I’m participating in an exciting collaborative quilt project – Common Threads Indigo Quilt Project. The project began with more than 40 people participating in the dyeing of 40+ meters of cotton, linen and silk. The indigo and shibori dyed fabrics will be provided to each artist so that a consistent color palette will be used in each quilt. There is a curving red band in each quilt, positioned so that the band will appear to circle the room once all the quilts are hung.
Last week, I visited the church and met with Sheila, one of the coordinators of the project. I selected the panel I’m going to work on, a 24 by 69 inch quilt. Sheila provided me with an amazing selection of the indigo fabrics. (I promised to return what I don’t use!)
Here’s my sketch of how I plan to piece my panel, and my first stab at selecting fabrics. I’m planning to do a lot of improv curved piecing, and lots of curved lines of machine quilting. I’m not sure if I will piece or applique the flying geese. I want it to look like sky and clouds at the top, with waves and water (the Fraser River) at the bottom.
I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
My original intention was to piece this quilt as hexagons – blogged here. That didn’t work so well, so I fused the hexagons instead – blogged here.
While searching for the origin of this quilt block, I found The Quilt Index website, where I discovered this quilt pattern from 1897(!). The pattern title is ‘Ecclesiastical’. Looking at this pattern, I can see that it could be pieced as vertical rows of triangles, each consisting of 3 half-hexagons – although there’s still a Y-seam in each triangle. I think I’ll try making this pattern again, but with larger pieces. I’m not sure if I’ll piece it as triangle or as hexagons – maybe I’ll try both!
I’m continuing to work on my optical illusion quilt. I decided not to zigzag the edges. Instead I’m sewing straight lines around the edges and through the middle of each section. I’m not sure if you can see on the front what I’m doing, but the green thread shows up really well on the back. I still have to stitch the light green top of each shape, and then some stitching on the black background.
Give-away – Don’t forget to enter to win fabulous prizes at the Quiltsy Team Give-Away Contest. Four lucky people will win prizes with a combined value of $500, including one that includes a $100 shopping spree among the 370 Quiltsy Team shops at Etsy (including my shop of course). The contest will close on Sunday night July 21st @ midnight Central time. Winners will be announced Monday July 22nd.
As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
I definitely bit off more than I could chew with machine piecing the half-hexagon quilt! The piecing started off fine when I was doing the corner with mostly solid full hexagons. But when I got to joining the pieced hexagons, I just couldn’t get the seams to line up. I think it was a combination of the extra seams in the blocks and the small size of the blocks. After several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to change my approach. The point was to use the fabrics and shapes to create the optical illusion, not to drive myself crazy. So I decided to scrap the piecing idea, and fuse them instead. I applied fusible web to the back of each pieced block, trimmed the seam allowances off, and fused them to a black background. Mission accomplished! Now I’ll do some zigzag stitching around the edges and some quilting.
I also made some blocks for the Alberta Flood Relief project being organized by Cheryl Arkison. Cheryl is coming to Vancouver this week to do a trunk show and two workshops, so the VMQG is going to collect blocks and give them the Cheryl. These are addictive – and don’t seem make much of a dent in my scrap bags – so I may need to make some more later.
Give-Away Contest!
I belong to a team of Etsy sellers of quilts, quilted items and fiber art – the Quiltsy Team. the team is having a Give-Away Contest. Four lucky people will win prizes with a combined value of $500, including one that includes a $100 shopping spree among Quiltsy Team shops at Etsy. With 370 Quiltsy member shops, there’s something for everyone’s list. Here’s how you could win.
I finished the custom portrait quilt, and it’s on the way to its new home. I made lots of notes and took lots of photos of my process, and I will be posting some tutorials later this month, including a new process for facing a quilt. I think these are the squarest corners I’ve ever achieved with a facing finish.
My next project is an entry for this fabric challenge from the La Conner Quilt Museum. When I saw the two green fabrics, one dark and one medium value, I was reminded of the Tumbling Blocks quilt pattern which requires the careful selection and placement of dark, medium and light values to create an optical illusion. Here’s a tumbling block quilt I made in 2001.
Then I remembered a more complex quilt pattern that I’ve wanted to make forever, but couldn’t figure out how to machine piece it without dealing with set-in seams. (If you look closely at my tumbling block quilt, you’ll see I found a way to piece it all with straight seams.) I’m not sure what the name of this block is, but I find it fascinating. It occurred to me that since this block is made from half-hexagons, I could use Jacquie Gering’s really cool method for sewing hexagons by machine.
So I cut my fabrics into half-hexagon shapes and arranged them on my design wall. Then I sewed them together into hexagons. I’m trying to keep this quilt to 18 x 18 inches, and I wanted to have 4 of the shapes across, so my hexagons are each about 3 inches unfinished. I don’t have a hexagon shaped acrylic template, so I cut a hexagon from freezer paper just less than 3 inches. I ironed my template to each block and trimmed the edges with scissors to ensure they are all the same size.
To sew my hexagons in columns as described in Jacquie’s technique, I have to sew them diagonally. I started in the upper right corner to make sure I understood the instructions. So far, so good. I have a couple of tips – you need to see your stitching lines, so don’t use black thread on black fabric – after I switched to dark gray thread it worked much better. I really don’t like back-stitching, so instead I’m leaving long threads at each end of my seams, pulling them to the same side of the fabric and tying them off.
As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
I’ve been working on the portrait quilt (last seen here). Everything is fused, the quilt is layered, the two people are completely quilted and the background quilting is underway. I’m thrilled with how it looks.
As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
I got the Sew Batik challenge quilt faced, labeled and sleeved on Wednesday, and in the mail Thursday. I forgot to take another photo after sewing on the facing, so this one (cropped to finished size) will have to do.
I really enjoyed the spontaneous free-style design and construction of this quilt. Normally I would have drawn a design, enlarged it to full size, and traced that to freezer paper or fusible web. Instead, I cut all the pieces free-hand and just placed them on the background where they looked good.
Now I’m back to working on the portrait quilt. The background is all fused, as are the two people, but I haven’t actually fused the people to the background yet.
A nice surprise in my email inbox yesterday – my entry to the Quilting Arts ‘Text Me’ reader challenge was featured in the Quilting Daily newsletter email. And again in today’s email!
Which reminds me, my entry to the ‘Map It Out’ reader challenge appeared in the June/July issue of Quilting Arts magazine. I always get such a thrill when I see my work published!
I’m working on two projects right now. I’ve been working for two or three weeks on a custom portrait quilt. The photo it’s based on is fairly blurry, and the heads in the quilt will each be only 3 or 4 inches high, so I won’t do any facial features. I’ve used that technique before in this quilt of me and my sisters, and just added some shading around the edges of the faces. I think this technique will work well for this portrait.
I’m taking photos of my process and will eventually post some tutorials on how I go from photo to pattern, and how I construct a portrait quilt. Here’s the starting photo and my pattern (reversed for use with fusible web).
I spent quite a bit of time selecting fabrics. After several iterations, I’ve come up with fabrics I’m very happy with. I sent the photo below to my customer before I fused the fabrics together to get her approval (she said she thought the fabrics were perfect!) For the background, only the light fabrics have been cut to size – the others are just there to check the colors. I’ve actually done a lot more work on the background since this photo was taken, but will post photos of that later.
I’ve had to set the portrait quilt aside for a couple of days because I suddenly realized a deadline was looming. I had sent away a long time ago for a fat quarter to participate in the Sew Batik challenge for the Pacific West Quilt Show. I realized a couple of days ago that my quilt has to arrive in Washington state by the end of next week. Since mail from Canada to the US takes a long time, I need to get it finished quickly. I’ve always known what theme I wanted to do – Starry Winter Night – but hadn’t really thought about the details. I decided to go with an abstract look, and challenged myself to complete it in two days. Last night I selected fabrics and fused the background. This morning, I layered the quilt, added the tree trunks (most of them have an extra layer of batting for added dimension) and quilted it. I took the photo below at noon. I just have to apply the facings, sleeve and label. I plan to mail it tomorrow morning – some sort of record for me! Then I can get back to the portrait quilt.
As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
The Fraser Valley Quilters Guild’s Biennial Quilt Show is being held in Langley BC this weekend. The FVQG has 6 teams and they are each competing against a team from another guild. Our team, the VMQG Mod Quilters, competed on Saturday morning. The challenge – each team to complete a quilt – 36 x 36 inches or larger – quilted, bound and labeled, within 2 hours. And just before the start of the challenge, each team is given a fat quarter of fabric that they must feature in their quilt.
We were the only Modern Quilt Guild in the competition, and we decided our priorities were to create a distinctly modern quilt, using improv techniques, and to have fun! So, unlike the other teams, we didn’t have our fabrics totally planned and/or precut. We had a basic plan, and we each brought some solid fabric and a few printed fat quarters. We didn’t decide which solid color to use for the front until we saw the feature fabric (which everyone loved!).
Here are some action shots of our team at work:
We didn’t quite get our quilt finished in the 2 hours (it was quilted, the label was on, and I was about 10 minutes from finishing sewing the binding on), so we didn’t win. But we’re really proud of our quilt – and the other team members even made a matching pillow cover, while I was frantically sewing the binding on.
I couldn’t believe how many spectators were interested in watching us quilt, although I understood the fascination later, when I found myself part of the excited crowd as the clock ticked down for the afternoon challenge.
It was a lot of fun, and I would definitely participate again!
At the VMQG meeting on Monday night, we had a block lottery with the theme – modernized disappearing 9-patch. I made my blocks on Monday afternoon. When you see all the entries together you can see what a wonderful quilt they would make! I didn’t win in the block lottery, but I did win a wonderful door prize – a quilt made by Laurraine of Patchwork Pottery.
On Tuesday, I went to visit my sister Anne for a couple of days. We drove down to La Conner and saw the Karin Franzen exhibit at the La Conner Quilt Museum – fantastic work! Anne and I had a wonderful visit – with a real focus on creativity and fiber art.
On Saturday, I will be participating in the Iron Quilter Challenge at the Fraser Valley Quilters Guild Biennial Quilt Show in Langley. The FVQG has 6 teams and they will each compete against a team from another guild. Our team, the VMQG Mod Quilters, will be competing at 10:30 on Saturday. Each team of 6 people must complete a quilt in 2 hours – 36 x 36 inches or larger, including quilting, binding and a label. It’s going to be a lot of fun!
And last night, I received some photos of the preschool quilt being presented to the teachers at the class graduation ceremony. I was told the quilt was very well received and the teachers loved it very much. Aren’t the kids cute in their graduation caps and hand-print t-shirts?
Last week, I visited the church and met with Sheila, one of the coordinators of the project. I selected the panel I’m going to work on, a 24 by 69 inch quilt. Sheila provided me with an amazing selection of the indigo fabrics. (I promised to return what I don’t use!)
