Bits and Pieces that I'm working on

After all the dying activity abated, I've got back to working on several projects.

Dog Mat

I made a little quilt for the bottom of a doggy kennel for a friend from the band who plays sax.

 I thought the text strips would be like training a puppy with newspaper on the floor.  I did some quilting from Angela Walters book. (A signed copy, thank you very much)

I used the Mod Mosaic technique for one side, and the pick-up sticks technique for the other side.

Scrap Slabs

I made three slabs for the Calgary flood relief that Cheryl Arkinson is organizing.  She is here giving workshops and I was able to catch her trunkshow where she showed off her quilts from the Sunday Morning Quilts book.  I bought the book there and she signed it too.  The book is all about using your scraps.

She also debuted her new book, A Month of Sundays.  That book contains quilts, clothes, recipes and essays and it looks really good too.

I made a couple of fabric boxes to tame my scrap heap from her book, "Sunday Morning Quilts."  (A signed copy, too!)

 Here's one of my new cupboards with mainly solids - and the two fabric boxes for scraps - a blue one and a grey one.

Lake Winnipeg Beach Baby Quilts

I am making three suns to go on three baby quilts using a New York Beauty style block for the sun.  I drew out one that's really big, then tried using Illustrator to do one on the computer.  Something happened to my version of Illustrator, so I finally did it using FireWorks - a stripped down image editor that's really for web graphics and images.  I didn't like the 4 points per quadrant, so I made a 5 points per quadrant one that looks sunnier.

 The big one is the one we are going with, so now I gotta make 2 more.  The Kaffe Fassett fabric works great for these suns. There's also a clam and a bird for the front, then a bunch of fossils for the back. All times 3!

Single Girl Block

I also tried out a Single Girl block using my own home made templates.  I made an arc template and am improv piecing the arc, then cutting it to size using the template.  I'm too lazy to make a bunch that I can paper piece onto, which would probably work out easier.  Maybe I'll draw one up and photocopy it a bunch of times.

Trunk Show Part 5 - Small Quilts

Here's some odds and ends - small quilts that were tests of techniques or trial runs.

Face Quilts

I made a couple face quilts.  I had seen some like this on the internet and loved the simplicity and the big bold slabs of colour.

 I pieced in the lettering and love the "pokerface" expression.

This blue guy was without a back for a long time.  I made the back when we had a challenge to make a quilt that represents you - so I did my current hairstyle.

30's reproduction boxes

I love Kona solids.   Here I paired them up with 30's reproductions to make really simple blocks.  I like how the drop shadows give a great dimension to these ordinary blocks.  I made about 50 of these blocks, some with the solid on the outside, some with the solid on the inside.

 

Here's one for Katherine and a pillow for her sister Mollie.  They were next door neighbours.

And here one for Marissa, my Cousin's little girl

Notice I was still using tone on tone backgrounds here.  I hadn't fully embraced solids yet.

These are mini versions of a design by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr

I tried it in orange on white, all blues and this one, blue on yellow.  When the next niece or nephew comes along, I'll put a back on it and give it away.  The blues are all Kaffe Fassett prints and so are all but one of the orange fabrics.

 

I was working with my colour wheel trying out complementary, analogous and triads for the bars between the orange fabrics.  It turns out there are no rules - everything works.   I had fun with the backs, using up the rest of the Kaffe Fassett prints.

 Japanese Quilt

This is a little test I made with some Japanese prints.  My friend Hisayo told me I shouldn't have mixed the seasons - there are plum and cherry blossoms, which are fine, but I shouldn't have included the chrysanthemums.  They are from a different season.  I'm finding out that the mustard-gold colour goes great with everything.  The colour is Curry from the Kona solids line.  Terry Ashe from the VMQG has used it in several quilts she has shown at the guild meetings, I have to thank her for introducing me to it.

Beach Ball Quilt

 I decided I was going to master insetting circles, so I made some circles and tried several tutorials and found out you just have to cut accurately and sew an accurate 1/4 inch seem and it works fine.  Most wrinkles can get ironed out and quilted out.

I put together wedges, then cut them into an off centered circle.  Then cut a hole in the background fabric exactly 1in. in diameter less than the circle.  When you sew it together with a 1/4 in. seam it will fit.  Since the circles looked like beach balls, I made the back like a towel we had that we used at the beach.  The "wrinkles" are on purpose.  If there's ever a niece or nephew needing a quilt, I'll finish this one.

Music of the Planets quilt

This little quilt is inspired by one of Dan of the Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild. A friend of mine found recordings made by the Voyager Space Craft as it passed by the planets.  It's not just static, there's chords, sustained tones, pops, booms, cool rhythms and unexpected changes.  I quilted vibrating lines between the planet's paths on this quilt.  One day I'll figure out what colour to bind it in and will get it finished.  One day...

The blue planets are made of squares from my box of left-overs from other quilts.  The big circle was too big for the front, so I put half on front and half on the back.  I inset the blue circles into the orange circles, then inset those into the background.  I still haven't decided how to quilt the blue areas. 

Two variations on a Ringle and Kerr design

Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop
I went down to the Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop In June with two friends, Lawanda and Ross.  Lawanda won a prize in one of the 4 stores we got to, and picked a magazine, Spring 2010 Quilts and More from Better Homes and Gardens, because she liked the quilt on the cover.  Later when I was going through the magazine, I realized that the quilt on the cover is designed by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr, the authors of my favourite quilt book, the Modern Quilt Workshop.

Orange Variation
The quilt instructions are for a big queen size quilt, and I can never get ones that big quilted, so I halved all the dimensions and put together a quarter size quilt.  The quilt is designed to use big size prints, so even if each of my blocks was quarter sized, I used big Kaffe Fasset prints anyway.  I only used 4 patterned fabrics, 3 Kaffe Fasset, and the circle/dotted one that was actually designed for the Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop.  I was "auditioning" solids for the narrow separators and started with the orange in the middle rows (analogous).  Then I tried the green (triad), then the blue (complement).  I actually like them all, so I used them all.

Blue Variation
Then I found the quilt sore on Saltspring Island when I was there for a weekend visiting, and bought a stack of blue Kaffe Fasset fat quarters.  There was a bright pink Kona solid in the stack so I used that as the separator colour.  I had 7 different prints so there's one of each in each row.

I really like white as the background, so trying a blue is a stretch for me.

I have another stack of 12 rows with white separators that I thought I'd try on a yellow background.  I really like a blue and yellow combination - sort of French Provincial.  I used a little bit of the yellow for the binding on the orange quilt.

Backs
I just can't leave the back of my quilts unpieced, so here's what I did on these two.

The blue back is another Ringle and Kerr design.  The quilt on their site has 14 inch blocks, but I sized mine down to 8 inch blocks.  I cut most of the left over fabric into 2 inch strips then sewed them together into a long strip.  I sewed 4 inch white strips on both sides of the 2 inch strip, then cut it across into 8.5 inch squares. Fast and easy and not much planning, just let the coloured strips randomize themselves!

For the orange back, I used the left over fabric from the front.  I added white to the selvage edges to make the fabric the width of the front.  Then I sewed them  together with a strip of colour between each.  That looked too blah, so I sliced it vertically twice, rotated the centre piece 180 degrees, then sewed it back together with strips of colour between them again.