Robes de Coeur
  • Blog
  • Quilting
  • Clothing
    • Menswear
    • Womenswear >
      • Self-Made Patterns
      • Commercial Patterns
    • Hats
    • Miscellany
  • About
  • Blog
  • Quilting
  • Clothing
    • Menswear
    • Womenswear >
      • Self-Made Patterns
      • Commercial Patterns
    • Hats
    • Miscellany
  • About

Micro-Mini Quilt

11/27/2023

1 Comment

 
Picture
Last year, at the Northwest Quilters' Guild's Festival of Quilts, I saw a selection of "mini quilts".  Most were doll-bed sized.  I remember looking at them and thinking two things simultaneously: 

1. What's the point of a tiny quilt?
and 
2. I can make it tinier!

So one day, I took a post-it note for foundation paper, and marked one-inch squares on it.  Within those squares, I marked the lines of a pineapple block.  This picture shows several stages of the process in one frame: the back of the quilt-top, half made, half bordered, half-un-papered!  

But let's look at more pictures.  

Read More
1 Comment

Fabric Collage

11/10/2023

2 Comments

 
Picture
Last night, I pulled out a bunch of scraps and some double-sided applique web, and tried my first fabric collage.  As I worked, I was thinking of water and aquatic plants, but subsequent alterations make it resemble mountains more.  

I was in a creative zone, and took few pictures, so I'll describe verbally what I did, with reference to the pictures I do have.  

Read More
2 Comments

The Discourse Around Gee's Bend Quilts

11/10/2023

3 Comments

 
I have mentioned before that I dislike Gee's Bend quilts.  This is a rare opinion... people tend to love Gee's Bend quilts, or at least praise them.  Good for them!  I am all for people loving art that speaks to them.  What interests me today is the squirming cringe I feel when I say I don't agree.  Why do I feel constrained to pad my opinion, when I give it, in a lot of stuffing about how great the quilts are, really, even if they're not my thing?  That psychology interests me more than the quilts themselves! 
Picture
The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Read More
3 Comments

Couture Brute?

11/4/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
An outside hall at Mt. Hood Community College (hereafter MHCC)
What I dislike occupies more brainspace than you might expect.  I worry at it, like tonguing a cut in my mouth, trying to quantify what I dislike and why.  Sometimes, in creative assimilation, I make what I don't like, and so become a connoisseur.  Then, like a cut in my mouth, the thing heals and I forget it ever bothered me.  Most things have some beauty if you look close enough.
Today I contemplate Brutalist architecture, the Brutalist design philosophy, and how it might be expressed in thread.  The photos in this post are all my own, of Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon, USA.  ​​

Read More
0 Comments

New York Groovy blocks

11/4/2023

0 Comments

 
Remember how I said the 1970's scrap fabric would have to wait ("A Groovy New York Beauty")?  

It didn't wait long!  One day when I was wiped out from school and didn't want to work on my Meadow quilt, I pulled out the 70's scraps, and began making blocks.  
Picture

Read More
0 Comments

    Karen Roy

    Quilting, dressmaking, and history plied with the needle...

    Sites I Enjoy

    The Quilt Index
    r/Quilting
    Wonkyworld

    Categories

    All
    1910's
    Alteration
    Antique
    Dyeing
    Embroidery
    General
    Hand Sewing
    History
    Lacemaking
    Mending
    Menswear
    Millinery
    Modern Elizabethan
    Musing
    Other Sewing
    Philippians 4:8
    Project Diary
    Quilting
    Regency
    Retro
    Self Made Pattern
    Self-made Pattern
    Terminology
    Victorian
    Vintage

    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    December 2024
    March 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017

    RSS Feed

Blog

Quilting

Clothing

About

Copyright Karen Roy
​© 2017-2024