TREASURE TROVE

This quilt has brought two back-stories together----

Back-story #1: I was lamenting to my friend, Tam, that I was having trouble finding interesting brown fabrics in the market.  She and I have a similar taste in quilting fabrics; and being the generous friend that she is, sent me a big envelope full of cuttings from her stash of browns --- the best mail ever!!  

Her gift was just what I needed to get started on a quilt I've been thinking about since 2005.  

Enter back-story #2.  I was in Nashville teaching quilt classes; one which was "How to use stripe fabric effectively in quilts". Just before class started, I was in the merchants mall perusing fabric and found a pink stripe from France containing some of the elements I was going to explain in the class.  So, I bought 3 yards of it (a rather large purchase for me).  I talked about if a quilt was looking bland and needed a spark, add a stripe and let IT do the talking.  Class went well, but I noticed students were packing up quickly --- well, the word was out that a huge huricane (Katrina) was headed to the area. New Orleans is about 500 miles from Nashville, but it was really raining hard in Nashville.  I've talked before about my struggles to fly back to Colorado with my luggage including 30 quilts with weather delays, etc.  Now to make a long story longer, once I got home that 3 yards of stripe just seemed to talk way too loud to blend in with several projects that I've tried.  

I decided that now 17 years later, I'm going to make that pink stripe work with my new brown fabrics from Tam or shut it up permanently in a trash bag!!!!

The fun part was choosing the brown and pink fabrics to use in the thirty 3" triangle blocks, plus I love to paper piece simple, little blocks.

THE STATS:  Treasure Trove, 2022, 30"x30", Paper pieced, Machine pieced, Machine quilted.

As expected, that stripe has a very loud voice -- maybe too loud!

PS:  You know, don't you, that I could never throw 3 yards of fabric into the trash?

DOODLES AND DANDIES

 Psychologists have studied doodlers trying to figure out why they doodle.  The reasons range from "expressing ourselves without words" to "occupying our right-brain so our left-brain can concentrate on listening".  I've always been a doodler for every reason imaginable; except I'm certainly not exhibiting my artistic drawing ability, of which I have none.  My sixth-grade art teacher made that very clear!!!

  I have done some study on the friendship quilts from the 19th century to the present, and notice that signatures are often accompanied with drawings.  I thought I can't draw, but maybe I can doodle; so in 1992 I started experimenting.  Some doodling on quilts has occasionally been going on since then.

I decided a crazy quilt format called for doodles, embroidery, and ribbons. 

Here's the latest ----

 THE STATS:  Doodles and Dandies, 2022, 25"x25", Foundation pieced, Machine ribbon applique, Machine pieced, Machine embroidered, Machine quilted, and lots of thread.

Always fun to work on a crazy quilt with no points to match and no expectations, plus always an unexpected result.