Palate cleanser

I struggled with what to make for my next quilt.  It was an odd time for me as we prepared for a 2 week trip to Hawaii, with hip surgery following that trip.  Sometimes, knowing what and where to start are a little hard; there's so many, many ideas floating around in my head.  That's when a palate cleanser is needed.  You know what I'm talking about.... something that you can make in your sleep, something to do with your scraps, playing around with techniques with no goal in mind, or making some quilts for charity and thinking about someone else in need.

I pulled out my scrap bin of greens and blues and started sewing them together.  It's a bit of a messy process as you can see in the picture.  I didn't use a foundation; just sewed them together and flipped and pressed as I went along.

I sewed enough pieces together to make 9" blocks that resembled crazy quilt blocks or modified log cabin blocks.

Then I cut 9" blocks out of dark navy blue fabrics and sewed these together to make half-square triangles.  I pressed the seams towards the blue fabric.  The blocks were trimmed to 8-1/2".  I was lucky that I got that size since I started with 9".  I think the trick was to sew a scant 1/4" seam on either side of the center line, so that I got the maximum size in the end. I put up  them on my design wall and played around with a setting.

This top would only be 40" x 56", which is a little small for a lap or twin sized quilt.  Even my husband said that it looked a little small when he poked his head into my studio.  

I thought about doing something else besides making more scrap blocks, but anything that I thought of just didn't float my boat.  So,  I went back to the sewing machine and made more scrap blocks.  I only had to make 5 more in order to get 10 more finished half-square triangle blocks.  Anyway, here are the blocks on the wall all ready to sew together.    It should end up at 48" x 64".  But I headed to Hawaii for a couple of weeks, so you'll have to stay tuned to see the finished top, or maybe even the finished quilt. 

I hope you like it so far! 

small lady quilts revisited

After teaching the class on chop and drop applique, one of my students showed me how she decorated the left side of her quilts with motifs.  It got me thinking about doing some kind of embellishment on 2 of the quilts that I had finished.

I have been pinning things on Pinterest for years, and some of the things that I save are humorous quotes.  I pulled out a couple of them, typed them up in Word and enlarged them in the font and size that I needed for these quilts.  Then I picked a background color that went with the quilts.  The Word document was then printed on HQ printables photo paper, which is prepared for printing fabric that goes through the inkjet printer.  After the ink dried, I adhered steam-a-seam to the back and fused the sayings onto the left side of my art quilts.

A friend came to visit and suggested that I add black buttonhole stitching to the outside of the sayings to permanently adhere them to the quilts.  I used stitch #1309 on the Bernina, and set the width to 1.6 and the length to 2.3.  It was just the perfect finish to these quilts.

Here's a close up of the stitching:

And the finished, revised quilts

I hope you like how I revisited these pieces with ideas from 2 other quilters!  I certainly do!

5 Ladies - part 7 and Final - "My Alter Egos"

This is the final post about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt. It was quilted both on my longarm and on my domestic sewing machine.   I thought a little bit about adding some handwork, but then decided that it was done, so I added the facing, sleeve, and label.  

It is 55" W  42-1/2" H.  I named it "My Alter Egos". 

I hope you like it!

5 ladies art quilt - part 6

This is a continuation of 5 previous posts about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt.

Once the figures were all placed on the background, I inspected for areas that needed some tweaking.  I could see that the figure on the far left had some issues with the neck and head placement.  And some of the legs disappeared against the background.  I fixed those areas and got everything pinned to the background instead of the design wall and then fused down the faces, shoes and hands.   It took a day to get everything sewn down and then I sketched in more facial features and thread sketched the hair and some more of the facial features.

I had enough background material to use for the backing and got it all layered up and ready to quilt.  Here it is part way done with the quilting.

I found it pretty easy to quilt the background by just following the dots in the fabric.

I hope you like it so far.

Exhibit at the Gray Space Gallery in the Downtown Vancouver library

The 10 Garden lady art quilts will be featured in a solo show at the Gray Space Gallery in the downtown Vancouver library for the months of September and October.  This is the last time all 10 quilts in the series will be exhibited together.  They're all for sale and up for grabs to anyone that wants to purchase them.  

I enjoyed making the series of quilts over a 2 year period.  And I'm thrilled that they are in their 2nd gallery showing.  I hope you get a chance to go and see them!  Here are 3 of them.

The Vancouver Library is located at 901 C Street, Vancouver, WA  98660.  Hours are generally 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.  The gallery is split between 2 of the upper floors.

5 ladies art quilt - part 5

This is a continuation of 4 previous posts about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt.

Once all of the pieces were pinned up on the design pattern, it was time to move them to the real background.  This is always a tricky step, because the pattern is what keeps all the pieces in the right place.  What I did was to pin the pattern just at the top and then lift and cut out one of the figures at a time.  It was easy to place the ladies in the right spot by just filling in the hole.   Below is one lady already placed and he hole cut out for he second one.

Now, you can see that the 2nd lady has been placed in her corresponding hole.

Here is the 3rd lady cut out and placed.

And the 4th one.

Then the 5th one.

When they were all placed and pinned to the design wall and background, I cut away all of the paper pattern.

I hope you still like it so far!

Rusty Lady and Lady in Blue

I made a couple more class samples both during and after the Saturday workshop day.

One, I'm calling, "Rusty Lady", and the other, "Lady in Blue".

I had so much fun teaching other members of Clark County Quilters how to do chop and drop applique.  We were having so much fun that I totally forgot to take pictures of my class and their projects.  Gosh darn it.  I did get one sent to me later and someone else snapped a picture of me teaching the class.

Here is my student's piece.

And here the two that I made, all quilted and ready to show.

I hope you like them and let me know how I should display them.  Sew them together?  Add some floral interest?