La Flor de la Nochebuena

I just put the final stitches into this oooold UFO. She's the sister my Fall Madonna, and here and here are some of the process photos, jeez, from 2010.

I got stuck with this piece because I felt like the Madonna looked like she was floating in space.  Easy fix: I extended the poinsettia swag under her.

This piece is built on a vintage napkin, and features, broiderie perse, silk ribbon embroidery, and lots of beads.   The embellished lace circle represents the new moon.

I had to add a bird.

 The Virgin's beaded skirt references the Mexican national costume, and the poinsettia is native to Mexico, and a flower associated with winter.  La Flor de la Nochebuena, the title of this quilt, comes from one of the Spanish names for this flower, which literally means Christmas Eve Flower.

I have been saving this backing and binding fabric of gold poinsettias for a long time.  The quilt is labelled, like lots of my other quilts, with a vintage doily.

Many blessings in 2014 to all.  I'm relieved to begin the new year with one less unfinished project.

Belive in Miracles (21 x 25)

I wasn't able to finish this piece by Christmas day, but if we fall back on the notion of Christmas continuing for 12 days, then I finished right on time.

After I turned in grades I came down with a really bad cold, but Christmas came nonetheless, and once the wrapping paper was recycled, and the leftovers packed away, I was happy to sit down and put the finishing touches on this piece.

It seemed only fitting, crazy quilter to crazy quilter, to add some seam embellishments to the outer border of Allie's quilt.  And I took a page from one of her techniques to use these beautiful shiny ribbons--some have beads, and all have metallic threads, in lieu of a conventional binding. I hadn't set out to do this, but I had four perfect ribbons and I also wanted to avoid cutting the points off on these embellished blocks, so it was a happy solution. I didn't follow Allie's instructions exactly, but the basic idea is there.

I added some mother of pearl buttons to the floral part of the composition.

Another close up.  You can see that I extended the halos with more buttons and with beads.

A lot of handwork is like prayer or meditation.  It infuses objects with spirit and with intentions. It's a wonderful opportunity to make a quilt for someone like Allie who is tuned into these messages in the cloth. This has been a fulfilling project, and in many ways it's been an unexpected form of  dialogue between two quilters.

I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays in the ways you love the most and with friends and family.  I am sadly behind on my blog reading, but I'll be catching up over the next few days.

Embellishing Allie's Madonna

I've now come out from under the semester's work.  Finals are over, grades are submitted, and I'm officially on vacation.  Between the madness, I've been working on Allie's Madonna, which became a serene meditation to counterbalance the busyness of work.

In the final composition I added that pink and white inner border, which to me adds breathing space to this piece.  I then machine quilted the whole piece with metallic silver thread.

The floral part of the composition got some hand embroidered foliage: the dark green is rayon ribbon and the light green is silk thread. The ribbons are top stitched with machine embroidery using rayon thread.

I took a close up of this part of the outer border because it's a little joke I've inserted into the piece.  The green fabric has that line of stitching because it was cut from a pocket of a night shirt.  I love this fabric and it's appeared in other projects, but I wanted to hint at its prior life.

The Virgin's crown was beaded with all kinds of sparkly things: beads, sequins and pearls.

 

The halos on the Mother and Child are embellished with tiny mother of pearl buttons, which reflect light like you wouldn't believe, although it's hard to capture on camera.

This is the first layer of embellishment.  It only seems fitting to finish this by Christmas, and the final layer is nearly done.  More pictures by Saturday. 

Allie's Madonna

Allie Aller and I agreed to a swap several months ago.  She made me a CQ, "Barbara's Door", one of her lovely and extra-special house quilts, which I have hanging over my sewing machine for inspiration and mojo.  In exchange, I am making her a Madonna Quilt.

I began with an image from Flor Larios, who sells fabric transfers of some of her painted images.  I love the innocence of the figures in her work, plus the baby Jesus in this picture reminds me of my son Alex when he was a baby.  He had the same round face and heavy black hair.   I framed the image with a vintage napkin, which I strategically cut and pieced in order to get the parts of the rose print that I wanted.

 

I used the left-hand and bottom ribbons in the final composition.  Allie sent me the woven ribbons, and the bottom one, which says "philosophy: believe in miracles" came to me with some wonderful bath salts from my daughter Allie.  I've been saving it for a project like this.  I also found the bit of lace in my stash.  It's the perfect size for a wreath or crown for the Madonna.

 

I look these pictures with my phone, so they're not so crisp, but I used some textured fabric samples to piece half-square triangles for the outer border.

This is the rough mock-up of the piece.  I must confess that I got stalled for a long time at this stage: there was something I didn't like about the composition, and I couldn't put my finger on it for awhile.  In the meantime, I sewed and ripped out the pieced border in multiple configurations, several times.  Finally, I successfully wrestled it to the ground.  Next I'll show you the final composition and some embellishment.

Converting a Pullover into a Cardigan Using Ribbon, and Making 1000 Pyramid Quilt Blocks

 

I'm having a cashmere love affair.  It's softness makes it a wonderful indulgence, and I've been on a streak finding cashmere sweaters at the thrift store.  Recently I found this really nice pullover, clearly from the 90s since it's long, and brought it home, only to discover why the tag said "as is."  

It had a tiny hole right in the center of the front.  Undeterred, I turned the pullover into a cardigan by machine sewing two lines of stitches up the middle to prevent raveling, and then cutting between the stitching lines with a sharp scissors. Here's a link to another sweater conversion I did using bias fabric, which has additional photos of how I cut the sweater.

At the fabric store I found a wide ribbon in a matching color, and pressed a seam along the length so that one side was a quarter inch wider that the other.  I then cut a piece of pressed ribbon for each sweater front, making sure I had a little extra on the tops and bottoms.

I machine sewed the narrow side of the ribbon to the inside of the sweater, having lined up the cut edge of the sweater with the fold.  Do this for each side.

 

Then I hand sewed the wider side of the ribbon to the outside of the sweater, and trimmed, folded, and stitched up the top and bottom ends as well.  Initially I thought I'd do a Laura Ashleyesque finish on the sweater, embroidering a few French knots along the ribbon, and using a flower button for a closure.

But then I found these great wood fish beads in my stash, which is really more my style.  These are purely decorative.  I sewed hooks and eyes to the inside edge of the sweater.

I'm loving this new-to-me sweater.

I also stole an hour from my day to make some blocks following Debra's 1000 Pyramids Tutorial.  I have a drawer of 3" strips in purples and greens.  I'll throw in some yellows and oranges for good measure.  When people were making 1000 Pyramids quilts for the millennium I was a newish quilter and never made one.  This is my second chance.

"Her Radiance" (11x17)

I've been even more MIA than usual, working on a big project at work, and not having a lot of spare time.  However, I've been working on this piece a bit at a time, using one of Flor Larios's fabric images.

I had the idea that I wanted to use prairie points as a textural feature, and some of my extensive collection of metal buttons.  After some initial clumsy construction errors, this piece came together very nicely.  Friday I came home late and buzzing with adrenaline, so I sat down to finish the machine sewing, and then on Saturday, I added the hand work.  There are times when I just need to sew for the sake of my soul, and I finished this piece in just that mood.

I embellished this Virgin of Guadalupe image with machine stitching and embroidery, which also acted as quilting.  Don't you love her blue eye shadow?  That's what drew me to this sweet image in the first place.  I remember shopping for a Virgin of Guadalupe statue in Tijuana and selecting from the ones whose makeup wasn't too heavy-handed and whose eyeshadow wasn't too obvious.

I used a variety of plain metal buttons.  You can see my free motion quilting on her dress, and the blue inner border was cut from a pillowcase my mother sent me.

I've continued to use vintage linens for small quilt backs.  I used half a doily for the rod pocket, and I cut the back from an embroidered dresser scarf.  

The title of this piece comes from the Nican Mopohua, the narrative of the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe to Juan Diego, written in the 1500s.  On the label I've included a quote from the narrative in the original Nahuatl language and in English: Her radiance was like precious stones, it seemed like an exquisite bracelet.  This is what I wanted to capture with the prairie points and the buttons: a picture of the light radiating from her person. 

Have a creative week everyone. 

All is Calm, All is Bright

                                     


This is the season of calm and bright, but the swirl of daily life continues nonetheless.  I'm almost done grading finals, and grades are due in a couple of days.  In the meantime, I thought I'd share the wall quilt I'm making in fits and starts.  In the outer border you can see some of the scraps of Debra's 12 original yards of Hawaiian fabric that has gone into so many quilts, but is still not quite used up.  Debra also posted some scrap blocks yesterday that feature some of this won't-die fabric.

The beautiful focal point of this quilt is a fabric print by Flor Larios, who sells  her lovely folkloric prints, including prints on fabric and other goods, in her etsy shop.  If I sat down for a couple of hours I could finish this piece.  Maybe it'll happen in a few days.

Here's the calm and bright scene in front of my stove.  All the cats decided to call a truce to share the warmth of the fire.  The black cat, Wee, is visiting from the kids' apartment.  When they both work on the weekend, she gets lonely, and likes to come to "kitty daycare" at my house.  We've had Wee for 15 years, and she was our original cat.  The others are, in her view, interlopers.  She's happy to visit the old homestead, and knows the routines at my house, then Allie picks her up and takes her home after work.

A favorite place by the fire is this cat bed I crocheted using triple strands of old acrylic yarn.  I used this free pattern for a crocheted bag as a reference for the increases and decreases.

Fun fur trimming make this kitty bed extra elegant. 

Happy holidays to everyone.  I hope your corner of the world is calm and bright.

Back in the Saddle Again

 The other day I just sat down in front of the machine and sewed.  It felt good to pick up a project and work on it again, and I finally finished piecing this still-unnamed quilt that I'm making with Debra.  She pieced the center medallion and the pinwheel blocks, mostly in western themed fabrics.  I added two side panels and borders.  You should be able to click on it to see the details.

I was taken with the western theme of the center medallion, and then my friend Leslie gave me a large piece of this old Alexander Henry fabric "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," which is a riff on the old Byrds album cover of the same name.  I've been obsessed with this image for a few years: I have a picture of it hanging above my sewing machine, so when Leslie gave me this fabric, it was double serendipity.

My only qualm with the fabric was that all the cowgirls were white.  In the service of historical accuracy, I took out my gel pens and inserted some racial diversity into the mix.

 This one got some silver "highlights."  There's no reason cowgirls all have to be young.

I love the pose of these cowgirls.  They remind me of angels.  I thought they'd be a good guardians for a western themed Virgin of Guadalupe.  I'll be sending this off to Debra soon.  We'll see what she adds.

Beautiful Flower, Bountiful Garden (41 x 41)

I put the binding on a quilt Debra and I made in a round-robin. "Beautiful Flower, Bountiful Garden" or, as we usually call it, the pink madonna, is our first joint madonna quilt collaboration, though we've been bouncing ideas off each other on this series of quilts for years. If you haven't seen it, we have a blog The Madonna Idea, which includes the bulk of the madonna quilts we've made.



The center of the quilt is a pre-printed panel flanked by some of Debra's machine embroidered blocks. She gave these blocks to me when we met at IPQF in Long Beach a couple of years ago, and I immediately knew they were meant somehow to go with the panel. From there we went back and forth a few times, each of us adding a round of blocks. Debra came up with the text for the embroidered ribbon: "Oh holy mother, beautiful flower of our life's bountiful garden." The results are, I think, seamless.

The quit is the center of my newly-decorated home office. With all that color and pattern, the rest of the room is quite subdued: a calm palatte for this and some of my other favorite quilts.

On the opposite wall, I've put two chairs and I've hung some of my favorite small quilts. For hangers in this room I bought some tall bamboo poles (found at the garden center), and I painted them black. They hang on some single coat hooks that I screwed into the wall.

The rocking chair was my grandmother's. I recovered some pillows I had around the house with black and cream fabric.

I bought this wing chair and the footstool at two different used furniture stores. The cats like this room a lot, and I can see that I'm going to have to fight them for the chairs.


At the entrance to the room, I hung I my St. Theresa piece. The room has a very peaceful vibe.

Mystical Rose

I finished my AAQ entry and mailed it off. Mystical Rose is one of the names of the Madonna, and the rose symbolizes Mary's mystery, her virginal role in the incarnation of Jesus. In addition, "the invitation ... 'Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds' (Wisdom 2:8) is addressed to all. We are called to be sons and daughters of God." (http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/prayers/rosamystica.html)

This piece is a tribute to women’s spiritual lives and especially to their ownership of their spiritual practices. It also highlight’s Mary’s role as an icon of the feminine divine.

The central block is a vintage handkerchief, emphasizing the personal, and the everyday as valued parts of spiritual life. I recently connected my handkerchief obsession with the story of St. Veronica, who wipes Jesus's face on his way to the crucifixion, and whose handkerchief is left imprinted with his image. This story will be the subject of my next small quilt.

The name of the original owner of this handkerchief, Olive Welch, (or maybe Welsh, it's hard to tell) is stamped on its top white border. I bought this handkerchief at a garage sale in the 70s, so I never knew Olive personally, but I feel like keeping her handkerchiefs over the years has helped to preserve a relic of her life.



Here are some close ups.


The photo is a vintage holy card image transferred on to the handkerchief. All the lace in this piece is vintage.


I pieced the hanging sleeve and used a vintage doily for the label.


Another close up.
I'm glad I used these old treasured pieces of fabric and lace to make this piece. They really needed to come out of the drawers and to see the light of day. I find it ironic sometimes that so many of my art quilts are made with such a nostalgic and sentimental tone, but I find myself drawn to the innocence of my childhood, and especially to the core place religion had in my early life.