Modern Quilts

Let The Trumpets Sound

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I must say when I began this Drunkard’s Path quilt I didn’t anticipate the chorus of trumpets that would emerge!

I had decided to give this quilt idea a go (from a photo I’d seen) because I liked it’s modern quality – two fabrics and stark lines.

Trumpets – Front Of Quilt

39 Drunkard’s Path blocks – the rest is filler to create the overall layout.

Working on this quilt has let me consider all kinds of possibilities for using Drunkard’s Path in unusual layouts. I picked up a panel the other day which I think might turn into something quite interesting were I to cut it into squares and use both the Pie and “L” elements contrasting the dark and light tones.

Hoffman Skyline – Multi

I didn’t buy a full panel – the fabric is 106″ wide! – I bought a metre (40″) which is most of the pattern. Use the multi-coloured buildings cut out as, say, the Pie pieces with some kind of blender – a grunge of some colour – as the “L” pieces with the fillers done using fabric from the panel – I think I’d end up with something quite unusual. That might be my next project… (after a couple of garments).

Trumpets, Back Of Quilt

The back of “Let The Trumpets Sound” – I made several more Drunkard’s Path blocks using the leftover pale turquoise Pie pieces with different leftover red fabrics to complete the blocks. I didn’t use all the blocks I made – I still have four tucked away in a box now. Never know when I might find a use for an already constructed 6″ block, right?

I decided to do a hidden binding for this quilt to emphasize it’s modern qualities. I matched the colours in the binding on the back so it blended in precisely with the back assembly. I like how that turned out – you have to look closely to see the binding on the back.

Charm Quilt – Finished

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Finished the quilt last evening. When all the quilting in the hoop was done (it went reasonably quickly), I added the binding. I didn’t want much of a binding but in the end I finished with a 1/4″ binding on the front (3/4″ binding on the back) which had to be hand-sewn. I never do hand sewing if I can help it – but in this case the binding on the back was wider than on the top and I didn’t want a machine stitched seam next to the binding; so hand sewing it was.

Charm Quilt – Finished

I’m pleased with how the back turned out, as well. I was able to use the column of HST I’d taken from the panel on the front, added a few sashing pieces that evoked the colour pallet of the front with a slightly darker grey fabric.

Finished Charm Quilt Back

This could be a quilt top on its own!

Now, I’d intended working on this quilt as a demonstration for the “quilt in the hoop” class – it was cancelled a week ago, the gals couldn’t make it yesterday, so far only three are able to come next week. I just kept working on the quilt and I finished it. So for the class (whenever it happens) I’ll work on my sample muslin piece. For now, I’ll be back to working on the bargello table runner.

Nine Shades Of Grey – Completed

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Finished this quilt a couple of days ago, now. Although a very simple quilt, I find it’s simplicity appealing and I’m happy with how it turned out. I particularly like how the two narrow borders frame the inner panel bringing out the darker greys and highlighting the golden colours in the batik fabrics.

Nine Shades Of Grey

I’m happy with the back as well. Finding a way to use the small half-square triangles along with the cornered blocks was satisfying.

NIne Shades Of Grey – Quilt Back

I elected to bind the quilt in the same fabric as the wide outer border so the binding would be relatively invisible. I also didn’t use a decorative stitch to apply the front of the binding – I just straight stitched it down – harder to do accurately than working with the decorative stitch which is more forgiving! But I didn’t want to introduce any distracting detail into the overall simplicity of the quilt.

Nine Shades Of Grey

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Here is one of the quilt tops I worked on during the weekend. I stitched and trimmed 95 blocks – this layout uses 88 (8 x 11 will stitch up to 44″ x 60.5″ with a 3″ border I will end up at 50″ x 66.5″ – a good lap size quilt).

Nine Shades Of Grey

The point of the quilt top was to assemble something fairly simple that I could do in that sewing retreat setting without having to focus carefully on what I was doing. I had five bright batik fabrics to allocate to ten blocks each of the nine grey fabrics – I thought that would give me plenty of latitude. Was I wrong.

Distributing the grey tones wasn’t so difficult but the batik triangles in the corners? Very difficult to get them to work out – still not completely happy with how some of the adjacent triangles are from the same fabric! I’m leaving the blocks on the floor for now so I can walk past it and think about how to exchange some of them.

Then I decided I would insert a single block of each batik fabric with a different grey corner – the question became where to put them and how to align them. I’ve decided the array looks best with the grey corners facing in the opposite direction to the bright corners.

That’s it for today. I see what I think in the daylight tomorrow.

Modern Flowers – II

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Just finished. I’ve spent the past four days stitching the edges of the appliqué – the leaves and flowers, and creating embroidered flower centres. It’s been slow but steady. Whereas I did a narrow quilt border on the previous version of this idea (flowers on a black/white background), this time I took the flowers to the border edge and decided to do a hidden binding so the cropping of the flowers was easily evident.

Modern Flowers – II (Wishing For Spring)

This version of the idea is brighter than the previous one. I could continue with variations on this theme, but I’m going to stop here. This is wall art piece #9 – I’m aiming to have 12 pieces completed by the end of July – so I’m getting close. On to other ideas.

Last week I cut a set of “watercolour” jellyroll strips in to 2″ blocks – I want to try doing some kind of “watercolour quilt” with the fabric squares – a wall art piece, actually, not a lap/throw quilt. I thought this would be a quick and easy project – not so sure now that I’m trying to lay out the squares in some kind of dark/light array.

There are quite a few people who are doing these quilts – there are any number of tutorials on how to make one. They use a special fusible gridded interfacing – not going to bother with that – I am planning on simply sewing the blocks together in rows based on the layout I create on my cutting table. Also many versions of these quilts use the “watercolour” piecing as a background for something else – I may end up doing something like that but I have no idea what the top appliqué elements might be at this point. Anyway, this is the next project I’m going to try – let you know how I get along!

Double Convergence – Completed

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Just Finished. Today I completed quilting the remaining wide border, created an embroidered label, attached a narrow hidden binding to the quilt edge and hand stitched it into place.

Double Convergence – Quilt Top

The quilt is relatively small – 45″ square – which means it could actually be a wall hanging or a smallish lap quilt/throw. I decided to finish with a hidden binding because I didn’t want to complicate the quilt top any further. The wide border mirrored the double convergence and that felt like it was enough.

Double Convergence – Quilt Back

I used the fabric from the back for the hidden biding – stitched it on the front using a 1/4″ seam, then folded the 1 1/4″ strip under leaving me with a 1/2″ binding. You don’t really see the invisible binding unless you’re up close and looking carefully.

A bit of explanation about the quilt back – I needed a narrowish insert to accommodate the quilt width. I had a small amount of ombre fabric left and decided a strip of ombre as it was worked perfectly – no piecing, except to extend the length of the strip. There’s enough interest in the fabric itself that it accents well.

That’s quilt #7 since the end of August – I’m planning one more for the Parrsboro show this coming summer. Now to turn to wall art pieces – I have lots of ideas, I just have to begin creating!

 

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Double Convergence Quilt Top

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I’ve spent days looking at the double convergence panel not knowing how to finish it. I finally decided to add a narrow dark border, then complete the outer border using the four fabrics I used to construct the convergence.

I thought about a second narrow border bringing in another contrasting colour but I couldn’t find anything in my stash (and my stash is large) that felt right – red? pink? green? yellow? I had a grey batik with small yellow circles, that was as close as I could get to something that possibly worked. In the end I elected to stick with just the four fabrics.

Double Convergence Quilt Top With Borders

To construct the outer border, I was limited by the amount of grey and turquoise fabric I had left. I was able to find some of the ombre online and ordered a yard (at great expense!) so I had options with constructing the ombre corners but I had barely enough grey and turquoise left to make a 6″ border.

I thought about adding a bit of dark fabric where two fabrics met, but when I photographed the layout I didn’t like how that broke up the unity of the border.

Top Layout With Joins Marked

I also thought about using a mitre to make the joins but I didn’t have enough fabric to make that work.

Looking at the finished panel I’ve decided to finish the quilt with a hidden binding – I have no more grey batik or turquoise and I think using the ombre for a traditional quilt binding will just add unnecessary detail.

When completed the quilt will be a rather small throw/lap quilt or a largish wall hanging – it’s ended up an awkward size, but I can’t see any way of extending the “length” that wouldn’t mess up the symmetry, so this is it.

Possibilities #7

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Finally finished this convergence quilt yesterday. Got the binding done and label sewn on. Two sets of mistakes that went together – totally unexpected and unplanned. It definitely worked out quite well.

Finished Quilt Top

I’m happy I took out the narrow vertical turquoise stripe – it disrupted the left-right movement of the convergence flow. Replacing it with the narrow turquoise border was a good decision. I didn’t have enough grey crackle fabric to complete the binding so I incorporated a turquoise piece I trimmed from the backing after I’d finished quilting. I ran out of binding as I was coming to the join and inserted another small piece of turquoise to complete it. I like where that insert landed.

Fiished Quilt Back

To create the quilt back I set up a “jellyroll race” using leftover bits of fabric from the top, with a narrow strip inserted and two unequal sashing strips. Using the turquoise for the backing sets up an interesting flow from top of quilt to the back. There’s enough turquoise in the top that when you flip the quilt over you retain the connection between top and bottom.

The ombre fabric I ordered online arrived Friday so I will now work on completing the double conversion quilt featuring the ombre fabric.

But before I can get to that, I’m have to work on the thread painting wall hanging.

Detail – Thread Painting Floral Wall Art

I started the thread painting last Tuesday as part of a class I’m teaching (I stitched the dark green parts of this and another leaf although you can’t really see what I’ve done in the photo). We meet again coming Tuesday and I have made no progress on the stitching work. Nevertheless I need to move on to framing the piece so I’ve trimmed it, I’m in the process of adding a bit more batting to the edges to allow enough background to balance the floral arrangement and provide support for the borders. Then I have to set up the marking (using Friction heat erasable pens) so I can apply the borders – have to get that process well underway before Tuesday – not completed, but started so I can demonstrate how I add borders. The framing of the piece won’t hinder the massive amount of thread painting I will still have to do.

Possibilities #5

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Yesterday I removed the turquoise vertical strip and resembled the quilt top panel – much happier with the flow across the two sets of strips – they’re not interrupted with that contrasting element that really didn’t work well.

Hodgepodge with turquoise vertical stripe removed, sashing and borders added

The colour was right, though, and I used the turquoise fabric to sash the panel – the narrow contrasting sashing provides closure to the panel and brightens it.

The border – that was a challenge – I had several grey fabrics in my stash – I tried all of them. At one point I thought one of the taupier ones would look OK (I used two different Grunge taupe fabrics in the brightly coloured strips) but in the end I used wide strips from the grey Crackle (Moda) I’ve had in the stash for a while (I thought the fabric pattern was long out of stock but I just found more in a wide range of colours online so I bought two yards to replace the piece I’ve used).

Now on to a backing panel with a wide strip of some kind. How I choose to quilt this will also make a difference to how the final quilt will look – quilting design, thread colour should help tie the elements together as well.

Possibilities #4

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Today, I looked at the two sets of discarded strips and decided they could go together and kind of work. The miscut ombre strips needed lengthening to match the pieced strips – I used my last bit of ombre (from the dark brown end) to extend them. I sewed the two sets of strips together this afternoon. The width proportions were the same so I put them together  wide/narrow, wide/narrow until they were assembled.

Hodgepodge

I don’t like the turquoise strip in there, however – I might actually take it out because it interrupts the flow of the strips in both directions. I’ve ended up with a panel 36″ x 43″ – reasonable proportion for a throw/lap quilt with narrow sashing and wide borders added.

Tomorrow I will take out the turquoise strip, then see what I can do about a narrow sashing and a wide border to get me to around 48″-50″ in width, 56″-58″ in length.

And here I am quilting when I intended to be making pants – the corduroy is sitting on the dresser waiting for me to get to it; the pattern is there, too. I wanted to get both pair done by the end of the holidays – nope! It’s quilts instead. Gotta follow the inspiration.

Oh, and I never work on more than a single project at a time, and here I am deeply engrossed in two.