Listening to a Little "Background Music" While I Work...

"Teresa's in, Teresa's out," this poor little blog is starving for attention!  

There has been sewing happening, often late into the wee hours after a full day of responsibilities.  There has been a growing list of unfinished projects, gifts due, babies born, graduations celebrated, actual early efforts toward Christmas gifts, and dreaming/plotting my next idea (which is a weird whopper tangled in another world). 

But enough yapping.  I went out on a style limb with this music-themed wall hanging for my daughter.  I've never designed such a large scale focus motif on so small a background!

I call it "Background Music" mostly because I made it for Riley to hang above her bed.  Sometimes, I think of walls above beds as the backgrounds of bedrooms.  Especially when an apartment has very little wall space.

The paragraph above sounds like I am dissing the space when it could go either way:

• nice way to anchor/balance the space
• focal point to establish a theme (pieced or appliqued) or establish/enhance a color scheme (not necessarily making something that just matches the room...)
• never done it, but I'd like to design something where the wall hanging, WH, is either the precursor or continuation of a theme to the bed quilt, BQ, or throw pillows (for example, depict a hot air balloon show theme where the WH contains an array of balloons, weather, birds, etc. and the BQ reveals what is going on at ground level, like people, trees, quilt display, balloons being blown up and such)
• a WH over a vintage or family BQ could just coordinate in a low key way, perhaps in a similar color scheme and a few of the same block components from the other quilt sprinkled in for continuity and a nod to the modern
• now that I've spelled it out, the creative juices are flowing.  Another type of project to put on the "to do?" list...
• just feature a favorite quilt whether it matches or not, LOL

Riley's an actress in Atlanta (double major in Theater and English), so of course there are Broadway show posters, programs, and an interesting array of theater ephemera on the available wall space.  It wasn't quite a shoe-horning ordeal of hanging it, but the surrounding wall items have yet to be rehung.

It seems like my daughter has always left the wall space over her bed blank, maybe secretly hoping mom would make something interesting to fill it...something that warms up the room and makes an apartment feel homey.  Hand-quilting with a surprisingly modern-looking Baptist fan motif bridges past and present for me.

I've always been fascinated with music modern art, especially the idea of instruments appearing to be explode out of a small celestial black hole in the middle of the canvas.

My "Baltimore Rhapsody" quilt is the complete opposite of this project.  With sixteen traditional 15-inch blocks of exactingly detailed representations of the instruments played in a symphony orchestra done in the Baltimore Album Quilt style, that quilt is completely over the top.

I wanted to include some instruments that she plays in the design.  She actually does have a blue ukelele!

After working with teeny-tiny applique pieces, typically individual flower petals and bird feathers, the instrument pieces were gigantic to work with!

It felt backwards to draw LESS detail on LARGER instrument pieces.

It was hard to draw instruments like a caveman!  No small details...I just made general instrument shapes, making up tubing and keys.

I drew crude instruments on vellum pieces (basically "onion skin" paper).  For the pattern background, I taped paper together to make a big rectangle on which to work.  I measured my big patchworked paper background to find the approximate center, where I penciled an "x."  

My pencil mark was the origin of my "big bang theory" of instruments appearing at high speed from the black hole!

The big rectangle was too big for my large light pad, so I had to float the paper over my light pad with the middle area and the "x" hovering over the center of the pad.

I did my usual technique of applique prep and and hand-stitching...just on a big scale.

The pattern weights are holding pieces together until the glue-baste dries.  It just takes more of them!

I hand-appliqued small chunks of the instrument motif together, which I joined with ther others into the whole motif.

Since I would be hand-appliqueing with a whole bunch of background fabric scrunched up in my hands, I only wanted to have to applique around the perimeter.

I really wanted a very simple border, so I used scraps randomly sewn on cash register tape and a simple continuation of the background fabric for outer border and binding.

I am obsessed with keeping and using every little scrap!  Fun for me!

(Still has her old college quilt on the bed...7 years old and washed 100 times I'm sure.  I need to put a new binding on...it's actually a little thread-bare.  The binding wore out before the hand-quilting!  Let's here it for us hand-quilting dinosaurs, whoop whoop!)

I promise to show you my vellum-background pattern designing technique.  You will see that you too can design your own applique.  My method feels like cheating, until I see the results!  Then I don't care...

Teresa - - - - - - - -

Like falling off a log...

Yes, a picture of actual sewing about to happen on my sewing machine...FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 5 WEEKS!  I'm happy to report that I still know how to drive my sewing machine...it was like falling off a log.  All the stress of the past 3 months just melted away as I pieced blocks today.

Those of you who know me are thinking, "Teresa doesn't usually sew with those fabrics!"  Bingo.  These are blocks I owed to my fellow Bee Balm quilt bee stitchers.  I have been such a scoundrel and they are VERY tardy.  These modern, funky, scrappy log cabins are for dear Lizzie.  Sweet Sue is going to assemble them into a top for Lizzie, who has her hands full right now. 

These two blocks are for Vivian...can you believe I had no Kaffe Fassett and very little modern and bold in my stash?!?  Good excuse to go fabric shopping, agree?  I found a local place with both, and then it was 'Katie, bar the door!'  I wanted ALL the Kaffe Fassett!  I think I don't own these fun fabrics because I'm scared of them...don't know what to do with them.

I really am alive, although right now I am sick and have been sleeping for two days.  The concert was last Friday night, and as usual, my body just gave up when it was all over.  I was a huge target for getting sick, as exhausted as I was.  Three out of four of us got sick...the drummer is far too cool to get stressed...

BUT, the concert was great!  The four of us raised a lot of money for the music program...here are some pictures (taken from the side, where my husband wasn't in the way), but I think they will give you an idea of what went down...

This was the instrumental opener, "Blue Bosso."  Then Jill came out and the four of us did "Hallelujah" (K.D. Lang).

Then we did "Send in the Clowns" (Barbara Streisand), "The Rose" (Bette Midler), "Amazing Grace" (my arrangement), "Wade in the Water" (traditional Spiritual), and "Fever" (Peggy Lee).

Then we did another instrumental, "Spain" (Chick Corea), followed by "People" (Barbara Streisand), "Sway" (Michael Buble, Dean Martin),"One and Only" (Adele), and "Happy Days Are Here Again" (Barbara Streisand).  The lighting makes it look like I was appearing with The Blue Man Group, doesn't it?!?  The drummer's cute, shiny head beautifully displayed each color beautifully.  The color was constantly changing, thanks to some great professional LED lighting...it's so dark it's hard to tell that I am sitting at a black grand piano.

Steve got one picture of me by myself...and a not-too-flattering one, at that.  Note to self - keep mouth shut while playing, unless I am singing, and make sure people take more than one snap of each pose.

I'm happy to get back to my dull (by comparison), little life and I look forward to lots of sewing and pattern designing.  I can only take so much of that stuff in the spotlight.

What else happened in the past 6 weeks?  Mr. Fabric Therapy and I celebrated 18 years of being hitched.

We continued our tradition of REALLY doing up Halloween right.  Here are half of the pumpkins we carved (mine - Steve and Riley's are inspired by pretty obscure references - it's no fun to me when I have to explain them to the confused parents of trick or treaters...).

Oh wait...Tonya of Lazy Gal Quilting will get this one of Riley's (you have to be a Dr. Who fan to get that it is a representation of the TARDIS)...2 people in the neighborhood recognized it...it seems that most parents of small children do not have time to watch BBC America...

Anyway, I am excited to catch up on blog reading and projects, projects, projects.  Christmas is coming and there are a lot of exciting things going on in my local quilting community right now.  It's good to be back!

In stitches (finally...),
Teresa  :o)