New Quilt: The Monsters

 Back in 2022 my mom was working on a quilt of all our many rescued dogs over the years.  She made  custom silk screens for many decades of family dogs and printed them on pieced fabric blocks.  Her quilt turned out great; it's called "Best Beloved".  This isn't all our family dogs, but it's most of them from the past 50 years.  Only a couple are missing,  notably my parents' dogs Kachina and Marigold, but really she got almost all of them. 

From top left (those with * have gone over rainbow bridge): Swatch, Jackson*, Jordy*, Maggie the elder*, Gibby*, Cab*, Auto, Fawn*, Skunk*, Mac*, Taxi*, Maggie the younger*, Swatch and Shooter*, Blue, Wrinkles*, Shooter*, Missy*, Pumpkin*, Calais*, Bentley*, Bullett*, Spooky, Talute*, Checker, Jenny*, Angel*, Boo* and Cassie*, ?, Pepper* and Peanut*, Strider*

Shortly after she made all the silk screens, I was at home visiting and decided to use her process to make one of Brett's dog Cash, and made this wall hanging for him as a birthday present.

But at the same time I decided to make a few prints of the dogs of mine that were on mom's quilts.  Making the screens was a lot of work for her and I thought they were super cute so I went ahead and printed plain blocks featuring all of my dogs that she'd had on there figuring some day I'd do something with them. 

Not too long ago I was desperately searching for something else (not tellin what at this point) and came across the blocks and decided I should just make them into a quilt.  They weren't doing any good sitting in a drawer and I love seeing the pups and I loved all the bright colors.  In the same drawer were a bunch of English Paper Piecing flowers I'd started years ago and I felt like their scrappy fun vibe fit with the blocks.  

A few years ago I had been into EPP for handwork, but the needle wound up hurting my hands and I set them aside in favor of other handwork, mostly knitting and embroidery. But I had several put together and a bunch more cut out and in little baggies.  I just wound up piecing all the leftover ones together by machine and then using them for this project.  I named it The Monsters because that's what I (lovingly) always call the pups.  I love all the bright colors and rainbow threads and flower garden blocks and especially the pictures of the pups.

The Monsters, 2025, 40x40 c. Shannon Conley

Bentley*

Spooky

Bullett*

Missy*

Blue

Shooter*

Pumpkin*

Angel*

This is just a happy quilt.  I'm so pleased to have made something fun with the blocks and to have it up on my wall so I can see all my monsters whenever I walk into the room.  

Cottonwood: Finished

 Earlier in the week I shared about a new quilt I recently finished inspired by the cottonwood trees we were surrounded by during a recent 4 Common Corners retreat.  today I'm back to share the final quilt. 

After finishing the piecing, I quilted it with largely abstract quilting surrounding a central tree quilted into the background.  It's quilted pretty densely, mostly because I like quilting but also because with the differing weights of fabric it turned out pretty bubbly.  This was defnitely a "quilt it out" situation.

I'd originally thought about incorporating some pom-poms but once I finished it I was happy with it as-is and didn't think it needed any added stuff.

That purple fabric with the hexagons is one I printed,  I love that fabric and only had some small pieces.  So happy to get to use it.

You can see here I had a hard time turning the thick eduges right at the top of the central peak.  But I loved getting to use the random orange and green striped velvet I dyed a while back.  The yellow and purple is silk I also dyed.  The yellow with the tiny polka dots in the top right is from an old necktie.

Here you can see the branches a little better in the quilting.  I also enjoyed adding a little blue in the quilting and piecing at the top to evoke the New Mexico sky.

Bringing forth life and giving growth, c. Shannon Conley, 2025, 50"H x 39"W

In the end the quilt gave me the feel of the tunnel of leaves with light shining through, but also the feel of a stained glass window.  It makes me feel joyous exploring God's creation and I decided to name it "Bringing forth life and giving growth" from Isaiah 55:10-12

For as rain and snow fall from the heavens
and return not again, but water the earth,
Bringing forth life and giving growth,
seed for sowing and bread for eating,
So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
The mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Isaiah 55: 10-12

In the end, the piecing isn't perfect and there are a few spots where that really bugs me, but I love the glow and the colors and I love seeing all my wonderful fabrics out and shining.

New Quilt: Cottonwood

 Our 4 Common Corners call for the first third of this year was Cottonwood, inspired by our retreat last year in northern New Mexico up near the 4 Corners Region.  

We were there in October and the trees were in all their gorgeous yellow glory along the river that flows behind the place we had the retreat.

I had lots of pictures of the trees, but I decided to take a more abstract approach.  I actually started with all these gradient pom poms I'd made but never done anything with and thought I'd make a quilt in yellows and oranges and then accent it with the pom poms.  

I had this abstract idea in my head of tree branches arching overhead in a tunnel of natural beauty, so I drafted a fairly simple pattern and decided I would paper piece/string piece with oranges and yellows and use purples and browns for the "branches".  

It's all weird fabrics, velvets, upholstery fabric, silk, pseudo-suede, weird melty non-wovens, and whatever other non-cottons I found in the scrap bins.  I foundation pieced it on fusable interfacing.  One main challenge was that the fabrics varied radically in weight making it challenging to piece and quilt but I got there.

It was reall fun to use up lots of scrappy stuff from the stash,  just looking at these pictures I see lots of fabrics samples I've painted, dyed, and printed over the years and I love seeing them incorporated into something. 

Come back later this week to see the final quilt!