The Blue River Quilt, FINAL Answer!

Yesterday I went to a warehouse sale being held nearby. Arlene Blackburn, a local fabric artist, has opened an internet fabric store, and she invited the local guild members to come by on Saturday when she opened to the public for a few hours. I did. And I bought several pieces! I first selected a bundle of fat quarters by Robert Kaufman...the Elementals Collection: Nature (lily pond colorway). Then I also pulled several bolts of batiks off the shelves and got a yard of each.

When I got home, I layed my new fabrics on the cutting table to admire them...and take a picture, of course. I walked into another room to get the camera, and as I returned to the sewing room, I had to laugh! I was struck by the similarity of the colors of the wonderful new fabrics I had just brought home and the quilt I have recently finished...they were practically the same!

I am not very good at cutting out pictures, so please excuse the jagged lines! But look at the similarity between these new batik fabrics and the hand dyed fabrics of my quilt (which hangs on the sewing room wall)!



Come to think of it, I am not sure I ever shared pictures of the *final*, final quilt. I know...I *thought* I had this finished several times, but truly, NOW it is finished!



The last time I showed this, it had lots of beads in the river in several curling swirls.

Well, I wasn't happy with the look, so I scattered even MORE beads on it, until it looked like it had blue chicken pox!

Not good...





To me, the swirls and sequins in the river were over-powering the quilt...that was all I could see!



I removed most of the river's swirls as well as the scattered beads and immediately liked it better! I slowly began to add bugle beads in a more orderly pattern. I wanted to create continuity between the orderliness of the beading at the top of the quilt and what was in the river. This is the finished product:


The final result still has beads, but not so much that that is all you see!



The placement of the beads was intended to represent reflections on the water.

There is still one swirl that is more heavily beaded, but the other swirls have more bugle beads than any other type of bead and are less heavily beaded.

This is the label on the back: I named this "Shoulda Putta Frog on it"...sort of tongue-in-cheek! Over the many months that I have worked on this, one of the girls in my Monday group kept asking where the frog was...so I put one on the back. Plus, "The Blue River Quilt" sounds so boring..."Shoulda Putta Frog on it" sounds more intriguing...at least for NOW. Having just finished "Shoulda Putta Ring on it", this can be part of my "shoulda putta" series!

Of course, in years to come, this name will no make sense to anyone.

The blue river quilt (still?)

I haven't talked about the blue river quilt lately. You remember, the the art quilt I have been working on for a year and a half! I finished the quilting on it last February (2009) and began embellishing it.

First, I did some big stitches on the trees with pearle cotton.
























I hated it! So I ripped it out.





This is how the piece looked after quilting at the beginning of the embellishment stage, with only that one tree done, and even that one was later 'undone'. The colors here look odd, though!












Next I tried just stitching on ONE side of the trees and I liked that better.







I applied beading along the rays of the sun and various other places. This took months, as I generally only worked on this on Mondays, and not every Monday at that!













When I was trimming the quilt after the initial line of stitching to put on the binding, I accidently cut off a corner of the binding. Arrrgh!


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This was supposed to be a continuous binding atround this corner, not one that starts and stops! It is NOT supposed to have two halves! So I had to rip off a big section of the binding and make a new section for that corner. Fortunately, the binding was pieced from a variety of pieces anyway, so this won't be seen as a mistake.



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This is how the quilt looked in October of 2009...I was trying so hard to call it finished!

I sewed with pearle cotton...I ripped out pearle cotton.

I sewed on beads...I took off beads.

SOMETHING about it still bothered me, but I was so sick of looking at it that I just put it away and called it 'done'.

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This is the lower half of the quilt...this is the area that bothered me the most. In addition to being so much lighter in color than the majority of the background, the piecing was also 'chaotic'...seams going in all directions...as opposed to neat and orderly like the seams in the upper areas of the background. Plus, the leaves and flowers in this lower area were stylistically different from the background trees. At first, I liked that, but it later began to bother me.

I had tried scattering beads along the river bank, like flotsom and jetsom, but that didn't give me the satisfaction I hoped for!

Even the cute turtle bead was later removed.




So I decided to paint the background of the lower right section! (what?)



First I used a very watered-down solution of DynaFlow to darken the light areas a bit. Better, but not enough.

I used some colored pencils and crayons to color in the quilting, to see if I might want to REALLY do some painting...with Shiva paintstiks. I decided that, NO, that wasn't the look I was after either.

By now, it is 2010, so the label on the back that says this was finished in 2009 will certainly have to be changed!









I recently decided that the way to fix this quilt was to whack off the lower part! Now, this was a difficult decision. I have never done anything like this before and was not sure whether or not I would ruin the whole thing by doing this!

But I did it. And it wasn't too bad...not too hard! I ripped some of the binding on each side then cut the quilt off where desired...then I rebound the lower edges on each side of the 'river'. Since I didn't want binding around the river itself, I undid some of the quilting in that area so I could turn under the cut edges of the quilt and the background and slipstitch them together for a clean edge. Then I reapplied the fuzzy yarn that surrounds the river edge (also by hand).

I removed the remaining pearle cotton stitches in those upper trees and added beads instead, also beading the remaining trees that were 'beadless'.

Now all trees had beads...it made more sense.


Then I decided to add beads to the water! I beaded for about an hour and (at left) is what I had:


I hated it. I was about to rip it out when I talked myself into waiting...telling myself , "Perhaps do a little more and then you'll like it."

So I did more.

I worked on this quilt for 4 days last week...or was it 5 days? It was ALOT! But I was more pleased with the overall result at this point and was trying so hard to get it finished!

Until I began beading the river, that is!
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I had purchased several types of beads, since there was no pre-mixed packagesin the colors I needed at my local Hobby Lobby. I even got some sequins, just to jazz it up a bit!














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This is where it stands today...Monday afternoon.

I am once again NOT pleased.

I think the beading on the water is NOT good....not a good thing.

I am pretty sure I liked it better without any beads on the blue water.

I am CERTAIN that I want to remove the small, 'S' shaped cluster near the bottom...but nearly as sure of removing them all.


I am forcing myself to sleep on it.

Blue River Quilt part 4

Today I have been working on my Blue River Quilt (I really should give it a more creative name, eh?). This sat on the frame for about 2 weeks with no progress while I worked on a blouse, but this weekend, I began quilting again, and am making great progress! Well, that is, until a song like "I CAN'T DANCE" by Genesis, or "I DIDN'T MEAN TO TURN YOU ON" by Robert Palmer comes on! Then I have to stop and dance a bit! :) I create a playlist on I-tunes to keep me company while I sew, and this time, I had it sort by song NAME rather than artist...see? I am in the 'I's...









My skills aren't 'all that', but the only way I'll get better is to just do it...so I am!








I am now to the point where I have to sew around all those triangular, pieced trees. Following a pieced seam is NOT easy for me...the seam allowances throw me off, as will a loose thread, a speck of dust, a fairy flying too close to my head... Ok, no fairies, but really, I have no excuse...EVERYTHING seems to encourage me to sew crooked! I have decided that gives this piece it's 'charm'....lets everyone know it is handmade...not manufactured or computerized!

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Blue River Quilt part 3

A while back, I was reading Myrna's blog and she was talking about choosing colors for her quilt by photographing them and looking at them in gray scale. I began to wonder how MY piece would hold up to critique in gray scale.



It DOES have the desired value shift that I was after, transitioning from dark in the upper left to light in the foreground. I was surprised, though, at the way some of the 'trees' just blended right in to the background! This is not evident in the colored version, which IS, after all, the real thing! Overall, I am pleased with the choices.









I'm in the quilting stage now, but thread selection is my hold-up. I had good results with some Madiera POLY NEON thread, but the variegated Sulkys gave me trouble...the thread kept breaking, plus, when I went to rip out the stitching, I could pull hard on the bobbin thread and it would 'break' the top threads, allowing me to basically rip out the whole seam by pulling on the bobbin...not slipping out from under the loops, but actually pulling the top thread down and breaking it!! No, the Sulky is not strong enough. I must go find other threads before I can progress.








I drew lines on the quilt top to create sections to stitch within. I haven't worked out all the areas yet, so I stitch only where I have decided what to do!


The long thread tails will be threaded onto a needle and pulled in between the layers to eliminate them, as opposed to just cutting them off.

I used a basting spray to temporarily attach the 3 layers, then loaded it onto 2 of the 3 poles of the HandiQuilter frame. This way, I can stitch across the full width of the piece, going back and forth as the design requires, instead of stitching in long narrow strips from top to bottom.

Blue River Quilt part 2

I updated the template for my blog, as was recommended for those who were having issues with posting, etc. Even if it doesn't fix the particular problem I was having, it made the blog look better! I have more control over colors, fonts, etc, and the text area is wider than before...less wasted space on the sides. I was nervous about upgrading at first...afraid I would lose all I had already written...but no, it worked beautifully and was easy!


I have been working on the blue river quilt. Both Marilyn and another friend, Shirley, gave me some more fabric scraps to use, but most of this was not ‘just right’ either. I used some of it, but finally, I decided I would HAVE to dye some of it to get it to better blend with what was already used. So I ran out to the store and got some TEAL Rit dye and overdyed several of the pieces. This is for the upper part of the quilt...the 'sky' area, if you can call it that!...so it needed to be less-bright/more-greyed...and this did it. Afterwards, I was advised that Rit is probably not the best choice for this project…that it might not be light or color fast on cotton…but it was too late! Plus, this won’t get lots of washing, so hopefully it will be fine.




The more it ‘grew’, the more unsure I was that I loved it. Then I decided that is normal for me…I felt that same way last year as I worked on the frog quilt for my son (that was before blog…maybe I’ll show it later). But I kept plugging away, and, eventually, it began to grow on me again! I rearranged a few components, eliminating one of the sun/star pieces and adding two new trees. Better!

To create a background for the ‘sun’ piece, I used my pattern drafting software to create a foundation to which I applied various strips. I used a ruler to draw lines on it at ½ and ¼ inch intervals…I *could* have done this in the software if I had thought of it before printing!

The circular piece in the center of the ‘sun’ was a bit tricky to do. My first attempt at turning under the edges was to use the facing method…lay a bit of interfacing on it and stitch all around, clip, then slash the interfacing and turn right side out. This resulted in a not-so-smooth perimeter! Then I remembered the “Perfect Circles” templates I purchased at the AQS in Nashville last summer. I only had the larger set, as the y had run out of the smaller ones, but the smallest template in the set was close enough…just barely larger than the pattern called for! I used it on the larger of the two ‘sun’ blocks that I had made and it worked fine. For this one, the smaller sun, it was a bit too large, but still better than nothing! However, this smaller sun won’t make it into THIS quilt.

The quilt background was created in sections. I sewed tiny scraps together to make larger blocks, then added larger strips as needed. Then I added this section to the last, etc., working around the river, which was just pinned to the background as it was created.

Once the entire background was assembled, I removed the river to work on it.

The river had been drawn on examining table paper and the fabric was sewn to that foundation. I needed to remove the paper from the back, as well as fix a couple of spots where it was ‘skimpy’. Plus, I resewed a seam or two to change the angle…the ‘flow’…of the river, to position it just a little better on the background.

Then I turned under the edges of the river using a hot iron and some spray starch. This took a while! Next, I used the iron with some washable glue to ‘baste’ the river into place. This is how the sun pieces were attached also. These will be stitched soon!

This is where it stands now….time to blind stitch the sun and river into place! I haven’t decided whether or not to add borders.

Blue River Quilt

Happy New Year!

This is what I have been working on lately, on and off. It began with the blue 'river' and has grown from there. Like the river, I paper-pieced the various leaves, trees, etc, and am now in the process of filling in the blanks between them. However, I have hit a snag. I am running out of fabric!

I obtained the fabric for this background from my friend, Marilyn...it was some of her hand-dyed scraps from previous projects. She had given me several large ziplock bags of scraps which I sorted through, picking out the blues and greens, etc., that I could use to go with the existing river. Well, duh...the river is big! That means I need LOTS of background to put it on!

But really, I just wanted to put up a TEST post. I have been ticked off, because the recently-posted pictures on my blog are NOT showing a larger version when you click on them. My pictures DID do this in older posts...you could click on any picture for a larger image. But not lately. I cannot figure out WHAT I am doing wrong! Any hints?

Ok, see? This one WILL will show a larger image! So why won't the ones in my last few posts show larger images? I am so green.