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. 

Modern Log Cabin Quilt finish 2014

I began the year 2014 with a quilting theme, the Log Cabin. It is a very traditional pattern I have always admired so when I got a request for a tiny 4 inch log cabin block from my modern quilt guild to add to a member's new baby quilt I thought it was time for me to try log cabins in my own quilts.

the first four inch log cabin block for the guild's baby quilt.
The finished quilt with baby Vivian can be seen here: Jessie Aller's Flickr

 I also listened to a new thing called a Webinar presented to the Modern Quilt Guild which said that modern quilt design is full of neutral areas that work against bold new colors. Naturally, orange came to mind as my favorite bold color to begin with and I found this red, orange and purple mixed print fabric really appealed. I also liked the notion of using mixed whites and neutral colors that almost blend to be one tone but are not quite a solid field. At first I just played with the colors and fabrics learning how to build the log cabins and what contrasts I liked making in the combinations.

I used oranges and purples to build a series as well as white and off white with gray. As I worked with the blocks and learned the formula it felt like I had too many different colors in my blocks. I eventually  pulled out the purple and orange log cabins and kept making those 5.5 inch squares until I completed enough to build the smaller "log cabin quilt" I finished in May...

 Determined to create a large quilt with this log cabin theme I held on to the gray,

mixed whites and orange blocks and experimented with scale of the strips in the blocks. Instead of just one inch strips I began making a mix of one, two and three inch strips to achieve a larger block scaled to assemble together in an improvisational group. At this stage the felt wall was really important to lay out the various blocks and see where I was headed before I began assembling the different blocks into an overall design.

Along the way I discovered an antique quilt on Pintrest which was called a Triple Bar Log Cabin.  This one appeared to be a slightly rectangular shape and I began using it in an off shoot to keep having fun. I played with a broader spectrum of colors which cried out to me as the orange, gray and mixed whites project was accumulating enough blocks to cover a queen sized bed.

antique triple bar log cabin quilt photo from Pintrest 

My first triple bar log cabin block using a red-orange center to represent fire in the hearth.

This triple bar log cabin finish I called the Cantilever Cabins quilt thinking of the cool new buildings that use prefabricated rectangular cubes or steel shipping containers stacked up to make buildings in modern architecture. It was a very colorful finish that really tickled my fancy. To do the hand quilting I used some near matching multicolor pearl cottons to add an extra layer of color. The neutral blocks really added a modern feel to the finish as the Modern Quilt Guild Webinar had instructed.

Still I had this big set of blocks waiting to come together and I plugged along playing over and over with the various ways to combine the quilt blocks and create a modern design. It is a real struggle to set these designs and commit to the arrangement. The variations were only limited by my own taste. In the end I had too many blocks and pulled some blocks that didn't fit in well, out. This became another kind of Neutral block with pink log cabin quilt. The Untitled Log Cabin creation was fun and finished next as I got closer to the big quilt finish.

All along the queen sized finish was getting closer. It was time to make up my mind how big and how the layout was going to be set and sewn down. On the felt wall I tried symmetry then asymmetry... square and rectangular formats all working around the one big orange and gray block  from the beginning seen in the center below. 

I decided on a big 88 inch square format to fit my sleigh bed. But I wanted to add lots more orange-gray blocks to the mix feeling for a need to see more color in the large field of paler neutrals. It is filled with rich wool batting and backed with a white on white print then hand quilted with ecru pearl cotton #8. That means it was going to take a while to complete. Once I determined the shape, all three layers went together fast and the quilting spiral was marked in a day. It was ready to begin the hand quilting. Using a hoop of 18 inches I find it is easier to do the center sections where grabbing by hand alone is a little difficult.   As I work the lines of quilting towards the edges I abandon the hoop and just hold the three layers with no frame. 

Lucky for me that the summer wasn't hot as it usually is, so I could endure working under all that wool and cotton fabric for long evenings in front of the TV. In the end I added a binding of orange and made a white label for the back. Now I am having difficulty photographing such a big quilt at home. I need another DC Modern quilt guild meeting at the large Arlington Library where we made finished quilt photos last year using our professional photo set up to get a really nice finished quilt photos for our portfolio and blog posts. In the meantime here is the quilt pinned to my bedroom felt wall and a few other detail finished quilt photos... 

With this quilt I think I am about to finish the log cabin series but there are still some strips of orange and white laying on the pile of left overs I cut so who knows maybe there is another little block or two of log cabin waiting to find form. That fire red orange color is a recurring theme in my quilting work. The hand quilting was done in a squared spiral beginning in the biggest orange block radiating out to the edges at two inch row intervals. 

Last night we slept under the orange explains it quilt  and the big log cabin seen in this photo. It was toasty warm with the layers of wool and cotton piled high. Ending the year of log cabins I am ready to move on to something with a new challenge. Curves are calling to me to come play in 2015. Happy new year! 

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.

Rowhouses, Townhouses, or Log Cabins?

I finished this low volume or value throw sized quilt and washed it yesterday.

 It's a small throw quilt, in soft colors with an attractive backing fabric from Finch Sewing Studios in Leesburg Va. The backing has these little row or town houses printed on a buttery cream color that seemed to fit with the front pink sections. It was used to wrap around and bind the edges as well. The front or top is log cabin variations from another bigger project I am working on... Now I am left to choose a name and make a label so what do you think it should be? Row house quilt, Town house or Log cabin quilt or something else?

Town Row house fabric detail

Finished, washed and dried size = 35 x 51 inches 

crinkly quilting details on the back 

I used machine straight line quilting on this quilt and chose a diagonal V pattern to accent the 45º angle of the pattern of the log cabin blocks. The pink inserted sections are where the lines change direction in four different ways. 

It was fun to make it and so fast with the machine. The hard part was piecing the blocks then laying out the blocks in a way that pleased my eye. This is my first attempt at a low volume quilt shying away from bold color wasn't so hard once I put my mind to work seeing things in a different way.

Fun just like the pink orange moon that rose over our horizon last night in Brookland. 

I have more fabric from Finch that will be showing up in quilts very soon after a great DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting held there two weeks ago. 

show and tell at Finch Sewing Studio with DC Modern Quilting Guild members busy working and listening...

March towards Spring

This weather is beginning to give us real signs of Spring! Yesterday with the warm temperatures and sunshine we headed out for a long walk and discovered our early miniature crocus were bursting out of the brown grass and dead leaves! Narcissus are poking up their bud filled heads and leaves and a few trees are beginning to show signs of earliest blooms. After so much cold weather and a lot more snow days than Washington DC is used to having we are all ready to move on to the next season full of promise.

In the intervening cold days and even on some of the warm days I have managed to get back to sewing and piecing. I was inspired by a color combination in a fat quarter that I played with using purple, hot pinks, oranges, and magenta it's one of Kaffe Faussett's designer's named Phillip Jacobs in 2012 it was a feather design. DC Modern Quilt Guild threw a lecture and pop up quilt fabric shop at Anacostia Arts Center this past Saturday and I was hunting for more of these fabrics and found non but I did get an idea to spread out my bright blocks with neutrals from the two speakers on quilting design and color Katie Blakesley and Laura Gunn.

Katie Blakesley on stage with her slides discussing quilt design.

Katie Blakesley with one of her quilts from her new book  Vintage Quilt Revival

artist and fabric designer Laura Gunn talking about color 

Laura Gunn's great grandmother's crochet Afghan and the quilt it inspired. 

Laura Gunn talking about painting and color 

So to bring you up to date here is what I have been playing with this week in the Orange and magenta log cabin project. 

building orange purple blocks 5.5 x5.5"

Adding space to the blocks 

mixed up white and orange purple blocks 

white on white log cabins

Time for a walk on a cloudy almost Spring day. Comments welcome on my new project. My biggest concern is how to let go of the compulsion to be so regimental in block building.