Drunken Flower

A few weeks ago I was asked to contribute to a very special charity quilt show. Joanna Figueroa of Fig Tree Quilts sent out a call for quilts to be auctioned off to raise funds for the George Mark Children's House. This facility provides housing and services to children with terminal illnesses and their families. How does someone not help such a worthy cause?
The theme of the show is Red and White Quilts and I was excited to take up the challenge. I'm not much of a limited palette kind of person, but I had an inkling as to how I could take this concept and make it my own.

First off, I knew the quilt would need to be small, primarily because of time constraints. But, I also knew that I wasn't going to make a traditional red and white quilt. I'm not really much of a traditional maker.

What I decided to do was to hint at white through the use of low volume fabrics (made me harken back to an article I wrote in April of 2009 for Quilting Arts magazine about designing with low volume fabrics) and to accent the quilt edges with red binding.

Since I'm super fond these days of rounded edges and I think it gives almost any quilt a fresh, fun look, I curved these corners and bound them in a mostly red print from my Simple Marks Autumn collection.
This little quilt is off to California and hopefully will be part of a bigger effort to raise money for an important cause.

A Baby Quilt for MX

Not too long ago an old friend commissioned me to make a baby quilt for a co-worker. The expectant parents planned to name the baby Marley Xene (said Zene). Not exactly your average, everyday middle name, but my friend was particularly taken with their choice of name, especially the middle one. In fact, my friend was so enamored of the name that she asked that I incorporate the-as-yet-unborn baby's initials in the design of the quilt.

I love this kind of challenge. I knew that my friend would be open to a creative interpretation as we went to Art School together. So, I set about designing a super-sized single block that included a variety of fabrics, especially mine, and at least hinted at the the aforementioned initials.
I had to do a lot of math, not exactly my strong suit, to craft these triangles and fit in the "letters", but I'm very happy with how this baby quilt turned out. Also, I can definitely see expanding this concept into multiple blocks as part of a larger quilt.
I'm also happy to report that my friend loved the finished quilt and was super excited to gift it to her co-worker.
In a bit of a twist though, the parents decided to forgo the unusual middle name, not related to the design of my quilt...I hope. :)

Hey there!

Top 5 BS Excuses for my Long Absence:
5. Kept typing in http with just one slash and couldn't get my browser to find this URL.
4. My dog ate my computer.
3. Someone was already parked in my cyber space.
2. Paralyzed by angst over whether to use Safari, Firefox, or Chrome as my browser
1. Too busy corresponding with new-found Nigerian banker friend to post to my blog.

There you have it. My reasons for being away from this space.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I want to show off 3 projects I recently completed.

This quilt is a supersized version of the traditional Snail's Trail pattern interpreted in low volume fabrics, kinda, sorta. The fabrics are a mix of prints and solids, some commercial, others hand dyed that I had in my stash. It's a pretty generously sized lap quilt.

Also supersized, but in a different way, this one-block version of Broken Dishes is actually a large floor pillow. The background is a neutral solid and the triangles are probably 40 or so mixed solids and prints.

Ok, I know I'm not supposed to pick favorites, that every project has it's own unique beauty, but forget all that. These guys are definitely my favorite of the three projects. I spend so much of my time making graphic, non-representational images that when I get a chance to make something that looks otherwise, I get really excited. These also have a finish that I've been using on a lot of my projects, rounded edges.
You'll be seeing these projects in another format in the future, though I can't exactly talk about that. What I can say is there are more reveals to come and I hope everyone's New Year has gotten off to a dandy start!