This is my 12″ x 12″ quilt, called When Day Was Night. Today is the one year anniversary of that day when the sky was a dark yellow/orange all day, from the smoke in the atmosphere from the wildfires. This quilt was in a show at the Blueline Gallery in Sacramento. I never saw the show in person, because of Covid.
Here’s a detail.
SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) will have a juried show called Prism Play. I signed up to make 2 quilts, one in blue and one in orange. Each quilt will be one color, and 45″ long by 15″ wide. I have to thank Cara Gulati who hand delivered my envelope with the color cards on Friday! The mystery of my missing envelope has been solved. It had been mistakenly delivered to a neighbor, who eventually delivered it to me. I have my choice of two different blues- that’s why there are 2 blue cards. Now I need to look in my stash to see if I actually have these colors.
I’m working on the spaces between these squares. I decided to make wonky strips instead of the even ones in element #2. I think it would drive me crazy to make that many strips that were exactly the same. Below are my first few strips.
Here is what they look like inserted between the squares.
The fifth element for the Lone Robin is “gradations.” While I was visiting my sister in North Carolina, I visited 2 fabric stores. I bought about 8 different fabrics, all of which had some kind of gradation. I had no idea if any of them would work for my Lone Robin. When I got home and auditioned the fabrics, one of them worked perfectly! I cut it into wonky squares and parallelograms, and framed each one with the blue fabric that is a constant in this quilt. When I looked at it on the design wall, I felt that the transition was too abrupt on the bottom. I made three different attempts at a strip to place there.
Luckily, the third one worked! (I had also added another curve to the top of the ladder).
I’m starting to work on striped coping strips between these wonky squares. The white between them is just the design wall showing through.
In the hamsa class I also taught them how to make royzelach (Jewish snowflakes that have a Magen David in the center) for the holiday of Shavuot. Royzelach is the word for roses in Yiddish. According to midrash when we received the Torah at Mt. Sinai, it was with all our senses. There was thunder, lightning, and the smell of roses. There was a tradition in Eastern Europe to decorate their homes with flowers for Shavuot, or to cut these “roses” out of paper and glue them in their windows.
Above is my example which I cut out in class.
This is my hamsa example.
These are the students with their royzelach.
While I was in Asheville visiting my sister, I taught a paper-cut hamsa class at Congregation Beth Israel. Here are some of the students’ work.
The next two are from students who didn’t want their faces photographed.
Here’s the description of the class:
Paper-cut Hamsa Workshop
A hamsa is a stylized hand for protection against the “evil eye,” frequently worn as jewelry. Made by both Jews and Muslims, hamsas are found all over the Middle East, but are older than either religion. Come learn about the folklore of hamsas, as we make them out of paper. Learn the basics of paper-cutting, a traditional Jewish folk art. We will cut out our hamsas with scissors, and/or Exacto knives for accuracy, then glue them to a background. No artistic talent is required to make stunning hamsa designs. The finished paper-cut hamsa can be framed, to hang on the wall.
The workshop lasts for two hours. Materials fee of $5 to the instructor.
Here’s the fairy door and ladder I made, installed on the tree in front of our house.
I seem to have ladders on the brain right now. I’m piecing a ladder into my Lone Robin quilt. Prompt #4 is roads, paths, ladders, and steps. Each space between the rungs on this ladder is at least 1/4 inch closer together than the previous one, as if they are smaller, receding into the distance. I’m also making a tiny ladder out of sticks to go with the fairy door I made for the tree outside our house.
Here’s the door I made from popsicle sticks and my twig ladder, ready for installation on the tree. The Sharpie is for scale, so you can see how tiny it is. If you double click on the image you will see the cord I wrapped around each twig of the ladder.
Here is the process of piecing the ladder into the background.
Here’s the ladder sewn together. I’m not sure if I’m done with it. I might change it.
#lonerobinquilt #ebhq_quilters #ebhqlonerobinquilt #sfqg
I’m running behind in this year’s Lone Robin. However, I worked on it for a few days, and now I’m working on the current prompt.
Julia created the Lone Robin for the SF Quilt Guild. With her permission, I’m running it for EBHQ. Here’s all the info on it from Julia McLeod. My photos are below this introduction.
The first Lone Robin Challenge was devised in 2020 to entertain members of the San Francisco Quilters Guild during the Covid 19 pandemic. The 2021 (second) Lone Robin Challenge runs for 6 months – February thru July 2021. August is a catch-up month.
Part mystery quilt, part Round Robin, quilters are given monthly prompts and very few rules to make a quilt of their own. Month by month, round by round, we build our quilts alone in the safety of our own sewing rooms.
The Lone Robin Challenge can be responded to in many ways – with traditional quilt blocks, modern motifs, skillful fabric choices, appliqué or embroidery. Use a motif once or repeat it multiple times; play with contrasting scale, color and contrast. Each round can be any size. Your finished quilt top can be any dimension.
There is only one firm rule: Each month’s work must attach to the previous month’s piece. For example: what you create for March should attach in some way – even if only on one side or in one small area – to what you made in February. Traditional quilters can build a medallion quilt where each round clearly follows on from the one before. Modern, art and improv quilters can create any kind of composition but we should be able to see where the first component/motif is followed by the second and so forth.
This is prompt #1 Points.
Prompt #2 Strip Piecing.
Here are some process phots of Prompt #3 Organic.
Prompt #3 finished.
I deliberately left the right side empty. I’m planning on adding a ladder in orange on blue to that side for prompt #4. I don’t know what prompt #5 is yet, but I can add it just to the top edge, just to the bottom edge, or to both top and bottom.
#EBHQlonerobinquilt
Here’s a detail of my first quilt:
On Thursday, 5/13/21 at the EBHQ Zoom Meet Up meeting, one of the activities will be participants sharing their first quilts. Here is mine. I started this quilt at age 13, when I was inspired by seeing a neighbor’s Victorian crazy quilt. Mine is mostly pieced by hand, although the blocks are sewn together by machine. There were no quilters in my family, so I taught myself, making it up as I went along. I didn’t know about the sew and flip method, so most of the crazy patches are appliqued to each other. I ripped up an old bed sheet as a foundation. There is a lot of hand embroidery all over it too. It took me 5 years to make that first quilt. I finished it just in time to take it with me to cover my dorm bed at the Rhode Island School of Design, where I earned a BFA in ceramics.
