Monday, November 1, 2010

Melody Johnson quilt in TCQC 10-31-10

It has been a long time since I posted a quilt from TCQC and I haven't kept my files updated either. Being sick does that to me - everything gets behinder and behinder. But I am feeling better and I need to photograph the quilts I have added since midsummer so the images are available to post on Sundays. We are supposed to have hot, sunny weather for this coming week and setting up outside to take some pictures is on my agenda
"Quenching Rain" Melody Johnson 2007 16.50" x 16.75"
Hand dye and vintage cottons - fused, hand and machine quilted.
Melody poetically posted the following when she put this one up on her Blog, 11-29-07. "French knots representing the straight down deluge of a great summer rain and the wind whipping around with straight stitches in a swirl. OK, maybe I am getting too romantic here, but the way I have recently experienced the end of the drought has made me think like this. That rain was so welcome and life giving and the days of summer so bright and glowing... well, it had to come out somewhere."
She talked about the thread she used: "A word about threads. I used perle cotton size 8 and 12 for some of the hand embroidery. Or sometimes I use embroidery floss, a single strand or two or three, depending. And for machine stitching, I use anything that looks good, but the majority of my threads are thicker weights, like 30wt. I refer a thicker thread to fill in the space left by each needle hole. Cottons, rayons, silks or polyester. It really depends on the color or the area where it will be seen."
I have always thought of Melody's quilts as "HAPPY" and have been tempted many times prior to purchasing this one. It reached out and grabbed me, I don't exactly know why, but I wrote that very day and said I would buy it. I frequently hang it where I can see it when I am at the computer (the most frustrating task in my life) and it always cheers me. It is more a California rain than an Oregon rain, but it does take me back to my growing-up years outside of Portland. Rain there was just a part of everyday life, whereas here in SCalifornia it is almost always an event.
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1 comment:

June said...

It's raining here in Portland today, and it's definitely a Portland rain. Tons of leaves which will turn tomorrow to slushy slippery slime, 60 degrees of balmy wetness, and green and gray, except for the not-yet-fallen leaves that will turn gray as soon as they hit the ground.

Not at all like Melody Johnson's version of rain. I think I like hers better --snort --