I took waaaay too many photos to post, so I'll keep this one more or less quilty. I couldn't get a photo to show this well, but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I saw these 3 little drinking vessels from the 2nd or 3rd century. They say,
And what's this? Looks like some primitive geometric design, laid out like a tablerunner. Think on it a second, and I'll show you the inspiration further down. Meanwhile, look at this:
Doesn't it look like a quilt? It's the ceiling of a Korean restaurant where we had dinner one night.
What a great museum! Wonderful stuff inside, but everything about its design is impressive. I loved the bridges and staircases:
And since I'm keeping this post quilty, there was a quilt on display at the MoMA!
Well, it wasn't displayed as a quilt, but the quilt is part of a piece called "Bed" by Robert Rauschenberg, and shows his own (they think) quilt, sheet and pillow, splashed with paint.
And finally, this is nice and geometric and could easily become a quilt design, but I was so annoyed to see a square pile of yellow bricks on display as art! I find it insulting.
I cut squares out of the first piece of string fabric I put together. There will be much greater variation when all the pieces are made, but I just couldn't wait. There will be pieces with dashes of brights, too.
I had put only 2 of the checkered borders on this I Spy. I always get bogged down when I get to the borders because the fun is over by then. But I bit the bullet today and put on the remaining 2 checkered strips and the green border, and then pieced and attached the outer border. Just have to piece the backing, sandwich, quilt, and bind!
I also went through two boxes of t-shirts that my sister sent me almost two years ago! She asked me to make a quilt of them as a memento of the various military assignments her husband has had over the years. I was going to have it ready when they returned from overseas this summer, but they came home several months earlier than expected and I had not even started! There are so many shirts that I think I'll make two tops -- one with black and gold fabrics added (the colors of the US Military Academy) and one with red, white and blue. I've sorted the shirts into those two groups and now I'm going to wash and prep them.
The beautiful new Champaign Public Library has funky air vents. Aren't the different sized holes so much more interesting than row after row of identical slots? And wouldn't that be a great quilt -- each block representing something artistically interesting in the building!
Years ago my dad made a set of small folding tables (like TV tables) with a tumbling block pattern. They are absolutely gorgeous! I photographed them while visiting my mother. If you look carefully, you'll see that the wood grains go three different ways -- one each for the top and two sides of the block -- to give it a 3D look.
This photo is a little truer in color than the top one (the finish just glows in real life), and it also shows what I find a fascinating feature of my dad's piecing. The grains are consistent, but the shades of wood vary randomly, so a top or a side might be darker or lighter. This makes the tumbling blocks fade into 6-pointed stars in some places. In a book I once saw a quilt titled "Tumbling Blocks with Emerging Stars," and that's just what this is. What a great look! You may have to let your eyes relax a little to see the effect in the photo, but I think it does come across in the lower one if you give it a chance.
This, alas, is most definitely not a great look. We had to clear out a good part of the downstairs for the work that's being done on the house, and the remaining part is all junked up with the stuff. Of course, we had four big bookcases in the two rooms where most of the work is being done... Guess I should view this as an opportunity to clean things out!
And I saw this ad in the most recent issue of Cooking Light. I wanted to find this image on the web, but couldn't, so I have to use the washed out photo I took of it. I love cityscapes anyway, and was enchanted by the thought of using a black fabric with spattered dots to show a skyline with lights in the buildings.
And while I was looking at the picture, I noticed the writing was upside down. So I turned it over.
Now the lights in the buildings are out, but you can see the stars in the sky. Absolutely wonderful! This is an ad for Earth Hour, which is sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund to publicize the effects of climate change. They are asking everyone to turn off their lights for an hour at 8:30 pm local time on March 28. Please check out their website for more information and to find out how you can participate. Such an incredible ad!
And finally, here's an I Spy I delivered to a friend's son this evening. So much fun!
This fish quilt isn't finished, but I think it'll be great! Guild members took home the background squares and added whatever fish they wanted. Several people made appliques of fish cut from fabric, so those (and a few others -- note the embroided fish in the top row, second one from the left) are in this quilt. We have enough squares for 2 more complete quilts, and those will have a much bigger variety of fish types.
We also put together two tops made from blocks made at worknights or donated by guild members. They're full of child-friendly fabrics and could even be called I Spy quilts. If you look closely, you can see there's a solid red square around which 4 blocks are joined. I had hoped the identical color blocks would provide some unity to the design, but I don't think that worked. I also don't think a 3-yr-old will care!
This one has purple setting blocks.
Someone donated a lot of 30's reproduction prints, so we're cutting them into 2-1/2" strips to make a variety of quilts. The first two will be a blue and a pink rail fence. For both we'll have a common center stripe and the rest will be scrappy, although I haven't cut enough of the strip piece sets of the pink yet that you have any variety! We'll mix all the prints, including some greens and purples, in the other quilts. Haven't chosen a design for those yet, but 2-1/2" strips leave a lot of options. We can't make it too complicated if several people are working on it, because the blocks always end up very different sizes! That's the real downside of group quilts, although it can lead to surprisingly wonderful innovations in design!
And yet again, another scrappy string quilt. I got over-zealous one day and cut a zillion red center strips. I'm getting sick of those, so we'll move on to something different as soon as these are done. I won't cut so many of the same fabric next time.
My husband alerted me to the beautiful sunrise yesterday morning. I took a couple photos and was thinking of using them for inspiration. Mother Nature is pretty good at using her color palette.
I am enamoured of bare tree branches and took this one to see the color of sky behind this big tree. It's not my favorite photo, but it's a good look at the sky behind the branches.
And I have the cutest giraffe going up the side, clouds and sunshine at the top, people waiting for the bus across the bottom (don't know how the giraffe will fit in the bus!). Apparently the themed pictures under each topic change depending on the location you enter. I entered my hometown, but I may try to enter another city just for fun.
The Wednesday morning farmer's market is great for mid-week restocking, but it's nothing compared to the lush piles of produce available on Saturdays. I stopped by this morning to pick up the usual stuff (though August's bounty should hardly be deemed 'usual'). What I got instead was Mother Nature putting on a show. Only two days ago I read about beets like these, and there they were, looking like purple tree trunks with their distinctive rings.
Normally I cube beets. They are easier to eat that way, and no matter how I love the color, I don't want beet splotches on all my clothes. But tonight I sliced the beets. With their concentric circles, they were begging for it. Like Michaelangelo claiming his chisel only revealed the figure already lying in the stone, my knife and I did the same with the beets. I was a kitchen Michaelangelo for the evening.
Vegetables are gorgeous, and no one quilts them like Ruth McDowell. I bought this book before I learned to quilt, just to look at her work. You can search the book at amazon. It's out of print, but used copies are available.
