I finished two quilts this week. Rainy Day People 2 is on its way to the SAQA Auction, and Scrappy Star has been listed in my Etsy shop.
Linking up to:
Worldwide Quilting Day – Check out the button I added on the right, with a link to a website with lots of information about Worldwide Quilting Day – March 16, 2013. I belong to an online group of quilters who sell on Etsy [and they are a terrific support group, too!] called the Quiltsy Team. Many of our members will be creating our own interpretation of the Sawtooth Star block to celebrate Worldwide Quilting Day, then we will be promoting each others work. Here’s mine – a mug rug/mini quilt with a scrappy, wonky star. It still needs quilting and binding, then I’ll list it in my Etsy shop.
Rainy Day People 2 – the 12 x 12 inch version for the SAQA 2013 Auction – is almost done. I stitched the buildings, people and umbrellas before sandwiching the quilt. After sandwiching the quilt, I sewed ‘rain’ with a variegated black-white-gray thread. I love how it looks! I’ll get it bound and labeled this week, and mailed to SAQA. 
Next up is Rainy Day People 3 for the Fibre Art Network exhibit FibreScapes. The entry deadline is March 15th, so I have to work fast on this one, but I’m planning to make it very similar to Rainy Day People 2, so most of the design decisions have already been made.
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.
My Graffiti quilt is finished. I called it “The Writing is on the Wall”. I fused all the graffiti elements to the background, then quilted the whole thing with a brick pattern. I’ve entered it in the SAQA Text Messages exhibit, and I’ll find out in March if it’s accepted.
Last night I did a trunk show presentation for the Textile Arts Guild of Richmond (TAGOR). I showed them more than 40 quilts. They just barely fit into the two travel bins.
Inbox surprise – Look what I found in my Inbox this morning – those are my coffee cups in the top photo!
On my design wall – The umbrella people are back. They first appeared last October when I was in Houston, then again in January as an entry to Cloth Paper Scissors. 
I’m still fascinated with them, so they are going to be the subject of two more quilts – this time in a city scene, with perspective. The first is a 12 x 12 inch quilt for the SAQA 2013 Auction. Here’s my sketch, and the cut-out but not-yet-fused fabrics.
The second is for the Fibre Art Network exhibit FibreScapes exhibit, which will debut in conjunction with Quilt Canada show in Penticton BC in May. This exhibit requires that all submissions measure 17 x 26 inches. I plan to use similar colors in this one.
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.
Last year I joined SAQA – Studio Art Quilt Associates. SAQA’s mission is to promote the art quilt through education, exhibitions, professional development, documentation, and publications. I’m working on my first entry to a juried SAQA exhibit – Text Messages. The unifying theme will be text on quilts.
I have a lot of ideas for quilts relating to text, but due to time constraints – the entry deadline is February 28th – I settled on just one idea. I decided to focus on the most colorful, creative kind of text I could think of – graffiti. I’ve had great fun with this one! Here’s a sneak peak, before fusing.
My other text-related ideas won’t go to waste though, because Quilting Arts magazine has a reader challenge titled Text Me! The deadline is not until March 29th, and the size is 8 x 8 inches, so I won’t have a problem getting one or more done.
Scrap Management – I have a huge collection of scraps, and I like to sort them by color in clear plastic freezer bags, preferably with the slide closer – so they stay closed and don’t spill everywhere when I pick them up! The problem has been that my scrap collection keeps growing until the bags overflow. I was thrilled to find some Jumbo freezer bags recently – 14 x 16 inches – with sliders. Last night I grabbed the 25-30 bags of various sizes that have been housing my scraps, and sorted them all into the jumbo bags (except the yellow scraps, which had to go in a smaller bag, because I only have 10 jumbo bags). I sorted them as follows: yellow, orange/rust, red/pink, purple/burgundy, blue, green, beige/brown, black/white/gray, solids, fused scraps. How do you sort your scraps?
Worldwide Quilting Day – Check out the button I added on the right, with a link to a website with lots of information about Worldwide Quilting Day – March 16, 2013.
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.
My butterfly pieces turned out very well – so bright and colorful!
I referred to this tutorial for wrapping the fabric on the artist canvas. I hadn’t done this before, but it was really easy.
Linking up to:
A year ago, I made an art quilt for a silent auction at the annual fund-raising gala of a local non-profit organization – SHARE Society. The logo for their event is a tree covered with stylized butterflies. With their permission, I replicated the tree logo in fabric. At the right is their logo, and my art quilt.
This year I’m making two 12 x 12 inch fiber art pieces with some of the same butterflies. I’m going to mount them on artist canvases. Here they are before fusing or stitching. I still need to add the butterfly bodies and antennas, fuse them to the background, and do some satin stitching around each butterfly.
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 VMQG February challenge is to create a block (or blocks) for a group quilt, using bright pinks and oranges, with a background of natural colored linen. The second part of the challenge is to try something new. Working with linen is a new experience for me, but I decided to take it one step further.
I’ve been looking for an opportunity to try Rose Hughes’ Fast-Piece Applique technique. Rose has written a book about the technique, called Dream Landscapes, and you can find a link to a video tutorial here. It’s a way of doing raw-edge applique without using fusible web. She recommends couching over the raw-edges after sandwiching the quilt. Because I was making blocks for a group quilt, instead I satin-stitched the raw edges, using tear-away stabilizer. First I made a block with one heart, then – because I love a challenge! – I made a block with 3 interlocked hearts. I like the technique and will definitely use it again. Here are photos of the front and back of my blocks.
Linking up to:
My entry to the Quilting Arts magazine Map It Out reader challenge is one of the 11 finalists. It’s on its way to the magazine for photography. Look for a gallery of “Map It Out” quilts in the June/July 2013 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine.
On Sunday I attended a very enjoyable workshop sponsored by the VMQG. The instructor was Paul Krampitz, one of the VMQG’s original members. He showed us the technique he calls Gee’s Bend Inspired Quilt Blocks. Here’s a photo of one of my big blocks before I cut it into quarters, and a shot of 2 of my big blocks after I cut and rearranged them. My blocks may remain a WiP for awhile, as I work on some other projects. 
I’m working on a challenge for the VMQG February meeting – heart blocks in pink and orange on a natural colored linen background. We plan to create a group quilt with the blocks to submit to future quilt shows. Here are some fabrics I’ve selected from my stash. Working with linen will be a new experience for me!
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 Madrona Road quilt is almost finished – it just needs binding, then I can post it on the Flickr site. I’m going to bind it with solid black. 
When I positioned the stars on my design wall last week, I hadn’t really thought through how I was going to piece them together. I wanted them fairly close together, so each star had to be pieced into the other stars’ background fabrics. I suppose I could have pieced the large stars into the background, then appliqued the small ones – but I didn’t think about that until I was pretty far along in the piecing process.
I started by piecing the top and left stars together. That worked really well – the diagonal seams in one star lined up with the diagonal seams in the background of the other – yay! So I thought I would do the same with the other two (right and bottom) stars. Then I realized there would be some partial seams in the middle. To further complicate matters, the second pair of stars didn’t line up as well as the first pair, and I had to do two inset seams. I lost track of how many seams I ripped out and re-stitched, and how many partial seams were required.
But I persevered, and it all come together. I used a lot of my geometry skills from high school. I quilted it with right-angle parallel lines in each quadrant. I really like the way it looks, and it has the added advantage of nicely minimizing the seams in the center area.
I’ve enjoyed working on this quilt, but will be glad to move onto other projects. I’ll post another photo when the binding is on.
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.
Update: the binding is done, and the photo is up on the MQG Madrona Road Challenge Flickr group. 
It’s been a busy and eventful week.
‘Rainy Day People’ was accepted as a finalist for the Cloth Paper Scissors Make Mine Mini reader challenge, so it’s on its way to be considered for publication (along with 53 other finalists).
My ‘Cool Blue Kona Modern’ is on the way to Austin TX for QuiltCon, and I entered ‘Even Trees Get the Blues’ and ‘Looking Up’ in the Canadian Quilters’ National Juried Show.
I finished my entry for the Quilting Arts magazine Map It Out reader challenge, and submitted it today. It’s a map of the area where I live, near Vancouver BC, on the bank on the Fraser River. I love the contrast of the natural curving lines of the riverbanks and the geometric shapes of man-made streets and structures.
I decided to do the major roads and railways with couched embroidery thread. I quilted additional streets in each ‘neighborhood’ area. I think the back looks really cool. 
On Saturday, I attended a joint sew-in of the Vancouver and Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guilds. Several of us participated in a Scrappy Trip block challenge (have you been bitten by that bug yet?). I’ve been watching the craziness on Flickr and other blogs, but this was the first block I made. We drew numbers to see which of us would take the blocks home. I didn’t win, but a quilt based on this concept is definitely on my to-do list.
I spent most of my time at the sew-in working on my Madrona Road quilt. I’ve long wanted to make a Lone Star quilt, and recently I’ve seen several tutorials for Scrappy Lone Star quilts. I knew that would be perfect for the Madrona Road. This is the tutorial I’m using. Right now the background you see is my design wall (a beige-taupe color). I was stuck on what color background to use – gray seemed to cold. I wanted something a bit warmer, but didn’t want to overpower the prints. Fortunately, Spool of Thread carries the full line of Kona solids. I decided Kona Straw (very similar to the color of my design wall) will look great with the Modrona Road prints. I’m aiming to get it finished before the January 31st deadline.
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.
Terry Aske Art Quilt Studio
