Studio Kit

1. dispersion quilt, 2. recycled fabric container, 3. Arlequin, 4. Expression libre

Why these are this week's Flickr Faves, after the jump.

Two of these quilts (the ones on the right) are by the same artist - Cecile Meraglia. The red one is by Deborah O'Hare and the third is by Carol Taylor. What all of these pieces have in common is an unabashed love of saturated colour and a certain fearlessness in their construction.

I admire these women as artists - not only because of the beauty of their work, but their lack of inhibition in producing it. Some day, I too hope to produce work as beautiful and free as this - with my own voice.

In the meantime, I hope you have a weekend filled with beauty. See you on Monday. :)

I mentioned the other day that I've decided to once again join Jacquie in her pursuit of cleaniung out our WIP closets - she's doing something called Joy in The New Year. You may remember that I participated in her similar projects in the spring and summer.

I did manage to get quite a few WIPs done, but sadly, I still have more! These days, when I make a quilt, I want to quilt it right away because the quilting is an integral part of my design right from the beginning.

But when I first started quilting, I was all over the map.

In the first few months, I was experimenting, creating things in my sewing room that were my dimly seen visions of what "quilts" were, with no knowledge and few skills.

But then I started looking around, in quilting magazines and online, and found a world wide community of quilters! I decided to start trying different things in a more structured way, without any regard for those quilts I saw in my head, clamoring to be made. But every time, when it was time to do the "quilting" part of the quilt, I was stumped.

My goal was to learn technique, develop the skills necessary to quilt, so I could make those quilts I see in my head. But in the process, I made a whole lot of quilt tops that are either "not so great", or are stylistically, quilts I wouldn't make today, or both. And now I have to quilt them, whether I like it or not! ;)

It's those WIPs that are languishing in my sewing room, and those are the ones I'm going to be working on for the next couple of months - on and off. I plan to finish a WIP, do something "fun", finish a WIP, do something "fun", etc.

So, strap yourself in, odd WIPs are ahead. It's going to be a bumpy night!

A while back, I showed you a sneak peek of a quilt I was working on. Well, I both started and finished it this weekend.

1. japanese quilt 2009, 2. DSCN1802, 3. Quilted Colour Study Art Quilt, 4. Reconstruction no.1 - Denim Art Quilt

My sewing machine and I were reunited and immediately commenced to work together on our latest project. She ran satisfyingly smoothly and well, and Zen Garden was finished in no time!]

That gorgeous Japanese silk fabric used on the back and on the squaures made me think of all things Japaense,

I was feeling better on Friday as I posted then. We had dinner plans with friends that evening, and Saturday was BSP's and my anniversary:

(I wish you could see how adorable BSP was on our wedding day, but I have promised (upon pain of death!) to never never never put BPS on the internet. )

So, no quilting was done on Saturday. But today, oh how lovely, today I finally got to go to my sewing room after such a long absence.

I happily created my new top and began quilting it, when ... DISASTER.

My usual sewing machine, Jezebel (a Singer Ingenuity) went to the hospital about ten days ago. She needed a part not on hand, so in her absence, I've been using my old sewing machine, a little Kemore I call Connie. I made all of my first quilts on Connie as well as host of clothing and home decor items, so I had no qualms about putting her to use and felt that she would be well up to the task.

Sadly, she gave up the ghost on me this afternoon. I spent nearly two hours painstakingly taking her apart, cleaning her, oiling her and putting her back together again, but she is still recalcitrant; so I finally came to the sad conclusion that there will be no more quilting today.

The good news is, when Connie stopped working, after my initial attempts to help her ended in ashes, I called the shop and found out that Jezebel is ready to roll. BSP has volunteered to pick her up tomorrow so she'll be ready to go when I get home. Hurray!

This is the backing fabric as well - I had to fuse it to give is some stability - it's a Japanese silk, but is fine and sheer like Sari-veil fabric. If you click that pic, you may be able to see a really cool detail - those grey ovals and the insides of the flowers are slightly raised and feel like caterpillar fur. So neat. I picked up several yards of this fabric at the most recent Textile Museum fabric sale and while I was standing in line with it, people kept coming up to me and touching it! It's extremely tactile - soft and smooth - it really invites stroking.

Anyway - my next post should be the finished product.

Hope you all had great weekends - and perhaps ones more productive than mine!