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Archive for September 30th, 2012

A Red-head Maverick

Sunday, September 30th, 2012

This is my maverick 12 x 20 quilt. I am not that thrilled with it. I didn’t allow enough time to flesh it out.

Here is the story. I live in a part of the country where it is almost a badge of honor for women of my age to let their hair go naturally gray. Many women in the northwest do not even bother to have their hair styled— they just let it grow and grow and grow.

My hair, if I let it go natural, would be thin and stringy and an ugly shade of mousy gray. I was thrilled when my stylist gave me red hair about 10 years ago. It totally fit my personality and made me happy. I had always loved my grandmother’s red hair.

Recently, my husband made a comment about liking my hair when it is more brown, like when he first met me. The maverick in me came out. I went in to have my monthly hair color done and asked Kevin for something new and edgy, but still in the red zone. We settled on a darker, burgundy red — in the sunlight, it looked a little purple.

The next day, we stopped in at a local gallery event. There were 3 long haired gray women talking at the counter. I overheard one of them say, I could never dye my hair purple! I laughed and walked up to the group, as the owner was one of them, and started talking to her. They were all taken aback a bit. That night, I decided that my maverick quilt would be about my hair.

I don’t do faces, hair, or people in quilts so I settled on a maverick red/purple fish. I couldn’t find gray batiks that I liked so I settled for these neutral fabrics.

Bye-bye September

Sunday, September 30th, 2012

I didn’t sleep well last night and by the time I was home from church, did some grocery shopping, worked on some SDA e-blasts and harvested veggies from the garden, I was falling asleep on the sofa. I finally roused myself and got to the studio with barely enough time to finish quilting the maverick quilt.

I was inspired by a post on Brenda Smith’s blog where she showed a new quilt edging that she had done with a Janome Horizon foot. I didn’t bother to go look up the blog post. I pulled out my manual and found the overedge foot C which, when you use utility stitch 14, makes a really neat double zigzag edge. So I gave it a try. I really like the effect and it was so easy to do.

I will post the whole quilt tomorrow.

Here is the whole of the red-orange 3 x3’s for September.

Now, on to blue-purple. I wonder what I have in my stash?