Improvisation on Shoeman's Puzzle Quilt finish

Shoeman's Puzzle improv quilt 88 x 90 inches hand quilted 

June of 2015 DC Modern Quilt Guild hosted Denyse Schmidt for a quilting improvisation workshop in which I was fortunate to enroll and wrote about last year. (follow this link to read that report)  She gave us a traditional pattern lesson then we were instructed in how to play with the shapes and develop the blocks in a free form way. Improvising with the wedges of two tones of the same color to form a playful modern look with an old fashioned repeating block design. I chose two shades of orange for my quilt lesson.

the traditional Shoeman's Puzzle blocks before the improvisation began 

Denyse talking about the designs

layout becomes the next decision, these are in the traditional star or flower layout 

We spent the whole day working and sharing and reviewing our progress as about 20 quilters improvised with their colors. I tried adding a little magenta with pattern and was relieved to get away from the all orange blocks but in the end decided I needed to keep to the orange theme for a finish that was true to the intention I set out with to make a new orange quilt. I completed the quilt with rows of pie shapes going this way and that dark in light and light inside dark alternating in rows. It took a long time to get it laid up and then figure out how to sew them together without messing up the order I had chosen. Thanks to some ones' picture online I discovered marking with numbered pieces of masking tape would help me organize the trip from design wall in my bedroom to the sewing machine in the living room and back to the wall. In the end I messed it up but decided I liked how a couple of my rows got flipped over and went butterfly like, instead of march stepped in the same direction. 

Then the finish got a couple of sashes worked into the rows and ripped out later because it again seemed to my eye to distract from the repeating design feature and the way the areas come together. See the image below for the strips running through about one third and two thirds of the way across from side to side.  

As it was laying on the bed I figured it was the wrong design to have the rows interrupted by these long narrow strips. It took a while to sink in but eventually I knew I had to rip them out.    

all sewn together on my 221 Singer Featherweight

It's not a lot of fun to rip such long seams out but it is more fun that leaving a design you don't like with months of hand quilting ahead. It just made sense to me to rearrange these rows without the separations. Once the top was completed I added long slanting strips about 6 inches wide to the edge to make the quilt top a little larger to fit the bed. 

Next I launched into the back design. I chose a reflection of the top's design by making a giant block of the traditional Shoeman's puzzle to cover the back using light shades of white. I chose two white prints on off white fabrics to give a to rest from the orange when all that orange is just too much. This means the quilt can be flipped over and all you see is one an orange binding on a simple white on white design with big stitch quilting. Making the back so large required clearing the living room floor to cut and assemble these huge puzzle pieces into a quilt sized block and then I had to add a 5 inch border all around to make it big enough to cover the quilt top. Again I cut the shapes for this bed sized block free hand on the floor from yardage. That was a real challenge but it went off smoothly once I made up my mind to work it out. 

Here is the top with the batting and the backing spray basted in place ready to begin hand quilting. 

On the floor I marked my quilting guide lines by using the Hera marker and following the edges of each of the lighter orange shapes about a quarter inch inside the seams. Quilting began with size #8 ecru pearl cotton thread and my big # 6 crewel embroidery needle and my favorite thick goat skin thimbles. 

 crease marks the Hera marker leaves on fabric as my guide to quilt.

Beginning in the center I use a standing hoop simply to keep the quilt elevated so I can put one hand under the quilt and the other on top to do the quilting. It took a long time to finish quilting this big quilt and once I was done I realized that this white line pattern wasn't enough quilting. Eventually I decided to add some orange pearl cotton #8 to the darker orange parts and chose to contrast the sharply angled lines with circles of various sizes all over the quilt. Phase two of the quilting moved along slowly but the end was in sight, making it seem a little faster. 

The back of the quilt looks like these detail shots above with just some big stitch quilted white lines and some orange circles... the label is a tribute to Denyse Schmidt for the class and all the inspiration I have collected from her workshop and her book. It's been a slow process to complete this quilt, mostly because I hand quilt but every stitch was a delight even the ones I had to pull out. Now I have it washed up and dried in the dryer for that nice crinkled soft touch of a new quilt on our bed today in the cold damp it's a very rewarding creation. 

detail of the turned back edge with lots of crinkle. 

finished on the bed ready to use

Orange Raspberry Quilt finish

Orange Raspberry quilt finish 29' x 57' 

This was a small quilt project I made as a gift. It's for a friend from my college Printmaking classes at Pratt Institute who has a new home of her own she acquired last summer. It is her first home which Keith and I went to visit during our big road trip last August. She has a big collection of artworks and had reserved a special place for one of my quilts. While we were there we measured the spot she reserved, intending for me to match up the space to fit the finished quilts I have at home. It is a place of pride by the wood stove in an alcove right in the center of the living room. I suspected right away that my finished quilts are a little bigger than what would fit in this space but I kept quiet because the idea to create a custom quilt suddenly leapt into my head.

left or right of the wood stove spaces reserved for a quilt

The 1930s bungalow front porch

I began this quilt with orange fabric because of the reactions to my finished quilts she had given while visiting Washington, DC and I know she likes orange.  I wanted to experiment with several new techniques. The fabric colors I limited to orange, orange-red solids and a raspberry stain magenta print. I began with several blocks from the improv workshop with Denyse Schmidt last summer that I decided not to put in my bigger all orange quilt. It took off from there making new blocks by whacking those improv blocks up to making new ones.  Then I began using a new technique of the eighth inch strip stripe inserted in a block which I discovered on Instagram. This is an example below. 

these colors are closest to the real quilt colors. 

While working I was thinking about handsome mid century chair's upholstery color and dots and the lines in the architect's modern garden features as references to fit this angled improvisational quilt design with round dots and triangles of hand quilting on the finish. 

orange dots on pink mid century chair

garden view 

It fell together quite fast since it is small and I had a lot of fun playing with the colors and pieces to create the top. Once the top was assembled I used an art quilt technique to put the three layers together. Instead of a binding tape around the raw edges, I used an envelope or pillowcase technique for the first time. It worked quite well and gave a nice finish without a tape frame. 

The quilting was fun. I used a contrasting pearl cotton size number eight with big stitch to show the piecing off and followed the angles then added circles to reflect the chair's dots. As you may notice the quilt colors are different in each slide. While photographing these close value oranges and high contrasting magenta I learned it confuses the camera. In some lights it looks like yellow and purple but that is not the way it looks in person. I marked the slide that comes closest to the real colors.

I gifted the finish to my friend just after Christmas when she came to visit and it was such a surprise and I gather she is very happy. She went right home and hung it in the space she showed me she wanted to display an original quilt last summer on our visit. Bonus shot includes one very interesting cat named honeybee passing by the new art work and she is the reason this collector doesn't think she can take home a quilt to use on  her beds since miss Honeybee sleeps on them. I liked the cat and wonder if there is a color quilt I could make that wouldn't show her fur? 

Finished Orange Raspberry Quilt 12-21-2015 

size 29" x 57" all cotton 

hand quilted with pearl cotton #8

label on the back 

Add a Border block quilt finished

A few years ago I joined an Internet group of quilters who swap small blocks and add borders to each then send them off to others to add more rounds until a 6 inch block becomes 24 inches then it is given to the first to lay claim to the block. A nice fellow in Kentucky hosts the block swap sending and resending the blocks from one quilter in the Flickr.com group to the next. Here is a link if you want to see some of the work or join in the fun:  AddABorderBlockSwap on flickr.com 

AFter a while in the group I never got to select a finished block so a second option was to keep one you liked and replace it. I chose this block after adding a round to it because I fell in love with the orange/magenta striped background fabric and the hexagon hand pieced block on it that looked like a toy block. It was made by Ed Hart who goes by Cattail in the group. I chose it as my block to keep and pinned it to my design wall to ponder how to build it into a queen size quilt top of my own improvising from this beginning. 

Not long after deciding to keep this block I put it away because I had so many quilt projects already underway and this project was not clearly worked out in my head.

The following year once all my Log Cabin quilts were completed I tried again. This first block built up to about 24 inches square and I realized that to keep going, like some other quilters do making it all a giant medallion, was going to be really difficult to keep my quilt squared. The wobble was starting to distort the square shape after adding only three more rounds! 

Next idea was to make more blocks like this improvising my way along with my core design element taken from the original block, the three diamond hexagon on a bright background that looks like a three dimensional toy block sitting in a field.

Next step was to make some three inch diamond English Paper Pieces and try to match the fabric of the original block with purple, white and green from my stash. It was fun making them up and hand stitching them together a couple at a time. 

The second block was different because the background was different and so it went on and on with each new block. Once I had four I decided I was going to organize them by doing a big nine patch design for the overall quilt pattern. 

Second block used a tartan shirt fabric given to me by Melinda Newton as my background

 The colors shifted to the purple and aqua range and I wanted to keep the magenta, red and oranges in the quilt so I chose another tartan in red and dark blue as the third block's backgrounder.

Third block 

4th block got a different colored hexagon in the center using a warm pink with magenta and white then the  flower background with oranges purples and magenta pinks. 

In this 4th block I was ready to take a step aside from the aqua purple theme and move back to the pink purple orange end of the range of colors. I am not sure why but it felt right when I headed in this direction looking at all four it needed this brightness. 

Three of the 3 inch central hexagons trying a new orange magenta color theme in the center hexagon. 

Then I wanted to throw a twist in and added a block with a diamond setting of the central hexagon. It was fun and a little tricky to add triangle blocks split in two...

I blogged earlier about messing this one up at our guild sewing day. I  cut that orange edged block in half the wrong way first thing and had to start it all over when I got home but that is a good example of how much thought and concentration is required to get the results you want in quilt top piecing.  This is how they looked before I cut them in half to create a triangle to add to the diamond block center. 

The various blocks all improvised pieces totaled nine which took a while to even up with extra rounds of thinner and thicker bands. In the final judgement I chose to add some solid magenta as sashing to draw all these unmatched blocks together to make a top to fit my queen sized sleigh bed. 

I was influenced by the hand work movement to make up some one inch English paper pieced tumbling blocks to include as a sort of button decoration on the intersections of the sashing. I wanted to add some scale to the theme small and large. 

one inch and three inch English Paper Pieced blocks in the quilt side by side

They were so small that I had a struggle to figure out how to get them on the intersections of the sashing and decided that applique was my best bet once the whole was hand quilted. I chose # 8 pearl cotton in contrasting or matching colors to detail the big blocks and surround them on the sashing leaving room for these small tumbling blocks at the intersections. 

Hand quilting with big stitch purple pearl cotton # 8

quilt top before the quilting began laid on my bed with four tiny one inch tumbling blocks at intersections 

detail of finish 

detail of finish hanging 

detail of central block finished 

Finished hanging by my bed (see the foot board lower left blocks the full view)

Hanging Tumbling block quilt improvisation based on the original "Add a Border" block from Ed "Cattail" of the block swap group. 

I wanted to thank Ed Hart for the inspiration and Dustin Cecil for sending me this block that has kept me busy for the last couple years. I regret that my home is kind of small and tight so the finished quilt shots are cramped but maybe next weekend when I show it at the Washington DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting I can get a better photo to add later. 

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