More Direction from the Nameless Pal

So, the stats scooted up again yesterday, thanks to the Nameless One and probably because of the nikked yoga guys, I admit.  So here is her suggestion for today:  (I think she is scraping the bottom for this one but I will do it just because...  oh I dunno, just because I don't feel like stitching on the circles here at 5:30 AM!  It's not light yet but I have the laptop in the courtyard because it's lovely out at this time of morning, birdies singing, sprinklers splashing, no leaf blowers or lawn mowers yet.  And can see the sunrise between the palms.  HERE GOES-

"seriously, try your smashed dish collage lesson.  QAers are hungry for how-tos."

Background (skip this if you have heard it already)  Back a whole bunch of years ago we moved out of a 17 room Victorian I had jam packed with flea market finds, stuff from yard sales, junk for (ahem) creative endeavors, and yup- 8 full sets of dishes.  How this happened I have no idea but I loved them all.  We were moving to a condo and I had to off load 23 years worth of , ummm, 'unnecessary items'.  So, the odd dishes went to eBay-  my gorgeous brown transferware, miscellaneous mismatched plates, and the TJMaxx oddities.  This was the hardest part of moving for me.  But serendipity took over and the photos I took to put this stuff on ebay weren't very clear so I scanned plates for the details and ended up with hundreds of scans on my computer.  

I printed some to photo paper, some to cheap computer paper, some to cloth and decided I needed a quilt about my dishes.  The best color and detail was retained with transfer paper for this particular idea, so I used several packages of that, but this was before pigment inks were available.   

Then the paper dish images were cut up, as if they had been broken and arranged face down on background fabric.  My first mosaic dishes quilt was ironed to a shiny damask fabric that looked quite smashing (forgive the pun) but because of the high slippery content of the fabric, wouldn't stick well.  But what the hell, the dishes were supposed to be smashed up anyway so it didn't bother me. 

Here's a detail with lots of crocking in the lower left.  I told myself it just looked worn.  I am good at making up excuses.
And here's the full shot of 'Mosaic'.  It's about 40" square as I remember.  There is a star i the center, but hard to see in this photo.

I decided to be more selective with my second attempt and went back to printing on fabric that had been 'bubble-jet-setted', and this time used my transferware plate images of my favorite plates that had been long gone spread out across the country.  And here I am disguised as Doris Day letting it all go!

'Doris Downsizes Her Dishes', cottons, machine applique.  And I notice that this must have been the year Kaffe came out with his line of stripes as that's what was used in the border.  Coincidentally, the stripes arrived from MY FAVORITE ON-LINE FABRIC STORE, Glorious Color, where incidentally there are still lots of Kaffe stripes all over the site along with all sorts of other cool stuff.  I hope my Shameless Nameless Internet Pal likes this plug.

Well, lo and behold, about this time I got a call from Alex Anderson's People and I was asked to come drag the dog and pony show to Burbank for my 15 minutes of fame.  So, I needed a quilt for their display wall, and also something to work on as a demo.  And so I got to work.  I changed the smashed dishes to mosaic sized pieces for the place settings in 'Apple Curry Soup', and it gave me opportunity to use more vintage tablecloths and placemats and doilies from my vast and uncategorized collection (which sits wadded up in two massive un-archival baskets).

All the place settings are different, not quite Judy Chicago, but I am only one woman afterall. Please note the cute little rice bowls at each setting, a nod to a quilt made by a Shameless Nameless Internet Pal called amazingly enough, 'Rice Bowls'. I think it appears in one of Kaffe's Quilting books but you will have to buy them all because I don't know which one.

Oh, perhaps you should start by finding the ones with MY name on the cover- there are several before I was discontinued and they went on without me.  

But back to HGTV: For a demo I decided to make placemats because I could have several in different states of completedness.  I finished two, had one ready to iron the images down, and one with full images ready to cut up.  I saved one to block as my demo but unfortunately discovered my squirt bottle was empty so had to pretend-  I am so good at ad-lib...  I also had scanned and printed knives and forks and spoons.  I picked a vintage white linen tablecloth as the background, and contemporary plates-  one a black and white check from TJ's and a smaller colorful plate from Droll Designs with chili peppers. (I love these plates so much that it was hard even to cut up the images of them!).  I used four different Marimekko prints for the borders, then a black and white stripe.  I had a set of 4 old linen napkins and folded up, you can't see the spots and holes.  The trouble is that this cannot be ironed because of the transfer prints and are therefore pretty useless as placemats, so I mounted them together on white netting and they hang invisibly against a white wall

OK, that's about it.  I guess the moral of the story is that inspiration comes from all around.  Or maybe it's to be New Englandish and use everything up.  Or maybe it's to keep your collections down so you aren't faced with getting rid of so much at once.  Or maybe it's simply to let life wash you up and down the beach and not fight it.

One more thing-  the 'Simply Quilts' episode is now in video (you must search for 'Sandy Donabed' in the little box on the left) and you get to see me in a chartreuse blouse with a melted sleeve from the hotel iron.  It fortunately was on the back and I didn't have to do the hokey-pokey-and-turn-myself-around.  Another moral-  bring a change of clothes...

OK, daylight and the sun is hitting me-  time for coffee.