Mellow Yellow....Project Quilting Week 4

Mellow Yellow is the theme for this weeks challenge. Of course once again I was stumped, how was I going to be inspired by yellow? I didn't even think I had any yellow fabric in my stash & my goal is to use up my stash & not purchase more fabric. This week was going to be hard.

I recently read the book All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, and when the Mellow Yellow Challenge came out, I thought about colors and light and how we actually see colors.

Did you know that the human eye can see 7,000,000 colors?  The way our eyes see colors will affect our eyes differently, some colors can be irritants, cause headaches, some can be soothing.

Yellow is often associated with warmth, happiness, fun, caution and electricity. In many countries is considered a sacred color, the color of gods and deities.

Yellow is a primary color along with red and blue. Without going into great detail because I'm writing a quilting challenge post not a scientific journal, in the world of color mixing...to get the color yellow you use red and green...if you want to know more about how that works...google it. :)

But did you know that yellow is also the most fatiguing color and an eye irritant? Because more light is reflected by bright colors, it results in excessive stimulation of the eyes. Yellow is also the color that the human eye notices first. Our eyes see yellow because the color yellow is reflected off the surface of an object, while the other colors are absorbed into the object.  Look around you and see what things jump out at you in a room, you will be surprised that it is the yellow objects that you will notice first!
Of course once I started looking for YELLOW inspiration, it was everywhere!

I found a neat poem by Carl Sandburg about Yellow and thought maybe that could be the inspiration for a fun quilt...but with a raging snow storm outside it was really hard to get enthusiastic about pumpkins in the fall.

Theme in Yellow 

by Carl Sandburg

I spot the hills

With yellow balls in autumn.

I light the prairie cornfields 

 Orange and tawny gold clusters 

And I am called pumpkins.

On the last of October

When dusk is fallen

Children join hands

And circle round me

Singing ghost songs

And love to the harvest moon;

I am a jack-o'-lantern

With terrible teeth

And the children know

I am fooling. 

I still wasn't sure I had very much yellow fabric in my stash since yellow is not typically a color I would purchase unless I specifically needed it for something. I decided I would dye some fabric and maybe find a way to use that in my project, so I dyed a couple of pieces of cotton, one with some different silk dye yellows and the other one with turmeric. I didn't like the way the silk dyes turned out after they were steamed,  but I was in love with the deep gold color that was created by the turmeric.  The silk dyes are on the left and the turmeric is on the right.

Since each of these squares of fabric were only about 9 x 9, and I had already decided I wasn't going  to use one of them,  I realized that I was going to have to dig into the stash and get serious about finding some yellow fabrics! I was surprised that I had as many different yellows as I did. But what to do with them all? I thought about making something with a golden elephant or Buddha on it and then creating a pillow of some sort. But the Olympics are on this week and I just want to sit in front of the fire and watch snowboarding, skiing & ice skating until I fall asleep in the warmth!

I was working on a customer quilt next door during the day and my nights were consumed by gold medal dreams!

On Wednesday we had Kat Perkins (Semi Finalist from Season 6 of the Voice) speak to the students at school about her journey, about Kindness, being Fearless, Brave and following your dreams...this would have been great inspiration for the last challenge! :) She is amazing & if you ever have a chance to hear her speak or sing, you will not be disappointed! I went home feeling inspired and thinking about the lyrics to her song Fearless..."What would you do if you weren't afraid? What crazy chances would you take?...What if you lived your life out loud? Not in the silence of your doubt....

When I got home from work that evening I decided that I wasn't going to win any gold medals sitting in front of the TV, my fabric wasn't going to sew itself together, and time was running out for doing anything overly fantastic. I needed to be fearless, stop doubting myself, and get busy!

Sometimes I find it very therapeutic to just cut fabric up with no rhyme or reason, then sew it back together, chop it up again, then repeat. So that is what I did with all the yellow fabric I had found, I cut a few strips of each yellow and went to town! I cut the turmeric fabric into a 2 inch strip because I wanted that beautiful gold to stand out from the rest.
This is what I had when I finally decided that I had chopped & sewn enough for the night!

I took it next door that next morning & put it on the quilting machine, I then just quilted random wavy patterns, lines and checkerboard designs on it. I thought it was quite fitting that while I was quilting it, Emmy Lou Harris was singing "Gold" on the CD player...."No matter how bright I glittered, baby, I could never be gold."

After I had it quilted I added some fun green thread designs with my sewing machine. Now what? I still didn't have an idea and thought it really wasn't something I wanted to put binding on and call a wall hanging. I finally decided that I would fold it in half and make a bag, of course this required adding a zipper and a liner. I found an old golden orange zipper and a fun green fabric to use as a lining. The zipper was tricky because it was 8 inches longer than the bag and I had to cut it down to size, plus I had cut off my selvage edges when I was done quilting it so I had to figure out how to attach it to the quilted fabric without it getting too bulky. There is the right way to do things, and then there is my way. My way works but it isn't always the most accurate. I was surprised that the zipper actually closed when I finally had it attached!

Close up of the green stitching.













The other side of the bag.










                                     



The green lining fabric.



The finished bag with a tassel I made for the zipper pull.


It was fun making something different this week! It will be even more fun when I learn how to move photos and text around in this blog! 😂 I am quilting from Western South Dakota where this last week it was again -0 with a couple of days of new snow. We are ready for warmer days and the warmth of the sun!

Project Quilting 9.3 Brave & Bold

Challenge 3 of Project Quilting Season 9 was announced on Sunday, and the theme for this week is Brave & Bold. The rules state that our project should be about bravery, maybe trying a new technique, honoring someone's courage, or conquering our own fears.

I had no idea what on earth I was going to do. I tossed a few ideas around with a couple of different people & they both told me the same thing, maybe I should create a project about myself and my journey with the big C.

For those reading this who don't know my story, seven years ago I was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma, I honestly didn't even know I was sick until the medical professionals told me I was. Then in order to save my life they made me sicker. To me it was like being sick in reverse, you feel great and then they try to kill you, so you spend the next X amount of years trying to recover from the cure. The whole situation was an annoyance, something that was interfering with the things I wanted to do. I had just turned 50, we had 2 brand new grandsons, and another one on the way, we had a big family reunion planned for that summer, I had just borrowed money & invested in a dream of starting my own quilting business.  I didn't have time to be sick.

Looking back, I honestly don't feel like I did anything particularly brave, I just spent a lot of time being crabby & doing nothing... I never felt remotely courageous, not when I think about friends & relatives who fought the same battle for far longer than I ever did, and some of them did not survive. It was something I had to get through so I could hopefully move on to the things I wanted to do.

Thinking about it on Sunday just made me cranky & I thought maybe instead of creating a quilt this week I should put away Christmas decorations and clean my house. So I spent Sunday afternoon trying to organize the mess in the basement, did some laundry & of course watched football, but the whole time my mind was thinking about Project Quilting! I knew I had to create something and while my own journey was a starting point for what I wanted to create, it wasn't the story I was going to tell.

There are so many people in history who are remembered for their acts of bravery but all I could think about are the ordinary people who face their fears every day, even things that others might not see as acts of bravery but are very much acts of bravery to the people who are facing them. Through all this thinking a plan was brewing in my head & I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

The definition of brave is having or showing mental or moral strength to face  danger, fear, or difficulty: having or showing courage.

 The definition of courage is the ability to do something that frightens you. Strength in the face of pain or grief.

I started making a list of things I thought represented bravery and acts of courage people face every day. The list kept getting longer and longer & actually pretty depressing.

Thinking about how most of us wake up in the morning & face the new day with hope & anticipation, I wanted to use a piece of fabric that represented the dawn of a new day. I had a piece of silk that was left over from a project I had done earlier this year & I thought it was perfect for my plan.

On heavy card-stock I wrote down all the different acts of bravery or fears people face daily  and then using tulle as a way to hold it to the silk, I carefully quilted a spiral to hold down the words.

I wanted to create basically the image of a dark hole. I then used more tulle to create a binding for my quilt (mistake #1) This finished quilt was 14 x 14 inches.

Since I believe that any act of bravery we face is in a sense like stepping into the fire, I wanted to create the fire, and what better way to do that then to just start one!

Here you can see the first little bit of lighter fluid

I decided that I was going to burn my quilt, and since it was fabric I thought I better help it burn, so I poured lighter fluid on it (mistake #2)

Remember the tulle? Tulle doesn't burn, it melts...so I added more lighter fluid, a lot more lighter fluid (mistake #3) ...

Of course it is February and we are in South Dakota, so in other words it is very cold and it is very WINDY! Since I couldn't do this insane project inside the garage, I decided I would set the quilt in a pan & burn it down by the basement door out of the wind. I envisioned a nice little camp fire in a cookie sheet...well remember the lighter fluid? Lighter fluid makes a very fast burning fire that pretty much does whatever it wants.

All I could think of while pieces of the burning quilt swirled around me was oh my gosh #$%&  how am I going to explain this to the fire department?! But thankfully it burned fast and there was enough snow to put out any lingering sparks!

I really like the effect the pieces of card stock made when it was burned down to ashes, they were ashes themselves but they looked so crisp and white in comparison to the silk that had burned, it was almost like they had been wiped clean, which really tied in with the next 1/2 of my project.

The 2nd quilt I made I wanted to represent what happens after we go through the fire, how facing our fears makes us stronger. I thought about the mythical phoenix that burns and is reborn from it's own ashes. So I made another quilt and painted phoenix feathers around a print of my hand. The hand print I made from the ashes that were left from the fire of the first quilt.

I used a hand print symbol because to me things like ancient cave paintings of hand prints represent the person who made them in a really personal way. Almost like a signature saying This is Me, I was here. It's a weird thing I have about hand prints! LOL

I originally wanted to put a heart in the center of the print because I had a really cool saying that I was going to put there, but I forgot to save it on my computer & could not find it again! 

 Handling the quilt rubbed off a lot of the ashes and the quilting made it look like the scarecrows glove from the wizard of oz catching on fire! LOL

I added some flames to the hand using paint, tulle & plastic. Then I wrote words I thought represent some of the positive things that happen to us when we face our fears, and also a saying I really like about how each day we are born again, and what we do TODAY is what matters the most.
This little quilt is 10 x 10 inches.

I was done with all my pyromania & both quilts by Wednesday, which was a real record for me! Putting a blog post together is the hard part. I am glad I didn't let my bad mood about the past interfere with the challenge I really wanted to take part in this week and I am most happy I didn't start the prairie on fire!

Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it a blessing of some kind. The goal is to find it.  ~Buddha

Project Quilting Challenge 9.2 ...Triangulation....Hidden Stars

I love stories! So when Project Quilting started this season I decided I would make quilts that had a story attached to them. The first challenge was easy, Hometown Proud, how easy it was to quilt a story about our little community of Dupree. This season was going to be a breeze and I was ready!

Then the second challenge came out and it was Triangulation. What?? I was completely blank. The rules stated that our quilt was to be as much as possible, primarily made from, and characterized by triangle shapes. So how was I going to create a story around a bunch of triangles? I want to say I don't even like triangles, but that isn't true, I think I just really wanted a challenge that I didn't have to think very hard about!

     As a preachers daughter...granddaughter...niece...cousin...mother AND mother-in-law, I thought maybe I should do something with the Trinity, but then I thought maybe that would be too easy or something everyone who knows me would expect.

Since my husband is Irish and I am Scandinavian, I tossed around the idea of doing something with a Celtic knot or Odin's knot, both of which are triangular in shape, but I scraped that idea too.

This was going to be harder than I thought, or else I was just making it hard and I needed to stop thinking about it. So I worked on a baby quilt for a couple of days just to clear my head and used a triangle ruler to cut my shapes, thinking if nothing else I could use it at the end of the week. Then I remembered my plan of incorporating a story into my quilt and I realized I needed to pick my negative thoughts up, toss them out and get busy!

So I started researching triangle shapes in nature, and found leaves, there are hundreds of different leaves that are triangle shaped, but the one that caught my eye was the Cottonwood Tree leaf. I knew I had found my inspiration! I love cottonwood trees as much as I love stories.

If you have never listened to cottonwood leaves sing in the wind then you are missing one of the most beautiful joys in life. If you have never heard the story about the stars that hide in the cottonwood trees, then it's time for you to hear it!

First things first, I needed to dig through my stash and find fabric, then come up with a design. Going by the rules, I created a rather hodgepodge bunch of triangles to represent my story. I chose of course stars and a fabric that looked like tree bark, then I picked a watercolor print that is supposed to represent the sunset along a river bank. I used a dark blue to represent the night sky, and then a batik to create the milky way. I added a cut tree fabric since part of my story is about the inside of the tree. When I had my triangles sewn together,r my quilt wasn't square along the edges so I added some dark brown fabric to make it even.

I decided I wanted to add stars to my blue night sky so I googled triangle stars looking for an easy pattern. What popped up instead was the summer triangle, which is the 3 stars Vega, Altair, and Deneb. These stars create an imaginary triangle in the summer night sky. Perfect! This fit right into my story.
     Of course by now it was Thursday, the longest day of my work week and I knew I was not going to sit down and sew together 3 tiny triangle patterned stars, I was going to be lucky if I made supper that night.
     So I decided to just cut some basic stars out of what I thought was celestial looking fabric and ironed them on in a triangle shape. I took some metallic gold thread and quilted around them then added the imaginary line of the triangle. I also made some little diamond shapes from the gold thread to add more stars to the sky. When this was all done and I stepped back to look at my creation all I could see was a dark blue wizards hat! LOL

Then the fun began, I wanted to make leaves and I wanted them to stand out from the quilt so they would look like real leaves fluttering in the wind. I picked a bunch of different greens I had in my stash, cut out cottonwood leaf shapes, added some interfacing and then quilted leaf lines on them. I then took wire and zig zagged green thread onto it to make the stems. I carefully sewed and glued them into the layers of the leaves. For fabric leaves I think they look pretty realistic.

After the leaves were done I needed to figure out how I was going to attach them to the quilt so I could manipulate them and they wouldn't drag the fabric down. I took a wooden skewer, cut it up, wrapped the wires around it and added some glue. I sewed the one skewer into the top binding of the quilt and the other one I created a fabric branch to cover it and sewed it down. It worked, but by the time I had added my skewer and all the seams, the wire had shortened considerably and I was wishing I had made the wire stems longer.

I painted a cottonwood tree into the sunset fabric, although when it was done, you really don't notice it. I bound the quilt with some of the tree bark fabric and the golden fabric I had made the stars with. The finished size is 13 X 17. It was done, quilted and bound and it was only Friday! It wasn't anything amazing but it fits the story I wanted to tell...

...imagine yourself around a campfire along the river banks, the breeze gently brushing the leaves of the cottonwood trees, causing them to whisper their secrets into the sky. Coyotes call and night birds answer. The milky way is bright in the night sky and the summer triangle can be seen overhead. Stories are shared about the great cottonwood trees that sing harmony to the laughter around the fire...there are many stories about the cottonwood tree, but this one is my favorite and the one I created my quilt around...

Many years ago when the earth was young, up in the sky were many stars. One little star was very curious and would come down to earth to look at all the amazing things here. One day it came close to a village and it heard the laughter and joyful voices of the people who lived there. The star thought this beautiful sound was the most amazing thing it had ever heard and it wanted to stay here forever. But the star knew it was a star and had to return to the night sky. After a long time the star started thinking about the sounds it had heard on earth and remembering how beautiful it was. It wanted to return but the other stars said no, those are people and we are stars. This is where we belong. If you are there you will disturb the people with your brightness and they will be distracted and not do the work they need too do. So the little star thought about it and one day asked the other stars if it could find a way to hide from the people could it go back and stay. The other stars said yes if you can find a way to hide you can go. So the little star went back to earth and looked around for a place to hide, it saw the great cottonwood trees that grew close to the village and decided to hide in the branches where it could be close to the laughter & joyful sounds of the people forever. That is where you will find the star still hiding today...

The cottonwood tree is a sacred tree to many Native American Tribes, it is used for many different ceremonies, medicine, for ceremonial items, and even as a food source. Cottonwoods are drawn to water, so they are usually found along rivers, creeks, where there are springs in the ground, or in low spots where there is moisture. Where there are cottonwoods you will usually find water. Cottonwoods are associated with spiritual growth and awakening, prayers, blessing, purity, creation, truth, endurance, higher communication, hope and rebirth. They are considered the Tree of Life and carry wisdom and the ability to see the truth. If you look at the branches of a cottonwood tree they are covered with eyes, these eyes are said to be able to see truth and are ever watchful.

I decided I had better have proof there are stars in the cottonwood trees so I went on a foraging mission to find stars. The first branch I cut had a heart in it....lol...I guess it is almost Valentines Day!

 But after a couple of attempts using a rusty old saw and branches from an older tree, there they were, the hidden stars!

Some of my favorite memories are of camping along the Grand River under the giant cottonwood trees that grow along the river bottoms. There is something magical in the sound the leaves make as they sing like raindrops in the wind. I have two cottonwood trees on the edge of my yard, I love listening to them and watching the leaves dance and flutter in the wind.

My goats love the dried leaves in the fall so I don't have to worry about raking! I don't have any photos of goats eating leaves but I do have these adorable pictures of two of our grandsons playing in the cottonwood leaves along the Missouri River.