Quilts

Not Your Grandmother’s Quilts!

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21 Quilts & Wall Pieces [Click on photos to view enlargements]

Today I hung my quilts and wall pieces at the Art Labs Studios & Gallery in Parrsboro. I didn’t hang everything I took with me, opting for the “less is more” principle. Nevertheless, I’m delighted with how the show looks.

I spent the afternoon as “artist in residence” to chat with folks who dropped by for the “opening” – there were probably a dozen visitors who stopped to look, half of whom actually wanted to learn more about the works themselves. Lovely conversations with each of them.

This year, I wanted to show the new quilts produced since last summer as well as a “retrospective” of what I refer to as “the portrait” pieces – the wall art based on my photos where I print elements of a photo on fabric and embed them in a pieced background. The initial reaction is always that you’re looking at a photo and then only when you step closer do you see you’re viewing a textile/thread piece.

The show hangs until late in the afternoon of August 18 in Parrsboro NS.

121 Main Street, Parrsboro NS

If you’re considering a day trip to Parrsboro make sure to stop for lunch at The Pier / Harbourview Restaurant in Parrsboro. Ruby and I went there just to have their lobster roll – it won’t disappoint you!

Lobster Roll (after taking a big bite!)

A nicely toasted (buttered) hotdog bun FILLED with chunks of fresh lobster seated on some lettuce (OK, so there wasn’t any chopped celery, but we didn’t complain because there was so much lobster). We added a single kids’ portion of fries which we shared (just enough for two without having to feel guilty about eating them).

We started with the deep fried battered dill pickle – yes you got that right – a Pier Restaurant invention, I think. Crazy but surprisingly tasty. Ruby had never had anything like it so I ordered some. Comes with tartar sauce for dipping.

Deep Fried Battered Dill Pickle

On our way back to the city we stopped at “The Egg Lady” – to pick up 5 dozen fresh eggs for a friend of mine. Laid today, they’ll last her for several weeks.

The Egg Lady

We didn’t stop at Five Islands Lighthouse Park today, or go up the hill to That Dutchman Cheese Farm. We did stop at Masstown Market for chili for a light supper on the way home to round out the day. (You could have a terrific order of Fish and Chips at their Fish and Chip Boat if you can handle more fried food).

In spite of some rain, we had a lovely day.

Art Lab Showing 2019

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Drove yesterday to Parrsboro, NS to set up a show of 22 quilts and wall art pieces which will hang in the Art Lab Studio and Gallery until August 30.

I’m always amazed at what my work looks like when hanging together like this – I can see just how much I accomplished in a year.

The reaction of the visitors yesterday at the opening was encouraging – people were interested in how I constructed the wall art, particularly those pieces with photo elements printed on cotton.

It seems the favourite pieces, they got a lot of attention, are the modern “flower” appliqué hangings. I thought the “banner” pieces might generate interest but the flowers seem to be winning out.

Until I saw the show hanging, I hadn’t realized how much turquoise featured in my work this year. It shows up in quite a few of the quilts and hangings as a highlight colour.

Another Quilt To A New Home

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I gave away another quilt this morning. It’s going to a new home and I’m happy for it. I know it will be used well and appreciated.

Quilt Top – Convergence Quilt

I need to draw up a list of friends who would appreciate receiving a quilt and give more away. I have three which I’ve put out to use myself and some of the rest in that closet need to move on.

I’ve given away about half of the quilts I’ve produced since I began quilting 15 years ago. If I have them hanging around too long I grow attached to them and it becomes harder to send them on their way. I like keeping particular ones on hand as examples for classes but I have photos of every quilt I have made (front and back) and, you know what, that will have to be enough.

 

Moved On

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My sister and niece were here from Toronto last weekend to visit the boys attending summer camp not far from the city. I was able to spend time with each of them at the apartment and to my delight two quilts have found a new home.

My niece fell in love with this “Double Vision” quilt which I completed in 2017. She has new light furniture in her family room and this quilt will be a bright addition to the room.

Finished Quilt Top

My sister came over a few days later – I showed her the quilt I wanted her to take back to Toronto for my niece. She loved the red. I mentioned there were more red quilts in my closet. In the end she chose the Shadow Quilt I made in 2016 to complement her new grey furniture. I love how the red blocks seem to float above the background – that, of course, is the effect of having a drop shadow on an image, it creates the illusion of depth.

That gives me room to make two new quilts. I have to go through what I have in the collection and see if I can find homes for a few more of them.

Layer Cake Quilt II

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Just finished the central panel of the Layer Cake Quilt. I had two challenges with this quilt – the number of small pieces (408) and making the fabric I had on hand go as far as made sense in the context of this quilt design. Total number of fabric pieces in this 4 x 6 quilt – 600! Given the fiddlely work with the 1 1/2″ white squares I’m surprised that my points work as well as they do! Not 100% perfect, but close enough that when the final quilt is quilted the slight imperfections are not going to be noticeable.

Center Panel

Now I need borders. I want to introduce a contrasting colour. I have some 4 1/2″ batik strips that bring out the rusty/beige colours in the central panel,  but I think a wide border in that fabric will be too strong – I’m thinking a 1/2″ – 3/4″ border will be enough (the question is whether to piece the strip in or to create a narrow flange). The outside wide border will be the white Zen Chic fabric used in the panel itself. My problem is that I have, at the moment, just four 4 1/2″ strips of that fabric! My local shop has none left! I’ve ordered some from the Fat Quarter Shop online (they had what I needed, my other usual sources didn’t) but the fabric hasn’t yet arrived. So I’m on hold for the moment.

I guess I can fill in the waiting time by going through my fabric stash and pulling out something for my next quilt….

Grey & Yellow II

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Here’s where I left off yesterday – with the darker, busier yellows in the center – too heavy, not enough gradation from center outward.

Where I left off Saturday

Where I left off Saturday

So I began playing some more. The first thing I did was add two more rows to the bottom. It just so happened I cut twice as many blocks (the size of charms – 5″ squares) of both the greys and the yellows than I needed so I had lots of squares to work with.

Next, I dug out an even lighter grey from the stash to use in the centre. I matched it up with some of the stronger yellows. Then worked my way through the other blocks swapping out those with the most detail in the pattern for more clearly yellow fabrics.

So here’s where I am today:

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Grey & Yellow – v. IV

The yellow is more uniform – I suppose I could have done this with just 7 shades of yellow fabric from a strong yellow to pale – just didn’t think of it! (The yellow gradient likely would have worked better – oh well, this will also be interesting once it’s completely sewn and quilted.)

I also think the inner very light grey “square/diamond” could use something as an accent – I tried a circle using the darkest grey fabric (neah…), next I found a flower on a dark grey background, fussy cut it and auditioned it (neah…), for the moment I’m placeholding with the golden circle with dots – but looking at the photo I think “circle” is probably the wrong shape – I still have one square left of that fabric – I think I’ll give that a try as soon as I have the top completely sewn together.

So far today I’ve managed to assemble the bottom border and five rows – hope to do the rest tomorrow.

Convergence Quilt #1 – Top Completed

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So here is the top completed. The original convergence block is the center of the quilt, with triangles matching one of the predominant colours on each side. Those triangles were difficult – in the end, I laid the sewn convergence block on the floor, laid paper under one side, then drew a triangle – the base of the triangle was the length of the block side, 45° angles to form what is an isosceles triangle! Where the two sides met created the apex of the triangle (which I made sure was a 90° angle). (I remembered to add seam allowances to each side of the triangle.)

I didn’t have enough fabric left to create the triangles in a single piece although overall there was enough fabric – if I made two smaller right angled triangles, stitched them together on what would become the diagonal of the overall block. Then I had enough width to accommodate the edge of the convergence block.

Once the triangles were attached, I added a 3/4″ sashing piece for stability – the sides of the triangles on the outer edge were all on the bias and needed to have something attached that would retain the overall shape. I cut the sashing on the length of fabric (since I had just enough length of the Kona solid I used). Then added a 4 1/4″ border from a fifth fabric that I’d bought as part of the set with the other four fabrics.

Now I have a 54″ square top. I need to think about what to do with the second side (back). I bought another 1/2 m. of each fabric, as well as 2 1/2 m of the dots fabric for the back. Flying geese? Half square triangles? Strips? Crazy quilt? Lots of possibilities. I’ll wake up with something in mind, I’m sure. That’s how these things seem to work themselves out for me.

Convergence Quilt #1

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Yesterday I drove to Parrsboro to retrieve my quilts from the Art Lab Exhibit. No sales – wasn’t expecting any. Lots of nice comments in the guest book, though.

When we were hanging the quilts three weeks ago, Michael asked me if I’d ever tried a quilt using the Fibonacci Sequence of numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…). I never have but I googled Fibonacci Quilts and found a gazillion examples!

Turns out that modern quilters began playing with this idea quite some time ago. One of the earlier quilters to explore intersecting graduated, spliced fabrics in two directions was Ricky Tims. He used a slightly different sequence of numbers but the effect is similar. His book: Ricky Tims Convergence Quilts offers a variety of ways to play with this idea.

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Book Cover

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Example from the book

Quilts called out to me today. I put the shirt/jacket to one side (I have to take the back princess seams apart and reduce the fullness of the side back panel to smooth out the fit of the back of the garment – I’ll get back to it likely tomorrow because once I solve the back fit problem the assembly of the garment will go very quickly!).

I went to my fabric stash and chose four complementary fabrics – two with strong patterns, two more muted. I had 1/2 m of each fabric – I cut 20″ blocks from each, pressed and starched them. Lined them up, trimmed them, sewed two together, folded them right sides together, then cut the following strips from each pair: 1″, 1.5″ 2″, 3″, 4.5″, and 7.25″ (that used up most of the width of the fabrics).

I interleaved the strips, then stitched each set together giving me two graduated panels. Here they are with the strips assembled in one direction:

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The second step is to cut the panels again, with the fabric rotated 90°. I laid the two pieced fabrics right sides together, strips horizontal, then cut vertical strips again, using the same dimensions, then interleaved them once more. This produces a single panel with the four colour blocks converging into one another:

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My “convergence” panel #1

My finished panel is 34″ x 34″ – now I need to do something with borders to extend the quilt top so I have a lap size quilt (~ 45″ x 60″). That means asymmetrical border elements so I end up with a top that is longer than wide. I’m thinking I might want to use this panel on point, making the strips diagonals… something like this example below – I’d want to offset the panel somewhat more than this one so I could then add more asymmetrical borders to the enlarged square. 

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Convergence block on point…

I’ll work on this some more tomorrow. Tims calls these “mystery quilts” – he’s right! It’s hard to anticipate how the spliced, interleaved fabrics will look. I’m happy with this first attempt – I’ll want to play with it some more using strong coloured fabrics with more muted patterns to see how that might turn out. I can see I might be engaged in this cutting, sewing, cutting, sewing for quite a while – there’s lots to learn here… 

Shadow Quilt – Quilt Back

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I started this insert for the Shadow Quilt back by cutting 2 1/2″ strips of the fabrics used on the top and sewing two strips together. At that point I wasn’t sure what I would do with the double strips. I ended up cutting equilateral triangles, sewing pairs into diamonds, then compiling four diamonds into a larger one.


This large diamond gave me 9″ for the start of what I intend to be a 14″ strip.

I aligned five large diamonds end to end: 75″ – long enough for the quilt back but I wanted to fill in where the points touched. I added single small diamonds on each side in the space. That still left ten half-diamonds needed on each side. The easiest way to figure out the dimensions for these half-diamonds was to place a sheet of paper beneath the diamond layout and draw in the missing half-diamond (I added a 1/4″ to each angled side to be sure there would be adequate seam allowances).


I did the same for the 1/4 diamonds needed to complete the ends as well.

Now diamonds are pieced in diagonal lines. Because I was improvising as I went along, I already had the large 4-part diamonds sewn which complicated the process somewhat. In the end I laid out the pieces and assembled the strip section by section.

Width so far: 9 1/4″ – so I’ve cut strips for each side:


The borders: 1″ red, 1/2″ dark grey, 2 1/2″ light grey on the outside. The strip will be inserted into the darker grey fabric with vertical pale lines and dots.

I’ll add the borders tomorrow.

Charms Quilt II

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Just finished – the second charms quilt. The goal here was to use up more of the leftover charms from the first charms quilt. I had to add some strong batik 5″ blocks to those I was able to select from the charms packs because I didn’t have enough strong coloured ones otherwise. The strips came from my scrap boxes I didn’t need a lot of fabric (I chose all darker colours) – 1″ x 5″ strips  (70 in all). The blocks were easy to assemble, deciding on an arrangement took a couple of days, first auditioning all 140 on the floor then tweaking the placement over a few days.IMG_7297

The big decision was whether to border the quilt in the off white fabric or to use the darker grey – I obviously chose the darker grey. Glad I did although the quilt would also be interesting with the background fabric as border – in which case, looking at the quilt now, I can see if I had done that I could have stuck one or two triangles in the border along with a couple of strips! Didn’t think of that at the time. Something to keep in mind for my next quilt.

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The back uses some more charm pieces to make “flying geese” blocks. My pinterest feed had instructions for making the blocks – since I’d never tried them I thought this a good opportunity to have a go at some. In the photo you can’t really see the teal colour in the backing fabric but there is some. That was the reason I decided to border the strip with a strong turquoise. It does bring out blue in the backing.

My backing was wide enough that I was able to salvage almost enough fabric for 2 1/2″ binding strips (I had a bit of backing leftover which I also used and incorporated one orphan strip to complete the binding. It blends rather well with the whole).

That’s two completed quilts in four weeks. Now on to a quilted jacket/coat that I want to take to San Francisco in a couple of weeks.