add a border block quilt label update

In the previous article about the Add-A-Border block I used to improvise a nine patch quilt top I neglected to show the back and the label I embroidered for it in my post. Trying to update the post by adding more photos and text wasn't working this morning. I decided to just post these photos with this story all on it's own.
Ever since I began quilting the label at the end was the part I felt was very important and it was a challenge to make. I was influenced to do simple big embroidery letters by a lovely lady in England Claire O. known as Selfsewn who had a blog post a number of years ago on her blog about her own labels you can read it here: Selfsewn Label Tutorial that was totally inspiring. For me it was the answer to the problem.
 So thanks Claire! Here is my latest kind of simple label on AAB quilt project seen in my previous post.

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. 

Michael Miller Challenge = baby quilt

New Baby Quilt: 32 x 40 inches 

The Modern Quilt Guild was given small pieces of fabric from a Michael Miller quilt fabric company's line called Petal Pinwheels. Five fat eights came in each set to make something quilted for a chance to win a years worth of fabric samples from the company for 3 winners. I used four pieces of the fabric plus two solids in pale silver gray & Curacao turquoise and a yard of orange Michael Miller tiny gingham purchased in a quilt shop.

by hand my embroidered label 

The finished quilt is 40 x32 inches and perfect for a new baby. I used my singer feather weight to piece together randomly the challenge fabrics in 8 inch half square triangles with the solids and plaid as my base neutrals.  This spread the special fabric as far as possible while trying not to loose the big printed designs hopefully with a modern feel. Then for the last guild meeting I made a embroidery label and turned it into an oval.  I like how the curves look on all those hard edges and angles. The quilting is zig zag to match the 45º angles of the half square triangles set in alternating rows. Naturally I used the orange plaid as my binding to bring out the oranges in these patterns. 

the back used remainders for a simple construction and an oval label 

zig zag quilting detail 

Now I need to find a baby who needs a blanket! Maybe this one is to be donated for the 100 quilts for kids project that comes along later this year. 

log cabin quilt in orange and purple

detail of log cabin quilt top

This is my first log cabin quilt finish. It began as a mix of oranges, purples and neutral grays and whites in an attempt to create a "Modern Quilt" design after listening to a webinar from the Modern Quilt Guild. The speaker extolled the use of graphics and lots of open neutral space as modern. I found it's a great idea but I began with too many colors and neutrals to bring it off in this project. For today and for the first time this year I finished a quilt!

39"X 59" Log Cabin Quilt in orange and purple 

It is composed in orange and purple secondary dominate color theme with a full range of red to blue primaries mixed into the blocks to give it the look I like of many colors together. These blocks are 5 inches square with a center that is always orange laid out in the field and furrow diagonal that resembles the rows in a freshly plowed garden. There are two larger ten inch blocks to add a scale jump, my nod to the modern esthetic of playing with the traditional repeats. At least bright color is a hallmark of modern quilt design and they don't get much brighter than this palette. I imagine this is a modern traditional design but what ever it is labeled, it is done and finally ready to show. Having completed 12 or 13 quilts last year I feel like this year the first finished quilt is long over due.

red pearl cotton #8 hand quilted 

It has diagonal lines of fire red pearl cotton #8 hand quilting to hold the all wool batting and backing together. The binding is a collection of fabrics found in the quilt top alternating orange with purple. The backing is a print of black arrows and lavender circles on blueish purple background called "Homestead" ©2013 designed by Juliana Horner which I fell in love with some time ago and only rediscovered during the hunt for complementary backing.  

Juliana Horner "Homestead" arrow and circle printed backing

Finally the label is a block of purple surrounding orange with red pearl cotton #8  embroidered by hand and blanket stitched to the back corner. Finished and ready to hang vertically with a matching sleeve on the back it measures 39 x 59 inches. 

log cabin label hand embroidered in red on purple log cabin block

February fun

 February has been a very exciting month for me busy with all sorts of quilting and art gallery events and March continues to be full of events to anticipate with excitement and joy. The snows have been many and the cold extreme. Each time the weather gets bad it then clears up and goes back to our average weather and brings back hope that spring is really on the way.

I had the honor of putting my crazy quilt on display and explaining it at the National Museum of Women in the Arts with my pals from Wash. DC Modern Quilt Guild.

We spent a few hours talking and working our hand made quilt projects. I think we were all amazed at the antique English paper pieced blocks and quilt top that Jessie got from her friend up in Pennsylvania. It was fun to have one antique quilt to touch and examine up close in a museum full of quilts off limits to the hand. On a Friday afternoon I met my new guild friend Cassandra and led a tour and discussion of the quilts in our "Stitched" exhibition at the Anacostia Arts Center for a group of about 15 women from the local shelter. They were very excited to try some piecing and quilting in their creativity workshop after our talk. I also got a tour of their great new building and home down the street.

Cassandra snapped this shot of me explaining my Shoo fly Orange Slice quilt. I hardly knew how to make a Half Square Triangle block when I made that quilt and I was explaining how I managed to get it to work.

Next came an artist talk with my new friends in the Man on Man show at doris-mae also on the cusp of a big snow storm during a warm spell that changed over to icy cold that same night. Keith came along and helped set up chairs for the talk. John's beautiful embroidery figures seen here which led the talk towards pornography and how that inspires gay men. The women seemed very interested in how gays present figures that are more appealing to them than the men in straight pornography. We also talked about how hand work and women's work is part of our identity and how women like our grand mother's influenced us to appreciate the fine work as a proud creative expression.

My colorful autobiographical Yo yo quilt got lots of love ever since this show opened. It's full of pieces of fabric I collected over the forty odd years it took me to assemble all the little circles to make it big enough to cover my queen sized bed. I think it casts a magical spell on people who see it just like the one I saw in 1967 cast on me when visiting Mom and Dad's college friends Brad & Winnie Day in Connecticut. Too bad it takes so long to make them by hand. Maybe that is part of the magic in hand made quilts is the labor and love and care that goes into creating them imparts a certain mysterious magical aura for these works of art.

"add a border" totally tubular block is growing 

Hungarian blue pinwheels

I am encouraged by the responses to my quilting and after spending the first part of the year getting the two exhibitions mounted I have begun some new work. Elizabeth Poti sent me some fine hand made Hungarian fabric in a classic royal blue and white print that has me thinking pinwheels. I began working it up earlier this week. Then I went back to a block from the Add A Boarder group on flickr.com that I kept to work up into a medallion using orange and purple and magenta with touches of gray and green... and I have a few scrappy log cabin blocks I am playing with in oranges and purples too! So the quilt block piecing bug is back and the cold weather is just more inspiration to keep building warmth with fabrics. I am looking forward to a weekend lecture and pop up quilt fabric shop at the Anacostia Arts Center next Saturday. More info about that here on DC Modern Quilt Guild's blog.

Museum demonstrations Sunday Feb. 23rd,2014

Next weekend Sunday Feb. 23rd I have the honor to be invited to demonstrate some of my old fashioned quilting know how at the beautiful exhibition of antique quilts called Workt by Hand currently on display in the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Several quilters from the DC Modern quilt guild will be there from Noon until 5 PM answering questions about our work and the quilts in the show. It really is a magnificent exhibition from the vaults of the ancient Brooklyn NY Art Museum's holdings.
I am planning to bring along my Victorian style hand embroidered Crazy Quilt to show and tell by the real things! After all the modern work shown at the Anacostia Arts Center's Stitched exhibition and the doris-mae Man on Man show this is a real throw back for me and my projects. I began the Crazy Quilt inspired by a museum show or something that escapes me now back in 1999. I know my sister was going to work it up with me but found she is too busy with her pets and work to do embroidery. after a couple years work on the piecing and embroidery I discovered it makes my neck ache to the point of disability and it's laid in a box for a long time waiting for me to get the courage to put it all together.

There most of it is laid out on my bed. The work I have been doing first is to piece the big 30 inch or more blocks together. The hand work is all embroidery on all the seams. I have a rich red velvet to back this quilt once it is in one top section. Then I guess it will be tied to keep the front and back together. Usually there is no batting in a crazy quilt. Hope you can drop by and talk with us about hand quilting techniques and the beautiful work on display in the museum this Sunday.

Streak of Lightning Chartreuse

This is the biggest quilt I have completed. It's a full or double size measuring 90 x 75 inches.  I used a mix of new to old fabrics and tried to stay in the yellow green end of the spectrum. One of my limitations is a small apartment with a lot of furniture and stuff on the floors which makes spreading out a real challenge but I managed to get the living room floor clear enough to baste the layers together. The design is like my last quilt, a traditional block design with three bars alternating vertical to horizontal. Using chartreuse green solid with other green patterns on the top was fun and then for an added splash of excitement the reverse side is tangerine with scraps of green & white patchwork. My label is hand embroidered and I am finally getting better at controlling the size of my text embroidery. What is a challenge is to get a big quilt photographed in a small cluttered apartment so please pardon the clutter in my photos.

quilt layers spread out on the living room floor for basting 

completed top hangs on my design felt 

back of the quilt with label 

showing binding in a pastel green calico, label front and back all in one view

close up of the label embroidery

TAG IT

first step foundation paper pieced a little sewing machine

next back it and quilt it with the name and embroidery embellishments 

bind the edges  and model it... 

Now I have a crafty new name tag that is HUGE so everyone will be able to read my name at the DCMQG meetings.  At the recent meetings I noticed that I can't read the paper ones unless the wearer uses a giant sharpie marker to write their names big and plainly. I was excited to find that there is a challenge in the group discussed on our DC Modern Quilt Guild flickr.com discussion board to make tags and bring the next month.
I hope everyone makes an original name tag for the March 17th meeting so I can really begin to recall and retain some of those names.
Maybe in time I can do a smaller one but the embroidery dictated the size of this name tag. Thanks to Anjeanette for the link to her Pinterest bulletin board for the quilty name tags ideas.

Shoofly quilt is finally revealed

This has been a fun quilt inspired by an old one in a book and my friend Jason Alexanders the potter's gift of some old fabrics. The two dark plaids of green and blue were my favorites from his old clothes and I set to work right off making this cool block my book calls shoofly. I see other quilts look different with the same name so I guess it is an open title. These half triangle squares are the key and that is what I wanted to practice and this old quilt caught my eye in the book. What ever you call it, I like it and set to work making the blocks and found I had enough fabric to stretch it out to make a nice sized nap quilt. 39 x73.5 inches

Antique quilt from 520 Quick and Easy Patchwork Designs by Kei Kobayashi ©1993

this is the quilt folded to consider the binding fabric hanging on my design wall

working on embroidering a label

boxed the embroidery in a frame for the orange back! 

completed the navy blue plaid binding by hand last night 

on the wall with the label showing

Three orange stripes progress across the field of shoofly diamonds  

I asked for advice about the background on this project and got a bunch of different answers. Yellow, Orange, Blue were all popular but somehow I decided early on that I wanted to pair these masculine dark plaids with a darkish neutral pebble print that look gray. Then the orange diagonal stripes were inserted to give a break in the traditional pattern. I also played with the thinnest stripe when I discovered I could not add a strip that ran from side to bottom without planning it ahead of time. I learned again that a wide strip inserted in the diagonal from side to bottom causes the edges to bump out the width of the strip and no longer meet up with the sides. It would have to be planned ahead to keep the edges even.  So I folded this little strip in half and sewed it in like a ribbon. Later I added a piece of cording to round it giving the top a play thing raised up from the surface to fondle. 

Once the top was done I went shopping for a dark backing fabric with my mother. We couldn't find one that suited my vision until we switched course and discovered the bright orange circle print fabric which happened to be on sale for 60% discount! I knew right away that this was the right choice for backing my plaids and pebbles Shoofly quilt.

notice the orange quilting threads in the gray blocks?

I used orange thread in my feather weight sewing machine, quilting in diagonal lines to match the 45º angles of the orange stripes.  I am looking forward to washing it to see it crinkle up and soften for use on these cold winter days ahead. Ground hog says spring is coming sooner than usual this morning he didn't see his shadow!