IN WHICH THE AUTHOR REVISITS THE PAST.........

This quilt is adapted from a pattern by Maggie Walker called the Blue Collection.  I finished it about 3 years ago and never displayed it as I started blogging about 4 months ago.  Here is a photo of the original pattern By Maggie Walker:

Here are the quilts side by side you you can see what changes I made to the pattern-not necessarily an improvement but just more me since I was the one making the quilt.

The first change you will notice is that I used just one yellow for the background.  I could see the advantage of user darker shades as there are some light colored vases which show up better against a darker yellow.  The second main change is the border treatment.  I did not like the odd greenery growing out of the vases so I added a (to me) cleaner lined oriental filigree shape.  Flowers are growing out of my vases.

I adapted these flowers from a Dover Publication and stitched down honeybees to sip the nectar from the purpler flowers.  These were some earrings and I removed the earhook.

Maggie's pattern does not limit itself to just oriental blue pottery but also includes A couple English teapots and a country pitcher.  I googled oriental pottery to seek out some oriental shapes and replaced about 6 of the pattern pots with ones of my design.

In my search for fabrics, I could not always find what I wanted.  For instance I wanted a dragon fabric and also a stork fabric.  Being unable to find these in one fabric, I combined two fabrics and appliqued the shapes I wanted to the vase fabric.

 The Chinese greenery and the stork are broderie perse against the plain blue vase.  In the photo below, the dragon was taken from some fabric I had on hand and I designed some little squiggles, and added the trim.

The little pot to the left is a lidded Chinese teacup, one of the googled shapes as is the dragon pot.

I rearranged the upper part of the stems and leaves and moved the fruit around because I did not like the apple just sitting there on a branch.  The blue lotus flower pot is also a shaped I googled.  This was where the country pitcher sat and I wanted an all oriental pottery look.

To carry on the consistency of  oriental pottery motifs, I changed the fan that Maggie placed at the top of her quilt with a rice bowl and cherry blossoms made of little hexagons.

One fun happenstance was the lid on the blue and white floral pot on the bottom left.  I found a fabric with lots of mingled, overlapping Chinese pots but was able to pull out the lid having a Chinese lion as a handle and made the little floral pot to fit it. That little pot is composed of 2 fabric but looks like one.

The last photo is a pot decorated with a sashiko embroidery design of maple leaves.  Quilts give us all a chance to try out techniques about which we are curious.

So that is a blast from the past.  I loved collecting fabric for this quilt and making it.  It was a long search to find fabric which seemed appropriate and I find I am stilling looking at blue and white fabric for that perfect pot.

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Sweet Surrender was not neglected this week but not having my Juki really put me at odds with myself.  I made the 4 half triangle corner flowered appliques so that's progress.  The main event this week was the exploration of foundation piecing.  I watched a couple of you tube videos and got started.  It is trickier than it looks and requires some practice.  I still am not sure if I am doing it right.  

I ended up piecing in rows.  That is the first row of 4 diamonds and a triangle was one foundation piece.  The second foundation piece was the next row of 3 diamonds and a triangle....etc.  The I pieced the 4 sections together.

HERE IS MY QUESTION:  is it possible to make a shape such as this without breaking it down into sections?  Someone tell me...(Gretchen?)

Here is the right side.  Aside from the blurry photo, you can see it all came together well.  Apparently, before rotary cutters and mats and modern rulers, a lot of pieced quilts were made using this method.  

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That's all the news that fit to print for this week.  I have not heard from Sewingmachinesplus about my Juki but their allotted 3-7 days to repair the juki will not be up until Thursday so they still are preserving their A+ rating.

On Tuesday, election day, we are going straight to netflix without one glance at election news.  We will find out Wednesday morning  what the future will be.

HAPPY QUILTING!

I am linking up with my old favorites.  You can click on any of the buttons on the left to go to their link ups and see pretty quilts and interesting ideas.

We begin August with 3 inches of rain!
I have been staying cool and working away.  I finished another column of Chuck, Susan, and Me:

I am getting there-about 2 1/2 columns remaining to be done.  I have gotten to the point where I am thinking of layout.  My latest thought is to make a one inch border between each row and column.  I am thinking of using one inch squares (finished size) of variously colored Kona cotton.  The main colors of Chuck, Susan, and Me are minty green, peachy pinks, aquas, and butters.  

I am mostly an online shopper.  As I am sure you know, what the photo of a fabric looks like and what the color actually is can be 2 very different things.  So I ordered a Kona color chart which is great because the swatches are the actual fabric.  Now I can order my 16 to 18 half yards knowing they will be right.  Here is what the card looks like which is really a piece of eye candy for quilters.

I want all the colors-there are 303. 

Next: blocks for this week.  3 are Chucks, one is of unknown derivation, and one is mine.This block is very different from the others having a more traditional applique look to it.  This block was very time consuming with all the little pieces-remember we are talking 6 inch squares here.

Here is another nice wreath block of unusual design. This pattern was followed closely except I centered the wreath in the center as the other is more appropriate for a modern look in modern fabrics.

I gave a new mood to third block from Chuck's book.  Chuck's block is obviously pansies which would not work for me as, much as I love it, purple has no place in this quilt.  I also joined the stems together to make one plant.

   

This is the block of whose derivation I am not sure.  I know I have seen it somewhere and I am not claiming it an original (I think??)  If anyone knows where the design comes from, please let us know.  A few weeks ago, I made a block which, to me, seemed really obvious design.  A reader wrote in to say the block came from the Dear Jane quilt.  She was right-the quilt had that block.  So much is done at a subliminal level and, if you are a person who does lots of research (technical term for spending hours looking at quilts on line),  it is easy to be influenced.  

The last block for this week.

You can see this block is broderie perse with the fabric taken from a piece of French General Bouquet Francais.  I loved the look of the basket of flowers and the birds.

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The Petra Prins fabric for Quiltmania's Discovery quilt was delayed because the fabric was slow to come out of The Netherlands.  They had some problem but I have it now. There are 2 more months of the mystery quilt-September and November.  Here it is in all its glory:

I captured the colors pretty well.  Is this lovely or what?  I have not yet decided  how I will use it-the Discovery quilt is not exactly right for me. Anyway-this is not the quilt next in line.  Next in line and coming up soon is Sweet Surrender form the Aussie pattern maker Susanne Cody-she associates with Material Obsession. There are 2 more months of the mystery quilt-September and November.

One new country visited me this past week-Ukraine.  I will add the flag to the growing list.

Lastly, I wanted to show off two more blocks from Caswell:

This block has two of my favorite things: honeybees and Yoshi, my outdoor cat.  I just love the spider web.  The black and yellow spider is one we used to see in our garden (acres and acres it seemed if you had to weed the garden) on our zen farm.  You can see how the spider is dropped and the bees don't stay on the own block which helps the illusion that the quilt is not composed of blocks.

After I decided to join these 2 blocks, I knew something had to be placed the the wide space between the bottom of the vase and the blue buds.  After much thought (and research) I came up with this bird who is very busy eating birdseed.  You can also see a pink butterfly and a dragon fly which is going after the water in the birdbath of the block below. The blue, vaguely oriental vase is a reference to one of my other quilts-the Blue Collection by Maggie Walker.

That's all for right now.  Happy quilting and thanks for visiting my blog.  I love your comments so please leave one for me to read and enjoy!

This week I am linking to the blogs you can see listed on the left.  Good blogs, all.  I am also linking up with Bambi's show and tell monday @http://bambisyr-evaj.blogspot.com/