New Quilting Project

I'm done enough of the hand-quilting on the quilt I made from this fat quarter pack, that I should soon be able to bind it, photograph it, write up the instructions, and post it on my Craftsy page.

That got me started thinking about what my next hand-quilting project would be.

I went out to the studio and retrieved this small quilt top that I sewed together a little over two years ago. Right away, I knew I wanted to do a large-scale, feathered motif. A heart perhaps? Possibly, but then there were still the corner areas to fill in. I wanted a design that would fill up more of the area by itself.

Because the quilt is as nearly square (maybe one-quarter inch or so larger on one axis), a feathered circle seemed like a good candidate.

I took this 8 by 8 inch template, draw the design onto paper, scanned it into the computer, and starting playing with it.

I made it as big as possible, tried a few variations, and soon arrived at this arrangement.

Rather than printing out the whole design on tiled pages and piecing it together, I am starting out with just the center, which measures about 13 inches in diameter. It printed out using just four sheets of paper. For the middle and outer parts of the design, I plan to redraw them so that there are four identical quadrants. As it is, the design is not radially symmetric, there being 23 feathers on the outside of the circle.

To be evenly divisible into 360, there need to be 24. That way, I only have to make a template for one-quarter of the pattern. That matters because of the way I make my quilting templates.

I print them out on paper, and then run the paper through my sewing machine (unthreaded) so the needle punches the design into the paper.

I use a Quilt Pounce to transfer the design to the quilt top, and then draw over it with a chalk pencil, since the chalk from the Quilt Pounce rubs off too quickly as I'm quilting.

I think I will use dark brown quilting thread.

Quilts of Valor Blocks

Yesterday, I sewed up a couple of blocks to contribute to the Quilts of Valor Block Drive currently going on at Pacific Fabrics.

The block, called "Hearth and Home," is super easy to make. The two blocks took maybe an hour and half to make, including cutting (which I had done the day before). With chain piecing, making one or two more wouldn't have taken much longer.

I adjusted the instructions for making the half-square triangle units, cutting the squares 3-1/2" instead of 3-3/8". I like to make them a little larger and then trim them to size.

I kind of overlooked the sidebar in the first column of the pattern instructions, where it tells you what colors to use. I was just going by the Materials list, where it said to use a light fabric and a dark fabric. 

The block drive continues through July 15. I may have time to make more, in which case I will try to do something more red-white-and-blue.

La Conner Quilt Museum

I have been meaning to write up a post about out visit to the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum for about a week now, but am only now getting to it.

My mother-in-law had just returned from some time in California, and 4 of the 5 siblings were in the area, so an outing was arranged more or less half way between Bellingham and Seattle — La Conner, which among other attraction features the abovementioned Museum.

I urge all my quilty friends in the area to take a day and go see the exhibit of art quilts by Marianne Burr before it ends on June 29. Photography was not allowed, but I will take the liberty of borrowing the promotional photo from the museum's web site.

 

I urge you to go to her web site and see more of her work, as well as a brief description of her process.

Marianne happened to be there at the museum, and I had the opportunity to chat with her, see her working on a piece, and handle and examine some samples.

The other two exhibits were "Color in the Great Depression" and "Suzanis and Crazy Quilts," also ending June 29.

Photography was allowed of those two exhibits, of which I freely availed myself. Since the museum is housed in an old mansion, the rooms were often too small to back up enough to get the whole quilt in the frame. But I did my best. Herewith is a sampling.

"Fans with Green Centers." 1930, maker unknown.

"Blockhouse." 1930, Josie Teeter Schlotterback.

"Mosaic." 1930, maker unknown.

"Rose of Sharon." 1950, maker unknown.

"Circle Star with 8 Point Star." 1940, Jose Teeter Schlotterback.

The third exhibit featured suzanis and related works.

Bloggers Quilt Festival #2

This is my entry in the Large Quilts category in the 2014 Bloggers Quilt Festival.

It's a Double Wedding Ring that I started about 9 years ago and finished last year. It measures about 100" x 100".

It's so big that I don't have enough space anywhere to lay it out flat, except maybe the back yard, and I don't really want to lay it on the grass. So I did the next best thing — carefully arranged it on the fence between us and the neighbors. What you can see in the picture is a little more than half of it — there are 8 rings on each side.

I started it so long ago that I don't really remember my motivation. I think part of it, though, was I was a little tired of making small quilts. I didn't know anyone who would be having a baby any time soon, and how many wall quilts does one person need? So I went to the other extreme.

I didn't like most of the Double Wedding Ring patterns I saw in books or online. They generally seemed to be more square-ish, or if the arcs were nicely curved, they flattened out where the rings intersect. I drafted my own pattern on the computer for perfect circles and prettier diamonds at the intersections.

I paper-pieced the arcs — way easier than trying to use templates! All the green, purple, and blue jewel-tone fabrics were from my stash. Those colors are the ones I gravitate towards, so they are well represented in my fabric collection.

I chose the yellow and red because of the contrast they provided against the jewel tones.

Two reasons it took me eight years to finish this quilt are because I did not work on it continuously, and it is 100% hand quilted. Especially when I was quilting it, I would put it down for several months, especially during the summer when it could be just too warm to be buried under a huge quilt!

First, I outline quilted, and then I designed my own heart-and-feather motifs, one for the lozenge shapes and another for the whatever-they-are-called shapes.

I had a genuine feeling of accomplishment when I tied off the knot after the last stitch I took for the binding. But once was enough, I think.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Welcome to the online quilt show that is Blogger's Quilt Festival!

This is my entry in the Small Quilts category.

It's called "Falling Leaves" and measures 23-3/4" x 25-3/4".

I had a variety of autumn-colored leaf prints in my stash, which made me think of Maple Leaf blocks. But then, I had to go get the yellow background fabric, because I tend to not have much in the way of yellow. Isn't that the way it goes — you try to use up some of your stash and end up with *more* fabric?!

I wanted to convey a sense of random motion. So I just started adding strips of various widths to the sides of the Maple Leaf blocks, arranging the blocks, turning them in different directions until it looked right, and then trimming as needed.

Before adding the scrappy binding, I marked the top with a simple leaf pattern, connecting the individual leaves with short curved lines to create a "vine-y" look, and hand quilted it with contrasting brown thread.

 

Hand Quilting

Since I picked up knitting several years ago, it's seriously cut into the time I can devote to quilting.

I've always liked handwork. Starting with embroidery while I was in high school, I spent some time doing crochet, before moving on to hand-buttonhole stitch.

I know that if I wanted to, I could machine quilt on my Pfaff. But that just really doesn't interest me.

I suppose I could send quilts out to a long-arm quilter. There's a really high probability that I will do so with my Maple Leaf quilt. But generally, I'm pretty particular about how I like to see quilts quilted.

I'm not a fan of allover quilting. It doesn't take into account the block design of the quilt, and hides rather than accentuates the quilt design.

One time, however, I saw some machine quilting that I thought was truly outstanding and enhanced the quilt design. Unfortunately, I did not make a note of the quilter's contact information.

Most of the hand quilting I do these days is outline quilting. I'm usually trying to get a quilt finished as quickly as possible, because most quilts I make these days are intended for my Craftsy shop.

But recently I decided to do something a  little more special in the corners of this one quilt that I made last year.

Even Better Than Strip Piecing

A quilting-related blog that I look at every day is The Patchery Menagerie. I came across her blog through Tonya Ricucci's blog. Tonya is the author of Word Play Quilts, which I illustrated.

(Lynne's cat, Millie, has her own blog as well — another blog I look at every day.)

A couple days ago and then again today, Lynne wrote about a method for making scrappy blocks and using up bits of leftover fabric.

It's similar in spirit but different in process to what I endeavored to do with my Big Heart block.

I am intrigued, and want to try this myself.

More to come . . .

Big Heart

Some time ago, I took this block, enlarged it to 20" x 20", printed it out and taped the pieces together. This weekend, I finally sewed together strips from my scrap bag to make the center block for a quilt.

If I do another one (and I probably will), instead of paper-piecing, I think I will try using freezer paper. Wrangling a 20-inch-square paper foundation took some doing.

Not only is the heart pieced, but the background sections are as well.

I had a bunch of equilateral triangles and half-triangles left over from another project a few years ago. With so many fabrics in the heart, it seemed like it would be "too much" to have the background be scrappy also. But piecing the background from leftover bits seemed appropriate.

I used up most of the triangles, but I was able to find more of the same print online, even though I bought in some three years ago. I remembered it was from a fabric line designed by Minick and Simpson, was able to determine that they design for Moda, tracked down the name of the line, and ordered some here.

Next, I'll be making smaller heart blocks, also strip-pieced, to go around the large heart.

Back to Vashon

Today, Tim and I took the ferry to Vashon.

We first visited the island last summer. Today was a good day to go back. It was one of my days off, and work has been light for Tim, so he had some free time as well. Plus, the weather forecast was promising — partly sunny with high temperature in the 50s.

And, I admit I had an agenda. Primarily, I wanted to go back to Island Quilter to see if they had one particular fabric that was in the fat quarter 10-pack I purchased last July that I recently turned into a quilt top.

I wanted to get it for the binding, and also see if they had a good fabric in keeping with the coffee theme of the quilt for the backing.

And indeed they did!

The diamond print is what I plan to use for the binding, and the word-y fabric is for the backing.

A Good Day

Yesterday was a good day.

Any day where I get to spend a good length of time in my studio is a good day. And yesterday was better than most.

Even though I work just part-time three days a week, I commonly have what feels like a kajillion tasks that need attention on my days off.

Yesterday started off that way, but as the day unfolded, I was able to spend about a total of three hours working on my next Craftsy project.

It's a quilt using this fat quarter pack that I purchased last summer at Island Quilter on Vashon Island.

I finished up the cutting and started on the sewing, and made some good progress.

The design task I had set before me was to use only what was in the packet for the top. I succeeded, and I think my solution is quite fun-looking.

Stay tuned to see the final result!

The Maple Leaf Quilt — One Year Later

A little over a year ago, I conceived the idea to make a larger version of this small quilt.

From the start, I planned to have more than one size block — 3", 4-1/2" 6", and 9". I drafted an arrangement of blocks, and began making my Maple Leaf blocks.

But then I decided I wanted to do something different. I drafted several variations — vertical, horizontal, on-point. But I wasn't happy with any of them; they all looked too static.

At some point, I tried arranging them in groups of four, with the stems pointing toward the center, and added a 12" size.

Eventually, I arrived at this design.

I went through my stash and found as many rust, gold, orange, red, and brown prints as I could, and a few green ones — at first focusing on anything that looked "leafy" (leaves, pine cones, pine needles, trees, batiks), but then expanding to include anything in the color scheme.

I bought a few yards of one yellow fabric for all the yellow in the diagram. Anything that is rust in the diagram is one of the various prints. Along the way, I purchased several more prints to make it even scrappier.

I think I've finished making all the blocks, but I'm not 100 percent sure. As I've been making them, I've been putting them up on my design wall. Unfortunately, it's not quite big enough to fit them all on the right side.

In the process of arranging them on the design wall, I decided that leaving them in their groups of four was still not interesting enough, so I started breaking up the groupings, moving one or two up or down and switching them out with blocks in adjacent groupings. The only thing I didn't change was the diagonal orientation.

This afternoon, I started sewing pairs of blocks together. So I wouldn't lose track of what went where, I would take down one pair of blocks, sew them together, take down and sew together a second pair, press the first pair and put it back up, take down and sew third pair, press the second pair and put it back up, and so on. Even so, I managed to somehow get messed up. I had started to sew some of the paired units to other paired units, but then when I went to put up one I'd just sewn, the diagonal orientation didn't correspond.

At that point, I'd been sewing for a couple of hours, and I decided it might be best to call it good for the day.

Update, Feb. 17, 2014: The top is done. See it here.

Flower Basket Wall Hanging

After I finished painting the spare bedroom this past summer (before and after pictures), I needed to make something to prettify the corner with the cover to the circuit breaker box.

 

It needed to be a tall, narrow piece, because there is a window just to the right of the cover.

I don't remember how I decided on a wall hanging with flower basket blocks. However, I didn't care for the flower basket blocks I saw in my reference books. The specific pieces showing the floral print were too small. So I came up with my own redesign, which features two large pieces showcasing the floral print, spilling exuberantly out of the basket.

Two blocks would have been sufficient, but I went ahead and made three, even though the bottom one is hidden by the dresser.

Who knows, maybe someday it will hang somewhere else where the third block is needed — maybe the back of a door or a high-ceilinged room.

For a view of the entire wall hanging, click here.

Interlocking Squares Baby Quilt

Recently, I was sifting through a box of old photos — some dating back to the late 1970s — looking for something in particular which I did not find, but then discovered that I had already found it somewhere else.

In the course of my journey back through time, I came across this photo.

On the back was written "1988," in handwriting that somehow looked more like my mother's than mine. My best guess is that I sent this photo to her, she labeled it, and at some later time it was returned to me.

I pondered for several minutes, trying to remember who I made this quilt for. To the best of my recollection, it seemed that I had made it for the younger son of my friends, Janien and Scott. I sent Janien a message through Facebook, describing the quilt. She wrote back that, indeed this was the quilt in question.

She also reminded me that I had made a quilt for her older son as well. "Funny thing is that to this day Spencer's favorite color is red and Trevor's blue. I wonder if having those quilts in their rooms had anything to do with that."

I really like the illusion of three dimensionality in this design. If I were to make it again, I would extend the squares into the border to complete them.

Fractured Squares Quilt

Last week, I uploaded a new quilt pattern to my Etsy page. [Update April 25, 2020: This pattern is now available through Pacific Fabrics.]

I really like this design. It is very simple to put together, and quite striking (if I do say so myself). I like the "op-art" effect from the alternating light and dark values combined with the various diagonal lines created by the arrangement of the blocks.

When I designed this quilt, the parameter I set was to see what I could come up with using just 2-1/2"-wide strips. I could have used a set of precut strips, but I'm trying to limit myself to using just what's in my stash, as much as possible. (I did go out and buy yardage for the backing.)

As is my wont, I handquilted it. I worked on it so diligently (a couple of hours most evenings while watching television), that I developed a case of bursitis in my left elbow.

Who knew quilting could be hazardous to your health?!

Lillian's Star Quilt

A couple of days ago, I finished painting the doors and the door trim in the spare bedroom and moved everything back in from the living room.

In my first post about this project, I neglected to mention why we chose blue.

It was to coordinate with this quilt. (The walls in this photo are rather washed out. If you look at the bit of wall showing through the nightstand, that is closer to the new paint color.)

This is a quilt that I made for my daughter a number of years ago, probably around 2002 or 2003. The block is “Ohio Star” from 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars by Carol Doak, one of literally hundreds of books I illustrated during my 20-year association with Martingale & Co.

The original block as presented in the book did not have the little star units at the corner. I added those, and I also designed an alternate setting block.

The bed frame and side table are part of a set that includes a dresser. They are made of maple and date from the 1930s, when they first belonged for my mom's younger sister, Fern. The furniture was passed on to my family, I think it was sometime in the early 1970s. I remember having the set in my bedroom when I was in high school.

Later on, the pieces passed into my possession and I put it in my daughter's room when she outgrew her toddler bed.

The piece on the dresser was made by my dad, who was an accomplished woodworker. He specialized in making smaller items with lots of detail. This fisherman was originally made for my uncle Ray, an avid sportsman. At some point, my older sister acquired it. Recently, she offered it to me during a round of downsizing.

The fisherman shows a particular characteristic of some of my dad's work. His profile exhibits my dad's unique cartoon-style of drawing.

Vashon Island

Yesterday, Tim and I took a day trip to Vashon Island. Neither of us had ever been there. At other times in the past, one or both of us have taken a ferry to Bainbridge, Bremerton or Kingston.

The ferry to Vashon is a little more out of the way. We had to drive all the way through West Seattle, which really wasn't so bad on the morning of a day after a holiday that was the second day of a four-day weekend.

We had no particular plans beyond driving into the "urban" core of the island.

On the ferry, we picked up a tourguide magazine, which informed us that there was an old lighthouse on Maury Island, which is actually kind of a misnomer, because Maury Island and Vashon Island are connected by a narrow isthmus.

Anyway, we did drive out there. Who doesn't like to see a lighthouse?

Also, on the way down to see the lighthouse, we passed a grassy area that featured this:

Not entirely sure what it is supposed to represent, but it attracted our attention. Actually, the path to the lighthouse is at the far end of the lawn in the photograph. The boulders are closer to the path, and the sculptured pieces farther away.

The lighthouse was situated on a beach that had a lot of driftwood washed up from past storms. It reminded me of the tidal flats we used to drive by in the East Bay back in the late '60s when I was a kid. People used to go out there and make sculptures from the driftwood; it was very cool — you never knew what you would see when you drove by.

After we saw the lighthouse, we headed back to Vashon town. On the way, we stopped at a boutique distillery we had spotted on the way out toward the lighthouse. At first, it appeared that no one was around, but just as we were getting in the car to leave, a fellow came around the side of the building and let us know that, yes, the tasting room was open.

This is a very new operation; they only began selling their product last December. We came away with two bottles of herb-infused gin, one bottle of vodka, and a fourpack of blood orange soda. Still in development is a coffee liqueur that we tasted — very good, not so sweet and syrupy as Kahlua.

Back in town, we had lunch at the Hardware Store restaurant. A good choice.

After lunch, we did some shopping. Among the places we visited, was the Island Quilter. For such a small community, this was a really impressive establishment. All I can say is, I wish it was on my side of the water and I didn't have to get on a ferry to visit it. Extensive inventory, well organized.

As I like to support the local economies of places we visit, I purchased this fat quarter ten-pack:

I don't know what I will do with it (yet), but I will figure out something!

Vashon Island on Dwellable