Quilting in the Wind - Again!

Quilt No. 62 Gets Some Much Needed Lovin'

As I've said before, most quilters are plagued by UFO's (UnFinished Objects).  It's one of the inexplicable tenets of life that starting a project is ever so much more fun than finishing it. There's that tsunami of enthusiasm, that unadulterated glee that accompanies a new enterprise. This applies not only to quilting, but to pretty much everything else - taking French lessons, teaching the dog to fetch your purse, encouraging the cat to flush the toilet, siding the house.

I like to think I've taken the UFO to a new place.  I now take quilts with FO status (Finished Objects) and demote them back into UFO's.  It's positively perverse.  It's the equivalent of Sisyphus finally getting that cantankerous stone to the top of the hill, being dissatisfied with the way he got it up there, and deciding to roll it down and start all over again.  At least in my case I only roll it half way down.

While I was reasonably satisfied that the design of Quilting in the Wind expressed the story I wanted to tell (see the 2008 blog post) I was never happy with it as a Finished Object.  It's been hanging in the closet since the day after it was finished in 2008.  So it was the first quilt I thought about when I started looking around for a quilt that I could revitalize with some machine quilting.  A practice piece.  Quilting in the Wind backslid into UFO status.

I removed the binding and all the hand quilting.  Yippee - none of the elements on the quilt needed to be replaced, unlike my previous adventure with My Escape.  Lacking a good idea of just exactly what shapes I should quilt into it, I spent hours gawking at it, doodling with my machine, and creeping other quilter's FO's on the internet.  All of that proved to be fruitless.  Ultimately, I just went for it and tried to add in quilted shapes that looked like wind.  Never having actually seen wind, this was tricky.  It called for lots of imagination and plenty of cups of coffee, and not necessarily in that order.

This quilt did prove to be a good learning experience, and my key take away was this.  If you don't know what to do...just jump in.   It actually will come to you.  (Warning: this is not good advice for non-swimmers or pilots who never showed up for their lessons.)

Quilting in the Wind

Quilt No. 62

July 2008

This quilt was inspired by a session of fabric dying that took place under less than ideal circumstances. A friend had given me a magazine that outlined a dying technique where strips of tissue paper are placed on damp fabric. Setacolor fabric dye is then painted over the strips, and the dyes from the tissue paper and the Setacolor run together to create interesting patterns. The process is done outdoors, as Setacolor dye is light sensitive.

I set up my work area on a table on the deck of our cottage. I was very enthusiastic about trying this new technique, so I ignored the fact that it was a very hot and windy day. Dying fabric with Setacolor paints requires limited air movement and high humidity to allow time for the dye to spread out slowly before it dries. However, as the wind blew fiercely, the tissue paper strips kept blowing off the fabric. The fabric kept losing its required dampness, so I didn’t chase the strips, I just kept spraying the fabric with water and adding new strips of tissue paper and more fabric dye. Eventually, I left the project to dry in the sun. As I made my way around the corner of the deck a new vista greeted me. All the strips that had blown away were hanging in the trees – in effect, I had “toilet papered” my own trees with messy strips of dye-laden tissue paper. When I related these events to my friend, she immediately suggested this would make a good subject for a quilt. Her comments became the inspiration for Quilting in the Wind. The tissue paper dyed fabric was used in the quilt entitled, Uncharted.

Quilting Notes

Although I tested several brands of tissue paper it was all dye-fast, and did not release any dye. It did however causing varying effects by blocking the sunlight to different degrees in different areas. The design of the tree trunk was “borrowed” from a drawing on the internet, but I drew the branches and leaves. A small amount of fabric was dyed to create contrast near the base of the tree. Purchased “transition fabrics” were used to get the gradations in colour for the sun and the pink strips.