Autumn Gear Wheels

Autumn Colors - Yippee! My favorite color scheme - NOT!
Ok, what do I do now - I already skipped the Afghan Square. No way I'm going to ditch this one.
So now what?

Why do I not like autumn colors? Probably the promise of cold, wet and dark days looming ahead is what really turns me off.

On the other side, autumn has beautiful sides to offer - Chinese lanterns, ripe berries, red maple leaves, asters and pumpkins. So I decided to focus on this color palette - even though it is not the typical autumn color palette you would expect.
After making the spirals, the quilt seemed to be empty in a way so I took to my harshest critique - my daughter. She suggested a green bug. But the only ones I could find which related to autumn were ladybugs and stink bugs. Ladybugs were out of the question - way to cute for my liking. Stink bugs are edgy enough - but most of them are brown. BROWN! Ugh.

So - Gear Wheels! Just because I like them. Yay!

Signs and Symbols

Ok - I am happy to admit here and now that I have not even started working on the Afghan square challenge. Nor do I have an idea worth mentioning. But hey! I finished the quilt for Eti's Challenge Signs and Symbols.

Quilter's Curse

These past weeks have been a plain hassle in my real world job - I'll spare you the details, but it has not been pink clouds and pixie dust. Just hard work and loads of it. And no quilting. At all. And when I did have a chance to sew - I messed up.

Usually I don't swear or curse ( ok, I'll say "scheisse" on and off) but that's it. But these past weeks I would have, if I had had the slightest hope of turning anything for the better.

'Working Meeting' in Germany

Gillian came to Germany for her holidays, and after spending a few days in the  Alps three members of the group got together for a brief and intensive 'working meeting' during which a number of issues were discussed - and decided!

Obviously, I did not take this photo - somehow to me it seems a bit distorted,
but you can still recognize Gillian, Barbara and Uta, from the left.

Because of heavy workloads and tight schedules of many of us we have gone back on the size issue a bit, and the size we will be working with in the near future is 50 x 100 cm. This new size could apply to the challenge including the Afghan embroidery already, but because Kathy Loomis (and, as it now turns out, Eti David, too) has already finished hers in the 60 x 120 cm, Uta Lenk has decided to make hers in that dimension as well.
We have a new member: Bella Kaplan, from Israel, and are looking forward to welcoming her into the group. Watch out for her introduction piece.

Progress Report

I've been sort of quiet in the last few weeks - because I was busy quilting. And I am happy to say: I'm DONE!

I was not happy with my piece I made for repetition. And I was not happy with the idea of creating a series of quilts that did not relate to each other. The first two pieces I made for the "Big and Small" challenge and for the "Black and White with a Touch of Color" both include cobblestone - one of them has an insect, the other has cog wheels on it. So I decided to create my own series of cobblestone, insects and cogwhees PLUS the theme I'm working on.

First was SCETCHES:
I like to scetch figures - which does not mean I am good at it. I need practice and I enjoy practicing.

 

The next one was REPETITION:

 

I learned that repetition is a challenge for me because I obviously can't remember my pattern. I messed up time and again, undid seams, redid them, noticed it was right the first time after all, opened seams, redid them...

The good news is, I like the final result...

Ok, next one up: LINES

Not sure, what was required and having a hard time sticking to rules to start with, I decided not to focus on quilting or sewing a line - instead I made dragon flies falling in line.

 

The colors don't come out that well, but yes, this one is pretty tone-in-tone.

Then, Uta suggested making BLUE. 

I like blue. This one practically made itself. 

 I had recently seen quilts by Susan Brubaker Knapp. She shades her pieces to create a 3D effect an I decided to play with that for a while.

And since I was at it and I had green silk left over, I made an extra piece. Green, distorted cog wheels with a mirror pyramid incorporated, which is the only place where you can see a correct cog wheel - which is kind of contradictory, because this mirror image is a whole big distortion in itself... Again, a lot of shading with color pencils going on here.

 

I'm ready for Prague!!

Repetition

I am currently in a creative vacuum  - possibily due to the fact that I am suffering from empty-nest-syndrome. A sitation I did not expect and hope to overcome soon...
Sooo - I went to my sewing room and started working on my piece on the repetition challenge. This what I came up with.

I have never worked with raw edge up so far. But this time I liked the visual depth I gained by not sewing the squares on to the piece. They are simply attached with a small knot in every corner.
When I was done doing that, I could not decide wether it would be better to cut off the pieces that are going beyond the binding so I left them on there, thinking I could still cut them off later on.
It's itching me to add something on to the foreground, like a butterfly, or some other insect. On the other hand I like this teasing aspect of "something is missing". What do you think? 

Better late than never...

I know I'm one month late - but HEY! I finally made it! Here is my piece for the big and small challenge.

 

The title is "David and Goliath". The big gear wheel and the small one next to it are made up of small figures - pawns in the big clockwork of life. 

 

The gear wheels are all my original designs, digitized with the Bernina software and stitched out by machine on a background of hand dyed silk.

I enjoyed working on this one - it took me a long time to settle on an idea, but once that had happened, it just sort of fell in place all by its own. 

Now, while I'm at it, I might move on to the next challenge right away.

Grey Challenge / Happy New Year

First of all, I would like to wish all of you a Happy New Year 2014!

Mine certainly had a  happy beginning, because I finally managed to get my grey piece done.

Grey is definitely a challenge for me, being a color I would never choose on my own. But I did not need to stretch too far out of my comfort zone doing this one, since I am working on a monochrome series which includes spirals and insects. The spirals representing the ongoing repetition of life and the insects being the most successful species on earth conquering life's challenges.

But - just to add a new element - I did incorporate hand applique this time, which I have never done before in this series.The silk fabric is really a grateful fabric when it comes to hand applique, the stitches just seam to disappear on their own.

The monarch butterfly is machine embroidered with it's wings added as 3-D features.  The pattern is a design I digitized according to my own pattern.

Red: check

I will apologize right now for already being done with my pieces - I don't want to impose any pressure on anybody. It just so happened that I have been teaching a class of mentally challenged adults and just to keep my own sanity I took to the sewing machine.

This little fellow is 40 x 80 cm. I really had not intended on making a lady bug at all. In fact, I was determined NOT to make one, because they are too cute. But as soon as I was done piecing, it occured to me that the center circle looked just like a lady bug - so I did what the quilt was telling me to do and made a little friend for him.

 

The right picture was taken in the dark (you can tell, I guess ;-) ) to demonstrate the glow-in-the-dark thread I used to quilt the upper left stripe.  Taking pictures of the dark version is always a pain - I need to set my camera to the highest light sensitivity and then I have exposure times of two minutes and more. 

Since I didn't realize we had settled on the 40 x 80 size, I made a second piece, which is 150 x 180 cm. Both quilts are silk. This time I added three termites. And no glow-in-the-dark thread. And it doesn't matter at all that it doesn't fit our size requirements, because I have a second group in Dallas, Texas that is also doing a red challenge and it fits perfectly into their set of rules.

Oh - and then I decided to take a break from spirals. I will stick to the insects and to the monochrom scheme, but I have a few changes in mind. Next week I have a wonderful week off of work - and the kids are either at work or on vacation - so I have a great week of sewing ahead of me!