PROGRESS REPORT

Spring is here!

Do you remember what you were doing around this time a couple of years ago?

Boy . . . . I do!

It's been a little over a year since I've posted my last full-length quilt/lapse video ("She's Having a Baby"), but that's not to say I've haven't been extremely busy attempting 3 quilts and 3 quilt/lapse productions at the same time! It seems ironic that this is all called "Quilting in the Fast Lane". This is the longest I've ever taken to complete a quilt! But I'm in the final stages of "Into the Woods" (the 'quilting sequence'), and this will finally be the year I unleash it to the world. I'm thinking around the end of Summer . . .

Quite often, I hear that some people's favorite parts of these productions are when Boo & Gilda make a brief appearance. So, this time around, they get a WHOLE scene where they're helping me make the border of this quilt. I shot this all last October (took the whole month for a 1 minute sequence) . . . . and I'll just say it; it turned out GREAT!! They looked their best and hit all their marks (many times, after several tries).

I had to shoot some of these scenes in a 'controlled' environment (instead of outside), so out came the green screen for some special FX shots. Boo & Gilda were always ready for their close-up!

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The other quilt(s) I've been working on at this time are "KABOOM" (all shot and completed last year) and "SPECTRUM", the one I'm currently finishing up. BOTH will appear in one 'challenge' quilt/lapse video called "Quillow Talk". A two-fer! It wasn't what I initially set out to make. It evolved from one kind of project . . . .and turned into something a little different. Something better. A challenge with . . . myself!

I was so excited to get to work on this quilt, "Spectrum". After making a couple of 'earth toned' quilts, it was pure joy to return to my usual pallet of ALL the colors!! It's also a technique that's new to me, called "Hover Quilting". (essentially, a slightly different take on raw edge applique). I was so eager to begin this quilt, I would even find myself up at 4:00 am, cutting fabric!

In the end, the final result will be a very densely quilted monochrome background (straight lines to contrast with all the colored curves I'll be appliqueing on top later).

While ALL the black & white fabrics where given to me by all my friends (for a birthday gift), all the colored curved pieces are from one line of fabric called "Prismachome" from Studio E. I laid out some of these pieces for a shot in the production, and while this picture is NOT how they'll appear in the final design . . . . . I thought it kind of made an interesting quilt design all unto itself.

These circles were then cut into quarters for the next stage . . . .

Out of curiosity (before I even began laying out what would be the final design), I laid out this block just to see a few of the color combinations that could be achieved. This would be called a "Bullseye" block . . . . but that's not what I'm making. I'm attempting a layout that is one of the many variations of "The Drunkard's Path".

The main idea behind "Hover Quilting" is how the quilt looks AFTER a spin in the washing machine. It will fray and soften the edges of each of the curves, and give it the appearance that it's 'hovering' above all the densely quilted B&W background. Here is a test prototype of that process (without the quilting);

After a week or so of standing back and moving many of the pieces around until I finally reached the look I was going for . . . . this ended up being the final layout (now with even more colored pieces than my original design called for).

And I found this delicious, luxurious, super-soft, GLITTERY Minky to use as the backing! This quilt just SCREAMS Todd!!!

This whole production has been such a BLAST!! I'm so looking forward to sharing this one with you!

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And finally . . .

Yesterday I was reminded of this catchy little song by Shirley Ellis, and was seriously considering that this might be a soundtrack to one of my future quilt/lapse productions. What do you think?