The Big Bad: Guitar Quilt

 

I've been blogging my little heart out because I want to get caught up to what I'm currently doing. After this post, however, I may need to take a little break for some beer R&R. This one's going to be a doozy, because it is the most complicated project I have ever taken on. I still can't believe that I did this.

For scale

Background: I come from a musical family. My father is a blues guitarist and song writer and my son, Eben, has shown an astonishing aptitude for guitar that is sometimes frightening to me. My uncle plays guitar (and is an amazing painter, as well...just to give props), and my fiance is a fantastical guitarist as well. My step mother plays the piano, and is now taking guitar lessons. Countless friends are musicians as well.

So to give proper respect to the role music plays in the lives of those I love (I can't play anything beyond basic piano), I decided that I would do a guitar quilt. And again, I jumped head first into something that was really out of my league. It's a blessing and a curse; this damn quilt ate my life for awhile.

It all started with a Google image search for "guitar quilt" to get some ideas. Eventually I found a quilt Robbi Eklow did called "Groovy Guitars" and after that, everything went nuts.

It may not seem like it, but drawing out these pieces and cutting them and laying them out so they match and overlap properly...uhg. Took forever. It's like putting a jigsaw puzzle together with floppy, wiggly pieces and then trying to pin them to a wall.

Next came cutting out the individual pieces in both fabric and fusible interfacing. Then I got to do the whole jigsaw puzzle thing all over again. To keep them in place, I used masking tape and very gingerly ironed the whole thing. Gingerly, because the slightest shift in a single piece would throw off the whole thing. Wow, writing this out makes it seem like it was so easy and in reality it was a frustrating hell. But I do love a good challenge and I wasn't going to let this best me. Truthfully, this was the hardest part. Once I got everything ironed on and in place, it became a lot more fun.

 



 I free motion quilted patterns in the guitars which would give it some texture after it was painted and embellished. Stupid Blogger isn't letting me make this pic bigger for some reason, so I hate them at the moment. Oh well. You get the idea.

 

 

From here on out, I got to play with quilting and painting. Here are some pics of the progress:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So that's it. A huge amount of work encapsulated into a blog post. I am so glad that I did it. And I am so glad that I'm done.

Pictoral Quilt: "Flowering Desert"

In an effort to expand my horizons, I enrolled in a Craftsy.com class called Pictorial Quilts by Wendy Butler Burns. HERE is a sample of stuff the other students have done.

This involved piecing different fabrics together in a way I had never done before. It was kind of odd, but I dug it. I also learned a little tip from her class that has helped me with other pictorial quilts: Masking tape can be used to hold things together while you iron the fusible interfacing. This is quite handy when it comes to larger, complicated projects. I'm sure I wouldn't have thought of it...I would have guessed that the tape would melt. Viva the internet!

The picture of the cone flower was a template that came with the class. But I decided that I wanted to stretch out a little bit (remember how I am about following patterns...) and so I added some free-motion quilting and some fabric paint to add texture and depth. This was the first time I used paint in my quilts and represents another turning point in my crafty head. It's a lot of fun to merge free-motion quilting for texture and the paint as a way to highlight and add some zing.

Pocket Monsters

Misha is a thrifty type, and she would often get her fabric by buying old shirts at Value Village and the like. Because she's extra-thrifty, she saved the pockets from these shirts and even ironed and starched them. Then I came along and decided I would find something to do with the pockets, and Pocket Monsters were born.

 

I only wound up doing three in the series before I moved on to something else, but I think they're pretty cute. All of the pockets are still functional, and the idea was that they would be something to use in place of envelopes, small gift boxes, or birthday cards. You could stick a note, money, jewelry, candy...whatever...in them.

 

I've never liked store bought cards. I find them to be an obligation of sorts, with no real originality to them, and they are rarely kept. Even rarer to see one displayed beyond the obligatory "Christmas cards on the mantle" season. So these were my answer to that. I'll probably revisit them at some time since I still have a gazillion pockets, but for now this is what I have. I'll start with my favorite; "Vincent":

 

Har, har. Get it?

 

Full view.

 

"Monocle"

 

"Lucci"

 



Random stuph

Now we come to the odds and ends of my stuff. None of these are anything I care much about but I wanted to get them included here in case my computer $h!ts the bed.

I needed a quilt, STAT, so I whipped this up out of scraps. I feel kind of "meh" about it.

Large wall hanging I made to cover a hole in the wall.

 Trying to follow premade lines with free motion quilting.

Scrappy Runner

Fooling around with free motion quilting

Door mat/Floor quilt

Table runner

Uhg. I don't even want to talk about this one.

 

 

Cuttlefish

 



Another piece done for Eric. He's always had a fondness for cuttlefish, but they seem to be under-represented in the art world. The octopus and the squid seem to get all of the lovin's. Too bad, because they are pretty fascinating creatures.

So once again, I plead ignorance of applique when I did this. I didn't follow a pattern, I just made it up as I went along. I used embroidery floss for the tentacles of the jelly fish, and blanket stitching all around everything. I didn't even know what fusible interfacing was yet at this point. All things considered, it turned out well.

"Grasping Hands"

My friend Misha made a quilt for her guy, and a gigantic version of this was part of it. I was pretty enamoured by it, so I decided to once again follow a pattern to see what I could do. I loved it. But not enough to do it again any time soon. Have I mentioned that I really hate following patterns and precise measurements?

The top pic shows some of the free motion quilting that was done on it, but this picture shows the true color of the quilt. Sort of. It's a Snail Trail quilt, but I call it "Grasping Hands."

Different Strokes

I mentioned in my first post that a friend of the family turned me on to quilting when I was just a teenager. She made me realize that I didn't have to follow any rules, and I'll be forever grateful for that. But it's interesting how many people don't take fabric creations seriously when considering whether or not something is art or whether or not someone is an artist.

 

Quite honestly, that pisses me off. While I have met more artists that are generous of spirit than not, I still have encountered some that like to be too pretentious for my taste. These are generally the types that will poo-poo anything that isn't done on canvas.

 

While feeling indignant about that, I did this:

 

Not sure how well the pic shows it, but that brown thing up in the corner is a paint brush, with embroidery floss as the bristles of the brush. A fabric paint brush painting fabric strokes.

This was, again, before I knew anything meaningful about applique, so it's a little rough. Usually, once I'm done with a project, I don't revisit it. Every pattern or piece is done once, period. This may be the exception to that rule, though. I like the statement it makes and I want to make it a little stronger now that my skills are a little more advanced.

Fabric Post Cards

 

Since my last few projects were large scale, I decided to go small. I like doing tiny things sometimes because you get the satisfaction of a finished project more frequently. And I admit to a kind of quilting ADD; I have to change things up every once in awhile or I get bored.

 

I'm not sure how I discovered fabric post cards, but they seemed like a fun little thing to do, and they were. The one above is my favorite. I would do it differently now, as I know a lot more about applique than I did then, but I really like how it turned out.

 

Here are a few others I did, none of which I like very much but will post here for posterity. I did send one, and it made it through the USPS unscathed.

It was Valentine's Day. What can I say?

 

 

Frog on Lotus

I call this one "Allergen." Used embroidery floss for whiskers.

 

An example of the backs of the postcards.

 

 

 



 

 

 

Some people use fabric for the backs of the post card as well, but after experimentation, I decided that using cardstock was better. It stabilizes the whole card and probably makes it easier to stand up to the rigors of the USPS as well. And when you quilt on it, your needle makes a satisfying popping sound. It's the little things that make me happy. 

 

Life Changes: "Mental State" quilt

When you have a powerful moment in life, certain things take on a kind of symbolism. At the time of my breakdown, I was in the process of making a quilt for Beelzebub my boyfriend at the time. When the breakdown hit, I purged myself of many things, but I couldn't bring myself to get rid of the fabric for this quilt, even though looking at it caused all sorts of anguish. So I boxed it up with the thought that I would know I had moved past that miserable part of my life when I was finally able to make the quilt and use it, without it causing me any painful flashbacks.

Mission f-ing accomplished!

 

I can't remember exactly how long it took me before I was able to tackle this quilt. Not nearly as long as I would have thought...a few months, maybe? By the time this quilt was started, I had met my current fiance, Jamie, and this fabric had lost its mystical power. In fact, it didn't bother me at all. I had a sense of wonder at the healing capabilities of the mind. Just a few months before, I wasn't sure I was going to live through my breakdown, and suddenly I was in a better place than I had ever been before. Funny, life is.

 

This pattern was just something I made up. By this point, I was sick of following patterns so I took the fabric and just played around with it. I'm sure this pattern exists elsewhere, but I didn't base it on anything. I just goofed around. I really like how it turned out.

 

I called it "Mental State" for obvious reasons, and it's not lost on me that it's got a few holes in it now. But it's still functional and useful and it still keeps me and Jamie nice and toasty on a chilly winter's day. I'll call that one hell of a win!

Life Changes: "Trinity" quilt

So now we come to the big upheaval in my life.

Without going into too much detail, I had what would have been called a "nervous breakdown" in the olden days. It was easily the most traumatic part of my life, and I still haven't figured out what the hell happened.

However, this breakdown slammed the door shut on one part of my life, and opened the one to where I (happily) am now. My own little closet door to Narnia. The mental anguish wound up giving me the courage to make a change I had wanted to make for 18 years: I wanted to move home.

So after 18 years of living on Cape Cod, I finally got the balls to relocate. They say you can never go home again, but whoever says that is obviously not from St. Louis. The city and my old friends welcomed me back with open arms and it was more healing than any medication could have been. I am now exactly where I want to be:

But I digress. A couple of years before my breakdown, I had started a quilt for one of my best friends, Eric. I wanted to try a log cabin quilt because they seemed like they would be fun, given all the variations you can make with the same blocks.

This quilt seemed cursed, however. The monotony of it got to me. To make a log cabin quilt, you become your own little assembly line and I grew tired of doing the same thing over and over again. So after I made about nine 12" squares, I put them on a quilting rack and decided to take a break.

During that break, I got sick enough to warrant the use of a thermometer. I still had one of the old mercury thermometers and kept it, stupidly, in an old coffee mug that happened to be sitting by a window. When I'm sick, I like fresh air. All the fresh air of one of the famous Cape Cod wind storms blew the curtains, which knocked over the mug and broke the thermometer, spilling mercury onto the floor and...you guessed it, onto the quilt squares.

Since I value Eric as a friend and had no desire to poison him with my quilt (although what an interesting concept! A quilt as the murder weapon!), I had to hazmat the quilt squares. As luck would have it, I still had three squares at the quilting table that I hadn't completed yet. These I salvaged, and they were boxed up and moved to St. Louis with me (along with some other fabric that has a story to be told on the next post.).

Fast forward to me being back in St. Louis and reconnecting with a long lost BFF, Misha. We had fallen out of touch over the years, but instantly ignited our friendship upon my return. As serendipity would have it, Misha had developed a love of quilting during our break, as had I, and she got me away from hand-tying my quilts and taught me free motion machine quilting.

This was a turning point in my crafty little world. As with everything I become interested in, I plowed head first into it. Wonderful, trusting woman that she is, Misha gave me a queen-sized quilt she had put together to practice free-motion quilting on. I'm still amazed that she did that. I could have seriously screwed it up. But she's enormously cool that way, and as it turns out, I wasn't so shabby.

Free motion quilting, for those who don't know, is simply drawing with a sewing machine and thread. Basically, it's like you are moving the paper instead of the pencil. Takes some getting used to, but incredibly cool once you get the hang of it.

Since my brain was still tender from the beating it took during the breakdown, I found the free motion quilting to be wonderfully soothing. After finishing Misha's quilt, I felt ready to get started on finishing Eric's.

My breakdown was hard on Eric, I think. I was living with him at the time, and what happened to my head had some nasty ramifications on his life, as well. He was incredibly supportive and understanding to an extent that I still can't believe. So I wanted his quilt to be wonderful. I wound up putting an enormous amount of time and care into it. More so than any quilt I've done before or since. I call it "Trinity."

 Used clear thread here. Basically fishing line. Very fractious stuff!

 

 

 

 

Reverse side

 

Eric has his quilt now and he seems to like it. However, the demon dog, Fizz, decided to chew a couple of holes in it. You'd think I'd mind after all the work I put into it, but quilts get their personality from things like this. I patched it up for him as best I could. Someday, when Fizz is gone, he'll look at those patches and miss her instead of wanting to kill her:

 

Fizz-tastic