Category: Projects

The days are getting longer as the mercury inches slowly up, up, up on the thermometer.  An observant walk reveals a million little things bursting from the soil while the cold wind still bites and turns my nose red.  But it’s coming!  This change of season is so beautiful and full of promise.

It’s full of promise inside, too.  One quilt awaits binding – a new design!  Another, dear to my heart, lies in strips awaiting the next phase of piecing.  A third, freshly bound, needs  photographs and a label, and being loved into true ownership by my family.  My sketchbook lies open with fresh ideas and renewed interest.  So inside, like outside, there is a return, at last!

I did not mean to step away and neglect this space for so long.  It wasn’t a decision; more like an unfolding.  Someone hacked my site, blasting posts into pieces and creating problems everywhere (no sensitive information was there to steal, thankfully, just a big mess left for us to work through!).  Countless hours later, and with consequences we’re still working through, here we are again, mostly – I hope – put back together. (Please be patient while I keep working through old posts to check for errors.)

 

Meanwhile, life marches on.  Two of our children were married in the last six months, one returned home from Guam after an 18 month mission; another left for New York on a mission, and a son is now graduating from high school and preparing to leave as well.  A million changes and meaningful experiences, challenges, good times, and stretching characterize this season.  But through all of it, something was missing.

There always is, when I’m not actively creating.  It’s one of a few “extra” things that add a layer of sweetness and fulfillment to my life, so tangible that they don’t seem “extra” at all.  The pressures of immediate concerns crowd them out; it’s an unfortunate cycle I’ve lived repeatedly, and one I always hope to eliminate.  Here is my question:  what do you do when you’ve wandered too far from creativity?  How do you find your way back?

 

So I’m beginning again.  A return, at last!  A little more sewing, a little more imagining, a little more color, a little more everything creative.  It feels good to be here!

-Jennifer

August is winding down, and autumn is just around the corner.  Before we know it, kids will be trick-or-treating and the holidays upon us.  I’ve spent the summer just trying to keep up with the day’s needs, but somewhere in the crazy I managed one fun project:

Arise in Nightshade Deja Vu.  A Halloween-themed quilt finished in August?  That’s a first for me!  But it was so much fun to dive right in and use the just-released Tula Pink Nightshade Deja Vu fabric.

In fact, I’m teaching this pattern at The Quilted Beehive in September, and they also have Nightshade kits available!
If you take the class, the pattern is included in your tuition.  So here she is, my Arise quilt for this gorgeous collection:

The Nightshade Deja vu collection consists of 8 different prints, and the color scheme is narrower than the usual Tula Pink spectrum.  To make this Arise quilt shine, I pulled in more color through other Tula Pink fabrics.  Namely, her neon dots, a tiny dot, two solids and the neon stripe in Spirit.  I pulled all these colors from the Nightshade prints, especially the Coven and large floral prints.

Can you see a bit of the quilting here?  I’m excited about that part!  I was also happy to feature both sizes of the coven print.

For my quilt back I used all my extra fabric.  I sewed it into strips before adding more yardage.

Pieced quilt backs are fun and interesting.  This one came together quickly and I’m very happy with it.

Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of Halloween.  This quilt, however, makes me like it more.  I love a slightly non-traditional take on a holiday.  These cute sisters are clever and fun to look at, and the extra color makes me smile.

If you look closely, you can see the edge to edge quilting design is a spiderweb with flowers in it.  My friend Melissa of Sew Shabby Quilting drew this for me, and I love how it turned out!  It feels like I have the perfect quilting design for this fabric.

I continued using the neon tent stripe for my binding.  It’s what I’d originally planned to do with my Curiouser and Curiouser version , but I used the dark green instead.  In fact, it’s kind of fun to see how slight fabric and color changes make the same quilt pattern look so different.  This Arise in Nightshade Deja vu is my third Arise quilt.  The other, scrappy version, is here .  I’m having lots of fun with this one!

If you live in Utah, this quilt is currently hanging in The Quilted Beehive prior to my class.  It’s always fun to see quilts in person!  I’m excited to get it home for my family to enjoy.  This pattern is simple but really fun to make.  A great way to play with color, too!

As I type this, rain is pouring down outside.  It makes me want to sew.  I hope you’re doing something creative today!

Earlier this year I was involved in a quilt swap with several amazing women.  Each of us was assigned a name, given a few color and style preferences, and we had several months to make them a quilt.  No pressure!  Actually, I felt so much pressure.  Over time, I noticed that most of my conversations with my assigned friend touched on the topic of hope.  In some way, it seemed to come up again and again.  This led me to my chosen design:  Hope, a lone star quilt.

Sometimes the darkness presses in from the outside, and sometimes it comes from within.  I wanted to communicate both.  But I also wanted to show that light always rises to meet it, chasing darkness away.

So I pursued an idea I’ve dabbled with a lot, flipping half a lone star the other direction.  I used my Mod Lone Star pattern and placed the color change on the diagonal instead of top and bottom, just because.  (I’ve actually done this before and prefer the diagonal line.)  In my quilt, the deep navy blue represents the darkest night, and the white is actually a white metallic fabric with a gorgeous shimmer to it.  I wanted to give the light “more” than the dark.  Metallic was the way to go.

The other colors – pinks and lilacs – are pulled from my friend’s list of preferred colors.  And the top/bottom borders are scraps from the back of My Heart, Today .  I knew that she’s a huge fan of the Outback Wife prints and these scraps were a perfect way to honor that.

Hope, a lone star quilt is my effort to share a little hope through a quilt.  To offer a reminder that we always have hope, especially if we look in the right places to find it.  And we can also offer hope to others when they are in their dark nights.  Just like my Morn Shall Tearless Be quilt , I hoped to give a reminder that eventually the light shines again and we smile for real.  Hopefully we find ways to do it every day, even as we struggle.

Our world struggles with hope, I think.  Uncertainty abounds and life often seems off-center.  We need hope for the big AND little things, for our trials and everyday.  I enjoy exploring these thoughts as I sew.  It reminds me to focus on the good, to look for the light.  I have hope for a bright future.

I hope you do, too!  Thanks for visiting!