Spliced Lines Sewn into Eighty-Eight Squares: Homage to Ellsworth Kelly II

Work on this quilt has been going slowly, but I have been making progress. The photo below shows the quilt top, batting and backing layered on and pinned into the carpeted floor in our large guest room. This is where I'm basting the layers together in preparation for quilting. The silvery line at the bottom of the photo is the piece of straight metal I bought some years ago to help me mark quilting lines. This time I used it to help me get the inner black border pinned down in straight lines.

Below you can see the basting stitches I've been putting in. These big red stitches will hold the layers in place as I do the machine quilting, and then will be pulled out. (I would usually baste with safety pins when doing machine quilting, but I didn't want to add further weight and bulk to this large quilt.) In a method learned from Suzanne Marshall, I sit on the floor and put in the lines of stitching. I only do about an hour a day, listening to music. I've been at it for a couple of weeks, and it will take me another several days still. Then on to the quilting!

Going back a step, it took me a while to prepare the backing for the quilt. I like using a fabric wide enough that it doesn't have to be pieced, and I have plenty of white fabric that width that could be dyed for the backing. Dyeing the color I want is usually easier than purchasing fabric, because there are not many quilting stores within easy reach, and I rarely buy fabric online because it's impossible to know the actual color from what you see on the computer screen. I also enjoy the challenge of dyeing the color I want, so the process began. I have a lot of experience in dyeing grays, with lots of samples to choose from, but not much experience with tan, which is want I wanted for this quilt. Yes, I have my invaluable sample book from Carol Soderlund's "Color Mixing for Dyers" class, but the samples are only 1" square, and for something as subtle as tan, it's difficult to assess from that small bit. Then when one of my first trials came out greenish instead of tan, I realized that my dyes were several years old, and red is usually the first to go. So, new red ordered, and the trials continued. Five samples are shown in the photo below, laid on top of the natural linen used in the top. I had started out aiming for a medium value like the ones on the far left and right, but decided that a lighter value was much better--less important to get a close match to the hue of the linen.

The next photo has pulled the fabrics that were 2nd from left and furthest right above; they are two values of the same hue.  The one on the left is what I chose, so it's what you see peeking out behind the pieced top in the first photo in this post.  It's quite a lovely "oyster white" kind of color, and I can imagine finding other uses for it.

Of course the big question remains of how to quilt the quilt, what pattern of stitching to use. With a number of leftover blocks, I did some sample quilting some months ago. The photo below shows the sample quilted and washed. I like the idea of keeping the black lines untouched, so the quilting will be done in the spaces between the lines, basically echoing the shapes. The lines are spaced more closely together in the top four blocks than in the bottom two; the plan is to go with the wider spacing. The long side pieces, trials for the wide borders, are done with wavy vertical lines, sometimes intersecting.

Well, that's been the quilting plan for a while, but as I look at the sample again now, I'm thinking I should do one more trial before a final decision. It occurs to me that simple straight-line quilting might be better, either just horizontal lines (which I've often done on quilts), or a grid of horizontals and verticals. Yes, this would mean crossing the black lines many times, but it's possible that a medium-value neutral thread would not show up very much. So, there will be a pause between basting and quilting while I do one more trial. If you have any thoughts on this, do let me know!

Once the quilting is done, there's one final decision--what kind of binding to put on the quilt. I considered a black binding or a linen one, but have decided on a faced binding done with the same fabric as the backing. A faced binding is seamed to the front for a finished edge, but then pulled around entirely to the back so that nothing shows on the front. I like the idea of the large borders of the quilt, that will hang over the sides of the bed, to be just plain linen, with no "frame." (I've done several quilts with faced bindings; here's one.)

I came up with a new name for this quilt. The small work of Ellsworth Kelly that inspired my design was called "Brushstrokes Cut into Forty-Nine Squares and Arranged by Chance," so I've done a riff on that. I left out the "arranged by chance" part, because there was a lot of thinking involved in how I placed the squares. And I wonder, did Kelly really leave the 49 squares exactly as he first laid them down by chance? 

Earlier posts on this quilt:

January 25, 2022

April 29, 2021

Returning to "Homage to Ellsworth Kelly II"

It's over five months since my last post. For the first 2-3 months, it was because on intensive work I was doing on a capital campaign for my synagogue, and all my writing energy was taken up with drafting campaign materials, and then--happily--thank you letters. When I was able to get back into the studio, I needed something simple, that didn't involve much thinking, so I finished up a couple of baby quilts that I'd started a while ago, and started a 4-patch posie quilt with some fabric on hand. At that point, it became clear to me that I wasn't just taking a break, but that I was actively avoiding getting back to the quilt I was in the middle of last summer, my second "Homage to Ellsworth Kelly." The last time you saw this project, I had completed 82 blocks of a projected 195 (for a queen-sized quilt), and I did a dozen more after this photo was taken.

I finally realized that I wasn't up to making another 101 blocks. I had really enjoyed making the blocks I did, figuring out various configurations of lines and how far I could take a pieced-in curved line. But going on to do dozens more would have been repetitive, without the joy of discovery. So, I talked it through with friends and came up with another plan. I decided to use the linear blocks for a 60x80 medallion that would cover the top surface of the bed, and then add plain linen borders to bring it to the size of a queen-size quilt (90x94).  Here's the medallion, with all the blocks sewn together.  Since this used just 88 of the 94 blocks I had on hand, I was able to set aside blocks I wasn't so fond of.

I dropped the photo of the medallion into Photoshop, and tried out a black inner border and then wider borders of tan (which will be the same linen as in the blocks). [I wish I knew why blogger lets me place some photos centered, but refuses to move others except to right and left 😐]

So, the image above is the final design for the quilt, and has been approved by the recipients--all set! But there was one more design decision to make--exactly how wide should the black inner border be? I knew I wanted it narrower than in the Photoshop image, but by how much? I pieced together six of the leftover blocks and tried out different widths in the border. First I pieced in a 1/2" strip, and then I cut a strip for a 5/8" border, feeling a little silly for trying something with only an 1/8" difference. But I'm glad I kept the difference that small. To my eye, 1/2" looks good, while 5/8" is definitely too wide!

So then I took out the 5/8" strip, and replaced it with a 3/8" strip.

The 3/8" strip is so similar to much of the line-work within the blocks that it looks like it's meant to join up with them. The 1/2" strip is still in keeping with the line work (there are some lines are are 1/2" wide, and occasionally even a bit wider), but it stands out a bit more from the line-work, reading as a border. Decision made--1/2" it will be.

There's one other thing that helped me get back in the studio--I figured out a different way to manage my time so that it's easier to spend stretches in the studio. I'll describe it here, in case it might help someone else who is having trouble corralling the computer-based tasks that can so easily take up the whole day, especially with the temptation to click on one link and then another. 

For all my working life, I've worked each day from a list of tasks that needed to be done. My habit was to work task by task, and I usually tried to finish one task before going on to another. But thinking about this recently, I realized that most of the tasks in front of me don't have specific hard deadlines. So, I now tell myself each morning that I will spend 2 hours of concentrated time on the campaign work, which is what has been most likely to take up expanses of time. I set a timer for the two hours, and make a commitment to not check e-mail, or follow random links during that time. The timer is important. It's helping me finish a satisfying chunk of this work before lunch, and to be able to be in the studio for much of the afternoon. It doesn't work out every day, but still enough of the time that I'm feeling much better about how I'm spending my time. (I'd prefer to be spending the mornings in the studio instead--my favorite time of day--but when I try that, I can feel a cloud hovering over me, the burdensome stuff that still awaits. It feels better to get that done at the beginning of the day, and then to know I don't have to think about it again until the next morning.)

One final note: Every once in a while over the past months, I thought of writing a blog post, but when I went to the blog page, I saw the photo of me on the couch, covered with the blanket made in memory of my mom. I really liked seeing that photo, and didn't want to supplant it with another post. Today when I looked at the page, I noticed that there was no image under the title of "Studio Notes," so I thought I'd try putting the photo there, where I can see it every time. I don't know if I'll keep it here, and if I do, I'll need to figure out how to tweak the placement of the name of the blog, but I like it there for now.