Quilt finish for charity

New finish Blue & White Wedges quilt 

 Recently I finished this new blue and white quilt of wedges sewn in long strips which were left over from a Dresden Plate quilt called Blue Diamonds I made almost three years ago.

Blue Diamonds quilt 2012-2013 a Dresden Plate set on point and hand quilted.

 I made too many wedges for my Dresden plates because I wanted lots to choose from when I was building them. I cut and cut six inch wedges and then put them together as I needed them to mix and match my dark and light plates. When I was done making two large bed sized tops I set the remaining wedges aside. At some point these wedges got sewn together into long alternating blue/white strips that laid in a pile of left over blocks for quite a long time. Opportunity this year to make a quilt for the homeless arose at the guild as it always does in Sept. We have 100 quilts for Kids as a challenge and I had a pal to help me assemble these into a quilt at our all day guild sewing day. Virgil, I met him over the summer, quilts but doesn't have much experience he says. We joined forces at the guild meeting and with his help we put it together in a top that measures about 40 x 64 inches. A nap quilt for a toddler or a throw for some one feeling the season chill. Our quilts this year are going to the Washington DC homeless family shelter at the old DC General Hospital I believe. Once the top was all sewn together and nicely pressed I was lucky to find a nice piece of blue and white tartan in a box of donated fabric large enough to cover the back. I brought the blue tartan yardage and our top home to finish with batting quilting and all the usual parts.

Since this quilt is going to be a donation, I did the straight line quilting on my featherweight Singer sewing machine so it was faster than by hand. I did a diagonal design to echo the wedges. Then on a visit to Manassas I whipped up a personalized label for the back and added the solid blue to bind the edges. 

front, back and label 

Long walks are part of my aspiration every day. It is good to get away from the sewing and in Manassas while I was working on the blue and white wedge's label this image of a local lake surrounded by white asters and blue sky and white clouds becomes a photo equivalent to the blue and white quilt. Guess I didn't get that far away from the project on my long walk seeing the same colors by the lake. 

Blue Hungarian Fabric Quilt Finish

In 2013 the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the national mall hosted a big beautiful display of Hungarian crafts and folk arts for two weeks. Keith and I went and enjoyed it about four days out of the ten that they were there performing for our education and entertainment. My younger sister is married to a great guy who's parents both immigrated from Hungry during the Soviet era to the midwest. Elizabeth his mom was so excited that this cultural event was coming and wanted to go so badly but her poor health at the time made the trip here to Washington DC in the heat of July impossible. That's why I went and dug into the events so fully to collect pictures and memories to send to her and to learn more for myself. I remember it as being an excellent cultural experience. One full of so many different crafts and songs and dances unlike most countries we see at the festival in DC there is a very strong youth cultural education model in Hungry. They have folk dancing clubs and all this great fun stuff for teens to do that American teens don't have.  Earlier this year Elizabeth sent me a surprise package in the mail. Inside were a couple yards of  beautiful hand made blue Hungarian fabric, printed with a tiny dot design of white flowers and strings of dots. 

Elizabeth's blue and white Hungarian fabric gift.

It is handmade in Hungry and I had seen the same type of fabric being made at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It is a resist process where the crafts people, after making a hand made wire block, dip the block in a resist type waxy substance and hand print it onto white fabric. Then the whole length of fabric is dyed blue and the resist holds out the dye everywhere it was printed on the white fabric. Voila, a blue field covered with delicate white designs. The woman presenting the process said it takes her husband about three months to make a new block from wood and copper wires, seen in the first photo below. They use a waxy resist which is turquoise colored in this picture below and you can see the print of turquoise wax mixture on the white fabric as well as the results after the fabric is dyed blue. 

The color of blue is a delicious rich blue and was seen around the festival in a few different places. This handsome young folk dancer was wearing a big shirt and wide legged trousers with a heavy wool coat of a shepherd and later a woolen suit jacket when he danced for us... he sweat up a storm in the heat of Washington DC July afternoon. I was very inspired by all the young performers who were the best in Hungry after winning a "Hungry's most talented folk performers" TV show contest of 2012. They were amazing. Getting some of this beautiful fabric was a dream come true so I set to work making a new quilt soon as I figured out a block I wanted to try.  

 I finished making it from the fabric sent by Elizabeth Poti in a modern jumbled pinwheel design. It's 46 inches square now after washing. I called it Blue Hungarian as I expect Elizabeth is a little blue being so far from her home culture, living in Iowa. I will be displaying my quilts for sale at the Middleburg Arts Project gallery December 5th-30th, 2014 Reception is Friday Dec. 12th 5-8 PM and the following day  "meet the artists" event Saturday Dec. 13th from 2-5 PM. The gallery will also have work by two other very different quilting artists I am looking forward to meeting.

Blue Hungarian is 46x46 inches all cotton hand quilted white and blue #8 pearl cotton. 

back of the quilt showing the diamond quilting and the huge pinwheel in blue and white.

Shirts become quilts

I have always considered recycling a noble idea and in quilt making it adds a layer of emotional connection to the projects if you have fabrics from special people in your life. It isn't always so easy to get it but the opportunity crystallized when I heard my pals Tom and Peter had a bag full old shirts waiting to be donated to Good Will. I offered to take them to donate, in exchange for a chance to select out what I wanted for quilting. They accepted the deal and I picked up the bags. I had them a good while before I was ready to use them.

shirts cut and hung for the first time on felt design wall

Then began my struggles of finding the way to use these many varied sports shirts. They are almost all made from heavier fabrics than is not normally used for quilt piecing. The colors are varied and each one has a nice hand. I began by cutting off the cuffs, collars and heavy seams leaving all the shirt shaped parts and pieces. Then I started hanging various pieces of them on the felt design wall. That was a surprise, none of these fabrics would cling to the felt, I had to pin every corner to make them stay up.

Still it was interesting to see the shapes that were part of the old shirt construction. I looked and studied and fiddled with them, moving them a little less than usual due to the hanging problems. Then an idea came to me: perhaps it was time to try a curved seam using the curve of the sleeves where they meet the shoulder. It wasn't difficult to sew a long gentle curve. The curves became a new design element, a new way of seeing the surface gently softened but it added a challenge beyond the curved seams. Later piecing in the angled intersections of the stacked triangle shapes. It was sort of like a very wide Y seam but with four pieces at four angles. 

With some help from my resident advisor, we decided to remove the plaids and work with the solid colored shirts and one striped fabric from one of my father's flannel shirts that was a color theme match. Burgundy, creamy white and the stripes needed a little more fabric to finish.  I went hunting at Salvation Army Store where I found a huge steel blue-gray linen shirt. It worked into the design as a break between the matched sets of burgundy and white sleeves.

experimenting with the new curves on the design wall. This shows where four angled seams came together to fill in the missing triangles in the center. 

Once the blue-gray shirt and stripes were inserted between the white and burgundy the insert looked too wide. Eventually I was inspired to add an S curve and flip the center section to break up the wide area of blue and stripes. Using a home made paper pattern for my big S curve so both sides of the S were the same curve shape when they were flipped helped keep the curves equal.

paper pattern used to match cutting the long S curves

The curve was a nice addition to the open space that was a little boring before I flipped that section and it added more curves to expand the original design idea. Some of the remaining shirt fabric made a long string of traditional "sawtooth" using blue and burgundy and white edged with cheddar cloth from a vintage line of quilters fabric that happens to match a tiny line of gold running through the striped shirt fabric. Making sawtooth strips for the first time was a delight. Even using linen and moleskin fabric to make them, if a little more difficult, wasn't a barrier to my joy as it came together.

before adding the S curve in the center section and with the sawtooth strips. 

Initially the plan was to use these sawtooth strips as part of the curved top design. Then again with some help from my resident advisor I realized that the sawtooth strips powerful graphic design overwhelmed the soft curves. He casually suggested to take those out and use them for another quilt. After a night's sleep on the idea, I loved it. Realizing I can make a second quilt that is totally different using some of the same fabrics felt like an exciting complement to this quilt. I continued the curvy top by adding stripes of all the colors in the 4 shirts around the edges of the central sleeve area to finish  this quilt I now call the Wave Shirt Quilt.   

quilting with ecru white perle cotton #8 which I then repeated with navy blue in between the white lines. 

The same big S paper pattern worked nicely to mark the curved quilting lines across the entire quilt with my favorite Hera tool.  It's filled with a nice warm wool batting and the back is a soft burgundy cotton sheeting. The label on the back is hand embroidery with white perle cotton on the blue-gray linen patch. It is bound with solid navy blue cotton.

I hand quilted alternating lines of ecru white and navy blue perle cotton #8

Label embroidery patch

completed Wave Shirt Quilt 

detail of blue and white quilting 

finished Wave Shirt Quilt 46" x 60"

Stay tuned for the Sawtooth Shirt Quilt reveal coming soon. 

wonky star quilts

Wonky Stars and Stripes quilt 

The past month I have been finishing two small quilts. Today I completed them both and they are ready to reveal. Wonky stars are a modern version of a traditional 8 pointed star block redesigned to be a little more relaxed than traditional stars. In a wonky star the points of the stars are at random angles willy nilly as it suits the quilter. I enjoyed making these blocks once I understood how.  I made more than I needed for a DC Modern Quilt Guild block raffle. Our theme was navy blue and white with a bold color. I tried different mixes of prints and solids and decided I liked both but not mixed up as much as I like them grouped together. So then I began making blocks for my own small quilt roughly 4 x 5 feet. I couldn't wait two months for the raffle. I made a total of 40 stars for these two quilts and had five more that I entered into the guild's raffle.

finished wonky stars and stripes quilt 

back showing the stripes 

Wonky Stars and Stripes label 

As I worked on the strong solid colors I experimented with some softer prints and found a new color way with a big yardage of pink plaid fabric my friend and former neighbor Kiley Bednar gifted last summer. It's a salmon pink plaid with little lines of pale blue, lavender, green and white, very soft and more feminine than the high contrast solid navy blue and white quilt. For the pink star quilt I saved up some wool batting to use and decided to hand quilt using a star and diamond pattern.

Hand embroidered label detailing wool and cotton content

Wonky Pink Stars quilt 5 x 4 feet

the back shows two stripes and the hand quilting pattern of stars and diamonds. 

Thanks to former guild president, Katie Blakesley who selected this block and the raffle color theme. She gave us a guide to colors and a link to a tutorial that made it all very easy and fun. Her new book is coming out next month and we are all looking forward to getting copies of our own. She presented her new book about revisiting traditional quilts in a modern way and she spent two years working and writing and quilting with two co-authors. Her presentation in late October to the guild about writing her book on quilting was very interesting and clearly not as easy as one would like to day dream it should be. 

Improvising again

Burgundy and navy blue were my theme colors for this quilt, sized 45x68 inches. 

I began with a small scrap of diamonds I had left over from the "add a border swap"  building a bigger block using those two colors. I liked the result and kept building new  blocks, just short of a full bed sized quilt because this project was getting a washable wool batting. Never having used wool batting before, I thought it wise to begin with a small quilt.

my first block with the burgundy diamonds left over from add a border swap

 I was working on this during the week of the big Navy Yard massacre and I missed picking up my "Orange Explains It" quilt  from Anacostia Arts Center because police hand closed the 11th Street bridge and I didn't know any other way to get over to that neighborhood. I was feeling sad most of that week due to the tragedy but I had my quilt to kept me busy. I was very excited about the developing blocks and didn't dwell on the news coverage after the first day. It was nice that the arts center asked to keep the quilt for a while longer. I was happy to lend it to them for a extra long display.

back is navy and white plaid with burgundy and navy blue Perle #8 quilting 

crossing lines of burgundy and navy blue Perle #8 quilting 

Burgundy and Blue finished throw sized quilt 45x 68 inches

This past Saturday I enjoyed sharing my two finished quilts with my friends at the Washington DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting at the library in Rose Hill, Virginia a subdivision in Alexandria. The meeting was only a block from my Uncle Bernard and Aunt Betty's old home. I knew the neighborhood from our holiday visits during the 1970s. It hasn't changed much excepting a nice new Indian restaurant in the shopping center across the street where I ate with Aubrie one of the local quilters from the group who recommended it as a new hot dining spot. We were surprised to find her newly wed husband and his pal, a civil war re-enactor there and shared a table with them. They were curious what we do at guild meetings and we tried to explain it but if you are curious you can read a after meeting round up on our blog and see photos of my guild's quilting work from our show and tell here:    http://tinyurl.com/qa24mr9

These guys both hand sew their own uniforms for the recreations of various civil war military units they portray at the mock battles both Northern and Southern units! Sounds like fun to me but I don't know much about military history nor guns so I am happy to focus on domestic quilting history in my sewing. I was surprised to hear they thought they knew a tailor in Colonial Williamsburg who led me and some of my family on a tour of a 18th century costume exhibition there about nine years ago. It's a small world.

Blue Diamonds spread out

One of my readers asked to see the entire Blue Diamonds quilt spread out. I am still trying to find a solution to photographing my big quilts. I want to take pictures like artworks are presented, in a straight forward way but in the mean time here are a few lawn shots I took of it last week while visiting in Manassas. For the full quilt story see the previous post here: http://orangeexplainsitall.blogspot.com/2013/10/blue-diamonds-quilt.html

The backing is all white on white print with the three colors of yarn quilting 

Blue Diamonds Quilt

Earlier this week I finished quilting this blue and white Dresden plate quilt, laid out in a diamond format. Living in Washington DC near the Hope Diamond, that jewel came to mind when I was searching for a title. These Dresden plate blocks were originally based on my great grandmother's quilt of the late1800's. It was around the house since I was a kid and gets special treatment because it is a unique family heirloom. Stuffed with loose lambs wool it has lots of hand quilting to hold it all in place and fascinating patches of old dress fabrics making up each plate.

Great Grandmother's Dresden Plate quilt 

 I found some tips on YouTube about how to make the Dresden plate blocks and then I went full steam ahead producing them last year in blues and whites. When a few dozen of them were finished I realized I wasn't ready to quilt them, and set them aside until I felt more confidant about quilting. This past two months I began the process of hand quilting this the smaller of two tops with contrasting and matched Perle threads. This fits a double bed and the next one is even bigger which is laid out like great grandmother's version in square format.

Folded back you can see some of the quilting and the navy blue calico binding

Title block embroidered on blue oxford shirt cloth

The one challenge this quilt gave me were the bias cut sides. They stretched and made it difficult to keep it flat and even especially on the long sides. The blue and white polka dot framing helped some but it wasn't a completely flat finish. I wonder if anyone has tips for keeping this large diamond layout squared up?  I would love to hear them in comments below so I can use the diamond layout again with less struggle.