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.

Mod Mosaic Workshop

I've been asked by other Lower Mainland quilt guilds to give workshops.  Actually, I've been asked to give trunk shows to 4 quilt guilds around Vancouver, and out of them was asked to do two workshops.  The Ridge Meadows Quilt Guild asked me to do a Mod Mosaic workshop on a Saturday.

Here's the blocks they created.

 

Then we tried some layout and background colour ideas.

 

These blocks were really bright and kid-like so the bright background works well.

 

These blocks were made from a fabric-by-the-pound sale.  How come I never find find good scraps like this?

 

These blocks are made from some really high quality flannel.  I don't think we actually decided on a background fabric.  On the lower left of the big block you can see where the grout fabric was one of the flannels, but didn't really stand out enough, so she switched to the cream.

 

This red and turquoise conbo really looks good against a tomato red.

 

Although these blocks are red and gray, they really popped on this orangy red fabric.

 

These brown and blue blocks will become a bag with the medium blue filling in between.

Elizabeth Hartman's Mod Mosaic technique can be found on her blog (Oh Fransson) by following the link.  I find that most people don't use scraps, so start by cutting one strip from each fabric you will be using.  I cut strips 3 inches wide, 3.5 inches wide, 4 inches, 4.5 inches and 5 inches.  So each fabric's strip is a different width.  These strips are wide enough so you can cut across it to produce blocks from 2 inch to 8 inch to use.  As soon as you use up a strip, cut another one, but at a different width from the one you just finished.

This was a really fun workshop to do and the process is surprisingly complicated.  I had no idea how many blocks each person would be able to make in a day, so was relieved that everyone ended up with 4 or more.  The biggest challenge was for the "planners" who tried to design each block.  I kept trying to get them to loosen up and just grab any strip to add to the block.

The other trick to this technique, is remembering to sew the grout strip between each piece.  And once you sew a grout strip on to a piece, you are committed to sewing onto the other side of the grout before adding elsewhere to the block.  If you don't you end up with 2 grout lines together...

... or a piece with no grout.

Pot Holder Exchange

Some members of the VMQG are involved in a pot-holder exchange with the FVMQG (Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild (our sister group), so I've been working on mine over the weekend.  Of the whole list of likes and dislikes of my partner, I chose to work with "Modern", and her favourite colours, "Lime" and "Orange".

If you are the one who said her favourite colours are Lime and Orange, stop reading now and wait till your mail arrives in December.

 You'd think that I have lots of lime left over from my Crazy Nine Patch Lattice quilt and the big HST one, but nope, pretty much all used up.  Here's what I finally found.

What is lime green anyways?  I ended up with some scraps and pieces of green - lime, olive, chartreuse - all greens that are more on the yellow end of the colour wheel.  I found several scraps with a dull orange so made some "mod mosaic" blocks at 10x10 inch square.  The sashing is a very bright chartreuse that looks great.

I wanted something more traditional for the backs. I had bought a really cheap template for drunkard's path last month in Hamilton, so I tried it out and made the largest one available and it turned out fine, so I make a bunch more and put together a big orange circle for the backs.

With the left over green quarter circles from the backgrounds, I made smaller blocks and quickly made several coasters to loosen me up for the final go at the pot-holders.  For the coasters, I didn't want to bother with a binding, so I did the turn inside out technique and then top stitched around the edge and did a quick double arc of stitching around the pieces.

Back to the pot-holders, I put the pot-holder quilt sandwich together - back, batting, insul-bright, top - then did some straight line quilting on each quarter of the blocks.  It really shrunk with the quilting, so I squared it down to 9.5 inches, then sewed on the chartreuse binding.  For these thick potholders, I used 2.5 inch binding, and found that sewing it exactly 1/4 inch from the edge worked out perfect for wrapping it around to the back.  The other trick I tried is not to iron the binding in half first.  I just folded it over and kept all the raw edges together as I sewed it on.  That way when I folded it around to the back, the inside edge wrap-around could be slightly less than the outside edge.

I put a loop up on a corner and then hand sewed the binding down.  One last ironing and it's all ready to show off at the guild meeting, then into the mail.

I've been a little lazy

I've been a little lazy blogging, but not quilting!

Back in August, I entered 3 quilts in the Ladner Car and Quilt Show.

This mod mosaic one is the one the guild members made the blocks as one of the monthly challenges and I put together and quilted.  I am now an award winning quilter!

It won the people's choice for Modern/Contemporary Quilt.  The Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild was very pleased that a collaborative effort won a prize.  They were also a little surprized! since they didn't know I had entered it in the show.

Vancouver Modern Quilt Challenge - Mod Mosaic

First of all, most of the pictures in this post are from the amazing Sonja at artisania.

At the January meeting of the VMQG, I showed off the two pillows I made for Hisayo.  She's been waiting patiently for months for me to finally get these done.

DSC_0260, a photo by sonjaartisania on Flickr.

The first one was really fiddly to make as I cut 2 inch strips, put one inch strips of yellow on either side, then lopped the top and bottom at an angle, sewed yellow strips on the bottom, then squared them up at an angle so they were all tippy.  The end product sort of looked like bamboo as there were lots of joints and sections.
The matching pillow - but different pattern -  is from Oh Fransson!'s tutorial for the Mod Mosaic Floor Pillow. 

DSC_0104, a photo by sonjaartisania on Flickr.

It's a great technique for loosening up and improvising, so I worked it up as the challenge for the VMQG. Our VP Louise had donated a huge bag of fabric she had cut for a quilt that she hadn't put together, so I thought it was a perfect use for all her great red and black fabric.

Here's what came back over the next 2 months!  Wow!

DSC_0540, a photo by sonjaartisania on Flickr.

I took them all home and have put them together.  It reminds me of what might be the street plan for the old town of Zanzibar.  I recall wondering around for ever trying to find the guest house and feeling really lucky each time I did find it. 

These are my pictures now (you can tell by the abysmal quality I'm not in the same league as Sonja).

 

It's all sandwiched and pin based and ready to quilt.  I've got two weeks till the next guild meeting so there's not much time to decide how to quilt it.

 

The back was inspired by a couple extra blocks that were much different from the rest.  I made a bunch more blocks once I had a plan.  The bottom area is for the members of the VMQG to sign in so we have a roster of members for the year 2011.  Not everyone did a block, but I think everyone should sign it.

Here's a last picture to show how I put the back together.  I laid it out so it looked good, then I shifted the blocks a bit so I could get some big blocks with straight lines across the quilt.  That's the yellow lines.  The green dashed lines show the segments in each of the big blocks.