox leaving a narrow seam allowance to use when I appliqued it to….I couldn’t think of anything.  I thought I might add it to a postcard quilt for a friend who had moved away, and casually mentioned this to my sister.  Surprisingly enough, she completely lost it.  The last time she had become that mired in emotionality she was at the altar getting married!  Who knew the fox was that important?  I was forced to re-think my position.  I abandoned it in a box of embellishments where it could share equal time with all that other stuff I felt guilty about not using. 

As per usual, years went by with the “in progress” fox in limbo.  One day a quilting friend called me over to her place to share in a windfall.  She had come into possession of a large box of fabric.  Most of these were fabrics of the “outcast” variety.  They were not cotton. Quilters generally worship exclusively at the altar of cotton.  I’m a little more inclined to stray outside of the all-cotton rule, so she kindly shared the box of deliciously slippery shiny fabrics with me.  

There were all kinds of taupes and related colours.  So intriguing!  I cut lengths from several pieces and sewed them together in aimless curves and ended up with a whole lot of sew-what.  I thought maybe the fox could help me out, but I wasn’t sure just how.  

My friend had also given me the fabric I ultimately used for the trees in this quilt.  She described it, and I agreed, as a piece of fabric that was just too special to cut up. The fat quarter (a 20x22” piece) was terrorizing her – too beautiful to use, too beautiful to not use.  It was too small to use in a large quilt, too big to waste.  I have a largely undeserved reputation for bravery with scissors, so she felt the fabric had a better chance of finding its way onto a quilt if she gave it to me.

For quite a while the fox and the enchanting slippery fabrics went back and forth to my cottage in the box I take with me every summer weekend.  One Saturday, a blue fabric that was under consideration for another quilt ended up tucked next to the stalled fox project.  It was fabric love at first sight – the dark blue provided the missing element that the fox had long dreamed of, and the creation of the fox’s new home was on its way.  

So, who got the quilt after the fox found his new home?  Well my sister, of course.  I figure I have a couple of decades before she gives it back to me.

The Mystery of the Charmed Quilt

Quilt No. 90

March 2013

When I found out that there was Nancy Drew fabric, I simply could NOT believe it.  Sure, I expected to find Harry Potter fabric and Star Wars stuff, but... Nancy?!  Incredible! 

To me, Nancy is the most potent source of nostalgia in the universe – my introduction to actual “books” and the world of mystery!  Who knew there were mysteries going on that people – girls the same age as my sister – were out there solving!  Of course I pictured all this “mystery” as going on somewhere in the “United States of America”, known only to me through the mimeographed map from school – the one on which I’d laboriously printed all the states and all two rivers (Mississippi and Missouri).  Nancy lived in that wondrous, far flung place where each state was a different colour!  And there was more.  There could be hidden staircases!  Surely there was one somewhere in our tiny house – I just had to be diligent, and smart, and I would find it. 

This quilt was made for my friend Bill, a truly loyal Nancy Drew fan, collector, and expert on all things Nancy.  Bill never fails to take the adversities that life unfairly tosses his way and find his own silver linings.  I felt that this deserved some sort of reward.

And so... The Mystery of the Charmed Quilt came into being.  Why “Charmed”?  The Nancy Drew squares were purchased as pre-cut 5x5” squares, called “charm squares” according to official quilting terminology.  I went with a white background, and of course, yellow was a given.  It’s the colour I most associate with the covers of the classic Nancy Drew books.

As for the hidden staircase, I never did find it, but I haven’t given up looking where ever I live. I might just find it yet.

Quilt Notes

This quilt was quilted once, unquilted, and then quilted again.  My first attempts at machine quilting along the edges of the blocks, or “in the ditch” as quilters refer to it, were disastrous.  The skills I’d mastered for free motion quilting were of no help whatsoever.  Apparently ditching it is a whole different skill set.  My first lines meandered like a tired river, but as a testimony to my blind stubbornness, I just...kept...going.  My plan was to rip out what I didn’t like later because it would only be a few lines of stitches...I would master the skill any second.  Well, any minute.  Well, any hour.  Or maybe not.  The lines wandered around like drunken ants trying to escape the Raid factory.  And still I kept going, thinking - like so many fools in a bar - that my prize would look better in the morning.  

It didn’t.  

I decided to check out YouTube to see what I might be doing wrong.  Turns out - pretty much everything.  So I turned back the quilt clock by ripping out all the machine quilting.  I won’t say how long this took, but I did get  more than one movie under my belt as I sat there picking out the stitches.  My next attempt went better as I carefully folded the quilt prior to stitching so that it wouldn’t pull all over the place.  I shortened my stitch length, went slowly, oh so slowly, and used a super sharp Microtex needle.  

The results were far better, still not perfect, but as any quilter (believer or not) will tell you, only a Higher Power can make a perfect quilt. The rest of us can only give it our best shot.

The Happy Nine Patch

Quilt No. 82

February 2012

In the fall of 2011 our quilt guild president announced this year’s challenge. We were to do a nine patch quilt. Apart from that, there were no limitations – it could big or small, conservative or wacky, or any variation of the nine patch we wanted – whatever suited our personal styles.

Challenge quilts are kept secret until we do our “reveal”. Our guild has a variety of quilters, who do every possible type of quilting imaginable. That’s the great thing about quilting – you could go on for a lifetime and never come to the end of the permutations of what can be done with a pile of fabric and a sewing machine, or a needle and thread. It’s like composing music – the possibilities will never be exhausted. I actually used to worry that this could happen when I was a kid – that musicians would finally come to the end of every conceivable combination of notes. I speculated that by the time I was ten years old, no new songs could ever be created again. I would have to listen to the Beatles singing about wanting to hold my hand in perpetuity - maybe not such a bad thing but there was the outside chance that it could get tiresome. Thankfully, creative pursuits are by their very nature unlimited.

Quilters are interesting creators because they can “think” in blocks. They can take shapes and break them down into clever components and come up with the pieces that will yield a perfect square representing anything from a flower to a compass to a cow. It’s something I have no talent for whatsoever. But I do like to take a concept, or an idea, and express it with fabric.

I decided my “nine patch” would be different. Traditionally a nine patch is a grid that is 3 blocks high and 3 blocks wide. The most common nine patch you’ll see is a tic-tac-toe game. Nine patch blocks can be re-arranged or re-cut to form an endless number of quilt variations. The previous summer I’d done a nine-patch quilt, and to save myself from embarrassment, let’s just say it was a less than happy experience. This time I wanted to have a happy nine patch experience - without the blocks. I just wanted the nines.

And so...the Happy Nine Patch was born – a group of cheery numeral nines cavorting on a lawn that is composed from a single silk neck tie. With a little creative piecing, I was able to make the borders from the same tie. The sky is a hand dyed piece, machine quilted to enhance the clouds. Additional machine quilting on the borders keeps the Happy Nines in their place.

Julie's Garden

Quilt No. 81

December 2011

I spy with my little eye...Julie’s Garden! Who hasn’t spent a pleasant evening or car trip using their little eye to spy objects beginning with a selected letter of the alphabet? In the car Dad would say “I spy with my little eye...something that starts with “H”! I would yell from the back seat “HEAD! It’s the back of your head!” He would of course say yes, both of us ignoring the logic that he couldn’t exactly see the back of his own head - even if he wasn’t driving the car! So when I saw a pattern for an “I Spy” quilt I was hooked. I was like a fish that had swallowed not only the hook line and sinker, but the whole boat. I was obsessed, dragged unwillingly into the bosom of the crack-cocaine of quilting – the “I Spy” quilt. Sometimes it happens that way – a quilt that wasn’t even a thread on your horizon yesterday highjacks your psyche, making you decline food, water, air, chocolate. There is no mercy.

As an art quilter I have a massive collection of fabric bits and pieces. And all these fabrics have only one thing in common. They're all weird. For example, I have a tiny drawer filled with fabrics that are all either rocks or stones or bricks. I call this my masonry drawer. My untamed assortment of fabrics goes on and on like that – a drawer of Africa, a box of reds, a bag of music prints, two boxes of postcard quilt fabric (one labelled “Christmas” and one labelled“Not Christmas”). So when I came across a quilt pattern where I could use these wildly differing fabrics I knew I was at the cusp of quilting Nirvana.

By cutting a 3.5” square hole into a piece of cardboard, I was able to “spy” a perfect picture for each of the 120 blocks of the central portion of the quilt. It was almost too much fun, as though my rotary cutter and I had been unleashed in an endless garden of free fabric. I threw open all my drawers, bags, and boxes of fabric and began furiously cutting out squares. Flowers, fish, dogs, moose, snowmen, giraffes, books, bears, boats. Waldo. Yes, even Waldo – the “I Spy” theme reminded me of all the hours I had spent finding Waldo in those clever books with my daughter. My little eye definitely needed to spy something that started with “W”.

The inner border and outer binding strips also gave me a chance to use some of the fabric from my collection of “transition” fabrics. I buy these every time I see them – the gradual colour change across the fabric as it transitions from one colour to another makes these invaluable. I can nearly always find the exact shade I need in one place or another on a transition fabric. This explains why mine are full of holes – I usually need only a little piece, and so I extract a chunk here, and a snippet there. The quilting moth strikes again. For this quilt I was able to use a transition fabric in continuous strips, showing off its lovely subtle colour changes.

The outer border forms the boundaries of the garden. These gorgeous green prints from Brazil, a gift from Cris and Becky, are what bring the whole quilt together in a wonderful blending of fabric and family. I thank them both for indulging my passion for fabric with these treasures from the other side of the equator!

Blue Collar

Quilt No. 77

September 2011

If nothing else, this quilt is a testimony to my tenacity. It spent just under two years “stalled” in one phase after another, passing through an almost infinite number of iterations – some good, some bad. Almost every piece was added on and then taken off - two, three or more times. I left the whole thing suggestively close to the garbage can more times than I’d like to count. And yet, finally, the end result did emerge.

The song Blue Collar, by Bachman-Turner Overdrive was the starting point for this quilt. While this song is much less well known than their iconic Takin’ Care of Business, it is my personal favourite from their repertoire. It’s an unusual rock-jazz fusion, or at least that’s my guess – I’m not exactly an expert on music genres. Perhaps it’s Fred Turner’s lyrics rather than the music that makes Blue Collar such an intriguing theme.

In the song, a blue collar worker on night shift implores daytime workers to withhold judgement of his world - a world they have never experienced. While the daytimers are snoozing, and maybe even looking down their noses at the blue collar workers who toil at night, they're missing out on the mysterious beauty of the city at “four in the morning.” To that end, I’ve tried to create a night time city scene that celebrates the world of this blue collar worker. He sits on a park bench with his lunch pail at his side. Fish frolic in the fountain, and flowers and trees are bathed in the lights of the fountain and surrounding city. A full moon in a “diamond sky” overlooks an array of tall buildings and trees.

Quilting Notes

The buildings have an odd, fanned-out perspective that differs from the perspective of the objects in the park. This was quite challenging and meant that I could not add in objects between the park and the buildings since these would have required yet another perspective. Much too crazy/impossible!

Two fabrics were used for the buildings. One was a silk tie patterned with blue oval shapes. When taken apart, a neck tie has a much larger quantity of fabric in it than you might imagine. It was kind of tricky to find a fabric for the solid coloured buildings, but I eventually settled on a placemat that Fabricland was selling for practically nothing – I could see they were desperate to get rid of it. I machine quilted the placemat buildings with blue thread to harmonize them with the tie fabric buildings.

The blue trees near the buildings also came from a single silk tie, yielding two shades of blue by using both the back and front of the fabric. This tie was a freebie from my Quilt Guild. It was intended to be used in a bow tie block . When I went to cut the tie for this block, I could tell that the material was too thin to use in a bed quilt – but, gee, didn’t it match the Blue Collar colour scheme perfectly. Happily, I was able to jettison all my previous unsuccessful tree attempts, including the ones I had to already sewn onto the quilt. So that no one at Quilt Guild would be any wiser, I substituted another tie to make my bow tie block. So far my husband hasn’t noticed...

The roadway started out made of denim fabric. My original concept called for an actual blue collar to be used in the quilt, but after a very long series of unhappy experiments, I concluded that collars are pretty ugly on anything other than clothing. Better to stick with a metaphorical collar than an ugly quilt.

Next came the park. Almost every object you could ever hope to find in a park was tried and/or considered. The bench was going to be the park’s focal point, but no matter what size I used, it looked, well, foolish. It needed something to go with it. I hesitated to attempt a fountain – it seemed like an impossible challenge. I spent about three months looking at pictures of fountains on the Internet. Nothing else seemed to be feasible. I went into my “what the hell” mode. Of course, fountain number one did not work out - after being thoroughly bonded onto the quilt. It had to be coaxed off when I decided to change the road and replace the grass with a different fabric. I found that I had barely enough of that one irreplaceable piece of specially dyed sparkly fountain fabric. It didn’t help that while Blue Collar was “stalled” I had used up most of that piece for the Lodestar quilt.

The whole time I was completing the quilt I was smug knowing that I would not have to struggle to figure out how to quilt the sky. Diamond skies? Are you kidding? A nice straight-forward cross hatch pattern would yield great diamonds. But... it made the sky look not like diamonds, but like the inside of a winter coat. This threw the quilt into yet another stall, and every new idea for quilting lines only made it look worse. Finally, in a frenzy of “less is more” I simply followed the perspective lines of the buildings and decided to go with machine quilting instead of hand quilting. I added Jolee’s Jewels (crystals) to the sky. Elsewhere in the quilt, glass beads and metallic threads in sliver and copper helped to further develop the sparkly night time look.

While I pretty much ground down most of my teeth into nubs trying to get through this quilt, I am, at very long last, satisfied with it. And I’m immensely grateful to BTO for this inspirational song. I hope I have done it justice.

View the Video: Blue Collar - Bachman-Turner Overdrive

Close Up of Fountain

Lyrics to Blue Collar - Bachman-Turner Overdrive (Fred Turner 1973)

Walk your street 
And I'll walk mine 
And should we meet 
Would you spare me some time 

'Cause you should see my world 
Meet my kind 
Before you judge our minds 

Blue collar 

Sleep your sleep 
I'm awake and alive 
I keep late hours 
You're nine to five 

So I would like you know I need the quiet hours 
To create in this world of mine 

Blue collar 
Blue collar 

I'd like you to know at four in the morning 
Things are coming to mind 
All I've seen, all I've done 
And those I hope to find 

I'd like to remind you at four in the morning 
My world is very still 
The air is fresh under diamond skies 
Makes me glad to be alive 

You keep that beat 
And I keep time 
Your restless face 
Is no longer mine 

I rest my feet 
While the world's in heat 
And I wish that you could do the same 

Blue collar 
Blue collar 

Posssum Block

June 2011

This appliquéd block features a mother possum and her three babies. The block is 18x18 inches, and is part of a larger quilt, Woodland Creatures, that is being completed by the Timmins Quilters Guild as a fund raiser. Possum boys, left to right: Freddie, Bennie, and Joey.

Donna this is for you.



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.

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.

Private Idaho

Quilt No. 69
November 2009

What would it be like to live underground “like a wild potato”? This question popped into my head when I heard the B-52’s song Private Idaho (see lyrics on right hand side bar). The song suggests that someone who is gripped by fear of the ordinary - patios, pools, “signs that say hidden driveway”- might be hiding in a lifestyle that mimics a potato tucked safely underground. What might this safe harbor look like? I couldn’t help but put my own spin on both the above and below ground life of such a marvelous sheltering potato plant.

This quilt features a hand-dyed sky. Each leaf of the potato plant was created individually and then sewn onto the quilt. A hummingbird visits the blooms at the top.

I drew each potato room on paper and then scanned it into a file. The files were then adjusted to create the high-contrast sepia tones. The potato rooms were printed out on cotton and appliquéd onto the quilt. All potatoes are connected by satin roots and are outlined in gold metallic thread. This piece is hand quilted.

Lyrics to Private Idaho

Written by The B-52’s: Catherine Pierson, Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, Cindy Wilson, Ricky Wilson

You're living in your own Private Idaho

Living in your own Private Idaho

Underground like a wild potato.

Don't go on the patio.

Beware of the pool,

blue bottomless pool.

It leads you straight

right through the gate

that opens on the pool.

You're living in your own Private Idaho.

You're living in your own Private Idaho.

Keep off the path, beware the gate,

watch out for signs that say "hidden driveways".

Don't let the chlorine in your eyes

blind you to the awful surprise

that's waitin' for you at

the bottom of the bottomless blue blue blue pool.

You're livin’ in your own Private Idaho. Idaho.

You're out of control, the rivers that roll,

you fell into the water and down to Idaho.

Get out of that state,

get out of that state you're in.

You better beware.

You're living in your own Private Idaho.

You're living in your own Private Idaho.

Keep off the patio,

keep off the path.

The lawn may be green

but you better not be seen

walkin' through the gate that leads you down,

down to a pool fraught with danger

is a pool full of strangers.

You're living in your own Private Idaho,

where do I go from here to a better state than this.

Well, don't be blind to the big surprise

swimming round and round like the deadly hand

of a radium clock, at the bottom, of the pool.

I-I-I-daho

I-I-I-daho

Woah oh oh woah oh oh woah oh oh

Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah

Get out of that state

Get out of that state

You're living in your own Private Idaho,

livin’ in your own Private.... Idaho

Crystal Blue Persuasion

Quilt No. 68
August 2009

It was 1969 when my best friend Jane and I first heard the song. We were sun tanning at the cottage, accompanied by the ever-present A.M. radio. Since that day I’ve always loved Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James and the Shondells. It’s not only a great tune, it has a wonderful message of hope – perhaps there is still a chance for “peace and good brotherhood” among nations. My dear friend Jane is no longer with us, but when I hear the song I am transported back to those sunny days.

This song is one of those exceptional pieces of music that has the power to create superb visual images. The first image that emerges is, of course, that of blue crystals. I looked at pictures of crystals until I thought my eyes would turn to quartz. I drew gawky clumps of crystals for several weeks before I came up with a configuration that pleased me. These were then used as patterns. The fabric was dyed with Setacolor fabric dyes, including Shimmer Pearl, which added sparkle. The crystals were hand appliquéd onto the quilt, and the facets were outlined with embroidery in metallic thread.

But the crystals needed to look worldly. When discussing this feature with my friend Ruth, she suggested adding a globe of the Earth. I thought of adding a series of different phases of the Earth on to the crystals, but this proved too challenging. The crystals looked liked they’d lost in a marble swallowing contest. Eventually I decided that a map of the world spread over the crystals would give the effect I wanted. To add this feature, I traced a map onto the crystals. One at a time, I painted the continents with Elmer’s School Glue (Blue No Run Gel). This glue penetrates fabric and is very precise – it doesn’t wander into areas beyond where it’s been painted. I sprinkled Trichem Downyfleece (it looks like loose powdered fleece) over the glue and let it dry for several hours, then dumped off the excess. The fleece adheres only to the glue-painted areas and forms a very durable bond with a clean edge. Where did I find this product? Ironically, I’ve had it in my craft stash for over 25 years – ever since I got it from my friend Jane.

The words “crystal blue persuasion” always suggest great expanses of blue water to me – or maybe that’s just latent heatstroke from listening to the song in the hot sun. I wanted a visual element of the Earth as a globe, so ocean seemed the natural choice. Dolphins, killer whales, and other marine life were added to take advantage of the crystal blue water.

The lyrics called for “children of every nation.” This seemed like a pretty tall order, especially the “every” part, so I settled for only a few representative children. I drew the figures, transferred the drawings onto cotton, and embroidered them by hand in satin stitch. Each child took a few hours to complete. Each figure was then fused to another layer of fabric, and then fused onto the quilt.

The waves and the quilt binding were dyed in various blues to finish off the quilt. Small music symbols are featured on the binding fabric. The song lyrics are reprinted as part of the label on the back of the quilt. As a final touch, clear beads were added to the stars on the background. A new day is dawning – but not quite yet.

I think Jane would have liked this quilt.

To read the lyrics to Crystal Blue Persuasion, check the sidebar on the right hand side of the page.

Lyrics to Crystal Blue Persuasion

Composed by Eddie Gray, Tommy James, and Mike Vale

Look over yonder

What do you see?

The sun is a'risin'

Most definitely.

A new day is comin'

People are changing

Ain't it beautiful?

Crystal blue persuasion.

Better get ready

To see the light

Love, love is the answer

And that's all right.

So don't you give up now

So easy to find

Just look to your soul

And open your mind.

Maybe tomorrow

When He looks down

On every green field

And every town

All of this children

Every nation

There'll be peace and good

Brotherhood

Crystal blue persuasion.

Let It Be

In Let it Be we see a figure holding the planet Earth in his hand.

Despite the cloudiness of the night sky, beams of light break through.

In his famous song, Let It Be, Paul McCartney wrote

And when the night is cloudy
There is still a light that shines on me.

Quilt No. 61
June 2008

McCartney wrote this song after a dream about his mother, Mary, who had died many years previously. In the dream, she soothed his tensions, advising him, “It will be alright, just let it be."
Often, during our darkest moments, someone will step in to shine a light and show us which way to go.

When we have learned to accept that there are limitations and situations beyond our control, we will have learned to let it be.

Is the figure divine? Is it human or alien? It’s up to the observer to decide.

What a world we could have, if we could learn to let it be.

Quilting Notes

I wanted to use some sheer material in this quilt as part of the beams of light. This proved to be exceptionally difficult, as various types of this fabric shredded along the raw edges when I tried to sew them on. Gluing them simply made a mess. The raw edges could not be turned under, as they would show. Eventually I found a fabric that could withstand stitching along the edge with invisible (nylon) thread. A different sheer fabric was layered over the star fabric to give a dreamy quality to the light beams. The central figure was put on and removed a number of times, as the tight curves and the thick material (two layers of cotton to hide any seam allowances that were turned under) made appliqué very challenging. The cloud and the figure were both painted with Setacolor Shimmer Pearl prior to being added to the quilt. When assembled, the quilt was much too dark. Additional Shimmer Pearl was painted on the finished quilt to give a much lighter look.

Waiting for Death

Quilt No. 60
June 2008

I noticed a crow was spending a lot of time in our back yard. Oddly, he didn’t fly away when I went out on the patio. He seemed to be injured, and began to spend his time sitting on the edge of the wishing well, gazing off into the distance. He could no longer fly and seemed resigned to his fate. I took a photo of the crow, knowing I would one day use it to create a quilt entitled Waiting for Death. His life seemed to parallel events in my family as my elderly mother declined and approached the final challenges of her life. The title seems bleak, but the crow is surrounded by tremendous beauty as he prepares to pass from this world to the next.

Quilting Notes

Black polyester-cotton was used for the appliqué of the silhouettes. One hundred percent cotton, particular black cotton, tends to be thick and coarse, and shreds along the raw edges, making it more difficult to use for appliqué. The cotton with polyester is smoother and thinner and gives finer edges that are more easily turned under. The background was dyed the Setacolor fabric dyes painted over tissue paper strips. A minimal amount of hand quilting has been added.

Crikey!

Quilt No. 59
February 2008



I have a message for my fans. Whatever you want to do in this world, it is achievable. The most important thing that I've found, that perhaps you could use, is be passionate and enthusiastic in the direction that you choose in life, and you'll be a winner.
- Steve Irwin, 1962 – 2006

It took a long time after conservationist Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, died on September 4, 2006 before I did this quilt in his honour. I’ve shown only his feet and legs plus a crocodile. This simplistic view of this passionate man is how I always think of Steve Irwin.

Quilting Notes

I probably looked at every one of the hundreds of pictures of Steve Irwin posted on the Internet when I was trying to find one that showed his feet in the position I had in mind. It needed to be clear enough to use as a template to make the fabric pieces for the boots. I searched a number of times over several weeks and came up with nothing that would be useful. I also looked at all kinds of pictures of work boots and hiking boots, but these weren’t right either. One day, I used “Crocodile Hunter” rather than “Steve Irwin” in a Google Images search, and found a picture of the Crocodile Hunter Action Figure. The feet were in the position I wanted and the details on the boots were very clear. I used this to create his boots and legs. The fabric for his legs was tea-dyed to give them a typical Australian tan. The green lawn he’s standing on was a piece of fabric I had dyed previously. It was the result of using up leftover powered plus liquid dye from an exploration that didn’t work out. Quite by accident, it was the right shade of green to match the fern and river fabrics in this quilt. The crocodile and fence fabric were in my stash, so it wasn’t necessary to purchase any new fabric for this quilt. The fence was also tea-dyed to give the original flat grey colour of the fabric the appearance of wood.

The outline of the crocodile came from the logo of an alligator that appeared on the plastic mailing envelope from a medical journal that I received at work. It was used to advertise an upcoming conference in Florida. I liked the outline of the alligator and kept it pinned up on my bulletin board for many years, with no particular use in mind. When I made the pattern, I narrowed the snout to make it look more like a crocodile.

The fence was added to bring things into focus by reducing the impact of all the green fabrics so they wouldn’t overwhelm the quilt. Every rail in the fence was outlined with embroidery floss. I used only one strand of brown for the top of the rails. The depth of shadow below the rails was increased by using two strands - one brown plus one strand of a red that matched the colour of the crocodile.

I made this quilt for my co-worker, Pierre, to thank him for all the hours he spent making and arranging the purchase of the business cards for Concept Quilts, and because Steve Irwin is one of his heroes, too.


Logo from envelope


Original concept drawing

Resting Place

Quilt No. 58

December 2007

I kept envisioning a quilt with a bridge and a park bench in a green and restful setting. I combed the Internet for a picture of each, and and rescaled the photos into patterns to use as separate elements in Resting Place. Although my original drawing included a weeping willow tree I didn't add it in - it simply overpowered the other objects. Instead, evergreens were placed in the foreground to frame the scene.

Quilting Notes

The wood grain fabric of the park bench was dyed slightly darker than its original shade to give it a nice warm appeal. Each "board"of the bench was appliquéd onto the quilt individually. I traced an outline of the bench pattern onto a piece of transparent plastic, and laid this on top of the quilt so that I could accurately position each board before sewing it on. This has proven to be a very useful technique for positioning intricate pieces.

I machine-quilted the bridge prior to sewing it onto the quilt. The river was machine-quilted after the quilt was assembled. Everything else on this quilt was hand-quilted.

Photo used to create the bridge


Original concept drawing

Looking for Atlantis

Quilt No. 56
October 2007

Looking for Atlantis was a “challenge” quilt. One weekend I had taken my usual vast amount of quilting tools and assorted fabrics to the cottage to work on a specific quilt. I was so focused on trying to remember everything I might need that I actually forgot to bring the quilt that was currently in progress. Faced with a weekend of not quilting at all, I challenged myself to use the limited fabrics from the 3 or 4 projects that were in my bag, and to see what I could come up with. The waves, fish and mer-people were “fussy cut” from various parts of one piece of fabric. The central rock in the background was from a piece I had dyed earlier in the summer by spreading light-sensitive dye on the fabric, scattering sand over it, and leaving it to dry. As the subject of this quilt emerged, I knew that I would use it as a gift for my daughter who spent much of her childhood reading about Atlantis. She is still convinced that if we look hard enough, we can probably find it. I think it is quite likely that she is right.

Flight of Fancy

Quilt No 55

May 2007

The central hot-air balloon in this quilt was scaled up from a picture in a small calendar. The colours were so vibrant that I thought it would be fun to recreate them in a quilt. I designed several smaller balloons to go with it. Composing them in a suitably random and realistic manner was extremely challenging. I struggled so much with this project that I wanted to name the quilt A Nemesis of Balloons, but that proved to be an unpopular choice, and so it became Flight of Fancy.

Quilt Notes

The large balloon is done in appliqué which became increasingly difficult as the coloured strips near the balloon's edge became narrower and narrower. The other balloons were made of tiny pieces fused onto white cotton and then appliquéd onto the quilt.

The original photo came from a calendar

Uncharted

Quilt No. 54
May 2007

This is a tribute to the explorer Ernest Shackleton. In this quilt we see the silhouette of a ship that is exploring in Antarctic waters, with the high cliffs of glaciers in the background and the sea in the foreground. The ship was scaled up from a picture of a three-masted barquentine, the type of ship Shackleton used on his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914. While there are many photos of his ship Endurance there are none that give a simple view of it from the side. Another ship of the same style was used to create the pattern.

Quilting Notes

The sea was dyed with Setacolor fabric paint and overlaid strips of tissue paper. The fabric used for the glaciers was dyed with the leftover paint. Cotton embroidery floss was used for the rigging.

Original graphic used to create the pattern pieces for the ship

A Winter of Frost

Quilt No. 53
March 2007

This quilt was made for Bruna. It features a white dragonfly that is symbolic of her son Adam, who died of cancer at age sixteen, on February 14, 2001

Quilting Notes

The dragonfly was foundation pieced from a pattern I found quite by accident on the Internet.
I tried numerous unsuccessful techniques to create the frost frond before I discovered one that worked. I glued down strips of white-silver sparkled cotton fabric, and then covered these with gauze ribbon that was edged with silver. First I hand sewed along one edge or the ribbon, then along the other edge. I then I went back and gathered up the gauzy portion of the ribbon, which was much wider than the underlying strips of white, and secured it with an overcast of invisible nylon thread. Some of the ribbon came from a bouquet of roses from mother’s funeral in January 2007. Mom always wanted me to keep the ribbon whenever was given a floral arrangement. She would be thrilled to know that I came up with a permanent way to “keep the ribbon.”