Saturday, December 1, 2012

Oval Boxes and the Forest (or Too Many Trees)

These are the shaker oval boxes that I made in John Wilson's workshop last weekend.  There are 6 swing handled cherry boxes and 2 trays.  The swing handled boxes are cherry rims.  There are 4 with cherry tops and 2 with curly maple tops.  The trays are cherry rims with birch bottoms.  With lots of sanding and finishing they should look great.  I wanted to do some more as I had given away the 2 swing handled boxes that I made a couple years ago and they make good gifts.  They took me most of last Saturday, but I think it was worth it.      
 This is the thanksgiving weekend (mom can't mope if she's occupied) quilt.  The kids were busy, 3 of them away from home and 2 others with their mom for dinner, so I knew I was going to be sad if I didn't get myself something pretty complicated to do over the weekend.  So...I decided to practice piecing.  I found a traditional tree pattern, modified it to make it more complex, and then cut out, trimmed, and sewed together 500+  3.5" HSTs to make 5 trees.  My initial thought was to put them together in this fashion, but ugh...  nope.   Too much brown tree trunk, the trees are too big, the sashing is too narrow,  and there is too much of everything.  I decided to try and use one of them as a medallion quilt and appliquéd leaves and some detail on the tree trunk and I think I'm going to like it much better.  Just in case it's starts looking too symmetrical, I'm going to use different colored sashing and a spiky free form border to finish it off.  It won't be bed sized, but it will look great in the summer next to the front door.   Let me know if you have any ideas on what to do with 4, rather large, left over trees.  

2 comments:

  1. nice block - so colorful -- and so many pieces :) I love those boxes

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  2. Thanks Karen. Check into making your own shaker boxes at www.shakerovalboxes.com. He travels all over teaching. It is fun to make them.

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