I have
already finished a number of quilts this year. Shapes 10 is on display in my
exhibition in Freiburg already, and Ultraviolet, or the radiation off S. Impey is
on its way to the organizers of the Radiation exhibition. But Shapes 11, 12 and
13 are still lacking their binding.
I think I
want all three of them to be the exact
same size – that was the original plan at least. Just yesterday, however, I
wondered whether I should make each of them their individual size, whatever the
piece allows for? The red one is the narrowest, because that is all there was
of the fabric. Both the blue and the yellow are wider right now – and they need
not necessarily be the same width. Now I don’t know what I want to do. Those
are the situations that I hate about living so far apart from other quilters
whom I could easily ask for their opinion. I can always ask my supporting
quilter husband, of course, but with some of these decisions he is anything but
comfortable, and to be honest – with some of them I don’t trust his judgement.
Although he is almost always right when he says “why don’t you turn it around
by 90 degrees?”
So when I
finished piecing and quilting Shapes 14 this week I forbade myself to roll it
up and put it away “for future use” until it has a complete and finished
binding. It’s not that I don’t like doing the bindings – except when I have
several waiting in a row. It just happens that I already have the next idea
looming in my head, wanting to get out and onto the wall, then the binding job
gets put aside, and again I get myself into the situation that I have several
waiting for me... Completely my own fault, yes.
However,
while I am doing bindings, something else might sneak in, too. For example, I
have lots of cut-out sort-of circles pinned to my wall from making Shapes 10
through 13. Couldn’t throw them out, waiting for an idea what to do with them.
 |
| Only a part of the cut-out circles on my wall |
This one uses circles from Shapes 7, 8, and 9 and could have turned into my donation for the SAQA benefit auction. That was the
original idea last night, just before falling asleep, second attempt at meeting
the “Early Bird” Deadline (read about the first attempt here).
But as it
turns out this one is taking on a life of its own again. While waiting for the
iron to heat up at various stages of the binding for Shapes 14 (yes – my new iron
is so evironmentally friendly that it shuts itself off so quickly when not
being used that it makes absolutely no sense leaving it on when I know I won’t
use it for even only slightly more than 2 minutes) I put the original idea up
on the wall.
Then I
wanted a background, and discarded the idea ‘black’ for ‘blue’.
Went for the blue, and decided to iron the background fabric. Then I
thought it might look interesting with a square arrangement of the cut out
circles in an off-center position, and tried various positions across the blue
fabric.
The positions vary very slightly, but it does make quite a difference in the appearance. Then I
counted the whole stack of the circles that I have, tried an arrangement of 7 by 7
circles, and finally arrived at 6 by 6, going back to the idea of a square overall.
 |
6 by 6 - the colours in the upper left hand
corner are not quite as light as in the picture |
Guess what?
It hasn’t been sewn yet, but it will be bigger than 12 inches. Yet again it will
fit in nicely with the five pieces 40 by 40 cm I have to make for Alfeld in
October as number four of those. Nothing lost – but will I be amongst the Early
Birds for the SAQA donation?
Meanwhile,the
binding for Shapes 14 is finished except for stitching the tunnel to the back.
