Teacups

I've got a fun quilt to share with you today. Tea for Two by Laura Caudle

Laura really cracks me up. This is how she describes the making of this quilt:

I have been a fan of your quilts for a while, and have longed to make a quilt with your liberated letters but have been intimidated.  (I come from a long line of German, Austrian and uptight British ancestors.  I even plant flowers in rows.  Rows!  Very martial.)  Anyway, I decided to shake off the shackles of genetics and just go for it.  I took a paper piecing class (and as part of my anti-uptightness (not a word, I know, but it fits) therapy I even did wonky teacups.  And then I was struck with a crazy bug and designed my own border of stacked saucers - they are wonky, too.  And THEN I let go and just did some liberated letters.  It was exciting!  It was freeing!  It was scary!  And I didn't do too well!  But darnit - it was fun and I'm going to do it again!

Whew.  I need to go organize my pantry by food type, color and size now or I'm going to have an aneurism. 

Thank you for inspiring a little crazy freedom.  Following is a picture of my nuttiness - not yet complete, because I have to go buy batting - hanging in its future spot.

I have to completely disagree with her on the "didn't do too well" front. She did GREAT. It can be really hard to just wing a quilt and improvise and she did it wonderfully. And Laura has since discovered my free-pieced teacup tutorial (still living in Quiltville but one of these days migrating to my site). 

Laura, thanks for the photo and the laughs.

Still on the subject of free-piecing teacups, take a look at Roz's current improv quilt all about coffee and tea. I happen to love the two different blue background colors under her letters.

I learned how to do Liberated quilting from Gwen Marston and Gwen gives credit to antique quilts inspiring her to go that route. It's not a new thing. As a great example, and still on the topic of teacups, take a look at Deb Rowden's blog at this great Crazy Teacup feedsack quilt. [If you like improvisational, string and utility quilting, Deb's is a great blog to read. She shows some of her own work as well as quilts she's given homes.]

And here is one of my favorite quilts ever. It was made by Lureca Outland of Alabama in 1994:

Credit Line: International Quilt Study Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2000.004.0091

Gwen's been out on the road teaching and I'm so envious of her students. Take a look at Sarah's report from class here and here. And Bonnie Hull's pics here.

I've been working like crazy this week at the computer. Making my eyes cross so I think I'm going to give it a rest now. My sweetie gets home tomorrow for an all too brief stay before once again departing. You'd think I'd be cleaning now wouldn't you, but you'd be wrong. I need to do some hand quilting, gosh darnit. Assuming my kitties let me...

Ya'all take care!

Leftovers

I've heard from some quilters that they don't like making the liberated wonky quilts because there is too much fabric wasted. I will grant you that, but I remember way back to working with templates and sometimes there was waste that way too. If you want interesting shapes, you just gotta deal with this:

I actually think it's beautiful. I'm saving these bits - I might be able to work them into a thready someday. Maybe one where I don't stitch everything down, because I love the freedom of this:

I'm sewing on my Amish L-O-V-E blocks, the ones I made duplicates of so that I could see how other people put them together too. It's a secret until next year unless everyone finishes their tops before then. So I can't show you what I'm doing but I'm really enjoying myself. It was torture making the dupes - I hated it. But now I'm having fun. I have most of my center pieced together.

Today I found the blog of Andrea Zuill, it's called BadBird's Musings of a Small Angry Bird. I thorougly enjoy her attitude and lively approach to quilting and embroidery. She's also a gifted painter. Check out Snake in the Grass - look at all the lovely layers of color and stitch. She's issued a challenge: Stitch by Hand's Old School Sewing Competition which might be just the thing for you if you enjoying working by hand. The winners get one of her lovely prints. The sign-up ends September 6th.

Iranian Items at the Louvre

My sweetie and I spent time at the Louvre yesterday - completely exhausting and we didn't even spend the whole day touristing like folks on holiday do. These are some items from an area in present-day Iran.

A pot with flying geese:

Molded brick wall facings from a temple dedicated to Inshushinak, the god of the city of Susa and protector of the Shutrukides dynasty. Or something like that. 12th century B.C.

This is a dragon head architectural feature. Looks almost Central American.

Cuneiform inscriptions from the temple:

A stele.
Close-ups. I'd love to free-piece one of these, but I keep thinking of horror movies and how you do something stupid like that and free the god (or mummy) to wreak havoc upon the earth.

This is for you, Jen: a hedgehog pull-toy from the temple of Inshushinak.

Baked clay figurines from Susa of nude women. And I think my hips are wide.

Today my plan is to make the Christmas Biscotti recipe I got from Siobhan. Both my husband and I love these. Only I was stupid and didn't read the recipe clearly enough - I don't have baking powder. So I have to hunt for that today - could be scary, I expect the grocery stores to be packed.

You know how I was talking about suzanis the other day in my post about the cool store La Bonne Renommée? [By the way, here's a link to the store.] Well, Maryam has a pic of her suzanis (lucky, lucky girl) in her blog My Marrakech, which you should check out anyway if you like ethnic textiles and decorating because she has fabulous taste. Maryam's suzanis are featured here at Trendbites as well. I love the bright colors in her suzanis - pink and purple, woohoo.

And on the same topic, here's a blog post on suzanis from House Beautiful. The featured works are much more elaborate and quilty looking - check them out.

Creature Comforts Reprised.

There are a lot fewer obnoxious phone calls here in France than there are in the States. Every couple of weeks we get a phone call at 6:30pm. Bonjour madame, french french french fenetre. Ah, that word I know. They're trying to sell us double-glazing for the windows. At least that's what we assume.

I did more border auditions today with Creature Comforts. I'm out of the lizard print and I can see that the quilt does need a fabric with a lot of black in it for the bottom border. Who was the crazy person who suggested I do a lot of piecing? Are you out of your mind? Lazy, remember, lazy.

This is a dinosaur-like monster fabric that I do have enough of:

But I think I like this better. Don't have enough of either the dots or the squares to go all the way across but I like this:

And who is that little creature wanting comfort? Pokey once again showing her belly, squirming back and forth begging for rubs. You'd think she was neglected or something.

A gorgeous sign in a tiny park. I'm trying to figure out the best way of translating it. That's not "Dogs must wear leashes." It is prohibited to be careless with dogs in the park?

A different park, with a statue and a typical apartment building in the background.

The first signs of fall.

The Halloween link today is for the Whimsical Whittler. Vaughn and Stephanie Rawson do incredible hand carved folk art. This is the Halloween gallery, but they also have fantastic Christmas pieces. I love this Wizard of Oz Santa. The Americana section is a hoot, with Uncle Sam puppeteering a donkey and elephant.

I finished the book Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews today. It's a dark urban fantasy, set in future Atlanta. I love the world where waves of magic hit, rendering technology incapable of working. The heroine, Kate Daniels, is a smart mouth mage hunting whoever (whatever?) killed her guardian. We've got vampires and werewolves and yes, there are many parallels with Laurell K Hamilton (except that half the book isn't comprised of descriptions of clothes, sex, states of arousal...). I just hope this series doesn't get lame like Hamilton's did. But I'm definitely looking forward to the next one which is due next spring. You can read an excerpt at the author's website.

Jivya Soma Mashe

Will and I saw the works of Jivya Soma Mashe displayed along with those of Nek Chand at the Max Fourny museum of Naive Art in Montmartre. This is the post I've been promising since then. I was completely captivated by his paintings, seeing applique, quilting and embroidery designs everywhere. You should be able to double click on many of these pics for larger views.

You can read more about the artist at the above link. To see great photos of the exhibition, which is on until 26 August, go here. It's really marvelous to see the paintings and statuary together and if you have the chance to go see them in person, do it.

A whole painting. Three different types of trees, along with critters:

A closer view of the spiders and insects caught in the web:

Another close-up. The leaves looks like hearts:

A detail from another painting. I like this dandelion tree. And the branches of the tree on the right look like peacock feathers. You can also details of village life: cooking dinner, carrying water, mending a roof.

The paintings that had spirals were amazing to look at from across the room. Very eye-catching.

The women in this painting were a bit different from those in the others. They have long wild hair. Looks like planting going on down at the bottom.

A detail from the above painting of fun critters:

Detail from a different painting. "Dandelions" and hearts together.

And another detail of a dandelion-like tree, with a beautiful peacock in the branches:I was fascinated by this painting, which seems very celebratory:

A detail of the spiral, made up of a conga-line of people. The person in the middle appears to be blowing a horn.

Before reading more about the Warli tribe who do not follow Hinduism, I thought that this was Ganesh, the elephant-headed god. Maybe a similar diety?

Another detail of the same painting:

Musicians and the elephant-headed deity (?):

More musicians and a view of the river:

Another tree detail:

Another painting which fascinated me. Loot at the night sky above and the river down below:

A detail of a man (could he be a king with a crown on his head?) holding a scimitar or scythe and riding a peacock, followed by a swarm of insects.

Hmm, okay these giant birds aren't peacocks. Peacocks aren't carnivorous. The babies are getting a bull for dinner.

A novel way to gather fruit:

A night sky from a different painting:

There were no explanations of the paintings, so I enjoyed making up stories for them. Do wish there was better documentation at the exhibit though. I found it fascinating that these tribal paintings used to be the sole province of the women of the Warli tribe and were done on the walls of huts. Not anymore.

I love the mix of the phantastical along with images of daily life.

Orphans for Finn

My friend Finn wrote an interesting post in response to my orphan quilt. She challenged me to make another orphan quilt, this time including leftover blocks from everything, not just my favorite colors that go so nicely together.

I can't do it, Finn. I just can't. Throw blue and white and red and white in here with these? And Christmas? Agggh. But I do have enough blocks left over that I could still do another whole orphan quilt. I can't believe how many nine-patches I have laying around.

Leftover houses and my name block that fell out of Bricks:

These heart in hand blocks are more like a UFO rather than orphans. My quilt guild friends of many years ago made them for me. And there's a crescent moon I was trying to make work.

Experimental stars and people:

Now these arcs are truly orphans. I was making the Karen Stone paper-foundation Indian Orange Peel quilt and didn't think to try putting one of the blocks together until I'd already made a LOT of the arcs. Well I HATED the process, couldn't make it work. I think I'm actually going to turn these into some interesting crumb blocks. But first I have to finish ripping all the stinking paper out.

I'm not willing to throw holiday blocks in, or any fabric that has white in it, but how would these orphans look with some refugees from the other side of the colorwheel:

That I could do, Finn.

The kittens paid lots of attention while I was throwing orphan blocks around the floor. Lily watched from the hutch. She's my supermodel:

And a photo from a bit further back. That's an Egyptian embroidery done by a woman from Moqattam there on my bulletin board.

Pokey in the orphan block box: