Office Art - Courthouse Steps

My office art is officially hung!!  I've been working for 6 months and I never thought it would take this long.  (Remember I had a hard time finding a border fabric, and then I couldn't decide on a final quilting design).  But the wait is over.

I had 2 bare walls in my new office, this is the smaller one.

The one by my desk is the larger one, the one most people will see. This is also the wall I look at 95% of the time, as I mostly do work on the computer.

Several months ago I brought in a bunch of quilts I already had and auditioned them.  This one worked perfectly.  It was made for a guild challenge a few years ago.  I love the quirky nature of the blue leaves and the asymmetry of the square in a square blocks.  It's always been one of my favorites and I'm thrilled I get to see it hanging.

We moved the bookcase to the corner, and it looks perfect.

I initially thought I would make a tumbler quilt for the big wall, but when I auditioned it, I didn't really like it.  So I decided on the Courthouse Steps, I was working for an attorney after all LOL.  There is a wool rug in my office that gave me the palette for the colors.  The neutrals look great with the wall color.

It is just wonderful that I can look at this all day long.

I get to look at the quilting as the shadows cross it - too bad it never photographs as well as it looks in person.  No surprise that I put the kitty where I could see it up close :).  It's at the top of the middle block.

And here's the kitty in the small piece - so fun

 

This is the view from my desk of the huge downtown metropolis of Pensacola!!  I'm on the 7th floor which gives me this great view.  The building on the left is the Courthouse -

and hidden behind that bush are the............ Courthouse Steps!!  How cool is that?

Even better than getting to look at my quilts all day, is the fact that my boss is totally on board with this.  He has mentioned several times that he really likes the way the quilts look. He was not really familiar with "wall art quilts" and I think it was a pretty big stretch for him to agree.  So it makes me even happier that what makes me happy also got a big thumbs up from him.

Have a great day,

Karen

Almost Done

It almost seems silly that I've spent so much time debating about the quilting on this wallhanging, but that's behind me now and I'm almost done.  Yay!!!  I'm sewing the binding down, then I'll add a hanging sleeve and finally take it to my office.  I do love the way the corners have turned out with this striped border.  Exactly what I was hoping for.

After finishing the row of feathers, I stalled.  This has been draped over a quilt stand as I have stared at it for weeks - willing it to tell me what to do!  I tried several different ideas and ripped them out.  Last week I was walking thru the garage and saw a roll of 1" blue painters tape sitting there and that was it.  I decided to use the tape as a guide and sew 1" diagonal rows in the 4 corners and be done with it!

It looks "just fine".  Not sure what I was hoping for, but this isn't an heirloom piece.  I guess I wanted to do the best I could as I do think clients will see it when they first walk in the office and I wanted my boss to be pleased.

So the next pictures of this will be when it's hanging in my office :).  After all the angst I hope I like it.  Oh well, I still have the tumbler quilt as a back up if I don't!

Have a great day,

Karen

Courthouse Steps Update

                                                           After a long search, I finally decided on a border fabric.  Thanks to my recent trip to Morgan City, LA and a visit to their LQS "The Quilt Cupboard", I found this beautiful stripe.  A stripe or border fabric had been my first instinct, but I didn't have anything like that in my stash, and hadn't found the right piece.  After adding a small brown inner border I was ready to quilt.

                                                            I decided not to do an overall and not to hand quilt.  That leaves me in a very uncomfortable place, way out of my comfort zone - custom quilting.  I'm still not very good at this, despite having recently read several great books on the topic of customizing your machine quilting.

I made the decision to quilt it on point but now I'm seriously re-thinking that.  My question is do the feathers look to big?  I still kind of like the idea of feathers, but not sure of the size.  Thoughts??

 

I like the way the center part looks.  The math didn't come out exactly perfect, but I'm okay with that.

 

                                                           I'm really happy with the way the corners turned out and the colors in the border.  It's brown, cream and a very soft, browned pink.

Perfection!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I need to decide whether to keep going in this direction, or rip out and start again. 

 

Happy Saturday - it's a beautiful day in Pensacola.

 

-Karen

P.S. Please excuse the spacing - blogger isn't cooperating for me today :).



Border Time

My Courthouse Steps is done, now for the border decision.  I thought that maybe it wouldn't need a border, but after taking it into the office yesterday, I knew that it definitely does need one.  I keep feeling drawn to brown, something that maybe feels a little like Civil War.  Here are four pieces I had in my stash, I may not have enough of some but wanted to get an opinion on which direction to go.  I also feel like it might need a touch of red somewhere.  Any thoughts?

Here's a close up of one section.... see anything yet??

It's my sweet kitty - hiding in one of the steps. :)  Always love to figure out where I'm going to hide him.

I also finished piecing the Tumbler wallhanging.  Now that it's done, I really like this one too!  It is currently 42 x 55, I'm thinking it needs to be more square, so I may need to make a few more rows.  I don't think I'm going to border this one, I'll wait and see.

This section contains... wait for it.... do you see it....

yes, the kitty hiding in one of the tumblers.  This is a new kitty batik fabric gifted to me by one of my students at the workshop in Gulf Shores, AL back in January.  He makes a very good choice for this piece, and it's so much fun to find new kitty fabric.  Thank you so much for sharing.

I'm going to live with the CS on the design wall and see how it looks later in the day when the sunlight changes.

I'm off to applique the last few berries on "In Full Bloom" - the final pictures coming soon!

Karen