Angel quilt

Here is another one of Roxanne Barbieri’s wonderful quilt designs:  her Angel Quilt!

I quilt these special quilts differently than I would quilt a block-based quilt.  With a block-based quilt,  I might do some intial  SID (stitch-in-the -ditch) around  the blocks and borders, then decide upon a block quilt design, a sashing design, and a border design.  With a pictorial quilt such as this Angel quilt, each component receives a special texture to highlight the specific quality of the design.  I also change thread colors often; I prefer to use solid color thread and blend my color with the fabric.  My personal preference is to highlight only the texture of my quilting, rather than showcase the quilting with a contrasting thread color; I accomplish this by choosing a thread color that won’t jump out at the viewer.  For this reason, I rarely choose a variegated thread.

Back to the quilting texture!  The angel wings were big and floaty.  They are (to my mind) a very “girly” element for the angel (if I were an angel– quit laughing, I could so be an angel!– anyway, if I were an angel, I would want beautiful wings.  And fabulous shoes.)  So they got girly texture, in the form of small, feathered, curly vines:

For the “Angels are secret friends watching over us” sign, I switched to a brown thread and stitched a wood texure:

The bird feeder was whimsical, so I quilted some fun textures there:

I quilted some bird-like lines in the blackbirds, and gave her girly floral dress an empire waist with a horizontal vine, with flowers quilted in the bottom “skirt”.

I thought it was interesting to see that Roxanne’s quilt label was a photo transfer of her very neat sewing room.  She must have an Angel that likes to tidy up as her secret friend watching over her!

Mohair

I love mohair!  I love the springy “boing boing” curly locks, I love the shine and translucent quality, I love the way it feels in my fingers when I spin it.

I was gifted with 8 oz. of natural silver locks.  I wanted to dye it a rich red so that I could add it to some merino I had already dyed.

Here it is, heating on the stove top:

And here it is, before I teased the locks open:

*I couldn’t get a good representation of color.  The actual color is what it looks like in the pot in the first photo!

I spent quite a bit of time opening the locks (non spinners, this is when you pick up a separate clump of wool– in this case, you would be on the right track if you are imagining a separate curl of wool– and tease it apart with your fingers) over a towel on my lap.  There was so much dirt trapped in those locks!  Also, I was surprised to see a pale yellow color when I teased open the curls.  So I did re-dye the locks, after soaking overnight to thoroughly wet the curl in the interior.  I thought this would draw the dye into the interior of the curls, resulting in a richer overall color.  Unfortunately, this was not the case!

After I got the whole lot opened and shaken out, I came to some conclusions:  first, mohair locks trap a lot of VM (vegetable matter) and dirt  inside those beautiful curls; second, the tighter the curl, the less dye migrates inside the curl; third, if you want a rich color all the way through, you should open the locks before you dye.

I will be re-dyeing the mohair now that it’s all opened, as I want to obtain a richer red.  For my own experience, I did spin some of this mohair as it is, and got a beautiful brick color.  I am slowly learning how color acts in different wool applications– in this case, I learned about dyeing mohair, and what happens when half a lock is one color and the rest of the lock is another!

I have about 2 1/2 pounds of honey colored mohair to process, so this was a learning experience well worth the time and effort!  I still love mohair, and can’t wait to begin processing more.  I will share my 3rd (and hopefully final!) dye result when I get time to play again!

Fishing quilt

One of my customers has the most whimsical sense of style!  Her name is Roxanne Barbieri– you will want to remember that, because she is being urged right and left to publish her patterns.  I am a very vocal member of her fan club, and I’m sure she feels battered and bruised after a visit to my studio, what with all my cheering and pushing to publish!

Here is a quilt I recently finished for her, based on her husband and grandson’s recent fishing trip.  Please note that the skewed prospective has everything to do with the fact that the quilt was still loaded on my longarm when I took the photograph.  In real life, this pictorial quilt is square and has true perspective:

Here is a close up of the fishy quilting texture:

I love quilting fish, and feature a lot of fish in my own collage work, so this was quite fun for me to work on!  You can see that I quilted the outline of the people parts, and where Roxanne had used pen to outline fingernails, noses, eyes, etc, I quilted over the pen using a charcoal thin thread, to add texture to the features.

Here’s a photo of the 2 guys.  I’ve quilted texture into their clothing, but outlined the faces and hands.  The extra definition in the ears, especially, gave life to the grandfather/grandson team:

This was such fun to quilt!  I always enjoy Roxanne’s quilts– she has a very interesting point of view, and the figures and text are always full of positive feelings.  Wouldn’t you love to find her patterns or books in your LQS soon?!!

Beach house quilt

I recently quilted this fun beach house quilt for a woman who lives… at the beach!

(wavy, wobbly quilt photo courtesy of DS2)

I was inspired to add little surprised to each house, in the form of doorknobs, roof tiles, climbing vines, or flower beds:

The green sashing strips became grass lawns:

and the Milky Way-ve piecing at the bottom got foamy whirlpools of watery quilting (hmmm, which I’ve cut off– so you’ll have to imagine it!):

Surf’s up, dude!

Alpaca bath

Remember the alpaca-in-a-bag I brought home with me ? The fleece only– the actual animal still lives on a ranch!

I enjoyed peeking into the bag every few days (ok, hours), but it was awfully dirty dusty, and didn’t seem quite as appealing in a bag as it did on the animal. I knew I would have to wash it sooner or later, but the memory of schlepping gallons of water, then sloshing the resulting dirty water out into the garden made my back twinge in fear. If you recall seeing the “Meryl the Merino” post, you will remember that I ended up washing only about 8 oz. of the entire 7 lb. fleece. And that took me all day, and I used up quite a few ibuprofen in the mix.

The alpaca is only about 2 lbs, but since alpaca isn’t as easily felted as merino, I thought I’d try washing in the washing machine. Not only would it save my back, it would use far less water, which is a huge consideration for those of us in Southern California.

After much internet consultation, I determined that the best way to execute this maneuver was to separate about 1/2 lb of fleece into several mesh lingerie bags.

I then filled the washing machine with hot hot hot water and a squirt of Dawn dishwashing liquid.

After soaking the fleece without agitation for about 40 minutes, I drained the machine, pressed out water from the lingerie bags, took them out of the machine and into a waiting plastic tub, re-filled the washing machine with hot hot hot water and some more Dawn (this fleece was DIRTY!!), repeated the soak, then went through the same steps with plain hot water to rinse. I did use the washing machine to spin the excess water out of the final rinse. By choosing this method, I was able to remove most of the water from the fleece, leaving me with fairly dry fleece. I spread this out over my drying rack, and soon had beautiful, soft, clean alpaca.

After bringing a bag of clean fleece over to my friend as a thank you gift, carding it into a batt, then meanly bringing it back home, I have spun it onto a bobbin to show you what it looks like:

Because my mama didn’t bring me up to have bad manners, I will sweetly bring my friend a replacement bag of fleece. But this time, I won’t even LOOK at her drum carder.

Even though it’s such a nice drum carder….

how would you quilt this? Leaves!

One of my quilting customers recently gave me several colorways of this quilt:

Many thanks to my boys for standing on a chair, holding the quilt so that I could get an overall photo, instead of only the close ups I have been taking while the quilt is still on my machine!  I figured wavy, wobbly quilts were better than no overall photo at all!

Because the piecing and the blocks are simple, the client chose to focus her creative energy on playing with color and texture.  You may remember this same pattern from a previous post :

It has been fun and challenging to quilt several of these tops for the same customer;  she allows me complete artistic freedom, and I wanted to give her back quilts with quilting she couldn’t get from anyone else, while keeping each quilt different from the other!

These quilts called for an interesting all-over type quilting.  You may remember that the first of these quilt tops received two different all over motifs, separated diagonally on the quilt.  Had I known I could coerce children into becoming quilt-hangers, I would have taken an overall of this quilt to show you the effect.

For today’s green, leafy quilt, I first thought I would do one of Suzanne’s Magical Meanderings with a leaf motif.  I decided to save that design for the next quilt top!  Instead, I chose to quilt leafy vines running within each row of blocks.  Here’s a photo of the back, because that’s where the quilting shows up the best:

The backing fabric is the same soft, lustrous seafoam green.  I don’t know how this looks on your computer screen, but mine isn’t doing the beautiful fabric choice justice!

I love leaves, and had a wonderful time quilting this.  I find it an interesting creative stretch to be given the same quilt top several times– it’s my own version of the “how would you quilt this” show!

alpaca shearing day

With my newfound interest in spinning flying out of control, I took a trip up to an alpaca farm to watch the spring shearing.

I couldn’t get over how adorable the animals are– I had to keep reminding myself that I could NOT fit a couple in my minivan!

I was glad I didn’t have my youngest with me– I had visions of him bringing an alpaca through the house, into his room to watch tv! Ironically, on one of my lists, a woman shared that very same scenario– she returned from an errand to find a sheep sitting with her child watching cartoons together.

The shearing itself was very interesting and humane. The alpaca is backed between an upright table and padded metal harness, the table is flipped sideways so that the table is now upright and the animal is lying on his/her side.

The animals legs are strapped to prevent kicking, and there was always someone petting the alpaca’s head, making soothing noises to calm him/her. It was over really fast, and the alpaca seemed happier to be free of all that hot wool!

I bought a fleece to bring home as a souvenir. It’s all washed and silky clean. I brought some over to my spinning friend as a thank you, but ended up carding it into a batt and bringing it home. I’m terrible!! I’ll bring her more, promise!

Washing Meryl the Merino fleece

This is the craziness that goes on when I’m not sitting in front of the computer (or behind the handles of the longarm)

This box contains 7 lbs. of freshly shorn merino wool, from a sheep named Meryl. I bought it from Terry Mendenhall, of Wool Ranch. I had no idea how this would arrive, and I opened the box fully expecting the wool to sproing out at me!

The fleece was lovingly wrapped in a blue paper blanket. It was sweet and clean, even before I washed it.

Here is some fleece, ready for its first dunk:

Here is the fleece, soaking in the water– the lanolin is melting off the wool and into the water:

And, voila– 1/2 lb of clean, sweet, yummy Meryl:

Here are some photos in darker light, showing the wonderful crimp:

Deelish! Can’t wait to dye it and spin it.

colorful artsy yarn

Although it seems like all the yarn I’ve shown has been neutral, natural colors, I have been spinning in color, too!!

I was given a tube of colorful, artsy batts from Crosspatch Creations and Three Bags Full.  I had the pleasure of playing with the wonderful colors and textures, and this is the resulting yarn:

I have no idea how it would knit up, but isn’t it yummy right on the bobbin?

All over quilting design

Just a quick quilting post. I have a new customer (hi Karen!) who lives in another state, and although we haven’t met in person, we seem to be in sync with our quilting. She has allowed me to do whatever I feel is right for the quilt at hand, which is a wonderful relationship to have between piecer and quilter! I feel that this brings out the best in the quilt. If you have a longarm quilter that you trust in this way, you are very lucky– like Karen! I know! I’m so modest!!

Recently, Karen sent me a quilt that she made “just because”. She didn’t want high end quilting on this, and I agreed that the piecing design didn’t warrant custom quilting– you know, heirloom feathers, stitch in the ditch, tiny pebbled backgrounds. However, the fabric was so interesting and modern, that I felt the need to get a little artsier than a standard all-over quilting design. I thought it might be interesting to show you how I decided to handle an artsier all-over quilting design.

It was a challenge to photograph the quilt, so bear with me while I describe the quilting. Photos follow!

I visually split the quilt in half diagonally, with some loose serpentine lines flowing from the top right side (just down from the corner) all the way down to the bottom left corner. Then I quilted a baroque swirl (from Jamie Wallen) in the top portion, and a pond meander in the bottom portion.