Dark and Stormy Night

There is one project on my WIP list that I have yet to blog about:  Dark and Stormy Night (Storm at Sea).  Despite the fact that I usually find naming quilts an arduous process, this one came unbidden.  Probably because Snoopy in Peanuts started all of his creative writing endeavors with, "It was a dark and stormy night..."  This always gave me a giggle (yeah, I know, I'm easily entertained).  However, it seems perfect for this quilt.

The picture above is courtesy of my EQ5 program.  I have not proceeded very far with the project.  I'm still cutting the pieces.  While the project will be color controlled in that all the blue pieces will be some shade of blue, the green pieces some shade of green, etc., each of the 64 blocks will be unique.  No fabric repeats.  That probably sounds crazy to a lot of quilters, but for me, it's fun.  I'm still collecting fabrics for the purple and green pieces.  The blue pieces are all cut.

My favorite colors are blue, purple, and green.  Yet as a rule, I tend to pair them with at least one warm color.  It always seemed to me that cool colors tend to need warm colors and visa-versa.  Art theory tends to confirm this.  My art background is very minimal, being limited to one art education class back when I thought I was going to become a teacher.  The teacher spent a lot of time teaching us about the color wheel.  Complimentary colors:  those straight across the wheel from each other.  Analogous colors:  those right next to each other.  Apparently, there are defined ways of putting colors together in order to create an attractive combination.


Then she told us about the painting "Blue Boy" by Thomas Gainsborough. 

Apparently Gainsborough broke the color theory rules when he created this painting.  The theory is that warm colors give the feeling of moving toward the viewer, while cool colors--like blue--give the feeling of receding from the viewer.  Gainsborough proved this didn't necessarily have to be the case, because Blue Boy feels fully front and center in this painting.  Of course, if there are any warm colors to be found in this painting they are very muted.

I have no idea why this particular thing of the many things that art education teacher taught us stuck in my head, but it did.  So my Storm at Sea is my own attempt to make cool colors come forward.  I'm doing it by making the background totally black.  A cheat compared to Gainsborough's beautiful painting.  Nevertheless, there you have it.

Poll Results--How Do You Stack Up?

The WIP/UFO polls have closed. "How Many WIPs Do You Have?" brought in 71 votes total, and "How Old is Your Oldest UFO?" brought in 60 votes total. So with no further adieu, here are the results:

How Many WIPs Do You Have?:

• Just one:  1 %
• 1-5:  36%
• 5-10:  22%
• 10-15:  18%
• More than I'll ever admit:  21%

How Old is Your Oldest UFO?:

• Have no UFOs:  5%
• 2 years:  11%
• 2-5 years: 13%
• 5-10 years:  28%
• 10-15 years:  28%
• Older than I'll ever admit:  13%

Okay, I have to admire the person who is focused enough to have only one project going at a time.  At 1%, there was only one of you--and I trust that you know who you are.  That takes concentration, determination, and self-discipline.  I'm not focused enough to concentrate on one project from beginning to end, and my determination wanes if I become daunted by the next step.  Self-discipline?  Heck, I regard the fact that I've started only one new project this year (besides the baby quilt that needed to be completed by July and was done by April) as self-discipline.  For me, that takes a considerable amount of effort.  With 10 WIPs, I'm in good company with 22% of you.  The largest group at 36% has only 1-5 WIPs going at one time.

Then there is the admirable group at 5% who has no UFOs.  Of course, this could be a matter of definition.  Carla, at Sew It Up Baby, said she doesn't like to refer to any of her projects as UFOs, because then it means the project is neglected.  I think she has a point.  I haven't neglected any of my projects, although I've been stuck in one place on some of them for a really long time.  Continuing in that vein then, I'm in good company with one of the larger groups--those who have WIPs/UFOs of 10-15 years old.  28% of us fall into this category.  The other large group, also at 28%, have WIPs/UFOs of 5-10 years old.

My Black and White and Red All Over quilt is approximately 3-4 years old.  It came about as block swap, and included signature blocks, which appear in the top and bottom border of the quilt.  After I free motion quilt the Pansy Quilt, this one will be next.  It's nice to have a plan for completing this WIP.  I wouldn't mind whittling down the WIP list just a bit.

Another WIP Bites the Dust!

Another WIP bites the dust!

I've been anxious to finish this quilt, because I made it for a friend, Matt. His wife, Robynn, received her quilt for her birthday in April. When I started the two quilts (nearly 2 years ago) I hadn't really intended the quilts to be birthday gifts, but Robynn's was done at the appropriate time, so I couldn't resist sending it to her for her birthday. Matt's birthday followed about 7 1/2 weeks after Robynn's, and unfortunately I just couldn't get his quilted, bound, and washed in the time between their two birthdays. So being late, I'm eager for him to have it.

The quilt measures 66 X 78, and is composed of thirty, twelve inch blocks.

I made this quilt around Matt's favorite color, turquoise. Turquoise is an interesting color. I had always thought of turquoise as being a specific shade of blue; a subset of blue so to speak. However, when I started rummaging through my stash, and looking at fabric online, I realized it wasn't that simple. There are the blue turquoises and the green turquoises. I asked a few fellow quilters which color people mean when they speak of turquoise. As you might expect, I got several different answers. At that point, I decided to use both the blue and green turquoises in Matt's quilt. Delving into the color in earnest, it became obvious that while turquoise may be a subset of blue (or perhaps green), it is so much more than that. The different shades of turquoise are seemingly endless. I began looking at the color in a whole new way. What fun!
Matt's quilt is the first quilt in which I did any free motion quilting. While I did stitch in the ditch around each block and did a significant amount of straight line quilting, I free motioned the "petals" that are the main motif in each block.
I learned a lot about free motion quilting from this experience, but I still have a long way to go:

1.) I got better at controlling speed and motion.

2.) I realized that although my skills will most certainly improve over time (I hope), free motion quilting will never have the same look as machine controlled straight line quilting. However, some people like incredibly talented lady at Ivory Spring get exceptionally close. (For anyone interested in getting tips from a pro, you should check out her blog series articles, "Thread Talk".) Free motion quilting is more art than drafting. Both give wonderful results, but they are distinctly different.

3.) I also decided that perhaps a smaller motif that utilized only 1/4 of the block might have been easier to manage than the petals that ranged over nearly the full 12 inches of the block. I'll give that a try on my next quilt.

So in a nutshell, free motion quilting went from totally terrifying to enjoyably terrifying. HA!

While a quilter always sees the flaws, and things she wishes she'd done a bit differently, I'll say that overall, I'm pretty pleased with the way this quilt turned out. I hope Matt is too.

I'll be linking up over at Amylouwho's for Sew and Tell Friday, and at Lit and Laundry for Finished for Friday. Check out these blogs and see everyone else's wonderful work.

UFO's, WIP's and a Poll or Two

In 2010, I decided to get my UFO's and WIP's whittled down to a more manageable size. To that end, I joined the Yahoo Group, Quilting and Finishing in 2010 and I've posted a list of my UFO's and WIP's on my blog so that I am frequently reminded. As of now, my list consists of 9 projects. I've managed to get two off my list this year--a quilt I gave a friend for her birthday in April (I'd been working on it for nearly 2 years), and a baby quilt for my cousin and his wife who are expecting in July. The last one was a project I welcomed, but was added last and finished first. After all, when a baby is on the way, the baby quilt is a priority. So my list went from 11 to 9 in the first 4 months of the year, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Why 2010? It's not that I haven't considered taming the project list before. The turning point came when I got my Juki TL-98Q in December. I love to hand-quilt, but obviously the process is slow and I can only hand-quilt about 6 months out of the year when the temperature is cool enough. I tried machine quilting on my little Kenmore sewing machine. It's a great little machine, but pushing a quilt of any size through its standard harp is a major chore, and I could never get the tension right for FMQ because it's difficult to set the bobbin tension. The Juki's larger harp makes a world of difference, and I didn't need to make any tension adjustments on it for FMQ--although I easily could if I needed to.

That said, I have two true UFO's, the Sister's Choice quilt pictured above, and the Black, White and Red quilt. I'm embarrassed about the age of the Sister's Choice. The result of wonderful block exchange, it's nearly 15 years old. Why didn't I finish it? A major move, no longer having any of the off-white background fabric, and not being able to decide what I wanted to add as far as borders to make it big enough to go on my bed. Luckily, my quilter buddy, P, (see her blog, The Way I Sew It, here) has discussed the project with me, and I can see light at the end of the tunnel on this one, although I haven't yet started. The Black, White, and Red quilt is ready to sandwich and quilt, as soon as I'm done quilting Matt's quilt.

The other projects are WIPs, although 2 on the list, the Drunkard's Path and the Storm at Sea, are in the collecting fabric and cutting phase. That leaves 5 projects that are getting my attention, however, the Scrappy Star is being hand-quilted and I have had to put it away for the season. (How does that count? Still a WIP or is it again a UFO?)

I'm asking myself, what is the perfect number of projects? I know that 9 (or more) feels like too many. I do both hand and machine quilting projects. With the hand projects I'll probably need two of those; one for hand-quilting in the winter and one for hand-piecing in the summer. I could probably get by with just one machine quilt project though. And perhaps, I need one project waiting in the wings, one for which I'm collecting and cutting fabric. So, I'm thinking 4 would be ideal. I intend to whittle this list down enough to try it and find out. However, I admit that I do love starting projects more than finishing them, and so I'm having to flog myself into submission to keep from starting something new, despite that I've got too many projects now. Crazy huh?

So what do you think? What is the perfect number of projects to have on hand? Oh, and don't forget to answer the new polls about your UFOs and WIPs!