HouseTops in colour!

Here are the beautiful HouseTop quilts made by my brilliant students from Whistler, back in November. The fabrics brought to class were as varied as the women who came, and the quilts were unique as well! Some people like to work on the straight and narrow, and some are comfortable with a lot of variation, some love lots of colour and some keep it close. Have a look at the quilt tops, made in two days of hard work, with everybody playing by the same rule book. Brilliant, yes?!

Using beloved colours- matching luggage!

 

 

Nice sashing

Christmasy colours

Traditional prints with polka dots!

playing with line

limited colour palette. beautiful!

This is the second quilt in a series, nice and loose!

one student's very first quilt!

Roofing in the rain

I'm working on a couple of things. My neighbour and I have embarked on a collaborative project. More on that later, its exciting! and I'd like to do it as a workshop someday...

and the other thing is another smaller more colourful HouseTop quilt. Pix to come.

How not to sew straight.

I thought I'd post some pix of the HouseTop quilt. These two photos are of my Chicken quilt.  detail

I am teaching a series of classes
in the "How Not To Sew Straight" vein, the first bunch of classes are built on the idea of using the
oh so familiar Log Cabin block.
The pictures shown here are from the HouseTop class. The quilters of Gee's Bend use the housetop motif again and again to produce unique quilts, and they have been my inspiration for this class. It's a way to show how to get out of your own way while designing original quilts, yet still having the traditions of making quilts backing up your work.




These are work-in-progress shots of students' work. Well, the first one is mine... it's part of the chicken quilt.

I wish I had pix of the finished quilts, but we were rushing to finish. I've redesigned the class to be done in two days, so the design work is all done in class and the quilts will be finished!

I also have worked up a class called Not Just Another Log Cabin, where people experiment with a framed square block- by stretching, skewing, paying attention to colour and value, and generally letting experimentation, rather than a known result, be the leader. I'll post pix of that one soon.

At Home In The Woods

We're back! We are back home in the forest on the ridge. Cat happy, plants happy, thanks to Rain.
Tomatoes turning- wee buds of green to red. I love that!
Squash roaming- little spirally tendrils grabbing onto whatever they can, and buds of squash growing. Looks like we may have food!
Beans coming. We had no beans when we left a week ago, now there are long skinny beany parts growing on the vines.
Spuds spuddling along.
Cuke!

I think its time for chickens. Be nice to have some company of the fine & feathered variety.

Blurry

K and I have been in the city for a few days. We want to go home! We love our forest and our garden and the cat and our wee home. We are here getting my father settled into his new home. It hasn't been easy.
I had a vision about "drawing" with patchwork- now I gotta get home and sew it! I have the quilt started, up on my design wall, with hard line scribbles and bits, but I just got a vision of another part- smudgy, like when you're drawing with a soft material and your hand rubs the lines and makes it smudgy- or when you erase and leave smudgy marks. I need to get back to my machine and see if I can turn the vision into something. That's how it goes- idea, sew, more ideas, more sewing, practicing the art and craft all at the same time.

Visuals

A truckload of quilts and a forest....

As promised- here are some photos of the Quilt Forest, A Walk In The Woods. All of the quilts are by Stacey
and me.

and 2 fantastic workers/engineers/display designers

The walk starts with a piece called "The Quilt Show"

And down the garden path it goes

The sunlight played games with the quilts all day.

This is the back view with the sun shining through...

one of my favourite views

detail of "Fresh Salsa"

nice colours with the woodpile

slip-covered chair

with Albert sitting on it

Katy's bird art chair

more quilts on the porch railings

one view from afar

Woot!

This is monday, the day after the weekend that 42 quilts hung in our forest yard.
My friend and neighbour and fellow quilter and I , just the two of us, had these 42 quilts ready to hang in the woods, and our fantastic husbands made it happen by rigging ropes in the trees and tying spring clamps in a no-slip kinda way to accommodate our work.

We hosted some 135 people for a walk in the woods to view our work, and we had great support from our community. They seemed to love it, they liked the work, they liked the woods, they liked the idea, men liked it and women liked it. They liked seeing our little house, and enjoyed being on the ridge where it sits.

We sold absolutely nothing, but the thrill of the show was enough for me, and we have learned a few things. Its a process, this business of being an artist. One step at a time.

Photos to follow soon, but today I need to harvest the garlic, put away the quilts, pack up the ropes and clamps and go clean up the bottle depot, which I left in a mess on saturday, rushing to get back home to the Quilt Forest.