Category: 2012 Quilting Challenge

Quilting Challenge: July

I cheated this a bit and sewed July’s patch in June! Because I’m currently on the road so I used the brilliant pre-set publishing option on the blog and set this up a few weeks ago! Delightful. Sometimes I adore technology.

No big story here for the July addition of my 2012 Quilting Challenge, just a sweet little mushroom. I think it could really work with forest creatures or foliage on a burping pad or quilt. I thought of it late one night along with the house idea in June. I guess a house for people is followed by a house for a gnome in my free association! But let’s not get too deep here …

And wow, check it out, I’m stickin’ to this challenge! There are 7 quilt patches with 7 original designs for my quilting work and 7 months of 2012 have passed. I’m excited to string them all together on the boys’ wall at the end of the as a quilty-garland!

Quilting Challenge: June [and musings on “home”]

I have been thinking about home a lot lately, perhaps because I am on the cusp of a big driving trip across the country to Alberta where I grew up. So I feel certain that June’s 2012 Quilting Challenge square should be a house! I love that Mr. Owl looks like he’s perched on the roof top.

I have many places I call home. Alberta of big sky and my first 20 years is home. City: Edmonton, neighbourhood: Parkallen. Friends and family, school and lessons, choir and dancing, adventures on foot, bike, bus and car, flights of imagination in the backyard. It’s more the memories that are home because by now a lot of the people have moved and the landscape has changed a fair bit. It’s the capital “H” home of my mind and heart.

Toronto is my adult home, In fact I’ve been here for 14 years as of this week — maybe that’s why home is on my mind! I came for dance school and fell in love with the city. And with a boy, who I married. I discovered how strong and able and independent and brave I am in this big city. And to my continued surprise, I rarely manage a streetcar ride without seeing someone I know. it’s become the lowercase “h” home, but no less important in my list of homes.

Now Toronto’s Cabbagetown is home-home. A house-of-dreams (yes, you are correct, that’s an obscure Anne of Green Gables reference) and its century-home maintenance realities is the literal roof-over-the-head-home. Now I am maker and keeper of the first home my boys will remember, with their own set of smells and colours and sounds and favourite corners. Their own intangible roots are stretching from this very house and city into the world.

And Adam, that boy I fell in love with, he and our 2 boys are HOME. All caps. Full stop. They are my chosen home, my heart and my landing place, my still point.

My friend Shannon Litzenberger, a prairie girl from the prairiest of all provinces (Saskatchewan of course!) and a  powerhouse artist, arts advocate and policy junkie, is currently developing a dance project called HOMEbody. It’s a multi-faceted artistic musing on what home is, literally and figuratively.  Definitely worth checking out!

Quilting Challenge: May

May is almost done, how is this possible?! For my 2012 Quilting Challenge, May’s contribution is a bit of a cheat, I’ve been quilting this shape for ages, but I need it in my arsenal of designs! It’s the heart of course, my go-to infant quilting shape. Herm. My May-heart is not photographing well, it’s camouflaged in the foliage. But it’s there, I assure you!

Since my dad’s heart has been struggling more than usual this month, and because a little boy named Ford would have been 3 years old this month but for his broken heart, the heart seemed like exactly the right choice for this month. I remember and love and carry them in my own heart. And I count my blessings …

Here’s January through May, the garland of quilting options is growing!

My Auntie Kath taught me how to cut out a pattern from paper and then sew around it, until then it seemed magic that she could sew perfect hearts into her work. Kath’s sewing remains magic to me (even if she’s revealed some secrets to me!) she’s meticulous and joyful about her work, utterly inspiring. I think of her often when I’m at my machine. My hearts are still not perfect, I probably work a little too fast and recklessly for that, but then, who’s heart is perfect?

Quilting Challenge: April

 

April is flying past me, like a train with cars bearing birthday, Easter, bathroom-construction, birthday, teething-fever, bathroom-construction, sewing-gig, taxes, birthday, sewing-gig, birthday, teething-fever, bathroom-construction and so on — whip, whip, whip, blurring my vision and leaving me gasping!

Before the month is out, I need to add April’s quilt square to my 2012 Quilting Challenge. I really had no ideas but then as I was hemming pants for a costume gig the other night, it hit me out of the blue that an umbrella would be sweet! And so it is, particularly on this fabric that almost looks rainy. I’m so charmed with this one and excited to use it on burping pads and quilts.

Quilting Challenge: March

In the continuation of my 2012 Quilting Challenge to myself I present my March quilting pattern, the acorn! It’s joined here in birth order by leaf and apple, January and February’s offerings respectively.

One more pattern to use on my quilts and burping pads, done.

I love nuts. That sounds a bit wrong but I’ll leave it, cause it’s true! I don’t remember ever seeing a chestnut or an acorn on the ground in Alberta, but they’re everywhere here in Ontario! And while the colour and texture of a chestnut is fantastic, it’s a bit of a blob when it comes to outlining it, not so inspiring. But an acorn, what a charmer! A lovely shape, makes me think of gnomes and chipmunks and quiet, mossy spaces.

I love this acorn in it’s singular context. I might dial the detail down a bit more when using it on a quilt or a burping pad, not sure that the crosshatching is entirely necessary in a different context. Anyways I’m really enjoying this 12-part challenge. Something to look forward to and muse upon. Now I get to cook up April’s quilt …

Quilting Challenge: February

My 2012 Quilting Challenge (to myself) continues today with February’s result. It’s a little apple! I’m pleased with the simplicity of it, the detached leaf.

Simple.

I’m working on simple in lots of places — sewing, walls, dancing, writing, art, teaching, choreographing, mothering, being. Simply being where I am. I tend towards complicated, tangled. I need to unravel, unfold, see more space, feel more space, give and have more space. Perhaps that’s cryptic, but it’s what I’ve got for today. More on that soon I imagine.

And here the little apple sits beside January’s leaf:

Fulcrum Wednesday

Oh Wednesday, tipping point of the week, here we be. Today Gene is 5 months old and I just received news that a dear friend had her baby this morning, so I’m feeling extra gooey and snuggly about wee ones with furry shoulders.

I’m patterning and cutting a new quilt design today, one for the new baby girl who arrived just hours ago and a couple for my forthcoming Etsy shop:

Before January bowed out, I managed to make my quilt square for The Great 2012 Quilt Challenge. This is my little challenge-to-self: create 12 different quilting patterns for my products, 1 in every month of 2012:

I also zipped up my big-girl pants and am getting caught up on budgeting. I’ve always been good with dance project budgets and we’ve had fits and starts of good budget tracking in our family life, but it often falls off when things get busy or complicated, which they inevitably do. Then it becomes complicated and terrifying to think about and I avoid it like the plague. So hubby Adam and I have committed to ourselves that this year, we’re gonna do it, really form a habit of staying on top of it. Thus the big girl pants. we’ve got spreadsheets and envelopes and files, it’s all happening folks!

The envelopes to help manage the incoming receipts, I do love envelopes:

Go Go Gadget week; lots of arms in lots of pies! Cheers til next time.

Quilting challenge to myself

On Friday I talked about how the last week had been an intense, straight-up mothering week and a gong-show as far as anything beyond the needs of the kids went. It’s a new week and I’m hopeful, always hopeful, that I’ll get a bit of my own artist work done.

I’ve given myself a manageable challenge for the year (I think?!), to develop 12 different quilting patterns this year, 1 per month. I’m cheating a bit for January as I designed this one in the fall, but this gets me going! I need a few go-to designs for the quilts and burp pads I’ll be making and think this will be a fun way to tie the projects and the year together. I’m going to make each one on a 6″ x 6″ square and maybe they’ll become a garland for the boys room by December!

Here’s my signature leaf design, gonna try to make the square tomorrow:

If you have a favourite quilt or quilting design, old or new, tell me about it and link an image in the comments, I looooves me quilts and quilting of any kind!