Tipus & Treetops

Several years ago I sewed up a kit from orange and gray fabrics, artwork of Lotta Jansdotter, a US-based Swedish designer. I really liked the fresh modern look of Windham's Bella Collection. I almost bought a second kit from the Fat Quarter Shop in its other colorway, teal and gray, but I felt silly and guilty to do so. Instead I bought some fabrics from the Bella collection in the teal options, reasoning I could alway buy supplementary grays at a later time. Of course I bought more teal fabric than necessary, also from the Bella collection, just to be sure. 

The four fabrics had identifying numbers but the corresponding names I could find only on the selvages. All dated from a 2012 copyright. Lind is for the trees perhaps, maybe Linden trees. Ruta is Swedish for box. Tipu is a word for a little chick still with yellow down. I have no idea what cal means; it looks like leaves and balls typical of a Linden tree, but I think I like to imagine them as stylized tulips.

The kit came with a hard copy of the free pattern Bella's Bird from Windham fabrics. I made it up in 2016 and "very creatively" titled it Orange and Grey (8/10/2016 post) misspelling grey. (I have since learned that grey with an "e" is the English version and gray with an "a" is the American spelling.) The teal fabrics sat in my stash for years. Here is the pattern on which I based the second quilt, substituting gray fabrics and enlarging the size slightly. Determined that my second Jansdotter quilt would have a more interesting name, I am considering naming it Tipus & Treetops, though I might squeeze Tulips, somewhere in the title, also, even though tulips are a stretch of my imagination.

The blocks are simple with a design interest interjected by the fact that the centers are either a wide landscape orientation or tall portrait orientation and the center rectangles undulate up and down as well as alternating orientation. Piecing is easy, four rectangles in sequence B, C, D, E surround the center A. Fussy cutting the pieces to be right side up and center some of the larger graphics was a challenge. 

At the October/November 2022 Houston Quilt Festival I shopped for grays. These are the five selections I chose to pair with the graphic teal prints. I could not pass up the sunflowers (top left) and woodland creatures (top right), both of which came from local shops in San Antonio and not the show. I included stripes, circles, and triangles in my geometric selections. The following images show some block fabric combinations and fussy cutting.

The pattern called for twenty blocks but I had so much fun I wanted to continue; I had enough fabric to do so. Should I add a row on the top or bottom or add another column to the right? I asked my husband and he said a row so it would be more the dimensions for on a bed. My daughter agreed with her dad that a rectangular quilt is more useful than a square one. I responded, "If you want useful, buy a blanket. This is art!" I am in the process of adding a column and the quilt will be square. That way I can also put in more blocks with striped perimeter since I want more stripes. The upper right and lower left corners will remain one of a kind odd ball blocks. Stay tuned for a progress report and the creation of a backing.

I am not so sure if not buying the kit in the teal colorway was a wise decision, at least not financially. Even though I'd brought a fabric sample with me to match grays, I bought several gray options that I ultimately rejected. From left to right: too plain, too plain, too beige, too purplish, too silver, too silver, too silver, too similar to teal prints with balls. I truly loved the fourth one with the kite tails but it was amazing how off the gray was, almost a brown-puce-purple. Oh well, I had fun shopping and maybe I can use these to piece a backing. Besides, gray is a neutral I can use anywhere. Whoops! Oh, wait. Maybe not!

Stir Crazy Museum Show

From February 1st thru May 31st the Museum of San Ramon Valley in Danville, CA held a quilt show featuring quilts made during the confinement of the COVID-19 pandemic. The logo and mascot of the show was a wall hanging titled Quinevere, the Quarantine Queen. It was a whimsical, delightful entry with toilet paper rollers in her hair and a portrait of Dr. Fauci hanging on the wall over her shoulder. The Danville website headlined the show as 'Stir Crazy Quilts' brings pandemic creativity to Museum of the San Ramon Valley

I entered two quilts that met the date criterion for when I made them. I noted after the fact both of them were gray tones and I am usually a brights person. The were Fifty Shades of Taupe (blog post for 6/29/2020) and Christmas Cars (blog post for 12/18/2020). I visited them and the rest of the entered quilts in the show in February at an opening reception with my husband; later in March when my daughter and granddaughter were visiting from Oklahoma I visited again with them. After these photos is the text of the information I submitted with each quilt.

FIFTY SHADES OF TAUPE: In the spring 2013 edition of McCAll's America Makes Fast Quilts magazine, a modern quilt in neutral tones surprisingly caught my eye. Typically, I love bright and jewel tone colors and am not fond of modern minimalism. To stretch both my style and my color palette I bough the kit. Luckily, (and rarely), I even bought the backing! Both sat in my stash seven years, until February 2020 when I began piecing it, determined to work from my stash during the pandemic. Maybe the colors were now appropriately boring? In June I worked on improving my FMQ skills with clamshell and circle templates The colors were still dull to me but I could still add zip by the curvaceous quilting and a suggestive title.

CHRISTMAS CARS: In December of 2019 I'd bought a whimsical panel of 12 vehicles because the atypical red/yellow/gray Christmas color combination caught my eye. Determined during the pandemic to sew from my stash, I wanted a larger quilt so I added triangles on the edges to double the size of each block and give it an "on point" feel. A diamond header was inspired by a seminole patchwork class I took. I tried different FMQ patterns to grow my skill both free form and with templates. The backing is a cute Dalmatian print.

I volunteered one Tuesday in April as a docent for the show but, alas, I learned Tuesday is typically a slow day and my interactions with viewers were minimal. Nobody came until very near to closing time. There is more traffic on other days and the show did in general have a good turnout during its duration. I cannot begrudge my time reading and relaxing amongst quilts. Here are pictures I took during my various visits to the show, a subset to share and remember.

My apologies for these next two. I do not have sufficiently high resolution pictures of the identification cards but I these quilts called to me enough that I wanted to remember them in my DianeLoves2Quilt blog. I think I am developing an affinity for gray (left) and yet still I love my jewel tone brights (right).

On June 2nd, I went back to the museum and picked up my two quilts. I was glad I got off my duff and made the effort to participate. Time immersed in others' creativity is never wasted.