As promised in my last blog concerning The Rocky Road to Dublin, I will now try to give you a peek into the next quilt I invented and constructed. It was quite challenging, but much love went into it. The “pointy woods” part came from all the fun and colorful pointy trees I was making all along the way of my regular quilting when I needed a break. It was fun experimenting with triangles in this way although triangles are frustrating to work with. One hope was that I could get rid of a lot of scrap triangles, but in order to make the trees with backgrounds, I always wound up making more triangles for each unit I made. Oh well. Eventually I’ll invent a way to use those up. I did use up a few.
I had also been experimenting with making something called nifty nine-patch which when completed looks like mountains. You use easy nine patch for the beginning, but then do some cutting on the bias and splicing and piecing of different row types to where you come up with the mountains (to me anyway). They turned out great, but my feeling was that it was more trouble than it was worth; a lot of work anyway. I created some nice things with it, but it was quite complicated.
Soooooooooooooooo…….I began to construct a scene using a really cool and colorful sun I had made in another experiment up in one corner, and building from there (top down) I began adding trees, and mountains, and backgroundish areas with either bushes or lakes or the like. It really began to take on a life of its own. In the middle I even added a river, although it was very straight.
I actually had three different sizes of mountains which I tried to group randomly to give the mountain effect, and tried to use the different sizes to give a feeling of dimension. It worked out pretty good.
The challenge was to piece this all together in a way that wasn’t tacky or awkward. I had to be inventive, but I did it and am very happy with the result. It turned out pretty cohesive, colorful (of course), and fun.
My daughter-in-law picked out a cool greenish madris backing that was really neat, and worked well. I was hooked on plain backings, but this changed my concept.
By the way I put a little house in this very pointed woods. This is the little house part of the story. It was small and cute, and added a human dimension to the composition. It fit in nicely.
All during the months of building this quilt our house was very busy with our usual Cove happenings with the campus club Students for Christ. We back up the club, and provide food and homey support for the students who are away from home. We are like a little house in a very pointy forest of campus life where God is not that prevailing. Academic life on most campuses is far removed from God and His divine economy. The students really enjoy having a place to retreat to in the midst of their busy lives.
Little House in the Very Pointy Woods
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