18 Jun 4801 – 5400 Minutes

This post is the ninth in a series about my 2020 100 Day Project called 6000 Minutes.  In a nutshell, I am spending 60 minutes each Monday thru Friday for 100 Days working on projects and sharing the results.  You can read more about my thoughts and how I came up with this project on the original post here.  These blog posts are about the finished projects.  For the daily in-progress posts, see my feeds on Instagram or Facebook.

By the time I get to Days over 80, I’m getting a bit tired – even with taking weekends off.  At this point, I was feeling a bit aimless doing individual pieces so decided to do a mini-series.  It always makes it easier for me if I have a specific plan before I start working.  The next four pieces were created using six organically cut lines, three long and three short.  Each of these pieces is available in my shop here.

I started with Six Lines #1 (I know, I’m so creative with titles!).  For this piece, I made the three long lines pretty much the same length and positioned them in the same space horizontally.  The basic symmetry of this idea is reflected in the evenly spaced quilting.  Six Lines #1 is 16″ x 12″.

When I began Six Lines #2, I had the idea of a river stuck in my head.  So the three horizontal lines were placed close together near the bottom of the piece and the three short lines were placed vertically.  I quilted vertically between these lines to emphasize that direction.  The rest of the quilting is horizontal either about 1/2″ or 1/4″ apart.  Six Lines #2 is 12″ x 6″.

I love the feeling of serenity that horizontal lines can convey.   So for the third piece in the series, I placed two of the long and two of the short lines horizontally and one of each vertically.  I added very intense matchstick quilting.  Six Lines #3 is 16″ x 12″.

(It is interesting to me that when I was making functional quilts, I was not a big fan of matchstick quilting and did not use it.  However, now that I am making smaller pieces for the wall, sometimes it is exactly what the piece needs.)

Cutting organic lines like these is fun, but it is harder than it looks – at least for me.  Even though I don’t use a ruler, I tend to make the same motions when cutting so the lines can begin to look too much the same.  The same happens with the width of the line.  Sometimes I have to trim them a bit or chop off part of a curve to keep them from being too similar.  The very skinny bits are my favorite, but they are hard to sew down and tend to fray more, so I try not to get too carried away with those.  Six Lines #4 is 20″ x 10″ and is quilted with organic lines spaced about 1/4″ apart.

I started a new project on the last day of this time period and finished it the first two days of the next, so I’m going to include it in the next blog post.  It has color!