Optical illusions. Don’t believe your eyes – 2020.04.12

Posted on April 12, 2020 by TerryAske

As I said in an earlier post, primary colors are not my favorite colors. And yet here I am making quilts for a primary colors challenge. When I first read about the Canadian Quilters Try-A-Triad Challenge, my first thought was how I could make my entry look like the colors were different than all the other entries.

I have recently been reading about optical illusions, including the Bezold effect and the Munker-White illusion. If you search for images based on these words, you’ll find many examples. Most of the websites have lots of advertising (which irritates me, so I’m not going to link to them!) but here’s one website that explains the effects and shows a really good example. Edited to add: here’s another great website, and there are many more optical illusions to entertain you.

I wanted to try this with the primary color fabrics, but first I experimented using Excel and the Fill Color tool. On the left, the 2 squares are the same red, although they look different depending on what color stripes are adjacent to the red. In the middle, the 2 yellow squares are the same yellow. On the right, you can see the 2 red columns are actually the same red.

After spending way too much time experimenting with Excel, I constructed a small quilt using the interweave technique. First, I made two 20″ x 20″ blocks, each with a yellow circle. I cut each block into 1″ strips and pinned them on the design wall alternating the strips from each block.

The last time I used this technique, my seams weren’t as straight as I would have liked, so this time I fused some Pellon 820 Quilter’s Grid interfacing onto the batting. The grid lines really helped me to keep my sewing lines straight.

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Below is my finished quilt. I’m calling it ‘Don’t Believe Your Eyes’. The size is 18″ x 17″.

‘Don’t Believe Your Eyes’ by Terry Aske

And even though these aren’t my favorite colors, while I was working on this one, I was thinking of how else I could manipulate these fabrics to look like different colors, so now I’m starting on another one!

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Thanks for stopping by. Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

Posted in Modern quilts, On my design wall | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Primary colors mini quilt – 2020.04.05

Posted on April 5, 2020 by TerryAske

Here is my first entry for the Canadian Quilters Try-A-Triad Challenge. The only fabrics allowed are solid fabrics in the 3 primary colors – yellow, red and blue.

‘Floating Layers’ by Terry Aske

I had an idea to make a quilt that looked like 3 layers floating above each other. Normally I would use dark, medium and light values of the same color to make an object appear to be 3-dimensional. For example, I would have used a darker shade to give the illusion of a shadow from the layer above. But the rules for this challenge say to “use one tint, tone or shade of each of the three triad colours. Only three fabrics in total can be used on the face of the quilt—including the background fabric.” So I used black thread to make the shadows. I hope the black stitching looks like shadows – if not, maybe it looks like an interesting grid between each layer of color. Either way, I’m happy with the result.

I constructed each layer separately with fabric wrapped around felt, then quilted first with matching thread, and then with black thread for the shadows.

To put it all together I fused the yellow piece to the blue piece, and stitched around the edge of the yellow through all the layers. Before I attached the blue piece to the red, I sewed on the top facing, so I could position the top corner of the blue piece slightly extending off the top edge of the red piece. This adds to the illusion that the blue piece is floating above the red background.

The finished size is 11.5″ wide by 12″ high. I faced it with red fabric and used a fun coordinating print on the back. As usual, I have left the label and sleeve for a later date, as I’m now eager to work on my next entry for this challenge.

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Thanks for stopping by. Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

Posted in Modern quilts | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Primary colors and rainbow blocks – 2020.03.27

Posted on March 27, 2020 by TerryAske

I’ve been working on a couple of entries for the Canadian Quilters Try-A-Triad Challenge. The only fabrics allowed are solid fabrics in the 3 primary colors – yellow, red and blue. I’m working with two different combinations of primary color fabrics. Below, on the left are the fabrics I started with, and on the right is another set – I much prefer this lighter shade of blue.

As I am working with these fabrics, I have realized that primary colors are not my favorites.   I’m more drawn to tertiary colors. But I love a challenge, and I have some ideas, although nothing is finished yet.

But I got to the point where I just had to use some other colors! So I took a break from the primary colors, and made some improv wonky plus/cross blocks with ALL the colors. Most of the fabrics are from my scrap bins.

I need a few more blocks to complete the color wheel – teal and green

While I was working on these, I started getting lots of ideas about how to use the primary colors. So I’ll leave the rainbow blocks for now, and go back to the primary colors. I expect to complete at least one mini quilt this weekend.

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Thanks for stopping by. Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

Posted in Mini quilts, Modern quilts, On my design wall | 2 Comments

Final finishing of quilts – 2020.03.15

Posted on March 15, 2020 by TerryAske

When I declare a quilt finished, it’s often not really completely finished. I will work to the point where I can take photos to submit an entry, then move onto the next project.

This means the facings are just pinned to the back of the quilt, and there is no sleeve or label. Last week, I took inventory and found I had six(!) not-quite-finished quilts. Some of them have been accepted for exhibitions and will need to be shipped soon, so I need to completely finish them before starting my next project.

Quilts to be finished

Facings – First, I fused the facings to the back of each quilt. I usually fuse the facings using 1/2″ wide strips of fusible web, rather than hand-sewing the facings to the back of the quilt.

Sleeves – Then I made sleeves for them. I use these instructions How to make a hanging sleeve (aka rod pocket) by Sarah Anne Smith. SAQA has recently changed their policy to allow 4-inch sleeves, but I generally make mine about 4.5-inches. Some exhibits have specific requirements for sleeve width and placement, and I always read those carefully to make sure my entry complies with the requirements. I do hand-sew my sleeves in place.

Labels – The last step is to make a label for each quilt. I like to design my labels in Microsoft Excel and print them on prepared fabric. See more details here in this tutorial I wrote. I used to fuse my labels to the back of the quilts, but many shows and exhibits require the label to be sewn on. So my new technique is to both fuse and hand-sew the labels.

I print the labels, then machine stitch them to a piece of fabric that coordinates with the back of the quilt.

I turn under the edges of the fabric, then apply some fusible web to the back. Then I fuse the label to the back of the quilt, and then hand-sew around the edge.

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Thanks for stopping by. Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

Posted in Art quilts, Tutorial | 3 Comments

Spring, circles and matchstick quilting – 2020.02.29

Posted on February 29, 2020 by TerryAske

It’s almost March, so in Vancouver our thoughts are turning to Spring flowers and Cherry Blossoms.  I’ve been working on an entry for the annual textile art exhibit Cherry Blossoms: A Textile Translation which will be on display in April at the Silk Purse Arts Centre in West Vancouver.

While I was working on ‘Circles of Hope and Joy’ (see previous post), I started designing my piece for the Cherry Blossoms exhibit. I felt like making another circle-based quilt, tall and skinny.

For this design, I used Microsoft Paint to draw circles and curves. Then I printed it out on 4 pieces of legal size paper. I taped them together, then traced the design lines onto freezer paper (my favorite way to make templates for cutting fabrics).

Designing and printing with Paint

I selected a variety of fabrics that said ‘Spring’ to me – a beautiful floral and striped pink print fabric, a few pink and green solids, and coordinating bias tape. Below are the fabrics pinned to my design wall, as I audition various colors of bias tape. (I decided the dark pink tape was too dark, and swapped it for a lighter color.)

Design wall

I sewed the pieces together and stitched the bias tape on top of the seams. Then I quilted it with vertical matchstick quilting with light pink thread.

For matchstick quilting, I mark lines using a Hera marker, one inch apart. (For fabrics where the mark doesn’t show, I would use painters tape.) I start quilting in the center and work my way out to each side edge. I stitch the marked lines first, one inch apart, going both up and down the quilt. Then I go back and fill in, with somewhat random spacing between lines. (If I think one of the lines is not straight enough, I just ignore it and keep quilting. When I have quilted across the whole quilt, if any lines bother me, I’ll pick out all or part of that line and re-quilt it. But usually, they all look fine.)

Here is my finished art quilt ‘Shades of Pink‘. It is 12 x 31 inches. I have submitted it for the jury process and will know in a couple of weeks whether it’s accepted for the exhibit.

‘Shades of Pink’ by Terry Aske

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Thanks for stopping by. Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

Posted in Art quilts, Modern quilts | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

Circles of Hope and Joy – 2020.02.10

Posted on February 10, 2020 by TerryAske

Here is my newest art quilt. It’s for a new exhibition by the Fibre Art Network titled “Threads of Hope”. All the pieces in this exhibit will be the same size – 18″ wide by 36″ high. Each art piece will have a piece of Kona Rich Red fabric entering anywhere on the left edge at 3″ width and exiting anywhere on the right edge at 3” in width. The artworks will be hung at staggered heights, matching up the red “thread”, so that the red will appear to flow from piece to piece.

This is the exhibit overview from the exhibit organizers: “Threads of Hope is an exhibition exploring our hope, longing and desire for the future of the world.  In this exhibit FAN artists express world issues that are meaningful to them.  The art pieces flow from one to the other with a ‘thread of hope’ connecting them, thus completing a line of artists, joining forces to improve our world.“

I started working on this piece in November then had to set it aside to work on other projects with more immediate deadlines. I selected fabrics that coordinated with the mandatory red fabric, focusing on bright, saturated colors with some white and black prints to add contrast.

I used some of my favorite techniques to construct it. I drew my design on freezer paper, cut the freezer paper apart and ironed each piece to the back of the fabric. I cut the fabric around the freezer paper templates, adding 1/4″ seam allowances. I reassembled the pattern by overlapping the seam allowances and using the freezer paper to hold them together.  Working from the back, I stitched in the gap between the paper templates.  Then from the front, I trimmed each seam allowance very close to the stitching.  This leaves raw edges, which will later be covered with bias tape.  This was a far as I got in November.

At the end of January, I resumed work on this project. I fused the skinny black bias tape over the horizontal seams, and stitched it in place. Then I layered the quilt, and quilted the horizontal wavy lines. The next step was to add the colored bias tape around the circles.

Then came the difficult part – quilting concentric circles. I started from the outside edge of each circle and echoed in. I periodically checked the accuracy of my circular quilting with freezer paper circles and/or dinner plates.

I finished the edges with a facing, turned entirely to the back. Here is my finished piece. It’s titled ‘Circles of Hope and Joy‘.

‘Circles of Hope and Joy’ by Terry Aske

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Thanks for stopping by. Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

Posted in Art quilts, Quilt shows | Tagged , , , | 13 Comments

Year in Review – 2020.01.29

Posted on January 29, 2020 by TerryAske

Better late than never, here’s a recap of my activities and accomplishments in 2019.

Making art – I created more than 20 art quilts and other fiber art with a variety of themes and techniques.  Many of them are shown below.

Exhibiting my art – I submitted my work to 14 juried shows and challenges, and had work accepted into about half of them.   I also created work for several group exhibits and art auctions.

Year of travel – this is how I think of 2019. I had several great trips this year (in fact, when I look at the list below, I’m surprised at how many there were).

  • February/March – my husband and I left the cold snowy weather in the Vancouver BC area to spend 3 weeks with our friends who live in Panama.
  • March – a week after we returned from Panama, I flew to Toronto to teach two workshops for the York Heritage Quilters Guild.
  • April – in mid-April I drove to Campbell River and nearby Quadra Island to do a trunk show and teach two workshops.
  • April – at the end of April, I flew to San Jose for the annual SAQA Conference.
  • June – my annual trip to Quilt Canada. This year it was held in Ottawa
  • July/August – a 2-week trip to NYC and England with my sister Anne. We traveled with Craftours from NYC to Birmingham for 2 days at the Festival of Quilts. Then we toured through English towns and countryside, to London for 2 days, then back to NYC.
  • September – traveled to Naniamo BC for the annual conference of the Fibre Art Network. 
  • September – at the end of September, I visited my friend Heidi who lives near San Francisco, and we attended the Alden Lane Nursery Quilting in the Garden quilt show.
  • December – at the end of December, we traveled back to Panama to visit our friends. We spent 3.5 wonderful weeks there – which is why I haven’t posted until now.

Instagram – I find myself posting on Instagram much more frequently than I write blog posts (maybe because of all those trips?). If you aren’t following me on Instagram, check out my posts here. https://www.instagram.com/terryaskeartquilts/ (or click on my Instagram feed in the sidebar on the right.)

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Thanks for stopping by.  Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.
~ Love Laugh Quilt Monday Making
~ WIP Wednesday @ The Needle & Thread Network

Posted in Art quilts, Quilt shows, workshops, Year in review | Tagged | 2 Comments

Maple leaf art quilt – finished – 2019.12.27

Posted on December 27, 2019 by TerryAske

My first post about this quilt was at the end of November, although I started designing it in mid-November. If you’d like to read about my design and construction process, my previous 5 posts have lots of information and photos.

So I’ve been working on this for more than a month. And, now it’s finished. (Well, it’s finished enough to take photos of the front. The back still needs some work – the facings have to sewn or fused to the back, a sleeve attached and the ever-important label created and attached.)

In my last post, I showed the leave shapes that I cut from the full-size paper pattern. I cut the paper all in one piece, to maintain the relationship between the leaves. After I took this photo, I drew vertical lines on the paper to help me remember how the leaves lined up on the background.

Background quilted and positioning leaves

I attached each leaf to the background, quilting around the edges and through each vein. I matched my thread color to the boiled wool base layer of each individual leaf. It blended in very well. In the photo below, you can see the quilting on the bottom leaf, but it almost disappears on the others.

I started with the top right leaf, because it is overlapped by two other leaves. Then I added the top left leaf. I was a little nervous that it would be difficult to quilt through all the layers where the leaves overlapped, but it was fine. I neglected to take photos as I quilted the 5 leaves to the background, but I can say that it took me at least an hour to attach each leaf. (The cotton fabrics were quilted to the boiled wool base layers before I attached the leaves to the background – see my previous post for photos of that step.)

Here’s the finished quilt. It’s 35″ wide by 38.5″ high. The smallest leaf is 16″ wide and the largest is 20″ wide. I titled it ‘The Magical Colours of Autumn’. Yesterday I submitted it to the SAQA call for entry Colour with a U. I’ll find out in mid-February if it’s accepted for the exhibit.

This quilt is larger than I have been making lately. So it felt like it took a long time to complete. But I really like the finished art quilt, and do plan to make more large-scale projects in the future.

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Thanks for stopping by. Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

Posted in Art quilts, WiP Wednesday | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Maple leaf art quilt – part 5 – 2019.12.18

Posted on December 18, 2019 by TerryAske

In my post last week, I showed a mock-up of the background of my Maple leaf art quilt.

Since then, I fused the tree trunks to the background leafy fabric, then layered it with batting and backing, and quilted it with vertical straight lines.

Tree trunks fused to leafy background
Background quilted and positioning leaves

I cut the leaves from the full-size paper pattern to determine exactly where I want the leaves on the background. I’ll use this to position the individual leaves when I quilt them in place.

This quilt is a good example of why I work better when I have a deadline. I was pretty bored quilting all those vertical lines, but with a looming deadline I persevered and got it done. Then I blocked the quilt – I laid it flat, sprayed it with water, gave it a good pressing and left it to dry.

Blocking: sprayed with water, then pressed, then left flat to dry thoroughly

Now I’m back to the fun part – quilting the individual leaves. It’s taking me about an hour to quilt each leaf. First I quilt around the outside edges and up the center vein. Then I quilt around the edge of each fused piece. Then I trim the boiled wool close to the fused pieces. In the photos below, clockwise from top left – leaf 4 before quilting, leaf 3 being quilted, leaf 4 quilted and trimmed, leaf 4 quilting from the back.

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Thanks for stopping by.  Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.
~ Love Laugh Quilt Monday Making
~ WIP Wednesday @ The Needle & Thread Network

Posted in Art quilts, On my design wall, WiP Wednesday | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Maple leaf art quilt – background – 2019.12.11

Posted on December 11, 2019 by TerryAske

I’m working on the background of the Maple leaf art quilt. In my last post, I showed a selection of low-volume leafy prints that I was considering for the background.

When I posted the photo on Facebook a few days ago, and said I might use all the fabrics in the background, my very wise and talented friend Judith said “Keep it simple!!!!” I kept thinking of more fabrics and details I could add to the background. Then I would audition it with and without the additions. Every time simplicity won. I just keep repeating Judith’s words to myself!

All the background fabrics I initially pulled are too small to use for the background. But I did find this leafy fabric in my stash, and I have more than enough – so that’s what I’m using!

Background fabric and tree fabrics

Then of course I pulled out a lot of other possible fabrics for the tree trunks. But most of them were too dark or too busy. I decided to restrict myself to the 4 above – keeping it simple!

Tree trunk rejects

I took a quick photo before removing the leaves from the design wall. I will be adding a few more tree trunks. I did add one darker leafy print along the bottom – just because I wanted some contrast.

Background – simplified

Now I’ve removed the leaves, and I’m going to construct, layer and quilt the background. Then I’ll quilt and attach the leaves.

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Thanks for stopping by.  Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.
~ Love Laugh Quilt Monday Making
~ WIP Wednesday @ The Needle & Thread Network

Posted in Art quilts, On my design wall, WiP Wednesday | Tagged , , | 1 Comment