The Treacherously, Tediously Slow Japanese Indigo Hexagon Quilt

 

 Mostly made from Goodwill men's dress shirts, it is a wannabe bed quilt.  IF (and that's a big if) I can carry on.  I figure it will take about a thousand of them to make a bed quilt.  Each hexagon has to be cut out of paper, pinned to a 3" (approximately) piece of fabric, basted on all six sides, then sewn one side at a time to another one.  So each hexagon has 6 sides which must be sewn to another hexagon's edge.  That's a lot of damn handsewing!!!!  It's meditative and relaxing, but slow as hell.  I do it when I don't need to think.  The Millefiore needs lots of concentration and designing and planning.  This one is just random.  It reminds me of a Scandinavian starry, cold winter night and Japanese boro (old field clothes that are worn and patched).  And that makes me happy!

 

Cut the templates (very carefully).  Hundreds and hundreds of templates!  Some people can reuse them, but I always end up messing them up so that they can't be used again.  It's a talent I seem to have perfected.

Then you pin them atop a square a bit bigger than the template.

You fold the fabric down over the template and sew each side, sticking your needle through the paper and I always take a double stitch on the corner/points.

Then you take two pieces and sew the side together.  I sew them into lines/rows of 14 and then sew the lines/rows together

 

Once all sides have another edge sewn to it, I cut the basting thread and pull out the papers.I like the random look of it.  I'm only using blues and taupes/creams.

So I always have to have several things going at once or I get bored.

The Millefiore Quilt. Sort of. So far.

Almost Finished!

 

So this was while I was sewing on the binding (I sew it on with the machine then put the batting and backing in place and fold the binding over and handsew on the backside)

 And this is the top, pieced and ready to be batted, backed, and quilted. Oh, wait!  I lie!  I still need to hook up the green stems to the top flowers and the urns at the bottom (which you can't see in this picture).  I also have an embroidered heart I made that goes in the center and I need to sew that in place.  Then it is ready to be put together and stitched up!

Sadie's Quilt Part 2

Working away on the blocks.  I really have come to love hand applique--who'd have thunk?  I always hated handsewing, including sewing on buttons or hemming pants.  Amazingly, I like doing this.

I cheated on the peacocks.  Instead of sewing strips of fabric together for the tails, I used a striped fabric.

 

It's great fun to pin them up together and look at them.

Another urn with fabric from a man's shirt.  I scout Goodwill for cool fabrics in men's shirts.  This one was dragons in motion.

I like mixing all different greens for the leaves, versus using a single color.

I grew up with guinea fowl running all over the place and toyed with the idea of getting some myself.  However, I live too close to a busy road so these will have to suffice.

The fawn does not make me happy.  The front leg looks deformed so I put a flower on to cover the bad spot and of course, my eye goes straight to it every time I look at that block.  However, deer are everywhere here so I felt I needed to put them in somewhere.

 

I love to sit and sew in my sewing studio.  It is very peaceful to listen to books on tape and stitch away as the sun moves across the sky and shifts the light and shadows across my work.

Better a Year Late than Never? Blocks Finished

Blue birds.  I liked this block so much--it just seemed so well composed--that I made another one with blue birds.

Golden Eagles representing Kazakhstan.

More of the blue birds block, with embroidered yellow eyes.

The elephant block with a trainer and two horses.  I thought about embroidering "Hanibal" on the elephants blanket, but decided against it.  Maybe "Barbar," though.

Owls.  Because one can never have too many owls.  This was a made-up block, not in the original.   I added blue berries on the bush and a butterfly.  The original had owls in the border, but not in blocks.  I didn't like all the plants in some of the blocks so I took some of those blocks and turned them into animal blocks.  Specifically animals that had some reference to our lives.

I added snails because I like snails.  The vase fabric was from an old shirt.  Originally, I had thought to do it all in greens, blues and browns, but the turquoise and pink just kept sneaking in.

and the red and orange and yellow.

This is the Bride block-or my interpretations of it.  

Arranged six blocks in three rows--Turtles, guineas, groom, squirrels, fawn are all my additions, not found in original.  I also added the two birds in tree with eggs twice (it is only found once in original).

Final layout, I think.

Borders and Other Such Things

 

 

My sewing studio in winter.

 

 

 

 

Two horses for the border.

Eggs for the center of the bottom border.

Bits and Pieces of the border and my hands traced and ready to be appliqued.

Leaping hares for the border

Blue urns on the bottom corners.  A lizard--inspired by all the Carolina Green Anoles we have in the backyard.

 In-progress borders.  Owls and butterflies along the bottom.

Side edge of border with the binding strip in place.  One side has leaping deer and butterflies, the other leaping hares pursued by two hounds. I still need to connect the green stems from the pot to the vines.  I probably should have added the vines to the pot last and just extended what was on the side border but I was doing it impromptu because I just couldn't decide what I wanted.  Then I ended up with mismatched seems, but what the heck.

Windowsill Cactus Garden

Appliqued, pieced, embroidered top.

 

I started it in Connecticut, just making one block but it was so much fun, I just kept making more and more blocks.  I couldn't decide what to do with them though.  At the time I was very much into planting succulents and cacti in 1950's retro style planters that I would drill a hole in the bottom of.  I found a poem called Cactus by K. Satchidanandan and I love the first three lines.   I plan to embroider them in the center box: 

 

"Thorns are my language.I announce my existencewith a bleeding touch."

The Sea That Stole My Love

I was thinking of the Japanese tsunami when I made this and how the big piles of debris floated in the ocean like islands. The world still going on about it's business as if it were just another day.  The loss and sadness that the survivors must feel for the ones they lost.  I know that after a loss in my own life I have often been stunned by how the sun shines and life goes on as if nothing has happened.  There's both a beauty and a horror to that.  At the same time, I was trying to work in the abstract and just piece together sections improvisationally.  All the blues are scraps from other quilts, the yellows what I had on hand..

Sadie's Quilt

 Some blocks are from the Civil War Bride Quilt pattern, but of course, I got bored and had to branch out and create a few of my own.  Guineas, a fawn, turtles and squirrels.