Monday, March 13, 2006


More Blasts from the Past

I vaguely recalled making a piece with X's this morning and so I ventured back into the closet to dig it out. It was not dizactly as I remembered it, and the idea that is in my head turns out to be better than this piece, which is why I bothered looking for it in the first place. Too bad you can't see into my head, where the great idea is percolating just now.


This is part pima and part muslin, and I am sure I was making it as a booth sample to help sell our fabrics, way back when. I used the deckle blade of the rotary cutter to make these edges. I thought this was so neato-keen at the time.
And the time was 1999!! At least I had the presence of mind to note the size as well as the date of execution. I made a lot of pieces to hang in our vendor's booth, and since they were for sales promotion I never took them as seriously as I maybe should have. For example, the quilt below was supposed to make our customers salivate for our hand dyed French Cotton threads, which were used in the French Knots, how appropriate, in this embroidery heavy quilt.

Another treat from that great year 1999. Who knew I had this in me?

Part of the deal was that there were endless hours just sitting and waiting for people to wander into our booth, and with all that time on my hands, I had time to stitch...

and stitch and stitch and stitch.


Of course some of this is machine stitching which I obviously had to do mostly at home. I do recall vending at Quilt Surface Design Symposium where I taught machine embroidery the first week and vended the second week. No wonder I have no energy anymore. I spent it all in '99.

A really old piece, that is actually pieced! It uses my hand dyed fabrics and lots and lots of quilting. Maybe a bit too much, no?

The very fancy title is machine embroidered. I know it is vertical but it took an hour to upload all these pictures 'cause Hello is nutso today, and I am not going to dink around with pictures any longer. I have real work to do.

It's a shame these are retired to my closet, along with a myriad of other works, but a person has only so many walls.

9 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:44 AM

    Melody, these quilts look very interesting, but there is no information coming up with them. Just an error message.

    Are these some that you discovered while cleaning out the closet?

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  2. I found these quilts really interesting...your work has changed but there was a touch of Melody in those at the beginning. I really liked the one with all of the stitching....

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  3. Ahhhh, ain't it fun looking back over what we used to do? But I've given all my old stuff to the women's refuge, tsunami appeals and so on. I live in a 100 year old stone cottage without much storage space, so the old stuff has to go!

    Shirley in New Zealand

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  4. When I saw your Medusa I immediately thought of my Lonestar Blowout. Brilliant minds, and all that!!!

    I too have a couple polyester quilts and they are bound very similiarly.

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  5. Anonymous2:26 PM

    I look at Medusa and see the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You've been touched by His noodly appendage! But really, how fun to take a tour of your progression as a quilt artist. It's hard to believe that the same woman who made the traditional brown and peach stars could have also made Elipses :-)

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  6. These quilts are very interesting. Your work has evolved tremendously. But these pieces are showing creativetity. Colors of this magnetude are appealling and make such a wonderful statement.

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  7. Anonymous3:46 AM

    They are interesting and attractive. I guess if you every decided to have a clear out you could have a web 'garage sale' perhaps in aid of a good cause like research into parkinsons.
    Cheryl

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  8. How can there be too much quilting?

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  9. They look pretty darn cool to me!!

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Hello,
So nice of you to drop by. I love your comments, and if you would really like a reply, please email me at fibermania at g mail dot com