Art Quilts

Circle Quilt #5

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Circle Quilt #5
Quilt Back

I actually started this quilt in the middle of May; I got sewing on it on June 18 (a month ago). I finished it last night (label and hand sewn hidden binding)!

Now I’m ready for the Art Labs show in Parrsboro, Aug 10-30.

I should be able to hang four throw quilts, including this one. I’m calling my contribution to this 2-person exhibit “Circles”.

Circle Quilt #5
Circles On Pink
Drunkard’s Path #5
Planets and Moons

In reserve I have two others:

Skyline #3
Study in Blue / Green

There’s also a narrow wall in the gallery where I may get to hang this small piece

Circles #4

I have time to create one more project – this one potentially will be a table runner, although if it gets hung at all it will be hung horizontally. Approximate dimensions – 45″ x 15″. An assembled background of five 9″ blocks in much lighter grey fabrics than Circles #4, each block with an embedded whole circle finished with appliqué embroidered circles, wherever.

Circles #4 is the only time I have tried embedding an entire circle in a background. I will give it another go just to get better at the technique.

I have until August 5 or so to complete the piece – that should be enough time.

Better get going!

Finally Underway Again

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I got accepted to show at Art Labs in Parrsboro from August 10-30 this summer. I’m sharing gallery space with William Forrestall – an interesting juxtaposition. My textiles with his drawing/painting.

That means I should have wall space for four throw size quilts, possibly one small wall piece. I’ve decided to focus on “Circles” – I have three circle quilts in my stash and enough time to create a fourth.

I started working on this new quilt three/four weeks ago – I came across a photo of minimalist square quilt of overlapping circles against a light background with a lot of open background. The image appealed to me so I drafted a rectangular version on graph paper, pulled a bunch of contrasting batik fabrics from my stash, numbered them, then distributed the numbers on the circle elements in my diagram. I counted the number of solid blocks, the number of drunkard’s path blocks using the background, the number of drunkard’s path where two circles/fabrics overlapped.

Then I started cutting the pieces I needed – a 9 block x 11 block quilt top (5 1/2″ finished blocks) – 99 blocks in all. I still had background fabric to cut when I went to Toronto for a week. I got back last Thursday – finished the cutting and over the weekend I began laying out a pair of rows carefully following my diagram!

Yesterday, I started sewing, today, I finished the 22nd block – I now have two rows – those with grey diamonds on white. I had decided to have a stripe in my background – the remaining background will be constructed using a grey/white crackle print which blends with the grey diamonds in tone so it will take a careful observer to notice the stripe in the background. I don’t think it’s going to stand out.

When I finished the 22 blocks in the stripe, I laid out the blocks on either side – they’re now ready for stitching.

I discovered I was having a small problem with my circles not being precisely circular! I began with the four blocks at the bottom of the photo. I’m leaving them alone for now, but I have a hunch I will take them apart and reconstruct them – I figured out how to piece the drunkard’s path more precisely as I went along.

I was surprised by the lack of circularity – it’s not a problem I’ve encountered before but it happened this time because I’d cut my pieces large, intending to trim them, and that affected the curvature of the seam. I lost the full arc where the four blocks would have joined after I trimmed the finished blocks. As I continued, I trimmed the pieces before stitching them together, consequently my later blocks today are more obviously circular. That purple “circle” at the bottom is definitely going to bother me – I have enough fabric to redo those 4 blocks.

With four columns stitched I will have 4/9ths of the quilt top completed. I’m anticipating it will take about a week to assemble the 99 blocks I need for the quilt top.

I haven’t even begun thinking about a back yet.

An Update

I shared a photo of a gorgeous red kantha bedspread several weeks ago and described what I was hoping to make with it.

Last week a friend came for lunch and we were looking at the various projects I had sitting around.

I had the kantha laid out and she fell in love with it!

I gave it to her – she’ll use it herself or pass it on to her daughter!

That coat/jacket I was going to make – crossed off my list!

Thank goodness! It was beginning to feel like an albatross. I’m happy to be rid of it.

Nightfall

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Quilt Top
Quilt Back

I finally finished this quilt this past week. It turned out to be a lot more work than I anticipated. I thought I was making a simple quilt block – square-in-square but that didn’t work out because of the colour flow I was after. In the end I had to construct each triangle element from scratch! Which took a lot longer.

The back took a lot of “walking around” time – I just couldn’t settle on an idea. One Tuesday evening when my friend Neha was here sewing with me (that’s another story) I made up five square in square blocks from leftover bits – that broke the log-jam and I was able to sort out a 15″ strip to insert in the backing fabric.

Then there was the matter of layout – I sewed most of the dark blocks together to begin with but then had to disassemble the partial panel because the colour flow wasn’t working. To get a decent colour flow, I ended up pinning triangles, and trapezoid pieces on top of the developing panel on a design wall I improvised in order to get a clearer colour placement. Then I had to take blocks apart to insert the new required piece.

I put the layers together. I created two possible block patterns using my out-of-date Pfaff Premier 2+ software (it still runs on my Mac but not for much longer I’m expecting – then I don’t know what I’ll do, because the cost of a subscription for the software on MySewnet is crazy expensive!):

Block 1
Block 2

I chose Block 1 after doing a test run with some muslin and batting. I wanted the simplicity of the curves in the first design; I will use the Block 2 design on another quilt sometime.

Because the blocks were placed in the quilt on-point, I had to quilt on the diagonal. When all 44 blocks were filled in, I still had 18 triangle half blocks along the sides with 2 quarter blocks at one end to complete the quilt.

I also changed thread colour to match the colour gradation – I stitched the dark corner with an almost black variegated thread, the top left corner I quilted using white; in between I used three different grey variegated threads to blend with the changing colour. I used a light variegated grey on the back throughout.

I used the off-cuts from the backing for binding – which allowed me to match up the design on the back. I finally added a label.

I finished yesterday by hand basting a hanging sleeve at the top so I can display the quilt. (I still have 8 quilts that need hanging sleeves – gotta get those done over the weekend.)

I’m just about ready for the Craig Gallery Show:

If you’re in the vicinity do drop in!

Convergence 4 – Completed

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Quilt Front
Quilt Back
Quilting Detail

I finally finished the quilt yesterday. It’s taken days to decide what to do within the narrow turquoise border. It was just a tad too wide to leave unquilted but too narrow to mirror the quilt block embroidery. I finally set up a half block I thought would work and got it done. Adding the hidden binding took little time (including the mitred corners). I hand stitched it down last night.

With the two previous Convergence quilts in my collection I will have three possible quilts to show together next summer. I may not use all of them, that depends on what I manage to create between now and then.

I’m happy with the appliqué work – the edge stitching is barely noticeable, you have to look very closely to see it. I like how it extends the bright colours to the the bottom right of the quilt without hitting you in the face, leaving the upper right corner the unadorned turquoise.

Appliqué Detail

I’m also pleased that my extending the square into a rectangle worked. I might play with that again sometime.

Now onto a bunch of unfinished projects sitting in my studio needing attention. First the fleece pants for my friend Joan; next the Kantha jacket remodelling for my friend Marlene, third the stack of six unfinished zippered bags from nearly a year ago – I did two last week, I’ll finish the rest up in a few days. There’s an Heirloom sewing workshop on my calendar but I don’t think enough people have signed up for that – I still want to use the panel I made a month or so ago to complete a nightgown, so that’s also on my ToDo list.

When those projects are completed I want to move on to some new wall art – I’ve just lined up a second summer showing – this one in Truro – I’ll need six or so pieces to display. They won’t be hung, they have to be attached to something firm in order to “stand” on a wide shelf – either some foamcore board or thin plywood. I have no idea how I’ll do that yet, but I’ll figure something out.

Lots to get done. Better get moving.

Night Sky

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Night Sky – Quilt Top

Here is the completed Night Sky quilt. I finished quilting it yesterday – it wasn’t a simple job because I’d decided to quilt on the diagonal within the flow of the strips which meant I had to keep pinning fabric strips to the edges so I could hoop the pinned layers.

Quilting Detail

I set up a swirl embroidery in two columns, used a variegated thread which blended with the various colours of the strips. I started at the strip end, changing to navy thread when I reached the dark fabric (often in the middle of a quilting run). A fiddly job, to say the least. However, I didn’t want the light thread to interfere with the speckled effect of the navy background. In some sections I had no choice but to carry the light thread into the navy but I hauled out my handy permanent navy marker and darkened the stitching. That worked well.

This was an edge-to-edge design which actually matched up very nicely – I could successfully place the next design and have it line up with the ends of the previous one. The joins are barely noticeable – I can pick out a few but most are perfect alignments.

Night Sky – Quilt Back

I widened the backing by creating a panel from scraps leftover from the Poppy Field quilt inserting a long batik strip of a rather wild palm leaf batik. In the photo it looks black but it’s much more colourful than that with purples, pale greens, pinks which blend with the other small batik samples.

My goal with this quilt was to showcase the beautiful fabrics in the curated set from the jellyroll. In the end I did have to add a few other strips on order to have enough to make the quilt long enough. Finished size: 47″ x 60″ – a good lap size; great for a wall hanging on a large wall!

Re-Vision

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Reworked Quilt Top

I was suddenly awake at 7:00 this morning (I normally wake at 8:00). Got out of bed and went to work (before going to the pool at 8:45 as always on a Friday morning).

First, I removed the narrow pumpkin sashing from the two “straight” sides. Then I carefully unstitched the three navy bits in the bottom right corner and replaced each with fabric that blended with the main strip in each location. Now there is no jarring bits of navy in that corner.

So, from “Poppy Field 2”, I can name this piece “Night Sky” which brings out the golden speckle in the navy fabric and implies a city scape below.

I think I’m happier with that. Next on to coming up with an idea for piecing the back.

Fish

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Fish 4 & 3 – Finished

For now I have the finished “Fish” pieces 4 & 3 hanging on the closet door. That’s it, I don’t plan on doing any more of these. They’ll go in the closet along with the other “skinny quilts” – I may take them to Parrsboro for the summer exhibit there, we’ll see when I start pulling work from the closet closer to the end of July.

One friend commented she’d put small bubbles coming to the surface – I did think about that for a moment as I was finishing the stitching on Fish 4 – but in the end I left the fish swimming peacefully among the seaweed.

Now back to the partially assembled quilt top. Really!

Corner Filled In

Fish 4

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I wasn’t intending to carry on with the “fish” but I’m stuck with the quilt I started so I went to work on another “fish” piece.

Fish #4

Because I’d cut bindings from the leftover piece of purple ombre, the leftover piece was a bit shorter than I wanted it to be, so I added some batik to the dark bottom end of the purple and filled in with seaweed-like shapes.

Not so many fish this time, they’re more spaced out, with one behind the seaweed (which meant I had to stitch it in place before fusing the seaweed to the panel. The other fish are just laying in place for now – I don’t know precisely where I will put them, I’ll know that after thread painting the seaweed elements.

I worked away at my machine yesterday, edge stitching the seaweed then adding three seaweed embroideries for texture. Late last evening, I fused the remaining fish in place.

Seaweed stitched

Next will be to edge stitch the remaining fish and add an eye to each. Again, I think I’m not going to do any background stitching, I like the water-like flow in the ombre print and don’t want to interfere with it.

OK. This really is the last of the fish pieces. REALLY.

Fish 3

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Against The Stream #2

I taught a class this week on “Skinny Quilts/Wall Banners” – on constructing simple, fast and easy quilted fabric art pieces. I’d worked on two much more complex pieces recently.

Sky / Sand / Sea
Blue Flowers

I wanted something simple to show the women in the class. I wanted whatever they tackled to be pieced/stitched in a day. Hence the “Fish”.

The night before class, I pulled the ombre pieces I had in my stash (from a Ryan McKenna kit I’d bought but never used five or more years ago), chose the purple one because it was an uncut 1/2 yd piece and cut an 11 1/2″ piece WOF. Next I gathered together the last of the “fish” scraps I’d saved from the Double Vision quilt – A Study in Blue and Green I’d made in 2019.

Quilt Top – Double Vision 2019

I positioned a dozen fish on the ombre fabric (they already had fusible web on the back), pressed them into position, cut a piece of batting and took it to class along with eight other banners I have in my closet so the gals could see a range of possible appliqué work.

Yesterday, I edged stitched the fish and added an eye to each. I thought about embroidering some seaweed at the bottom of the panel but the ombre fabric has a soothing “water” movement to the pattern and I decided that rather than embellish the background, I’d leave well enough alone.

I sewed on a hidden binding and added a backing muslin this morning, pinning the binding in place. I still have to add a hanging sleeve and hand stitch the binding in place but the hanging is now complete.

The women managed to piece a background (as I had done on the two banners above), cut out appliqués, fuse them in place (we discussed matters like colour, value, complexity of pattern, etc when choosing both the background and appliqué fabrics), then began the edge stitching.

I usually do this class as a two day affair but we were doing it on a single day. Had it been a two day class, I’d have had the gals practice edge stitching on curves but there wasn’t time so they went at it on their banner pieces. One had an open toed foot, luckily we were able to find another in the shop for the second machine – what a difference being able to see where your needle is in relation to the appliqué fabric! It takes a bit of practice to get the eye/hand/foot coordination to sew accurately at the fabric edge. Then the issue of editing the various decorative stitches to get a suitable width/length so the stitching shows, but doesn’t dominate the work, arose. Stitch selection and editing takes practice and judgement as well. We didn’t have time to develop a stitch sampler with notations – that would have required another couple of hours – we went with what was expedient.

The gals made significant headway and their technique improved significantly as they went along. Toward the end of the afternoon we stopped and examined how I’d done the finishing work on my textile pieces. I’ve sent them the directions for completing their wall hangings. Now it’s up to them. I’ve asked for photos of the completed work.

That’s the last of my “fish”; I still have a bag full of circles in many sizes waiting to be used.

Skinny Quilt I – Fish
Fish #2

Gathering No Moss – In Progress

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1/2 Done

I have just finished the 15th block for the Gathering No Moss (Kaffe Fassett) quilt. That’s half way. The block, by the way, is called a “rolling stone” – hence Fassett’s choice of name for the quilt.

Once people figured out the “quilt along” on Facebook (a “private” group for those who purchased the quilt kit) was mostly about us commenting on (and sharing photos of) our progress, the traffic has died down. I had decided to purchase the kit and join the quilt-along because I thought Fassett would discuss his decision-making regarding fabric design and choices for the quilt in some depth. Doesn’t appear to be the case. Had I realized that, I likely would have just deconstructed the quilt from the photo and done it in some colour set from fabrics I had in my stash and could pick up from The Woolworks in Mahone Bay. I wouldn’t have bought the kit.

Oh, well, I won’t do this another time. I have a greater sense of satisfaction when I’ve worked out how to construct a quilt from a photo and chosen my own fabrics, as I did with the Escher quilt. That was a real challenge and I was very pleased with the outcome. Here, although the quilt block is an easy one, it is fiddly – the four corners take time to construct – add one triangle, press, add the opposite triangle, press, add a side triangle, press, add final triangle, press – and hope you’re close enough to square that they will assemble with the rest of the block without too much distortion. But overall, there isn’t much challenge to the quilt once you figure out how to construct the block. In this case, I chose to change the block size, which required some testing out to make sure my pieces would match up, and I’ve changed some of the colour selections, but it’s still the “Gathering No Moss” quilt. Far less challenging than most of the quilting I’m used to doing.

Here is the panel at noon – with four rows now completed.

2/3 Finished

This time I worked on an entire row at the same time doing what’s called “chain piecing” – taking great pains to keep the elements in the order I’d planned on them having! At the bottom, second block from the right – not sure about this one. I want that centre where it is but the large blue and white dotted fabrics together are rather loud. Given the symmetry I set up, that pairing was bound to happen since I had five light and five dark fabrics.

Enough for today. On to other tasks.