Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 14 Sometimes, when I get to a certain stage of making a quilt, the work speeds up for me, in eager anticipation of the finish. This was not one of those kind of projects. I had to deliberately work slowly so as not to tax my hands. And then there were the unintentional delays.  The six stranded floss, at the point where it goes through the eye of the needle, becomes 12 strands. It is hard to push through the little quilted blocks, and much harder when there are also fused eyes to contend with.  Sometimes I would just yank it and accidentally peal off ..read more

Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 13 This part took so long to complete! Wahhhh! I took hundreds of photos along the way, and it has taken me a while to narrow it down a bit.  And, it is still too many photos for one post, so I will be making two posts about the building. It is all hand sewn, like the prototype. Every seam is a different color.  Some of the seams have 2 squares, some have 3, and some have 4.  As expected the ones with 4 pieces being combined in a single seam were the most difficult physically.  I am pushing a needle through 4 quilted pieces while it is thre ..read more

Mary Lou York 1940-2024 I loved my mother so much and I am completely overwhelmed now that she is gone. She was my number one supporter in my life and my work. She bought me my first sewing machine and got me started in quilting. She never tired of showing my work to anyone and everyone. And no matter how busy she was, she always had time for me and her grandchildren. My mom loved dominoes and dancing, cooking and gardening, making money and spending money. She played the piano and was an excellent seamstress. She was always fashionably dressed and perfectly coiffed. She loved to wear beaut ..read more

Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 12 I almost did not make this in a 3D form.  I was looking through my second prototype, and I realized that beyond one block in, I could not see most of the work I had done. I could not see the batik, I could not see the satin stitching, I could not see the colors of the blocks, I could not see the colorful threads I would use to sew the blocks together.  All I could see was the hole, and some of the stitching around the hole. (ps. if you are wondering where the eyes are, remember, this view is on the prototype, not the actual project) I also realiz ..read more

Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 11 I was looking for a way to more literally and visually show the loss of privacy when I remembered this expression.  So I decided to put eyes on the insides of the walls, and ceilings, and floors of the project. How? I tried a few things, but this is the one that stuck! (ha ha!) Mistyfuse (to the rescue again!) on the back of white fabric.  Draw the eyeball with a pencil.  Outline it with the black posca paint pen. And then cut them out with scissors. I did not have perfect cutting technique, so after the center circles were also cut out ..read more

Untitled, Part 10 It began with a concept, the loss of privacy. And morphed into a big project. I started forming a very long list. A list of events, places, and ways to loose privacy. I drew a distinction between ways to loose privacy in public, and ways to loose privacy in your own home where there is supposed to be an expectation of privacy. There are so many privacy losses related to the internet that I knew that was the focus of my project. I had to question: who is doing the 'looking'. Is it friend or foe? It kind of haunts me. .......Cambridge Analytica, algorthims, hot mics, third ..read more

Untitled, Part 9 This week, I show you one of the less glamorous stages of the work, but very necessary. I have now cut the sections into ONE block wide strips.  From there, each block will be trimmed to a 3"x 3" piece. Keep in mind that each of these blocks is already quilted, cut, and embellished with thread work, a complete LITTLE quilt, if ever there was one! Only, there are a lot more than ONE of these.   In fact, over a thousand! The rotary cutter makes my shoulders ache. So I limited how much time per day I could work.  Very slowly, all the pieces got cut neatly i ..read more

Untitled, Part 8 Finally a title has emerged!! Unfortunately, I am not sharing it with you yet. Ha ha! Sorry! This stage requires me to deal with a giant mess of tangled embroidery floss. I did not take a photo of the giant pile, but this is what it looked like after I pulled the threads out carefully, one by one. Wahhhh, so tedious and not fun! I learned to wind yarn around my hand to make skeins back when I was a weaver.  So, I tidied these up the same way. And, then stored them in color coded boxes, a yellow box for the warm tones, and a blue box for the cool tones. And while thi ..read more

Untitled, Part 7 note: In case you are wondering, yes, I do have a couple of titles floating around for this project, I just haven't settled on the right one yet. Meanwhile: I was a bit concerned that all the tiny repetitive circular free motion quilting (from the last post) would cause injury to my rotator cuffs.  So instead of finishing the quilting on ALL these little pieces, I planned to start the next step at the same time. That way, I could alternate sewing jobs, utilizing different muscles, and hopefully not get a repetitive stress injury.   The next step is satin stit ..read more

Untitled, Part 6 Let the sewing begin! First up, layering all the fabric with a backing and batting. These pieces will be seen from the front and a little bit from the back (or so I thought), so I picked matching solid colored fabrics for the backing. I think I used up ALL my blues, and had to buy some more!  This effectively tripled the bulk of the project. Fortunately, I opted not to baste the layers.  The pieces are small enough that the quilting will be manageable without it.  I do not use an adhesive to baste.  These fabrics are being held in place by the friction o ..read more