International Threads get-together!

Uta has been visiting the United States this month, and spent a week with us in Louisville before heading off for several other stops, including watching the eclipse.  We had a great reunion and she got to meet several members of my family that she hadn't met before, including Vivian, who will be four months old next week.

Here's Vivian hypnotized by Uta's knitting!

"Green"

After I returned from Israel I wanted to start on the signs-and-symbols-challenge, because that was the one most overdue. (I hate being overdue, which is a constant status of mine at the library, too....) Instead, with Gillian's new challenge on my mind I went ahead and did the one to meet my challenge, 'green'.

It uses a piece of green hand-dyed linen which had been begging me to do something with it. And it uses a study piece I made in an online class where we were supposed to make a sketch letting us be inspired by a famous artist (for which I chose a mixture of M. Rothko and J. Albers).

This is what it looked like before it became part of this challenge - it had some machine quilting and some hand stitching, but it just didn't seem finished, and I was still debating which direction would be the most appropriate:

So I turned it by 180 degrees, added to the batting and the background and put my green linen around it.

Some more hand stitching, some quilting on the longarm, and a few other things added:

And this is the completed piece (no tunnel yet, but I am working on that one...).

"Greening Rothko", by Uta Lenk

"autumn colours"

Just this morning I finished stitching "autumn colours".

I started by scrap piecing remnants in that colour range.

Then I overlaid it with an enlarged transfer of a drawing by Ellsworth Kelly. This required a bit of puzzling around, with mirror image and transfer etc.

not yet correct orientation of the overlay

And hand-stitched over that.

Some machine echoing for the background.

Of course, I ran out of bobbin thread less than 10" from the end, but that's the way it goes. And I had just about enough thread left to put that on the bobbin to last me to the very end:

And this is the finished piece (minus the tunnel, which will follow in due time):

Now for the signs and symbols... yeah.

"Thinking of Nasrin" - Afghan Square, finally finished!

After taking forever, I finally finished my Afghan Square quilt a couple of days ago.

It went through a number of planning stages.
This was my original square:

Although the background suggested it, I did not want to 'turn traditional', and at first thought I could stretch, turn, mirror and replicate the shape of the orginal motif. Planning by photoshop and sketching looked like this.

Of course, eight of the blocks - i.e. all the ones that would have been not the original size - would have been pieced. But somehow this didn't really talk to me.
Then we had a left-over square anyway, and Barbara offered to give me hers, too, so I figured I could use three instead of only one. I also had a piece of a real Afghan tchador (if that's what it's called there), which I had dyed blue, and started figuring out how to include that.

The embroidered squares were inset into
circles, and a couple of other circles added

A lot of handstitching, some quilting on the the longarm, and quite a bit more handstitching followed.

Extra stitching added to alter character of pre-stitched cloth

green stitches on the yellow cloth were done by my son,
when he was trying out a bit of embroidery

And with all the refugee crisis, my involvement in and exhaustion from volunteer work the title simply suggested itself, because while I was stitching, I kept thinking about the woman who had made the squares, hoping that this work is enough to keep her well supplied for where she is, without having to think about possible leaving her country via a dangerous and unpromising migration to countries where things would be so different, difficult...

"Thinking of Nasrin", 60 x 120 cm

'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.

Sketch, finally finished

Just about in time - I finished my sketch-challenge!

It all started with my heaps of scraps:

And, of course, the sketch which seemed everything but feasible (a line tracing of a photo of water swirls I had seen somewhere):

I used techniques from the class with Jan + Jean, which I took last year, and in the end, strictly speaking, this is not a quilt.

Scraps arranged on solufix, covered with Avalon film, stitched

under the machine

It waited on the wall for a few days,
trying to figure out whether it needed
more stitching, or was done like this

Check out whether the other orientation is preferrable -
definitely not! But I could imagine a double version
including both orientations, perhaps in a different color range...

dissolving the film and solufix in the sink

figuring out how to do the sleeve, involving the flimsy backing

finished

It is just a bit wider and a bit longer than our usual size - but I did not want to cut anything off at the edges, it needs to be raw as it is.

seven finished - working on sketch...

So I had already shown you my Blue one, over a month ago. Since then I have worked hard (not only these Prague quilts, but...) -
This is my report:

Finished Repetition - pattern:

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text messages 6, detail

Then Kathy had this problem about one being too long, and out of sheer solidarity I made one that is also approx. 10 cm longer than our normal size. At first I planned it for the 'lines', then I thought I might substitute it for my black to grey to white with colour, which I thought I didn't really like.

Play of Lines XXXVII

Play of Lines XXXVII, detail - all the seed stitches are done in
four different shades of grey (no pun intended)

But then I took another look at my original solution for the grey challenge and didn't think it quite as bad as I had remembered - so I decided this one was going to stay my piece for 'lines' after all. By then, however, I had already started another one that could have served for 'lines', which I finished, too. Figuring it might give me a good excuse to drop out of making one for sketch, which I was really having a hard time with - mainly deciding, which sketch I was going to use...

Play of Lines XXXVIII

This one is green, because Barbara had mentioned that she had made a green one extra - and, again, it is slightly longer than the usual size, thus another companion for Kathy's long one.
In between I thought I would never be able to really come up with that nice sketch, then made several, neither of which seemed feasible. However, after I finished all of these, counted to seven and thought I could consider myself done for Prague, I finally took the plunge, chose the sketch least workable - and am currently working on it. This is the sketch.

To be honest, the sketch was done on the computer - but Gillian had not said we could not do that, so I consider the method legal. It will not be a quilt proper, but I am doing it in the style of Jan + Jean, the double-troubles, whom I took a workshop with last year. But again, we didn't say they all have to be quilts proper, so I think it's legal. (And it will be faster to finish before the big date.) Kathy can say no to it when we are hanging, if she thinks it's not appropriate. I will show a picture before we hop on the train.

"Blue" - Uta

I'm not really abiding by any order, but I hope that is not a problem. I'm still working on the 'lines' assignment by Margaret (stitching!), but "Blue" is finished:

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Here is a detail shot of the threads etc.:

And who has been following my work lately knows that I have started incorporating reflector fabric. It appears in this one as well, as you can see in this flashed picture:

I can also report on some progress in terms of Gillian's assignment - at least I have done some sketching!

Repetition and Pattern - Uta

I finally got to a point where I can show you what I have been doing for Barbara's assignment, Repetition and Pattern. As I have started playing around with text, this is not a pieced quilt. (I even made a little sketch - but since this is not the assignment where I have to prove that I was sketching...)

After marking a grid on the piece of snow-dyed fabric I had chosen (a remnant from my sales with exactly the right width - can't let anything go to waste!) I auditioned different sizes of font before taping up the letters for increased stability:

A first stitching around the edges, to get past the stage where I still had to fiddle with the letters. In honor of the name of the group, of course - very thready it was!

This is the piece vefore washing out the stabilizing embroidery fleece:

Here you can see what it looked like after a good wash, and a detail.

It's quilted now, it only needs the binding. But I will save that until I finish Gillian's assignment, and then do both of them together.

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