See Me and My Trunk Show in Person!

Tooting my own horn

The Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild was contacted by TAGOR, Textile Arts Guild of Richmond, to see if anyone could give a talk about this "Modern Quilting" movement that's been going around.  I eagerly agreed and here's the updated announcement:

If anyone is in the lower mainland (for you non-BC residents, that means if you're in the Vancouver area.) feel free to come.  Well I guess not free, but do come.

While, I'm on a tangent, you know how Washington state talks about the Pacific Northwest? Does that make this part of Canada the Pacific Southwest?  Does it feel a bit like the US doesn't know anything exists above their border?  Any-how, lower mainland is pretty much all the communities along the mouth of the Fraser River up to Abbotsford, I guess.  That would be Vancouver, North Van, West Van, Burnaby, Port Moody, Coquitlam, PoCo, New Westminster, Maple Ridge, Mission, Richmond, Delta, Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford and White Rock. When I looked it up, I see Chilliwack isn't included and that's my hometown!  and if you go much further, you're beyond Hope.  Oops, Google says it includes Chilliwack and Hope too and actually contains 59% of BCs population!  You are all welcome to come.

I've started collecting quilts I made for others back for the talk, and of course will show lots of unfinished quilts, as that's pretty much my thing.  You know, make the quilt top, then put it away.  I was thinking of trying to get a couple more finished for the show, but, why?  I don't want to pressure myself when there's so much else happening and of course so many more quilt tops to start on too!

Do come as I'll be talking about some of the traits of modern quilts and how they are really variations of what we all do as traditional quilters.  If you are a traditional quilter, you may see a quilt of mine that you'd like to try for yourself.  The fun of alot of modern quilts is you don't need a pattern.  Just sketch out a sort of layout or plan, and then go for it.

There's going to be a lot of this if I don't get some "holders":

Check out the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild on Flickr for pictures of our members quilts

And there's a great group to help and encourage you - the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild and the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild.

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. 

Trunk Show Part 2 - More Traditional Quilts

Here's more of my trunk show.  I'm still in my traditional phase here in the mid 90s.

 In 1993 I quilt my job at the Royal Bank and cut up my dress shirts to make this quilt top. The yellow zig zag isn't working for me, so I'll take that off when I finish it - if I ever do.

All of 94 I traveled through Africa from Cairo to Capetown using local transportation. This quilt is my diary of the trip.

In each town I visited, I would go to the tailor shops and ask for scraps of fabric. Once I had a few blocks done, I could just show them what I wanted the fabric for. Most of the fabric I got for free. I embroidered the name of the country, the town, and the name of the fabric, or the type of outfit that would be made from the fabric.

I have enough blocks made for two more quilts.

Pickup Sticks Quilt - Tutorial

After I made the Christmas Tree Christmas Tree Skirt last December, I put together a quilt top I call Pickup Sticks that uses the same technique.  This is a great quilt to show off Kona solids and to use up left-over strips of solids you may have from other projects. 

Here's how to do it:

Start with a 12.5 inch square and cut it crosswise 2 or three times

Cut a whole bunch of 1 inch strips from a selection of solids.

Sew the strips to the top fabric of each cut.

 Iron them open.

Trim the 1 inch strips so they match the edges of the piece they are sewn to.

Sew the sections together overlapping the ends so the 1/4 inch seam hits the edges exactly where the two overlaps cross.

Some of the overlaps will be less than others depending on how angled your cross cut is.

Here's the block with the four sections sewn together.

Iron everything open.

Cut the block across one or two times.

Sew in the strips.

Trim the ends to match the sides of the block.

Sew the sections together and iron the seams open.

Trim the blocks down to square them up.  If your seams are less than 1/4 inch you may be able to trim them down to 12.5 inch squares.  If you're inconsistent like me, you may be trimming all your squares down to 12 inches.

Make 24 blocks, varying the amount of cross cuts and varying the colours of the 1 inch strips.  The most cuts I made on a block was 5, the least was 3.  Sew them all together to get a 4 foot by 6 foot quilt top.

My stack of UFOs

I'm the type of quilter that loves piecing, but hates quilting.  This means my stack of UFOs just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  Out of the 10 quilt tops that are laying around, I've got a stack of 8 that I'm determined to - I don't want to say finish so how about - crack, attack, make a stab at.  Here are 4 of them.

New Wave
This one is a "New Wave" quilt from Oh, Fransson!  I went literal and made it from Hawaiian prints I got in Hilo several years ago.  It's a poly blend so it sort of feels icky, which means I lost interest once I got it to this stage.  It's near the top of the stack to get done so I can post it in Oh Fransson!s flicker pool.

Crazy Nine Patch Lattice
The next on is also an Oh, Fransson! pattern too, the Crazy Nine Patch Lattice Quilt.  This one's in the greens that my big half square triangle quilt is done in. 

I sort of regret the light green squares in between the lattice.  I may end up replacing them with a darker colour or maybe a crisp white.  That pale green is a "lost opportunity".  I got that phrase from the "Modern Quilt Workshop" book by Ringle and Kerr.  They use that phrase about choosing your binding.  A safe or boring binding is a lost opportunity to make the quilt spectacular.

Sock Monkey Gallery
This one features some sock monkey print that I really like.   I framed the little fussy-cut monkeys in white, then added a wide floral mat then a blue or gray frame to make this quilt a gallery of finely framed monkeys.  Classy and silly.

VMQG Challenge 1

Challenge 1 from the VMQG
The last one for today is a challenge quilt from the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild.   The guild has been meeting for 2 months now and I volunteered to come up with a challenge for the first meeting.  I had bought other colours of the sock monkey fabric, so I fussy cut 40 monkeys and supplied a strip of white to frame it.

The challenge was to improv piece from your own stash around the monkey fabric to come up with a 12.5 inch wonky block.  We got 28 blocks back at the next monthly meeting with a promise of another 10 for the upcoming meeting.  We laid out all the blocks and tried to figure out how to divide them into sets that would go together.  We sent 12 ones that had a polka dot fabric theme with a guild member to put together.  I took the rest home and put this one together.  Since there was really no rhyme or reason to try to match the blocks, I ended up pulling out the 4 lightest coloured blocks and was left with all the darker ones.  I had used a drop shadow effect on a baby quilt and tried it out again.  I think it works well on the blocks that have a solid colour frame around it (bottom 2 rows), but sort of gets lost on the ones that have busy edges (top 2 rows).

photo by Sonja Callaghan

Once the rest of the blocks come in, I may put some on the back of this one if there's extras.

Here's the blocks and their creators from the August meeting of the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild.  I'm at the back left with two blocks.