Silhouette - PQ 13.2

This week has been a roller-coaster of inspiration and reality!  I had some really great ideas, was inspired to try several techniques to implement those ideas, and then crashed back to reality by the fact that I do not (yet!) have the skills to use any of those techniques to make something that I would be proud of for this challenge.  

One technique is, of course, applique.  Applique is not my favorite technique, and I first thought that the only way to do a silhouette would be with applique.   I knew that I wanted to do the challenge, just wasn't sure that I wanted to do a complicated applique! So I hemmed and hawed and procrastinated for a few days. 

On Tuesday morning, I went down to the boathouse for my regular crew team workout.  Note that, since it is winter here in Pittsburgh, we don't take the boats and go out on the water, we work out on the rowing machines inside the boathouse.  The machines are set up facing the floor-to-ceiling windows, so that we can see the river (and wish that we were out on the water instead of indoors!)  So while I was working out, I was watching the water flow past the docks. I noticed the reflections of the docks in the water.  That reminded me of some photos that had been taken last fall, with the team boats backlit by the setting sun.  Or, I guess you could say, 'silhouetted' by the setting sun!  Inspiration!!

I went to the team's website and found the pictures that I was thinking of.  

 

Reality: Both of them are really great examples of silhouette, but way too complicated (for me) to make appliques out of them, at least not in a week.  

So I went back to hemming and hawing.  

On Wednesday morning, I attended a meeting of the Creative Quilters subgroup of the local quilting guild.  The topic was thread painting.  They mentioned several types of thread painting, one of which involves printing a picture on fabric and stitching over it.  Inspiration!!

I watched several of the videos about thread painting.  It looked easy!  I can do this!  Reality: No, I can't. That is another technique that I want to learn, and want to get good at, but my attempts this week were dismal failures.  File this under "things that I want to do someday". 

I set my sights lower.  I realized that what fascinated me about the rowing pictures was the lighting, and the setting sun.  That reminded me of some pictures that my brother had taken of seagulls at the beach, with the sun behind them.  So I did some internet surfing and found some really cool pictures of sea birds sitting on docks, piers or buoys.  Inspiration!!  

This time, reality was the winner.  I realized that I didn't have to make a super complicated applique project in order for me to be happy with it. I decided to make a simple applique project.  It finished at 10 X 14 inches and is the perfect size to add to the wall in my sewing room. 

This week's project took me a little longer than usual, but I am glad that I had all that inspiration. One of these days, I WILL do a thread painting of a rower at sunset! 

Seagull at Sunset

                                                                                                        

Here We Go Again!

A new year, a new Project Quilting season. And again, I haven't posted anything on the blog since the last Project Quilting challenge. But I'm not going to go down that path.  It is what it is.  But I do have a new project to post!  

PQ13.1 started last Sunday with the announcement of the first challenge.  It is called "All the Colors".  The question that was asked is "what can you make that is very, very colorful?"  

I was thrilled to see that topic! Lately, I have been really loving bright colors.  I don't know if it is my way of coping with the uncertainty of the pandemic, or if I'm just bored with muted shades, since I just finished a quilt using my Thimbleberries prints from the mid 2000's.   Either way, this challenge is right up my alley. 

I started thinking about what to make and was quickly overwhelmed with uncertainty.  Did I want to start a theme, and try to make each challenge related to each other?  I already have way too many mug rugs, so I really don't want to go that route. Pincushions?  Baby Quilts? Knitting project bags?  The problem with that approach is that, based on my past experience with PQ, the challenge could be anything! It could be to use up scraps or to use only one fabric. Or to make to something tiny, or make something big.  Use a specific block, use a specific color,  Make something to wear, or three dimensional, or, or...!  I didn't want to come up with a theme only to have it be shot to heck with the very next challenge!

OK, a theme is out the window and I decided to just focus on one challenge at a time.  For this first one,  I had no idea what the end result was going to be, but I had lots of ideas about what to do.  I considered using up a lot of half full spools of thread by playing with the special stitches on my sewing machine, then make something out of the resulting fabric.   Then I thought about the colorful zippers that I had purchased in bulk a few years ago, with the intention to make a bunch of small bags to sell at a craft fair. That never happened, so maybe I could sew them all together, or applique them to something?  These ideas, of course, all came about 2 o'clock in the morning when I was lying in bed trying to get back to sleep.  

The next day, I decided to go poking around in my bin of left over blocks and pieces thereof to see if there was anything inspiring there.  I discovered some 'waste triangles' that were left from a quilt that I made from brights and solid black and knew that I had my fabrics for this challenge.  The fabrics are bright, bright, bright!  I learned about waste triangles in the book 'Nickel Quilts' by Pat Speth.  It fascinated me that something could be made from such small triangles. And working with them is so much easier because they are already sewn together into half square triangles.  

I sewed the half square triangles together into flying geese, added some solid black strips to even it out and ended up with an 8 inch square.  Some of the geese are wonky, and some of the points are cut off, but since it is intended to be a potholder which will get used and dirty, I am happy with it!

So here it is - a new potholder and my entry into PQ 13.1!