Quilt Marking

I finished the hand quilting on Cranky Witch, the project I started ages ago in order to illustrate my technique for quilting freehand fans (the tutorial, including a picture of the Cranky Witch top, is here).

I quilted these fans in the spiral technique, which ends up with all the fans going smoosh in the middle:

I quilted almost the entire top without any marking. I did just a little bit at the beginning to illustrate how to mark without a template if you were a bit nervous starting out. But that was it. I love how these arcs turn out. When I started the quilting I was doing fat arcs, but by the end they were much narrower. That's the charm.

Continuing with this theme, a friend recently forwarded to me an email written by Joe Cunningham. He's a fabulous quilter and the co-author, with Gwen Marston, of the wonderful book Quilting With Style, which is where I learned how to do the freehand fans in the first place.

I wrote him a gushy email and asked if I could quote him here. With his permission:

"I was reading one of the many recent posts about marking implements and marking methods when it occurred to me that I needed to mention a traditional alternative: no marking. In the 1980's I studied marking at length and wrote about it a lot. But in the early years of the 1990's I realized that the loose, asymmetrical style of many of the feather wreaths, cables and cross hatchings I found on old quilts could possibly have been the result of the quilter working freehand, with no markings to follow. After many years of drawing and quilting these kinds of designs, I figured I could just do it freehand myself. It turned out to be much easier than I imagined. I have taught a freehand quilting workshop many times over the last dozen years and have taught many hand quilters how to make cables, feathers and all kinds of designs with no markings at all. I wrote an article for Threads in 1997 on this subject and I think it is still available on the internet at http://www.taunton.com/threads/pages/t00030.asp

Since then I have hand quilted dozens of tops freehand, and I continue to see old quilts that I believe were quilted freehand. Any of you who have studied old quilts up close have probably wondered at one time or another how a quilter marked such a wobbly cable, such a lopsided feather wreath, or how many different templates would have been required for the dozens of different leaves on a quilt. Some, at least, were quilted without markings.

Joe Cunningham in foggy San Francisco, Still hand quilting after all these years"

This is me again. I'm still in awe and thrilled to the core that Joe responded to my email. Go check out his website and look at some of the improvisational, maverick work he has been creating in the last few years. Now he just needs to write a book. The link for his article on freehand quilting is in my sidebar.

Anyway, I have to admit I haven't done much freehand quilting with the exception of fans, straightish lines, and echo quilting. I do a lot of my marking myself, without templates, and then follow the marks loosely using them as guidelines so I still get a freehand look to my work. Not that I've done much in the way of feathers and wreaths. More like monsters and spaceships...

For another look at freehand marking a quilt, take a look at Too Much Wool, to see the progress of a Welsh Quilt. I didn't realize that so much of the hand quilting on these beauties was improvised.

It has been overcast, cold, and rainy here in Paris. August is not supposed to be 66 degrees Farenheit. The weekend's forecast is better, but I'll be going out into the sunshine alone since my husband will finally get to read Harry Potter.

Harry Potter At Last

Our copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows finally arrived yesterday. My husband was convinced someone had taken it, but no, it had just gotten shipped to the wrong APO. I read a couple of hours of it last night and then finished it this morning. Sigh. I'm incredibly impressed with J.K. Rowling's writing ability and the fact that she maintained such a high quality throughout the series. I can think of so many books and movies where that isn't the case.

I only really bawled once. Pokey was sweet and stayed with me throughout. Cats may not be quite as empathetic as dogs, but they do have their moments. It started raining heavily last night and has continued to do so much of today. The weather echoing my mood.

Yesterday, before the arrival of THE book, I watched some first season of Remington Steele (my how I loved that series when I was in high school) and hand quilted on Cranky Witch. She's almost done.

The day before that I played more with Blooming Horrors. Pokey continues to insist I include a cat:

Lily getting in on the act:

Playing around with pieces. Do I put the devil head on the yellowlime flower?

Or the eyeball? I think I prefer this. Everything will be moved around more and stems and leaves added. I've been trying to decide if I should include spider bodies, but I'm leaning towards doing those in the quilting. Or maybe some embroidery. Don't have to decide yet.

As I do this, I can understand why some instructors suggest that you compose the work exactly how you want it and then recut the fabric pieces with the seam allowance included. That just seems wasteful to me. Remind me I said that when I'm bemoaning how small everything turned out. Then again, that's more room for quilting something cool in the background. I'm thinking spiderwebs.

I did get some more applique done. I decided to cut down the hand some and make it skinnier.

I'm doing this post in reverse chronological order. A couple of fun pics from Sunday's trip to the Marais. You know I can't resist fun advertising in unusual places. Les Simpson in front of the St Paul-St Louis Church.

The rain has let up. Time to dash out for groceries.

Melting

Long time, no quilt content. Sorry about that, but it's about to change. I need to take a break from the Mardi Gras thready - it's almost completed and that's when it gets really hard to get the needle through all the layers of floss.

So I got Blooming Horrors back out. I haven't worked on it since September 2005, although I did drag it all the way to the states with me last winter. Yesterday I got the rat, bat, and moon on using needle-turn applique. Pokey thinks it needs a cat:

If I actually stick to this project I may have it up on the wall for this Halloween. Then again, I may get bored and switch projects yet again. They do get done eventually. Sometimes.

Looking down a side street from the Champs Elysees last month brought an unusual sight: a melting building:

The street sign reads Rue Christophe Colomb.

Okay, it's not really a building, but rather a fabric covering a scaffolding at a construction site. There are PVC (I think) details added in to give it even more zing.

The whole work is amazing. There is a website for this "urban surrealism" project, which is called the 39GeorgeV.

This work required 40 people and more than 370 working hours.

Rain, rain, rain today. It will give my bad knee more time to recover from all my recent walking, although I really do need to dash out for food. Ramen two nights in a row just isn't appealing.

Did I tell you I tried Doctor Who? I never cared for the older ones, but the newer versions have been highly recommended, so I gave Series One a shot (that's the one with the actor who played Bilborough in Cracker - the real U.K. version with Robbie Coltrane) . Have to say, hated it. Just not for me. I'll watch Red Dwarf instead, thanks, if I need a dose of British comedic sci-fi. Or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I haven't seen since high school.

Ferris Wheel View of Paris

Last Wednesday was a glorious sunny day. My friend and I took a ride on the ferris wheel that has been set up as part of the fair on the Jardin des Tuileries near the Louvre museum. My previous pics of the fair can be seen here.

The sign says La Grande Roue de Paris. The Big Wheel of Paris.

It's set up a bit differently than the typical U.S. ferris wheel. You sit in a circle and if anyone moves much the bucket goes around and around.

Looking at the Louvre:

The Jardin with the Eiffel Tower in the background:

Rue du Rivoli and beyond:

You can barely see the Sacre Couer Basilica up on the butte in the background:

Paris is suprisingly gray from above. The splashes of terra cotta help to break up the blahness.

My company has now departed. I'm trying to get caught back up with my backlog of laundry and blogs.

My friend Siobhan sent me a postcard from her trip to Dublin. The card shows a bottle of Guinness sitting on a window ledge by a bottle of milk. My husband the Guiness lover immediately put it up on the fridge.

Unfortunately Harry Potter still hasn't arrived. Our mail here is very unpredictable - some things we get quickly, others are really slow.

Speaking of books, I can highly recommend Stuart MacBride's Cold Granite. It's a police procedural along the lines of two of my favorite writers Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin. Detective Sargeant Logan McRae is just coming back to work after medical leave and he's having a very bad week investigating missing children and a possible serial killer in Aberdeen, Scotland where it's raining, raining, raining. The author's blog is a hoot and you can see some wonderful pics of the book's setting at his website.

More Montmartre

Good thing my friends wanted to visit Montmartre, since that is one area I know how to navigate. Montmartre is definitely built on a hill, there are lots of stairs.

We climbed up bunches of steps on our way to the Sacre Couer Basilica. Looking down at terraced gardens and steps:

Looking up at the Basilica, with more steps to go:

The gargoyles are always a draw for me:

My sweetie and I recently watched the episode of the Sopranos where Carmela and Rosalie visit Paris. It was a hoot to recognize places that I've seen as well as one museum that is on my list to go to (the Museum of the Middle Ages).

I've gotten more work done on my thready, which I'm now thinking of as Mardi Gras due to a comment (sorry I can't remember whose, I have a little brain).

We're supposed to have a beautiful sunny day here today, so our goal is to ride the ferris wheel at the fete (fair) near the Louvre.