Amazingly enough, our “playpen” is working out pretty well.It gets pretty hot on sunny afternoons because it faces west, but a little fan makes it bearable. I want to share a couple more ideas I used in setting up my studio.

First, I was reusing basic bookshelves ( the $50 at Walmart kind) that we have had forever, and there weren’t enough shelves for the way I wanted to use them. We went to our local lumber store to see what we could find. They had prefinished shelves that were exactly the right width, but too long. Of course, in our 2-bedroom apartment, we didn’t have the means to cut them off, but fortunately, the store was able to to that for us. They also carried packages of the little pegs that the shelves rest on, so we were all set, and pretty inexpensively. In the photo, the new shelf is on the left, second from the top. (You can tell that I have a ways to go on the sorting and folding fabric project.)

Adding a new shelf

I also got the makings for my favorite design wall from the lumber shop. I like to use foil-covered styrofoam insulation. It is very lightweight and easy to attach to the wall, as well as being sturdier that just plain stryrofoam.  In my previous studio, I had two 4×8 foot pieces, but here I only have room for one. It is 3/4 in. thick, and I had to cut off about 12 inches at the bottom to fit it in the elevator. I covered it with a leftover piece of grey fabric that sticks to  Velcro, originally purchased for my merchant booth at Houston. It holds up pieces of fabric pretty well, but most of the time I just use pins.

Design wall from insulation board

In this photo, I am trying out a couple choices of sashing fabric for a baby quilt I’m working on. Next time, I’ll tell you about the pieces at the top of the wall.

I haven’t posted to this blog for quite a while, and I apologize. Part of the reason is that I haven’t been at the sewing machine for several months (except for a workshop by Linda Halpin, and even that I haven’t followed up on). Instead, I’ve been trying to decrease my work area, both office and creative space, by more than half. It’s funny, I thought I did pretty well not accumulating clutter, but it has been an eye-opener to go through every box and every drawer. I keep finding things I didn’t know I had (and they aren’t much use if I don’t know they are there), and things that I wonder why I ever kept. A lot of it is also from previous interests, that I don’t think I’ll pursue any further.

Then when I decide what I don’t need any more, there is the question of what to do with it all. I’m not very good at tossing things that might be useful into the trash (although I could take lessons from Marv) so I try to find ways of blessing others with what I am giving away. I’ve been slowly reducing the number of quilts, donating to the Quilt Museum, my church, the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity and other worthy organizations. This last week, I’ve been going through drawers and boxes of notions, threads, lace, etc. About a third of my no-longer-useful-to me stuff will be offered to friends and guild members, a third (not quilt-related) will go into the Salvation Army pile, and a third just gets tossed.

It’s funny, though. I’ve been a member of Flylady.net for probably 10 years, and always thought I didn’t have a problem with clutter, but, by golly, she’s right. It’s way more peaceful with less stuff. It’s just way harder than I thought to get there.

I’m not sure when I’ll find time to post again, so please be patient. Our plan is to finish decluttering and painting in February, spend March in Tucson, then finish up preparing for sale in April and get the house on the market in May. I’ll update our progress whenever I can.

I  promised I would show you how I am quilting Sue’s Legacy quilt. Many years ago, I learned to Big Stitch from Jo Walters, and it has been a favorite technique when I want to have the stitching be a major design element. I use size 8 pearl cotton, and the stitches are about 1/4″ long, with small spaces between them. Both the color of the thread and the weight of the stitching line add another dimension to the quilt top. For this quilt, since the fabrics were so bright, I also chose very bright thread colors. Here is a closeup of the stitching. I really like the the stiches in the orange checkerboard squares, inspired by Ann Johnston.

The back, of course, looks quite different, since the stitches on the front are long. Here is a photo of the back.

I am donating this quilt to our guild as a fundraiser, many of the members remember Sue and might like to have a bit of her work.

I’ve been trying to publish this description of how I made Yum!, but it’s fighting me all the way. I may have to break it up into even more pieces, but this is the continuation of the previous post. The photos seem to want to go with the wrong paragraphs, so you’ll have to figure out where they SHOULD be.

I photographed several baskets I had in the house, one of which I made, and started playing in Photoshop. I was working in CS4, which I hadn’t used much. Oh, look how easy it is to change the color, and to posterize the image!  I got a little carried away, I’m afraid. There wasn’t enough of the challenge fabric to do a practice piece, and the baskets printed darker than I wanted them to. (Since I wanted to use the Cotton Lawn for raw-edge applique of the veggies, I ironed a stabilizer to the back of the baskets so the fabric wouldn’t ravel. It helped a little.)

Photo of one basket

After playing in Photoshop

Then, on my regular visits to the nearby Wheat Ridge farmer’s market, I photographed lots of lovely vegetables to fill the baskets with. Again, I had too much fun playing in Photoshop, posterizing the colors and adding edges. One challenge was sizing the veggies so they looked like the right scale.

Original photo of beets

I had taken several photographs of wheat fields in Wisconsin this summer, thinking to use one as a background for this piece. I used a neat program called Image Tricks to modify the photo for the background, and printed it on four 13×19 EQ regular fabric sheets, then pieced it together.

Original wheat field photo

After playing in Image Tricks

The next step was to play with the arrangement of baskets and vegetables on the background. I soon realized that I needed to have shadows cast by the baskets to add a little “realism” to the images. I tacked the baskets and veggies in place with droplets of Elmer’s Glue, then used Derwent pencils to add the shadows. The next step was to quilt, I used mostly King Tut variegated thread, and outlined the colors on the veggies. I did a sort of “scribble quilting” on the background.

About this time, daughter Shannon Osorio in Ohio sent some photos of the harvest from her garden. They were wonderful, and I decided to include them as mirrored images for the borders. As I was coming near the end, I took a workshop from Susan Cleveland on her marvelous piping technique, adding piping to both edges of the border was the final touch the piece needed. I am really pleased with the result, here is a detail. (Check out the previous post for a photo of the whole quilt.)

Detail of Yum! A Farmer's Market Fantasy

Yum! A Farmer's Market Fantasy

Making a new quilt is kind of like planting a garden for me. I don’t seem to able to plan a quilt out ahead of time. A seed of an idea gets planted in my brain (which may or may not be fertile ground at the time). It has to lie there under the surface for a while, accumulating the energy to sprout and poke its little head into the light of day. A little feeding and watering (or maybe a lot, depending on the challenges), and in due time, I can harvest a finished quilt.

My newest quilt is called Yum! A Farmer’s Market Fantasy, and the seed (idea) was a challenge fabric for Columbine Quilt Guild. It was a tone-on-tone beige fabric, and I wondered what would happen if I printed on it. The theme of the challenge was “Seasons of the Year,” so I thought maybe I could print some baskets on the beige fabric and the texture would show through the baskets. I could fill the baskets with veggies, and do a harvest season theme. More in the next post about how it developed.