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.

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.

The Evolving Hearts Quilt

I took the pattern for this 20-inch block and upsized it so the largest piece would fit on 18-inch-wide freezer paper. The resulting block will finish to about 28-1/4 inches.

Then I pieced 16 of the smaller hearts to go on the four sides.

I had drafted a corner heart pattern, of which I made up four. But when I had them all arranged on my design wall, I did not like the corner hearts. Because of the redrafting, they have a different silhouette which bother me.

I have drafted a new corner heart pattern, which I will be sewing up later this week.
Stay tuned!

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.

 

A Little Something

I may have mentioned previously that I have a tendency to start projects, and then set them aside to do something else, and then not get back to them for a long time.

I had to go back two-and-a-half years to find the blog post where I first talked about cutting the pieces for a quilt from Country Thread Goes to Charm School.

Coincidentally, in that post I observed that I don't often exactly follow the instructions for making a quilt. Such proved to be the case when I finally got around to making this little guy.

The quilt instructions as written do not include the sashing, and have a border framing the blocks.

When I first cut the fabric for this project, I didn't have any particular end use in mind. But I think someday it will make a nice baby quilt.

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.

A Little Something

When I had finished the cutting for my next Craftsy project, I had a fair number of small triangles left over from the strip-pieced sets.

It seemed likely that they could be turned into something useful, and indeed this turned out to be true.

I suppose if I did some research, I might discover that there is a name for this block. However, I just noticed that it looks like a variation on the Spools block. How appropos!

Since I took this photo, I have sewed the blocks together. The assembled piece now measures about 13-3/4" square. Eventually, it will become a pillow. I think I will be able to fit a 14" square pillow form — I think the form will be just squishy enough!

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!

Making Progress

It's funny sometimes how, after you've been working on something for a really really really long time, all of a sudden, it's done!

That's kind of how I feel about the Maple Leaf quilt. Just one month ago, it looked like this. It had taken me a year to get to that point.

Once I had all the blocks arranged, I started sewing them into pairs, then sewing pairs to pairs, small set to small set to bigger set. Saturday afternoon, there were four or five large sections done. What remained weren't simple rectangular sections. Because of the way I had rearranged the individual maple leaf blocks, I ended up having to sew several partial seams.

That's what I did yesterday.

  

The finished top measures about 70" x 90". I didn't make it with a particular finished size in mind, but those dimensions should work well enough for a twin size bed.

I'm thinking that I may get this top machine quilted. I've never sent one of my quilts out for machine quilting, but I think this is a good candidate. There are so many seams and so few wide open spaces, that I don't think I would enjoy hand quilting it.

I'm not sure what my next quilting project will be, but I have some ideas kicking around in my head.

I'm also making good progress on my sweater. Yesterday, I finished the front.

Once I started shaping the neck, and I was working on fewer stitches, it went pretty quick, especially after I had done all the decreases on both the neck and armhole and was just knitting on 12 stitches.

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.

Modern Quilts

Also at the Quilt Festival exhibit was a display of modern quilts.

Here is a good explanation of what modern quilting is. And here is another blogger's thoughts on the subject. The first and third links at the end of her post are also helpful (the second leads nowhere).

These quilts contrasted quite noticeably with the rest of the exhibit, primarily in their stark minimalism.

I have yet to decide what I think about the modern quilting movement. It reminds me of the class in modern art I took last spring. The instructor had a concise way of summing up art history.

Classical art — This is art.

Renaissance art — This is art!

Modern art — This is art?

Some modern quilts I like, some not so much, but by and large they don't make me say "Wow!"

To any quilt-y readers: I'd like to hear your thoughts and opinions about modern quilting. 

Solid Love, Kelly Smith, St. Louis MO

Scattered, Katie Pederson, Seattle WA

Bull's-Eye 1, Colleen Wootton, Clinton WA

Detail, Bull's-Eye 1

Fireworks Quilt, Tara Faughnan, Oakland CA

Detail, Fireworks Quilt

Oddballs, Alissa Carlton, Los Angeles CA

Untitled, Lindsay Stead, Toronto, Ontario

Box of Rain Quilt, Karen Anderson-Abraham, Santa Barbara CA

Detail, Box of Rain Quilt

"Moo-ston"

These quilts have been blogged about elsewhere, and I don't have anything to add.

Except to say that I illustrated the step-by-step art for the book that inspired these, so I played a small part in creating the ensuing hilarity.

All I can say is, quilters like bad puns as much as anybody.

What follows does not include very single quilt, but I think they are representative.

Detail