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I belong to a small group of quilters known as the Fyber Gypsies (made up of members of the Rocky Mountain Creative Quilters guild) and this spring we set ourselves a challenge: we picked two crayons from a paper bag and one word from a bunch of slips. The goal was to make a quilt using those colors and to look to the word for further inspiration.
I got pink and black crayons, colors I rarely use, and my word was “embellish”.
As with most quilts, my initial ideas were very different from the final product. At first, I though of making animals that were either pink or black and then adding an embellishment-worthy accessory in the opposite color, such as a pink pig in a black top hat or a penguin in a tutu. The animals would be cute, simplified shapes, and the overall effect would be whimsical. I would make four separate blocks, each with a different animal on it.
Once I started sketching, the plan changed completely. I found some Adélie penguin pictures (a very cute, round penguin species) and made some drawings, thinking that I would like to try using the piecing techniques I learned from Ruth McDowell in a class I took with her over 10 years ago. But I had to enlarge my penguin to about one foot tall so that the smallest pattern pieces wouldn’t be too hard to work with, and I needed the finished quilt to be a manageable size if I was going to meet the deadline we’d set for ourselves. So I went from four animals to one.
My paper pattern for Pink-guin
My pattern has turned the original drawing into straight lines, but you should be able to tell that the drawing I came up with was rather realistic. My tutu idea no longer worked, so I decided to use pink fabrics for the white I would need for the penguin and the snow/ice behind him in order to meet the color requirements of the challenge. I auditioned fabrics and started putting the quilt together.
Fabrics selected and ironed onto my pattern pieces, and construction has begun.
About halfway through the construction
Quilt top is finished (just needs a border)
Once the entire quilt was completed, including the quilting and the binding, I added beads for an eye and then decorated the pink frame with beads in order to include a little more embellishment. Here’s the finished piece:
Pink-guin, an art quilt by Kit Dunsmore
Making good progress on my Maple Leaf Quilt. I laid out some of my border blocks with the center yesterday so I could see how it’s coming. I love the tiny squares, but am afraid the new blocks pull the eye away from the center. I’m hoping when they are balanced by more blocks, it will all even out.
Maple Leaf Quilt laid out with one of the side borders
The new border is only going on the two long sides; I need to get this thing closer to square to fit the bed. I do intend to wrap everything with the little row of squares to tie it together, then to use a multi-color fabric I originally intended to use on the back for the final border.
Note: the flying geese (aka Dutchman’s puzzle) blocks are not their final size here: I gave them extra big borders to I can trim them to size when the time comes. I’m finding this project really fun at the moment. 5 blocks to go and then I’ll make the decision about whether or not to attach them. Of course, this thing is getting monstrous. With every border I add, it will be that much harder to work with…
Most of my projects tend to be big and complicated and take a lot of time. As a result, I have plenty of WIPs (works-in-progress): novels, quilts, me… 
So I’ve decided to post about a bed quilt I’m making even though it isn’t finished yet, because it could be a long time before it’s done.
Back in 2001, I was part of a quilt block exchange group in the Tompkins County Quilters Guild. We made maple leaf blocks using batik and batik-like fabrics. I came up with an unusual layout for the blocks not long after I received them, but I didn’t actually put them together until recently. I love blocks on-point (so that they look like diamonds instead of a grid), so I found a way to do that with the blocks I had. About half the leaf blocks in my quilt were made by friends. The rest were made by me.
The observant may have noticed that not all my leaves look the same. I intentionally made some wonky blocks using the techniques in Cut Loose Quilts: Stack, Slice, Switch, and Sew by Jan Mullen, and I really liked the results. To me, the odd angles make the leaves look like they’re dried and curly — like real leaves lying on the forest floor. So I mixed in my wonky leaves with the regular ones for a more interesting quilt.
My goal is to make this quilt big enough for our king-sized bed, which means it needs to be a lot bigger than it is at the moment. The final quilt needs to be about 100″ square, so I have to make the center section wider and then add a border or two. I’ve decided to make two strips of blocks to go on either side of the center panel. I couldn’t face making another leaf block (even though it’s been years since I made the last one), so I choose another pattern that goes with the outdoor, autumnal theme: flying geese. I already have a few done…
My current goal is to have this quilt finished within ten years of starting it, which gives me at least one more year. Ideally, though, it’ll be done in time to go on the bed for this coming fall. I’d love to have autumn leaves scattered in the bedroom at the same time they are falling outside. But I still have a long way to go.
I think my favorite studio container has to be the picnic silverware caddies I’ve picked up at thrift stores. As mentioned yesterday, I was able to get all my paint brushes, plus some pencils and even a pair of scissors, into a single caddy.
My tool caddies - oh so handy!
They can hold all sorts of things – scissors, pencils, brushes, awls, hammers, pliers, rotary cutters, small bottles – so I have one for each of my activity areas with the tools most commonly used in that area. They come in various materials and are easy to move around. Thanks to caddies, I can always find my scissors (which can be a trick when I sew and the fabric starts to pile up and drift all over the table).
Thanks to the clean-up/organization I’ve done, I’ve spent time playing in my studio every day this week. Even brainless sewing (assembling quilt blocks into a quilt top) has been fun thanks to my stress-free creative environment.
Of course, I’m not really done with the studio yet. I want to put up shelves to hold my finished projects and display inspiriational materials. I need to organize my closet. I can find things in there right now, but not all the storage is appropriate for what I have (ex: all my yarn is in one huge bin). My bead collection needs to be re-organized – everything has a container, but there’s no rhyme or reason to what is where. I also need to get better shelves and/or containers for my doll-making materials, which include a variety of strangely shaped bits and pieces. So there’s more to do, but I think I’ll wait until January before I tackle the next organizational task. I’d rather spend my time right now basking in the fun of a clean studio.
Once I had a plan (thank you, Julie Morgenstern!) and had thought things through via the writing exercise, I was ready to start sorting. This was the longest part of the process. I had to make piles and piles and piles of supplies as I went through the materials that were stacked on the floor, sitting on the tables, and stuffed in containers. I had a box for each of my large categories (sewing, paper arts, or embellishment) for the really homeless odds and ends, but I actually spent a lot of time just putting things away. Even though it didn’t look like it, I had some areas in my studio that were already well-defined, and I used those locations to collect and pile related materials as I unearthed them.
The tidy view from the door
The hardest part of this process was out in the middle, when I’d been sorting for days and still wasn’t done. Everything was a mess and it felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere. Because I didn’t know how much of what I had to deal with, I didn’t always know how I was going to actually store something even though I had a good idea where in the room I wanted to keep it. Writing really helped me to work through the process. Because I’d already done some writing to prepare for the project, I made a point of writing whenever I was feeling stuck. Before I started, I would state my goals for a session, then at the end, write about whatever I was unsure about. Just by writing things down, I often found a solution. At one point, just making a list of all the piles sitting around that needed homes helped me to focus on finding the right containers and getting things put away. Much as I wanted to bull through this process as quickly as possible, I think I needed the time between sessions both to recover my energy and to cook-up more ideas of things to try. In actual hours, I put in maybe two days worth of time, but it just wasn’t possible for me to do all this work in just two days.
For the record, Morgenstern forsees the slogging stage of this process. One of the reasons for the questions in the analysis phase is to build a list to help the organizer stay focused and motivated. When I was particularly stumped, I would pick up her book and reread her instructions, and that often gave me a new idea or reminded me of something I had forgotten. In case you haven’t guessed, I highly recommend her book for organizing a studio, or anything else for that matter.
Tomorrow: Getting my worktable back.
