With this blogpost, we will end the series on how I made the quilt of my son playing guitar.  I had fun with the quilting, too.  Here’s the bucket and bag of threads I used for the quilting:

And here is the completed quilt; notice that the proportions have changed a little.  The finished size for the exhibit is 36 inches wide by 48 inches long, so I needed to remove some extra, especially in the length.  If the quilt hadn’t been in this exhibit, I might have let it go a little longer, but I think in terms of design and composition it is still fine the way it is.

While I was mulling over how to quilt the walls, there was yet another discussion on either QuiltArt or SAQA (or both?) about the line between traditional and art quilting.  As usual there were those who want nothing to do with traditional quilting.  I, however, am proud of our traditional roots and proud of this as an art form that began with women’s work.  As someone recently said to me, Quilt is NOT a four-letter word!

This discussion led me to the idea of using traditional feathered vines for the background quilting.  As you can see from this next photo, though I chose a thread I thought would show up on the background, it was too subtle.  I decided to echo-quilt around the feathered vines, then pencilled in the resulting space/channel to define the outlines of the vines with Prismacolor Pencil (which I later covered with a combination of a textile-friendly varnish and water to seal it to prevent it from rubbing off).

Here is a wider-angled shot of the wall area showing the feathered vines…I just love them!

This shows the quilted quilt with the threads distributed over the top where they were used:

Here are two close-ups of the quilting of Joshua’s face and torso:

I love the backs of my quilts, the line drawing look, so took this (alas blurry) photo–you can see the feathered vines clearly on this semi-solid background fabric, and that the entire quilt is stitched 1/4″ apart or close… a lot of thread!

And to end where we began, but arrayed nicely, all those beautiful threads ( all but one of them Superior Threads):

PS–I am reminded by the comments to add that Joshua –hallelujah!– actually likes the quilt!  Given how picky teenagers are, especially of pictures of themselves, I am so thrilled that he of all people likes it.  Hugs to my firstborn!  Now…. what will the years bring that I can do another quilt, this time of secondborn son?

My quilt, Mt. Fuji Seasons or Mountain Seasons, was included in my book, ThreadWork Unraveled, at the last minute.  I realized there wasn’t a pattern included, and there wasn’t enough page space to include a pattern/drawing of the postcard in the book.  Erg.  So….. I was *supposed* to upload a downloadable PDF for those who prefer not to draw their own pattern a while back and I am, ahem….behind again!  I also discovered that as long as this little quilt has been around, I’ve never blogged about it (!!!) or shared it on my website (!!!!).  EEEK!  So belatedly:

Please click on Mountain Seasons pdf to — you guessed it — download a PDF of the outlines.  Depending on your software and printer, the images should print out at approximately 4×6 inches, the size of a typical postcard.  If the size is off by just a little bit, you can simply cut off or extend the edges to fill a 4×6 inch space.  If the size is off by quite a bit, you can use a photocopier to enlarge or reduce to size. This is what the PDF should look like:

Sorry it has taken me this long, but now it is here for all eternity or until the internet (I hope not!)  implodes or is followed by something else even more amazing and wonderful than cyberspace as we know it today!

Well there is LOTS of news–with the best saved for last (yes, I’m evil…<GRIN>):

• I’ve been to Arizona to teach, blogging to come
• the family joined me and we visited Flagstaff (which is an awesome and friendly town!) and various points including Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, the Wupatki ruins and Sunset Crater…and oh yeah, Sedona…more on that later, too
• the laptop DIED—deceased, defunct, digitally toes-up—36 hours BEFORE I was supposed to give my slide lecture to the Arizona Quilt Guild.  We went to plan B, it worked, and everyone was gracious and understanding.  That morning I ordered the new laptop
• I visited my beloved sister in law in LA for the first time in 27+ years, we went to the Getty and had a grand time, blogging on that to come too
• I was home 3 days then went to Hingham, Mass., to teach at the Herring Run Guild, yes..blogging to come…and 90 minutes after I left for there my new laptop FINALLY arrived two weeks after I ordered it

and at long last….DRUM ROLL and unabashedly SNOOPY DANCING with wild ABANDON:

• ThreadWork Unraveled has–in a mere six months–gone into a SECOND PRINTING!   I just can’t believe it… most books go into print once, are sold, and that’s it.  Thanks to phenomenal word of mouth starting with so many of you dear readers out there in cyberspace and good reviews hither and yon, the book has already gone into re-print!

So I invite you to join me in silly dancing, chocolate, a nice chilled glass of white zinfandel or your favorite sip-able (sp?), and CELEBRATE!

I’ll be back once I catch up on 2 1/2 weeks of work, student inquiries, teaching applications, quilt show applications, assorted mountains of paperwork etc. with lots of blogposts with lots of photos!

Cheers, Sarah the Elated (and really happy to be sleeping in my own bed with family close by!)

Some time ago (that great whooooshing and sucking sound is time roaring past us), I blogged about having my Naiads quilt critiqued at QuiltCritique.com.  A joint venture with Lisa Chipetine and Sandra Sider (who also happen to be the current president and vice President of SAQA–Studio Art Quilt Associates), this is an online process where you send in your jpegs to Sandra two weeks before an appointed date.  She ponders and comes up with suggestions to improve your quilt.  She has that great skill of asking questions that make you think, that are open-ended and help you learn as you talk about something.

(I promise…there are pictures below!)

Well, the process was SO educational–I think listening to the critiques of the others on that evening’s session were maybe even more informative because I wasn’t invested in the outcome, but an observer–that I really wanted to have Sandra look at this piece.  So I SLAMMED to get it done in time to have her review it and still have enough time to make changes (if needed) to the top and then get the quilting done by the deadline.    It was worth every penny of the modest fee and MORE!  Best of all, Sandra had only three relatively minor suggestions:

1.  Add details to the face; I told her the entire face would be added in the stitching… I left the face just as a single piece of cloth at the top stage.  Problem solved.

2.  There was a tiny bit of dark wall showing between Joshua’s hand and the neck of the guitar–it really bugged Sandra and pulled her eye, distracting her.  This was not a good thing, so even though it was true to life, it needed editing.  So I moved his hand a bit to be more closely curved around the guitar neck.  Problem solved.

3.  The initial lines at the bottom of the dresser and the wood on the bed came together at accurate but odd-looking angles.  So I added a bedskirt and more bedding to change the lines and better lead the eye up to the focal point.  Problem solved.   Here’s the before, as I was testing out floor and chair base:

Then, with more in place (note, the purple vertical is the bedpost):

and after:

In the next post about this quilt, I’ll finish up the process with the quilting, sharing some of the background quilting and showing you the array of threads used in the entire piece.  See you soon!

Once the torso was complete, PHEW!, it was time to tackle the guitar.  With the shirt and pants a medium-light value in cool colors, I wanted the guitar to be a medium-light warm, especially since both of Joshua’s guitars are red (he has this cool idea that he will keep all his guitars and have a gallery of them, and hopefully all red!).  I didn’t have quite the right colors–I tested out a couple of options.  Here you can see me “color-blocking” early on:

I found a couple fabrics that were close, but not quite.  A hand-dyed-look batik fabric was too pale, and a batik was too contrasty.  Solution?  Pull out the textile paints and fix them!

The fabric in the upper left corner is the “before”, the piece on the upper right is the “after” that became the main body of the guitar.  The contrasty swirly lovely batik on the bottom became the lower edge of the guitar.

The neck of the guitar proved to be one of the coolest moments of the construction process.  Initially I pulled some stripey batiks, thinking to use the stripes to simulate the frets on the guitar, but I just didn’t like how they looked.   Then I found this awesome batik (another one that I wish I had yards of…), a lime green with weedy flowers (or flowery weeds) in coral and pink.   I was a bit nervous about the color choices, but the neck was SO COOL in this fabric with a single stem running up the center!

The night I got the guitar fused, I showed Joshua the progress, more than a bit nervously.  His reaction: “that is SO COOL… if I could find a guitar like that I’d BUY it!”  WOW!   It doesn’t get any better than that!  And if I win the lottery (better buy a ticket, eh?), maybe I’ll just get him one custom made.

You can also see the wall in progress.  In real life the walls are a lovely celery green, but I needed a deep dark, so I raided my stash of blues and purples.  Although the walls are shiplap siding (wood, painted), I decided to be a bit more freeform and cut wavy-edged strips.  I like the sense of motion it gives to the entire piece…like the room is rockin’ with him!

Here is the quilted guitar, with the sounding board (or whatever that stuff is on the bottom) fused on, but the strings weren’t stitched until the very last.

And of course, I have to share the back side with you.  I think the guitar is the most densely quilted part of the entire piece… about 1/16″ apart over the entire surface!  In the photo above, again you can see the colors of thread used for quilting.

Hope you’re enjoying the journey as much as I enjoyed making this piece,

Cheers, Sarah