Tonight is the monthly meeting of the Vancouver MQG – and also our 3rd anniversary party! We also have a block challenge that was announced last month, due this month. It’s a modern take on the disappearing 9-patch block. We’re using 5 inch squares and each block will be made from 4 scrappy-bright squares and 5 solid black squares – each block with a different layout.
So this afternoon, I pulled out some black fabric and several printed charm squares with black in them. I made 3 blocks, then sliced each into quarters. I rearranged them on my design wall, just to see what they would look like – pretty cool.
I’ll take them to the meeting tonight, and hopefully I’ll win a few of these in the block lottery. Wish me luck!
The preschool quit is finished – I love how it turned out! I’m delivering it today to one of the parents.
I quilted it with straight lines with a light lime-green thread. The vertical quilting lines are about 2.25 inches apart, and the horizontal line about 5 inches apart.
On a quilt like this, I would normally use a 2.25 inch strip for binding, attached entirely by machine, which would finish to about 3/8 inch on the front. On this quilt, I wanted the striped binding to be about the same width as the frames for the hand-prints. With a bit of experimentation, I determined that a 3 inch strip, sewn 1/4 inch from the edge on the back, would finish at 3/4 inch when folded to the front.
Originally, I had planned to attach a standard hanging sleeve, split in the middle. But given that the quilt is 77 inches long, more than one split might be required for the hanging rod supports. The parents told me they haven’t decided exactly what type of hardware they will use to hang it, so we don’t know how many supports there will be, or how far apart they will be. So I turned to the Internet for alternative hanging options. I found this post by Mary Burns at Martingale, showing a variety of hanging methods. I was intrigued by the invisible hanging tab technique at Modify Tradition.
I decided to use several mini-sleeves (a hybrid of tabs and sleeves). Here’s a little tutorial about how I made the mini-sleeves.
I hemmed the sides of a 6.5 by 48 inch piece of fabric, then cut it into 8 pieces, each 7 inches long. I folded each piece in half and positioned them with the raw edges along the top of the quilt, and caught the raw edges in the stitching when I bound the quilt. When I hand-sewed the bottom of each mini-sleeve, I left some slack so there is room for the hanging rod. I positioned the sleeves with a gap of 4 inches between each one, with one of the gaps right at the center of the quilt. This will provide a lot of flexibility for hanging hardware and number of supports, while ensuring the quilt won’t sag when hung on the rod.
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 preschool quilt, and it’s now all pieced. We had planned a finished size of 30 x 60 inches, but it’s going to be closer to 33 x 77 inches. I pinned it sideways on my 6 foot tall design wall, and had to tape the top to the cupboards above. I’m really happy with the center panel with the logo.
Next, I have to piece the back, layer and quilt it. I’ll bind it with the stripe fabric that’s outlining the center logo panel.
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.
If you’ve been reading along, you’ll recall the red bench quilt is for an exhibit by Fibre Art Network members.
‘Abstracted’ will explore the development of a subject from a realistic image to one that illustrates the essence of that subject in an abstract, or in a non representative way. Pairs of artists will illustrate their subject – one in a representative fibre art piece and one in a abstract / non-representative fibre art piece.
My fibre artist sister Anne de Verteuil is my partner. She finished her abstract piece just the other day. We haven’t actually seen each other’s piece yet – we’ve just been sending photos to each other. Using the magic of photo-imaging software, I’ve made it look like they are hanging next to each other. I think they look fabulous together, and I can’t wait to see Anne’s abstract piece ‘in person’.
I was contacted earlier this month about making a quilt for a ‘graduating’ class of preschoolers at Friendly Forest Preschool. It will be hung on a wall in the school as a legacy from the class of 20 kids. I met with one of the moms to select fabrics. We started with a cute lizard print for the background and a coordinating stripe for binding. Then we picked several matching solid colors.
One of the moms cut the solid fabrics into squares and each child put their hand print on one square. The wall space available for the quilt is 3 feet high by 10 feet long, so the quilt will be about 30 inches by 60 inches. I’ve put borders on each hand printed square, and decided on a layout. The blank area with have a fused image of the preschool’s logo. It’s going to be a fun and colorful 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.
I’ve finished the red bench quilt. I’m going to call it ‘Solitude’.
Anne is still working on her abstracted version. Below you can see the original photo, my finished quilt, and an in-progress shot of Anne’s abstract piece. Anne has used very similar colors, but with geometric shapes. Her red bench fabric is flipped back in the photo below, until she finishes some stitching that will be under it. She may add some more squares of dark green fabric before layering and quilting it, and trimming it to the final size of 18 x 45 inches.
I’m really happy with my quilting – especially the leaf pattern on the bushes with a green variegated thread – and also the wood-grain quilting I did on the back of the bench. I was unhappy with the sky – it wasn’t lying flat and was resisting my efforts to steam it into submission. So I fused some clouds onto the sky, and I think it made a huge improvement to the whole piece. It added to the impression of distance.
To square and trim the quilt, I again used the Pellon 1-inch grid. This time I folded the Pellon to 18 x 45 inches – the required finished size of the quilt. I then trimmed the quilt 1/2 inch larger on all sides. I finished it with a facing, and I know from previous experience that these dimensions will give me the exact finished size I want, using a 1/4 inch seam allowance and rolling the front of the quilt about 1/8 inch to the back.
I used a combination of my facing technique and this one by Victoria at The Silly Boodilly. I prefer Victoria’s single-layer facing with the edge turned under 1/4 inch, and her corner treatment. Some day, I’ll re-write my technique – for now I just refer to both.
I’ve submitted my quilt to the Fibre Art Network ‘Abstracted’ exhibit. Anne will be entering her piece in a couple of days. In June, I’m going to visit Anne, so we can see our two pieces side by side.
Last week I attended the Canadian Quilt Conference in Penticton BC. My friend Janet drove us from New Westminster to Penticton – a beautiful scenic drive!
When we arrived in Penticton, we went straight to the convention center, and discovered that Janet’s quilt had won an award! After we admired her quilt and beautiful ribbon, we looked at all of the other quilts in the juried show – gorgeous entries, stunning workmanship, inspiring techniques – it was almost overwhelming! We weren’t permitted to take photos in the show, but you can see the award winners here. Of course, the quilts were so much more impressive in person than on a computer screen! I had two quilts in the show, and it was a thrill to see them hanging there, even though they didn’t win any awards.
There were also 3 concurrent quilt shows. My Rainy Day People art quilt was in the Fibrescapes exhibit with works by other members of the Fibre Art Network.
It was also an opportunity to reconnect with fellow fibre artists, including a meetup with several on-line friends who I had never met face-to-face. We had an interesting lunch conversation.
On Friday evening, we attended a lecture by Anna Hergert, resulting in even more inspirational ideas! And I won 2 door prizes!
When we woke up Saturday morning, we looked out our hotel window to discover a street market, where we wandered through many interesting booths selling arts and crafts, baked goods, jams and jellies, fresh produce and many other interesting wares.
Then it was back to the conference center for one last tour of the quilts before heading back home. All in all, a wonderful weekend!
The red bench quilt is all fused and ready to be quilted.
I purposely cut my fabrics larger than required to allow me some leeway when I cut it down to the final size of 18 x 45 inches. I don’t want to cut off the extra fabric yet (it’s nice to have extra fabric at the edges to hold onto while I’m quilting) but I didn’t want to waste time quilting fabric I’m going to cut off. My technique for squaring up a quilt is to lay a piece of Pellon 1-inch grid on top of the quilt. It’s sheer enough that I can see the quilt through it. I folded the Pellon to a size of 19 x 46 to allow for a seam allowance when I add the facing. I lined up the horizon line and smoothed it out from there. I pinned the Pellon to the quilt, then took it to my machine and basted around it with orange thread. When I quilt, I’ll know to stay within the orange basting lines.
Meanwhile . . . (you may recall that this piece is for a show titled ‘Abstracted’ where pairs of artists will choose an image, and one will create a representative fibre art piece, and the other will create an abstract piece – more info here) . . . my sister Anne has started working on her abstract piece.
Below you can see her initial fabric selection and some fabrics prepared for vat dying. Several months ago, I gave Anne some of the fabrics I was planning to use in my quilt. But I think I’ve changed my mind about a lot of the fabrics since then, so I just mailed her a package of the fabrics I actually used. To design her abstract piece, Anne will work with the photo image upside down. That makes it easier to design in an abstract manner, as objects read as shapes rather than recognizable “things”.
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.
Category entered: ROYBGIV – color wheel Techniques used: machine piecing; illusion of transparency Machine pieced and quilted by me Finished size: 14.25″ by 45″
This quilt was created last year in response to a transparency challenge at the VMQG. I pulled out all of my bright tone on tone prints, and started auditioning colors on my design wall. I was having so much fun, I couldn’t stop until I had used all the colors in the rainbow!
The selection of the fabrics create the illusion of transparency, but in actuality the fabrics are all pieced – there is no actual overlapping of fabrics.
I used a solid medium gray for the background, and a mottled gray-charcoal-black for the binding. I quilted the squares with either vertical or horizontal straight lines, with the lines overlapping in the ‘transparency’ areas. I quilted the background with free-motion organic mostly straight lines.
Don’t forget to check out all the wonderful quilts in the Festival and vote for your favorites.
Amy at Amy’s Creative Side has been running the Bloggers Quilt Festival since 2009. I discovered it last fall, just after the deadline to enter, so I voted but didn’t get to submit a quilt. Here’s the schedule if you’d like to participate – you can submit one or two of your quilts, nominate your favorite quilt for Viewer’s Choice, vote for favorites in each category, and win wonderful prizes!
Schedule of Events :
May 17 – 24 – Linky’s Open & Nominate for Viewer’s Choice on this post
May 24 – 30 – Vote for favorites in each of the 15 categories
May 31 – Winners announced
I’m entering this quilt in the Scrap Quilt category. It’s machine pieced and quilted by me on my domestic sewing machine, and is 50″ by 62″. The back is pieced for added interest. The double-folded binding is sewn entirely by machine.
Here’s the story behind the quilt. Last September, I pulled out my ziploc bags full of scraps, and started piecing wonky squares using a free-style improv process. In no time at all, I had 12 good sized blocks (and had hardly put a dent in my scrap collection!)
I surrounded each block with a border of white print fabrics and another border of color, then pieced them all on a solid grey background. I hadn’t really planned the final size, and as usual when I improv piece, the quilt ends up bigger than expected!
Make sure that you pop over to Amy’s Creative Side and check out all of the wonderful quilts in the Festival and vote for your favorites. I’d love it if you voted for mine, if you’re so inclined.
