Thursday is Purse Day - Fish Purse

 

I made Fish Purse in 2007.  I didn't have any intention of making a fish when I started.  I cut a rectangle of the striped fabric.  I sewed a facing that was mostly yellow fabric, with orange and aqua strips on one end.  Then I put them right side together and sewed on three sides, leaving one short side open.  After turning it inside out,  I started folding and putzing with the short end to make a flap.

That's when it started looking like a fish head to me.  I carried on with that theme and added a great big old slightly bulging fish eye made out of two stacked, rounded buttons. 

 

This closeup shows one of the two metallic fish buttons, around which I wrapped a variety of green novelty yarns to emulate seaweed.

The yellow band with the different colors of metallic variegated thread is how I finished the raw edge after turning the purse body inside out.

There's a relatively heavy-gauge copper wire inside the beaded handle, and it holds its shape nicely.  I've made other beaded handles with beading string, but they're so floppy and unsatisfactory.  The disadvantage of heavy wire is you have a smaller pool of beads to choose from, because they need to have a wide opening.  To secure the handle, I pushed the wire through the top of the purse, then wrapped it around itself a few times.  You can sort of see that on the right.

With the flap open, a peak inside.

Looking at this fussy-cut fish reminds me of a really pretty stained glass fish quilt I did.  But I think we'll save that for another time some months in the future.  We might be feeling a little fished out right about now.

Tea for Tuesday

On occasional Tuesdays I'll be featuring a vignette of tea-related items.  Most of them will have one of my teapots; they all have at least one thing you could use at a tea party.

This pitcher, manufactured by Applause, Inc., is 8 inches tall.  Applause produced figurines, mugs, and other ceramics in the 1980s and 1990s based on license deals with Disney, Sesame Street, the California Raisins, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.

This pitcher is not of that ilk.  It's a Dan Gilbert design of a Fairy Basslet.  Fairy Basslets are native to coral reefs, but are widely collected for home aquariums, no doubt because of the vivid colors of the male.  They are carnivorous, aggressive, and hermaphrodite.

 The back side.

The "shell" plate is nothing special - it's from World Market.  The fish plate, a Holland Mold ceramic, is from a recent vintage shopping expedition.

From the Vault - Seaweed Quilt

Strictly speaking, this isn't a vault quilt, since it didn't come out of a plastic tub in the basement.  I've had it hanging at home or at work almost nonstop since I made it in March 2008.  But it dates pre-blog, so maybe that's the new definition of vault.

 

Seaweed Quilt is 35 x 47 inches.  I bought the center fabric at Stitcher's Crossing in 2007and didn't want to cut it, so I added pieced borders and embellishments.  This was the only quilt where I used folded borders, which you can see on the left and right edges of the seaweed fabric.  You can slip your fingers behind the fold and lift it up.

Here's a closeup of a fish I appliqued, emerging from the fold.  I free motioned around all the seaweed and scattered seed beads across the top to simulate bubbles.

Turquoise and citron eyelash yarn loop around (fake) mother-of-pearl beads.  On the left you can see more of the folded border.

This is the type of quilting I did in the borders.  It looks like variegated thread, but it's not.  I did multiple passes with different colored thread.  It was a lot of threading and rethreading, but I was happy with how it turned out.

Here's a detail from the upper right where you see a little of everything: seaweed free motion quilting in the border, "real" seaweed yarn, and the folded border on the right.

This has put me in a fish mood.  Come back for more fish posts this week, starting tomorrow!

Juvenile Embroidery Book - Page 1

In Connected, I showed you some of my twenty eight juvenile transfer embroidery blocks from the 1950s.  I was really happy to find them "blank" - meaning I get the fun of doing the embroidery.

I finished the first one last night.   

I decided rather than sash them into a quilt or wall hanging, I would make a book out of them.  This will take up much less room, which is good.

I'm going to pair each block with a complementing fabric.  Here's my plan:

1. Find fabric with the same theme as the embroidery block.
2. Use those colors when picking out embroidery thread.
3. Instead of using the fabric as a backing on the corresponding block, use it as backing on the preceding page.  That way as you flip through the book, you'll see two interpretations of the same item, at the same time: fabric on the left, block on the right.

 This means I won't be backing the blocks until they're all done and I figure out what order I want them in.

She thinks this is a great idea.

Here's a little peak at some of my other backing fabrics.

  

Design Challenge - Diagonals

In Stuffed to the Gills, I talked about using my batiks as part of my small quilting group's design challenge.  The book "Color and Composition for the Creative Quilter" lists nine design compositions:

1. vertical
2. horizontal
3. circular
4. diagonal
5. radiating
6. grid
7. framed/border
8. symmetrical
9. asymmetrical

My plan is to make one block in each style, then assemble them into a quilt.

For my first composition, I chose diagonals.  The method I chose was fused applique with machine stitching on the edges.  This block is 10 x 10 inches. Each of the other blocks will have a different color combination, and the blocks will all be done without a pattern.

I thought it would be fun to also do the design challenge in modern fabrics, using pieced blocks from patterns.  I chose my diagonal block pattern from Shape Workshop for Quilters.  I like to preview books from the library first, then decide if I want to buy them.  This is definitely on my buy list in February.

This is the modern block I made, designed by Tacha Bruecher.  Of the four authors of the book, I find myself consistently drawn to her designs. 

Her block was 12.5 x 12.5, which is much larger than I wanted it to be.  I thought I was clever by making my center triangle 1 inch smaller than her's.  Even so, my block turned out bigger - 14.5 x 12.5 inches.  Uh oh.  How did I do that?  My strips were 1/8 inch wider than her's and I guess that's why.  Oh well, now I need to make the other eight blocks huge, too.  Maybe it will be interesting.

Whereas the batik blocks are all going to be different colors, for the modern quilt I'm going to stick with this color palette and reuse these particular fabrics along with some new ones.

Originally I thought I would do one block a month, but I don't want to work on the same two quilts for nine months!  So I'll keep plugging away in between other projects.  I'll keep you posted as I get each block done.

 

From the Vault - Safari Quilt

Welcome to another installment of From the Vault.  In this series,  I pull out an old quilt from one of my plastic tubs in the basement.  Some of these quilts are no longer my style or color palette.  Some I still like quite a bit, but they've been edged out on the main floor by others I like better.

 This quilt is 39 inches tall and 45 inches wide.  I made it in 2004 and loved it enough back then to keep it hanging at work and at home for many years. 

 

This is the center block in the middle panel.  I machine appliqued it on top of the safari batik.  The beads on the navy border alternate between small oval wood ones and turquoise ceramic spheres.  I free motioned around all the animals, then outlined some of them with hand stitching.  Visible in this photo is the giraffe in the upper left corner - couched chenille yarn; the tiger below it and the gorilla in the upper right - copper metallic thread worked in a stem stitch.

   

Upper left block.  The triangle stone beads looked like arrow heads to me, so I made arrows with them.  The center button reminded me of a papoose.  I named this block Pocahontas.

Center left block.  Red metallic ribbon is hand couched.  Big red things are buttons, as are the shiny red orbs in the center.  I had a woman's name for this block, but I forgot it.  Something to do with red.

 

Lower left block.  Variegated yarn, knotted on the quilt back at the beginning and end of each of the Greek keys, couched on the front.  The green buttons are fraternal twins to the red ones in the block above.  I wanted to name this block after a real Greek woman, but lacking in ancient history, I didn't know any.  I asked my friend Carla and she gave me a name, but I can't remember it now.

Upper right block.  Shiva mirrors in the corner go with the Indian-looking inner border.  That fabric isn't batik, it's some kind of shiny material.  The circles in the outer border are two strands of something (I don't know what in the world it is!).  One strand is purple, the other is pink - they look like stretchy ponytail grabbies, but they're not stretchy and they're not little circles.  I used beads to couch the area where the strands crisscrossed.  It was really hard getting that "something", which is 1/16" in diameter, knotted on the back and pulled through to the front.  This block is named Indira Ghandi.

Middle right block.  I bought a book of embroidery stitches when I was working on this quilt, along with crazy quilt books.  I never made any crazy quilts but I did have fun trying out different types of stitches.  In the lower left is an apple charm.  I call this block Maid Marian.

Lower right block.  Variegated embroidery thread was used on the outer triangles and zig zags, variegated yarn was couched just inside it.  See that button in the center with the thread tassel?  Do you recognize it from my Sun book?  I named this block Joni Mitchell.

I don't put this much work into my quilts any longer.  I'm getting older and don't like the thought of spending months and months on one quilt.  But I'm glad that I made some detailed ones in the past.