Back to Work!!

 Yes, I have been working on quilts again.  The weather has been so wonderful since the hurricane, I have been compelled to spend a lot of time just watching the waves rolling in.  It hasn't rained in three weeks!

This is the Albers quilt that I finished some time ago.  I finally finished the quilting last week but still have to sew down the binding.  It is made from a lot of my hand dyed scraps.  I am working on another quilt now using even smaller scraps from an old dyeing project. This uses a special set of rulers which are not quite square and not quite a diamond and there was lots and lots of trimming but I had seen a small quilt using these rulers and liked the look of the block and thought it would be good to showcase my hand dyes.  I have an awful lot of smaller pieces of hand dyed fabric from when I did much smaller batches at a time!

This is a closeup showing the quilting.  It really took a long time to get it done.  I called it the Albers quilt as he was the artist that did a lot to show how colors were influenced by the colors around them.  So there are colors in this quilt that look different but are the same.

I finally finished this quilt as well and it is on the bed that it was destined for.  It was another of those projects that I brought down here last year.  It was just unfinished squares and not enough for the king sized quilt that I wanted.  I really didn't enjoy making it as it was just too much green.  I tried adding other colors but they just didn't work so had to be satisfied with the touch of yellow and yellow/orange.

This is a closeup of the above quilt which gives  you a better idea of the block itself.  It was Margaret Miller's Easy Pieces.  I gave the book away as I have made four quilts now from that block and I am just done!!

These are blocks that were cut down from larger pieces (not much larger - only 8 x 11 inches).  I had a whole pile of these small pieces from several overdyeing sequences I did after taking Carol Soderlund's class.  I used some different sets of primaries.  The snowflakes were made by applying thickened bleach through a silk screen that I had made.  You can see which colors discharge and which don't.  I wanted to do something with all these blocks so the next project is being birthed now - more later!

As usual, we have pictures of some of the local fauna!  This is the backyard of my daughter's new house.  It is wonderful to sit by the pool with my camera and a good book.  I have seen three kinds of hawks, lots of vultures and several smaller birds.  She has trees all around the lot and it backs up to a marsh so lots of potential for bird watching here -- just have to get her some feeders!!

This was the rather large Bullfrog that decided to nestle into one of her pool skimmers.  She thought it was dead but Warren found out differently when he tried to get it out and it jumped into the pool and starting swimming around!

I followed it back to the woods when Warren finally got it out of the pool!

Two kinds of Skippers -- this is a Silver Spotted Skipper.
 

This is a Fiery Skipper.

This is a young Cooper's Hawk that was flying overhead quite far away.

While Lisa was cleaning out some brush, this Eastern Phoebe took interest as they do like bugs!

I have also seen both Red-shouldered and Red-tailed hawks, lots of Vultures, Yellow-rumped Warblers and others that were deep in the woods and hard to see.

The Color Quilt Almost Done and the Challenge Quilt is Done!!

The blocks are finally all done and the triangle inserts are all cut and all totally bias because of the odd shape of the rhombus.  This was not easy.  I finally picked a mellower yellow than I had before and luckily had just enough yardage to make the setting triangles.  

Here I have sewn about half the quilt together.  Matching the points was easier than I thought it would be and this step has gone relatively quickly!

It's finally all together!!  I really think it needs borders to kind of hold it together.  If I had used a dark triangle for the setting triangles, this probably wouldn't be necessary but I couldn't bring myself to do my usual dark outside!  

My first was a thin orange strip and then a dark green about the size of the strips on the rhombuses.  

I have finally decided to go with a narrow red strip and then a fairly wide navy blue.  This will make the quilt 72 x 96 which is a little bigger than the lap robe I had envisioned!!

This is the background for the challenge quilt for the Quilters by the Sea. The theme was "circle of friends" and had to be circular.  I remembered a Facebook post where I mentioned that I was glad to be back and seeing my birds again down here was like meeting up with old friends so that became my inspiration.  This is obviously a beach-y looking background.

 I printed a bunch of my pictures on fusible fabric and then carefully cut out the birds from the picture and fused them down onto the background.  This is by no means all the birds I see (in fact there are two more on the back but still not complete) but there was only so much room on the piece.  I used a thin Sharpie to put their names underneath.  It was kind of fun!  I may actually hang this somewhere.  I used a piece of painted fabric on the back and of course all the fabrics on the front are scraps of my hand dyes.  The background is pieced.  I machine quilted the background and then used the pillowcase method to put on the back (so no quilting shows on the back).  I put the birds on after it was all quilted.  This blog won't appear until after quilt club tonight as it is supposed to be secret!

Forward Progress and the Beginning of the Challenge Quilt

This quilt is slow going but has already been claimed by my oldest daughter who saw it on Facebook.  There is only four more blocks to go and it will be done.  It certainly has used the full spectrum of my hand-dyed fabrics!!  I haven't arranged them particularly yet and will put the darker ones on the outside (I think).  My biggest quandary has been how to fill in those weird triangles on the side.  You can see one thought on the upper right hand side (discarded I might add).

This had been my very first thought.  Yellow triangles with the striped pieces kind of giving the effect of a border.  Didn't like it at all as it was jarring.  When thinking about it, I had been sure this would be the answer -- NOT.

I finally went back to my original thought which was just plain yellow triangles with the darker blocks along the outside edge.  I am not quite sure whether it will be yellow or not yet.  I am trying to only use fabric that I have down here although I could dye some so I will have enough as these rhombuses take a lot of yardage --- this is complicated by the fact that I kind of have to add inches to the ruler so that the triangles are the right size.

It also requires two different size triangles as you can see here.

In the meantime, I have started work on my "challenge quilt" due next Monday night!!  So I better get hopping.  My dear husband is going to NYC for a week of fun and frolic so I have a vacation from cooking so I shouldn't have any trouble completing this project.  The theme is "circle of friends" and it just has to be a circular shape between 12 and 18 inches in diameter. I am heading for the top end of the range. 

What absolutely amazed me is that I had no idea what I was going to do for a background except that it would be blue.  I picked up a stack of fat quarter blues from my stash down here and instantaneously it came to me.  This is the experience I had with Iron Quilter as well.  I always think I am not able to be creative and then surprise myself with my quick visceral response to things.    I can't post the quilt until after the meeting on Monday!!  It required printed images and this complicated my entry as our printer pooped out (of course) and I had to get a new one!  So stay tuned!

No birds today!

Quilt Progress and More Bird Pics (of Course)!

The beginning of a new day and some more work on the quilt but first a trip to my bird places as it is a nice sunny day.

First a lovely Tri-Color Heron down at the boat ramp.  He was joined by a Snowy Egret and then later a Great Blue Heron.

The Great Blue was fluffing his feathers and annoying the others!

There were a lot of the usual gulls plus several Royal Terns and Forster Terns that were adorning the dock.  This is a Royal Tern.

I headed down to Carolina Beach Lake and there were several male and female Buffleheads diving like crazy.

There were even more Lesser Scaups, both female and male, than before.  You can see his distinctive head shape.

I finally got to see the male and female Red-headed Ducks close enough to take their picture.

A closeup of the male Redhead!

I called this a double date for Valentine's Day as there are a male and female Redhead and a male and female Scaup hanging out together!

Auditioning some more insides in the early afternoon.

Making real progress here.  Right now it is about 40 inches x 50 inches but think I will make it probably about 60 wide by 80 long so good for a nap on the sofa.

I already see one block that I don't like and it will be removed or put in an inconspicuous place.  These are slow going as there is a lot of trimming at each step.

Moving Forward on the Albers Quilt

All those things that look like rocks are really Dunlins!  The wind was fierce yesterday and the tide was extra high because of the new moon so the Dunlins and Oystercatchers were all huddled on what little was left of the rock wall at Ft. Fisher.  This wall was built in the mid 1800's to keep the silt from the ocean from getting into the Cape Fear River.  It is really long and almost intact still although a  lot of it goes under water during high tides.

Well, I had the idea that the blocks might look more interesting if I set them on their sides -- kind of wave like.  So I tried it.  No, didn't like it!

So I turned them around again.   Much better.  It is slow going.

There is no way to do these quickly so am just plodding along.

I really liked the blocks with the deep fuchsia/purple.  I decided at this point that I needed some reds and red/oranges in the outer layers. 

So far I have just been using the scraps from other projects plus green and blue fat quarters that I brought down with me with the intention of making some quilts out of them.  I always seem to want more color and things always evolve which is why the other colors are getting added.  It would probably be calmer if I stuck to a nice restricted palette but I am pretty much incapable of that!!  I am making the rings larger than the pattern I had been using.  Each rhombus is about 10 1/2 x 8 1/2 now.  It keeps growing and growing, another thing my pieces have a habit of doing!

Dyeing Day and a New Quilt Start

Shortly after returning from Florida, Dianne and I met for a day of dyeing -- extreme overdyeing which results in 35 colors using 10 dye baths.  It is very labor intensive though but Dianne and I have gotten it down to a fine art and a predictable time schedule.  She always lets me pick the colors and I noticed we hadn't done any reds -- well, I think we overachieved.  There were some strange things happening which I think resulted from old dyes -- red seems to be the most sensitive.

The first set of dyes were Sun Yellow, Golden Yellow, a mix of half Strong Orange and half Rust Orange, Basic Brown and the Neutral Gray.  The overdyes were Mixing Red, Fuchsia, Strongest Red, Fire Red (Dharma),Scarlet (Dharma) and then Deep Navy.  I think the Fuchsia and Scarlet were weak -- the scarlet being the weakest as it dyed orange.  They were all 3% concentrations.  I overdye a couple of those red/oranges that look alike -- maybe with some black, brown or navy.

Just another view of the same fabrics.  I think it shows a little more variation this way.  I do like the effect of the gray, brown and navy.

This is the beginning of another quilt.  I bought a rhombus ruler after seeing a quilt made with it at my local quilt show in Rochester.  I already  have a name for it and a different direction -- it will be called Ode to Albers.  The reason for this can be seen in the chartreuse in the two blocks - they look like two different colors as they are affected by their surroundings -- this is what Albers did a lot of studies on and a principle I often emphasized when teaching a color class.  I have cut up a lot of those center rhombuses from scraps and was doing the same for the strips.  I will be cutting the strips of real yardage so I can do more strip piecing.  There is a lot of trimming with this block.  A rhombus is just a fat diamond.  

 No  blog would be complete without a few birds.  This was an Ibis wandering with a few friends down at Ft. Fisher.

 A large flock of Lesser Scaups has returned to Carolina Beach Lake.  I hadn't seen any last year but they were frequent visitors before.  This is one of the males.  They are diving ducks and they almost seem to dive as a group -- first one and then a bunch more follow.

Here is a group of four of the males.  

There are mostly Gadwalls now at the Aquarium pond.  Here is a male and his female friend.  There were also Buffleheads and Pied-billed Grebes and a beautiful Great Blue Heron.