Wonderful quilts I get to see

This wonderful quilt top came in to my studio a couple of weeks ago.  I wish I knew more about it.  I mean, I know who it belongs to, and my client knows who made it... but I wish I knew the person that worked on it.  Why did she make it?  Did a different person make the two borders?

It is a wonderful quilt, nice and flat, very old, still figuring out how long ago it was made.  It has a few stains but not too bad, and the fabrics are just wonderful. 

I've hung it up in my office on the design wall so that I can study and enjoy it. 
Here is a couple of close ups.

Isn't it wonderful?  All sewn by hand too.   I need to decide whether it should be machine quilted or not.  What do you think?
Enjoy!
nicole

horse quilt

I've been working on this quilt for, oh, I think 4 years or so, and it is finally on the machine being quilted!  Yay, Yahoo!

It is a depiction of a horse appearing through a mist of color and triangles.  Very very cool.  It was commisioned by a wonderful customer (and a very patient one!) and her original design idea.  My friend Narra and worked on it, with Narra doing all of the initial triangle sewing.  I then put on the border of more and more triangles and finally, I've cleared my schedule enough and got up my gumption (is that how it is spelled?) enough to start quilting.  I will post more pictures of the finished product soon.

I am just so excited to finally be finishing this quilt!

Here is another angle:

And some of the quilting close up:

I will definitely add some pics to this blog when it is all finished.  I can't wait!

nicole

Semana Santa, Holy Week

A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to visit the wonderful city of Antigua in Guatemala during Holy Week.   I've been thinking about that trip as that time of year approches once again.   It was one of the most beautiful and special traditions I've seen.   This first picture is of one of the churches in downtown Antigua.  Spectacular!

Here is a detail:

The local people create "carpets" for the parade that winds it way thru town on foot on their slow way to the Cathedral, carrying very heavy depictions or stories of the death of Christ.  The carpets are made from all kinds of imaginable plants, from seed pods, to pine needles to colored sawdust in fanciful patterns.  Each represents hours and hours of work.  Some small, some as long as the street along the parade route, and they are instantly destroyed as the parade passes.  Here are  few pics:

And another one!  I took sooo many pictures!

This next picture is one of the very heavy "stories" (I'm not sure of their official name)  carried throughout the town for hours, carefully blessing each neighborhood.

As you can see it requires 40 to 50 people (at a guess) to carry this one.

A couple of the young men in the parade.  Isn't it a great picture?



No quilts have resulted from this trip as of yet, but I did get lots of great traditional handwoven fabric, lots of patterns and colors to choose from or simply to use as inspiration.

Wishing I could be there again this year.  Gracias por la visita.

More later!

nicole

friendship

Many quilts are made for friends, to commemorate an occasion, like a birthday or just for fun.  I made such a quilt for my friend and coworker Pat.  She and I decided almost 10 years ago to pool our resources and rent a retail space together.  She would run Chairworks an upholstery and custom drapery studio and I would have Dunn Quilting, a longarm quilting studio.  We could share the rent, phone, utilities and customers too!  It has been a wonderful experience, and the friendship we have built over the years is one I will always treasure.

To commemorate the occasion... well, let me back up.  I've wanted to make her a special quilt with a "chair" theme for a long time, but couldn't quite figure it out in my mind.  Late this past year, I found some chair fabric at a local quilt shop Santa Fe Quilting (great store, make sure and stop by next time you are in Santa Fe) and knew immediately what I wanted to do. 

I found a chair image I liked, fairly simple, and started digging thru my stash.  At the time, I had also been working a scrappy halloween quilt.  I had the little leftover pieces (about 1/4" x 8" little strips) left from trimming the fabric pieces for that halloween quilt just lying there on the table.  So I drew the chair on a plain muslin background and decided to build the chair from lots of these little strips, glueing each down,  one on top of the other, paying attention to the value (light or dark) of each piece, slowly building my chair.  Then, I chose a blue netting from another drawer and sewed thru it and all the layers, not very heavily, to hold all the pieces down in place.  I then cut out the chair, cutting away the extra background leaving only about 1/4 around the chair.  I carefully appliqued the chair to the fabric that I had bought from the quilt store, with couches and birds on it.
Here is a picture of the final chair:

And then it was a matter of making enough interesting borders to balance the whole piece and use all the fabulous fabric that I had to go with the original piece. 

As a last minute addition and because my sense of humour got the better of me, I decided to add words in black velvet upholstery weight, which says "I have this chair".  Those are words we hear a lot when people come in to the store.  We joke about how we could go to Disney world and see someone from the Los Alamos area and they would say:  "I have this chair ..." 

We had a good laugh when I gave her the quilt. 

A wonderful Kaffe Fassett designed fabric completes the quilt on the last border.  I love this quilt, loved using what is a new technique for me to complete the chair, and hope to use it again soon.  It ended up a small twin size and is currently hanging in our store.

Friendship, one of the best reasons to give a quilt.

Here is the final result.