External Validation

The feeling of engagement in the process of quilting and the pleasure in (some of) the finished products are entirely sufficient motivations to keep me going in quilting. But it's nice to get external validation occasionally as well. My little "Waves" wall hanging recently brought in $250 at the Brockton Family & Community Services raffle. (Detail above, to show quilting.) And "Loss" has been accepted into the 2009 Sacred Threads show. (Mary Beth has had two quilts accepted into the show also.) I'm not inclined to enter juried shows, but the special nature of Sacred Threads made it a venue in which I could imagine sharing "Loss" with a larger audience.

Progress on "Shelter"

After a couple of years of making countless small sketches and maquettes with different combinations of curves for my "Shelter" quilt, I made the leap recently to a full-sized pattern. It has turned out to be larger than I had been thinking of—this is 58x70 (instead of about 34x40)—David's suggestion and a good idea. The width was determined by how far my hand could sweep a line without me taking a step. (For other views of the plan for the quilt, go to this earlier post.)

I've been making progress with doing sets of curved strip-piecing with the fabric I've collected in turquoise, cobalt, rusty red, and black. The next photo shows which color I'm thinking of for which part of the quilt. There will be many panels joined up in each swatch of color, with a variety of angles. Reading Vikki Pignatelli's Quilting by Improvisation has given me very helpful ideas for how I'll stitch them together—basically, an improvised appliqué technique.


Here you can see the four colors together, just pinned up on the design wall.

And I might mix them up, also. It will be easy to add other colors in, as I play around with the panels. Here's a sliver of red added between the turquoise and cobalt.

Lynette suggests that the red-orange in the upper right may overpower the quilt, and that having a fifth swath between the orange and the black might help. It will be a while before I have enough panels done to get an idea of how much I'll need to mix things up.