Orange Explains it, quilt revealed

close detail of hand quilting with ecru pearle threads 

"Orange Explains It" queen size quilt finished 

 Since April 4th of this year I have been working, playing and enjoying the building of an abstract improvisational quilt top in orange with a few neutrals, mostly grays and browns. I was inspired by two things:
1. A visit in Washington DC with the Gee's Bend quilters of Alabama.
2. The scraps of orange and gray fabric that were given to me at a DC modern quilt guild meeting.

scraps of orange gray and brown first gift 

more orange from the scrap swap meet 

DCMQG members at the Gee's Bend event 

Gee's Bend quilt detail 

table view of Gee's Bend quilt 

close up of the quilting from Gee's Bend quilt 

Nice detail of Gee's Bend quilt 

Lady in purple suit with pearls and the younger one in Pink sweater set both from Gee's Bend who shared their quilting stories and songs with us. 

Elder Gees Bend quilter with the US Postage stamps commemorating her communities quilts 

my first try at using the orange gray and brown fabrics in an abstract improvisational block

At first I played with the fabrics on my design wall, not sure what I was going to do with them. Pretty quickly a block style began to emerge. It's all rectangles from strips of any fabric that was a little like orange. I chose many fabrics ranging from reds to yellows in the spectrum of orange.  It's interesting how colors that look a little orange alone when placed next to other oranges becomes a new hue, usually yellow or red. I used what I understood to be the Gee's Bend design formula of going with my natural inclinations to work up more and more new blocks until the whole was big enough for a queen sized bed.

blocks arranged on the design wall to try and find a way to assemble them into a solid quilt top

Soon after I added it all up with hand stitched quilting using a #8 pearle thread in ecru and bound the edges with a dark chocolate brown. It's bold and bright in the end a very unique piece.

orange quilt top takes up the whole living room spread out on the floor to baste

detail of hand quilting using pearle #8 ecru

adding a dark chocolate brown binding 

 Then I chose a pair of contrasting blue and white prints for the backing that I was saving because I loved the prints. I worked on a label at the summer meeting of DC Modern Quilt Guild in the Botanical Gardens on the national mall.

top with label turned up 

simple blue and white for the backing to cool off those hot oranges

This quilt was one of the must fun to make because I only had to follow my inner voice the whole way through from start to finish. No fussy cutting or pattern making was needed the biggest challenge was arranging all my blocks to fit together into one huge block. This artistic way of working is just one of many I plan to use in the future.

summer begins

with a picnic by the tidal basin.

 Decadent fried chicken and potato salad with some French pink sparkling lemonade. Then off for an after dinner walk around the whole tidal basin. Perfect weather and a slowly setting sun made the walk fun and different from the usual mid-day walks we normally take. All around the basin were the usually lovely cherry trees but this time of year they are covered in dark green leaves.

along the route we noticed a vine covered wall across the roadway leading to 14th St. Bridges.

upon closer inspection we realized the entire wall was covered by one single vine which I believe turns red in fall for an amazing display. 

decorative rails on one of the bridges caught my eye.

Canada geese were nibbling grass at the edge of a flooded area. 

in the distance Washington Monument has a new skin of scaffolding built to repair earthquake damage from 2011

here you see the Jefferson & Washington memorials and the flooded edge. Seas levels are rising right here in the capitol.

Waxing moon is high in the sky

 We made it home before sun was all the way down to see a pretty pink purple sunset reflected on the few clouds along the horizon. Then I set to work and finished up the sewing of a binding on my big orange quilt project. Now it will be turned under and blind stitched over the next few evenings and an embroidery label is on the way.

I worked during late afternoon to make my chocolate brown binding for the nearly completed Orange improvisational quilt inspired by Gee's Bend quilters. 

improvisation modern or traditional

design wall with improvisational blocks using green with white next to scrappy multi-colored blocks 

I have been working for almost a month on improvisational quilt blocks. They began with my green and white work from 2011 that is continued to be very stark and fun to play with on my design wall.  I got this far on the green/white and began a new series using scraps from the generous donations given at the March 2013 DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting mixed with my own scraps.

The colors I brought home were gray, brown and orange tangerine and marigold mostly and that is where I went with my improvisational block building once I realized it was making me feel energized to work with this mix more than others that evolved from the scrap heap.  Then I began wondering how big my project would grow and how to lay it out once I had a number of blocks assembled. 

Edge to edge or stacked on a gray background field were the two choices I considered. 

 

layout with a gray field background 

The feed back I have so far is to go with the all over orange theme and leave the gray ground out. Honestly it was the way I wanted to go in the beginning once I realized I had a new orange project that was looking good but I wondered if I could make enough blocks to create a whole quilt of these improvisational blocks. I would need some more fabrics to do one large enough for a bed. Then I wondered if that is really what I wanted to make because after seeing the Gee's Bend quilters finished quilts I knew I wanted to hand quilt this project and big means lots of work quilting. Wouldn't a smaller quilt be just as good?

I have been enjoying the play and the collection added one next to the other not worrying too much about size or relationships to the connecting blocks. This was meant to be very free and fun. To assemble them I need to be more thoughtful how the sizes line up and the edge designs and colors will come together. Also I am giving some thought to the balance of the entire collection of blocks. As I have worked on this I have had a few tiny scraps and I made two almost six inch square blocks to consider scale but over all the blocks have been getting bigger and the pieces wider and longer.

Mini block 6x7"

Miniature block 6x6"

The big blocks are adding in some of the new fabrics including a gray paisley, a brown printed black burlap design and the speckled gray "concrete" backing and a neutral tea stained muslin.

Do you have a preference or comment on how the final quilt or quilts might look best? I am looking forward to this week's DC Modern Quilters Guild meeting in Arlington where we are going to have another scrap swap this time with lots of quilter's bringing in scraps. We also have an orphan block quilt project that is seeking donations for a charity quilt and our quilter's name tag reveal. I also expect we will be talking about our plans to join the international organization of guilds called Modern Quilt Guild. I read the various definitions of "modern quilting" that the guild has used and began thinking that I need to look more at Modern art. I am a traditional kind of guy and look to Albrecht Dürer the 15th century German artist more than more recent works of art because I can relate to them better. Skill drawing and painting I can aspire to more than the mental feats of Modern art's conceptual creations. I understand these modern movements pretty well and admire and delight in the fun that they hold when they tantalize the mind and the spirit but sometimes I get board looking at them. So to quilt modern does one need to embrace the modern aesthetic? How does it relate to the history and the traditions of quilting? The ladies of Gee's Bend offer a way forward that uses both the fabric at hand and the chance of discovery by following your own voices when piecing a patch work. They were isolated from the museums and galleries that brought us minimalist and conceptual art yet they are heralded as makers of throughly "modern art quilts". I think the ideas of color and field and minimal are interesting but I like the complex layers of patterns and design that comes in a baroque like composition. Therefore I hope this orange project will be a beginning of a new kind of vision modern and traditional at once speaking to my roots and my education and our modern times.

after the cherry blossoms

Each year I remind myself that the Asian vine called wisteria blooms the week after all the cherry blossoms fall while the trees leaf out to fresh green. It's a wonderful sight and can surprise you.  I was out for a walk near Dupont Circle a few years ago, walking along Q. Street NW by the Argentine Embassy when I was overwhelmed the most amazing perfume. I remember looking around and wondering who was wearing such a strong perfume. Sniffing and walking then I passed by a very tall southern magnolia tree and smelled the perfume much stronger. I paused and took a a spin around looking to see if I was missing someone or something and there it was above me a the tree covered in the blooms of a giant wisteria! It was so sweet and fine but only showed on the west face of the tree then. Now you can see it on both sides. So the other day when Melinda and I were walking and she exclaimed how lovely! "What's that called" she asked, "we can't grow those in Wisconsin..." I told her about this wisteria on Q. St. and the equally amazing vines that grow on the long low walls of the National Gallery of Art's West Building down on the mall.

 After that discussion with Melinda, I realized I had to go back and see this display we didn't get time to visit Friday. I also found a second smaller vine growing high over a narrow entrance to a row house on R. Street in the same block between 19th St. and NH Ave. NW It makes such a lovely display and even these tiny row house gardens have room for a big flowering vine if you just make a place for it to grow up to the light.

This is just one of the many moments this week that were a joy for me. I also had the honor to meet two Gee's Bend, Alabama quilters and see and touch their amazing quilts. I went to Manassas for a night with Mom and together we took in a spectacular display garden of tulips in Haymarket, Virginia. I hot linked my photo sets to the quilts and tulips if you want to go see them on my flickr page. I hope your spring is not all gloomy after so many terrifically tragic events in the news I realize each day it is important to live life in the moment.