Charles Harper and Eleanor Grosch

I bought these prints by local artist Eleanor Grosch last year. They immediately reminded me of Charley Harper's illustration style (especially the focus on gracefully curved birds). I wondered what she thought of his work, and then I saw on her blog that he's her favorite artist! "I'd like to thing our work has some similarities," she writes; I for one have always associated the two. Do check out her shop, where you can see more of her work, including some beautiful stuff using more pattern. And take a look at Caroline Tiger's interview with Grosch.

Charley Harper, for his part, seems to be cropping up quite a bit recently. After writing about Harper in Handmade Modern, Todd Oldham has a 420-page, $200 monograph, Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life (no, that isn't an extra zero) due out in June. Just a few days ago print & pattern ran a post on Harper, too. I saw this set of notecards at a shop yesterday and was tempted to buy it—if this set had been in stock, I would have bought it. Actually, I probably would have bought two, one to use and one to frame/admire. But for now, I'm waiting for my copy of Introducing Our Western Birds to arrive after reading about it here—it seems to be illustrated in a similar style.

All the bird business got me itching to stamp out the Feeding Frenzy pattern I've had in my head for a while now. I'd like to print yardage too, but for now I wanted to see how the crowds of pigeons looked on these book covers, as I'm thinking of starting an Etsy shop.

And Column Inches? It's still coming along, but slowly due to the slice-and-dice improvisational technique I'm improvising (no, that isn't redundant). The top looks completely pieced together from this photo, but it isn't quite wide enough. I wish some of the text strips were a bit more angled, so I'm seeing what I can do with the last few pieces.

Column Inches quilt progress

So here's the first glimpse of what this one's going to look like. I'll be adding more strips of text fabric, splicing them into the aqua stripes in a somewhat haphazard way.

Solid colors figure prominently in my quilts so far, so it's nice to be working with so many different prints too. Especially since I've been gathering these ones since the first glimmer of quilting was in my eye. Of course, just when I feel like the collection's complete, another text print crops up—do I order it? I fear I must.

Flamingos and strips

I was racing to get the eyeball sewn onto the Other's flamingo before the sun went down, but I finished around dusk, so once again the photo is pretty washed out. But nevertheless, the quilt top is done! I quite enjoyed the appliqué and will be doing more soon, I'm sure. The bird was supposed to get a wing, as the original design indicates, but the fabrics I had left were going to stand out too much, so the Other and I agreed to skip it. I'm thinking of asking the Mother to give some feathery details to the big body section when she's quilting—we're going to use pink thread, so it'd balance out the eye. I'm so excited to get the quilt top in the mail—fire up the machine, Mother!

I've also been cutting up strips for my next quilt, Column Inches. I dutifully washed and dried all the fabric before slicing it, and good thing too. Half the fabric shrunk to a couple inches narrower than the other half—the selvage strips in the photo are aligned at the fold. The quilt needs wide strips, which I'll be sewing together and chopping up to insert vertical bars, so it looks like I'll need to add some more aqua strips to the selvage pieces I've cut, since they're only 38 inches wide and need to accommodate several seam allowances (this is another bed-sized quilt). EQ6 isn't really set up for the type of quilt I have in mind, so I can't show you a picture of what I'm thinking—I'm sure my written description could hardly be more confusing. It also means I'm flying blind a little myself; it should be intriguing to let the fabric speak for itself.

Who knew there were so many shades of aqua fabric? Aqua and green, that is, but only very specific shades of green. I've been collecting these solids from all over the country, along with text prints for the vertical bars. It's about time to empty them all out of my closet. Watch this space to see what the hell I'm on about with this quilt.

Unearthed from the basement

My great aunt passed away a couple weeks ago, so the Mother went up to help sort out the treasure trove of stuff she'd amassed in her basement. Aunt Mary's basement was legendary when I was growing up—linens, clothes, antiques, and probably the lost city of Atlantis were down there. She was a lot of fun, and I wish I'd known her better.

The Mother rescued some of the linens from the basement and put the things in the photo aside for me. The glass bowl is really a deep ashtray, perfect for my collection of blobtastic, somewhat creepily shaped art glass. I already have several pieces in this color, but they're all taller, so this will be a nice contrast.

Even better is the unassuming aqua bowl in the background. It's the Fashion Shape sugar bowl from the Midwinter Modern series of dishes, of which I've collected the teapot, coffeepot, cups and saucers, various plates, and a cream jug in the Cassandra pattern. The creamer had come with the coffeepot, so it was pure luck that the Mother happened across the one piece I needed to complete the tea service. I should really post some photos of the other pieces, since the sugar bowl doesn't even hint at the deliciously graceful curves of the rest of the series. The spare teapot lid is an extra score.

Less soda, more tea for me, I think.

A visit from the Other

Hurrah! At the last minute, the Other decided to come visit this week.

We've been having a splendid time, and when we had some people over on the weekend, I was finally able to use the sunshiny face plates I'd picked up at a thrift shop. I don't know anything about the designer or manufacturer (the back just says "Trend Setter Collection"), but the plate reminded me of Alexander Girard's suns.