I know what you will answer

What a capacious word LOVE. 

It has so many meanings: love to children, love to man, love to parents, love to nature, love to quilting and so on and so on.

The idea came out really quickly. I wanted to dedicate this quilt to our love – my husband and me. I wanted to do a lot of handwork so “boro” style has been chosen.

Colours and forms of scraps symbolize our characters.

Very often while sitting together quietly I ask my husband: ”May I ask you?”

He:      I know what you will ask.

I:          I know what you will answer.

He:      Yes, I love you!

I:          I love you too.

Is this love?

Flowers for Valentine

Love.... so many ideas, so many interpretations, so many different aspects. It took me a long time to decide about this quilt. Would I make a quilt about the city I was born, Paris, for many the city of love, about my love for quilting, my kids... 

Valentine day was last month and when I decided I really had to start on this quilt I remembered the happy faces of my three children when they gave my the tulips my husband had bought for valentine day. I choose bright colours to represent both the bright happy faces of my children and some of the tulips colours. I used a thermofax screen, first with discharge past on the green and dark pink then with gold on both fabrics and yellow, orange and red on the white, yellow and orange fabrics to represent the different tulips I got. I cut the diffrent pieces of fabric into smaller parts and started assembling them in a diffrent order, kind of puzzle like. First I wanted to quilt hearts on the background but finally decided to quilt only straight lines. When the quilting was finished I hand-appliqued the small blue piece of fabric with a golden tulip stamped as a focal point. I made this stamp last year in a class about tulips on fabric.

commercial hand-dyed fabrics
thermofax screnn with discharge past and fabric paints
stamp withn fabric paint
polyester batting
machine piecing, hand appliqué, machine quilting

Sabine Courtellemont-Max





Crocus - Love for the Garden in Spring

Gabriele Bach: Krokus - Liebe zum Fruehlingsgarten

Love is a very difficult theme and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. But when I saw my little garden in the sunshine, it was clear for me, what I wanted to show in my quilt. I love my garden, especially in the early spring when it is full of crocuses and snowdrops. The crocus is a wild sort and they become every year more.

For my quilt I had the idea to show the flower with a wide border. I admire often the hand embroidery in other quilts and this time I wanted to use seed stitch to present the wealth of crocus blossoms in my garden. I have self- dyed embroidery yarn, which waits to be used.

Every year again I admire the crocuses in my garden and I am very happy that I made at least a quilt with the crocuses.

I used mostly self-dyed cotton and embroidery yarn, pieced and quilted with the machine and made the embroidery by hand.

Love’s Illusions

Most of us grew up with a fairy tale, Hollywood movie image of love. One day our Prince Charming would sweep us off our feet and whisk us away to a wonderful castle where we would live, rich and happy forever. There would never be any problems or discord, just longing gazes into each other’s eyes and eternal bliss.

For most of us who have been in relationships in the real world, we know that Life sends us many challenges whether health or finances or family or personal issues that test our love.

These challenges can affect a relationship and make it stronger or eventually wear it down. For those who survive the tests the result is a true love based on having seen each other at our best and our worse and having decided that we love and respect and accept each other no matter what. This is True Love!

In this quilt I have woven a double ikat in shades of red to represent love in its many forms and in shades of blue-green to represent the various challenges. The resulting fabric is the fabric of Life.

The white fabric is covered in black text that represents the good and bad aspects of a relationship. The red text consists of the fairy tale words. When we look at love through rose-coloured glasses we selectively choose the fairy tale words and ignore the rest.

Love Tulip

When I put out this challenge, I called it maybe trite but when I started working on it, it really ended up as a challenge for me. While I was looking in my sketchbooks, and my heart for ideas, I came across a journal-quilt I made last year. It was worked with spraying through stencils with some tulips. And I really love tulips with their many shapes patterns and colours. And not to forget it's history. The first tulip in Norway, bloomed in the garden of an old pharmacy here in the center of Bergen more than 400 years ago.
So I had an idea, but how to interpret it. By spraying and stenciling I managed to get a piece of cloth I liked, but I also needed a focus. I went to one of my other great love: Letters, in all it's sizes and fonts. And how they can be decorative as well as have a meaning. So I stenciled a big L on top of it all and put the rest of the letters for love as a decoration on it. I hand quilted the visible tulips, machine-quilted the background and appliqued a photo-transfer of a tulip from my garden as a finishing touch.

And some close-ups:

O Canada

Love….. it can go from one extreme to another; either it is totally mushy and commercial or something as simple as a love of the outdoors.  

Well, I wanted to do something completely different. Firstly, I haven’t done any hand stitching in this piece except when putting on the binding; and secondly, I’m getting over my fear of free motion quilting and have done the entire background in different motifs.

During the Olympics in February, I found that every time the Canadian flag was raised, I stood proudly in my living room belting out the Canadian anthem with a great sense of pride.  So, my interpretation of “Love” is for my country.  I may not like the politics, the politicians, the taxes or the weather, but I’m very thankful to be living in this country - O Canada!

  

O Canada - Detail 1

O Canada - Detail 2

Material:         Commercial cotton and batik fabric

Technique:      Free motion quilting, fused maple leafs, trapunto

Katie

New month - new challenge

I have been pondering a lot on what to choose as our next theme. There were many suggestions on my pad, but I had to choose one. It is February, and soon Valentines day, and, this may seem rather trite, but our next theme is:

LOVE

Love can be so much more than a Valentin card or present:

- people we love, children, family, our loved ones...
- nature
- film or books
- history
- colour
- fabric and thread
- some beautiful lines and texture
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The list can go on and on. Go in yourself, find what you love, and make something beautiful out of it.

Enjoy, Greta