More of My Favorites from Houston

This seems like a very appropriate quilt to start a November blog with! This is a wonderful design and quite difficult to photograph. The raven’s feathers are made up of so many dark colors and textures. It is called My Inner Raven and it was designed and made by Cat Larrea.

The very talented David Taylor did not disappoint with his entry this year. Hidden Treasures depicts baby hummingbirds. From a distance, I thought they were thrushes, perhaps because I have never seen a hummer’s nest. Davis does amazing hand appliqué and machine quilting.

Philippa Naylor had two entries this year, but I seem to have photographed only one. This is a close up of her quilt entitled Tumbling Blocks. The color scheme features her juicy hand dyed fabrics and the curved piecing is really great. If you look closely, you will see that she actually made 3D pieces on some of the blocks!

The Japanese love of taupes and their amazing skill with hand done anything is evident in this masterpiece by Yasuko Sugaya. It’s called Flower Quartet, and is entirely hand done… She made it as a gift to her daughter – lucky girl! I hope that she uses and loves this incredible quilt.

And it was great to come upon Jane Sassaman‘s Tree of Life quilt, displayed by a vendor. It is such a wonderful design, and I like it as much as when I first saw it!

Here is Karen Buckley‘s Fiesta Mexico quilt. She won a well deserved prize for this quilt, along with the woman who did the machine quilting. The colors are so bright and happy and the design so striking.

This close-up of Karen’s quilt has to go last because of its shape. I think this long rectangle is my favorite “square” in the quilt. There is a lot of beautiful design going on and just this piece would have been perfect to hang between the large windows we had in our Colorado livingroom.

Houston Quilts – Natural Beauties

All of us who had the pleasure of attending the Fall Quilt Festival are busy posting pictures of our favorite quilts. It’s interesting to see what each of us chose. Today I’m going to share some floral and nature themed quilts. First, here is Prairie Grass by Freida Anderson. I spent some time looking at it and then returned another day to photograph it. This triptych is so calm and serene. I really liked its elegant simplicity.

Staying with the triptych theme, you may recognize this pattern! This version of Melinda Bula’s pattern is Zinnias Three by Jean Smith. It’s a great to see some other color schemes. I’d like to make two more but I just don’t have the time at the moment…

And now an incredibly bright and beautiful quilt. This is Tulips by Charlotte Hickman. I really admire this original design, from tulips in her garden. (Lucky lady – the deer eat mine!) She has used her own hand dyed and hand painted fabrics and they are amazing. From where I was standing, I thought it was machine appliqued, but she did needle turn appliqué. So quilts don’t have to be fused or pieced to look “contemporary”.

This exquisite piece is by a Japanese artist, Toshie Kato. It’s called My Secret Garden. It makes me think of a crewel pattern that I saw in the Victoria & Albert museum a few years ago . The colors are yummy!

Here is another Japanese quilt, in the group category. I was again struck by the delicate and juicy color scheme, and the pale, pale yellow background that the flowers are on. It’s called Dear Friends and was created by Michiko Yanagihara and 8 friends. This is just a detail so you can see the lovely work they did! The quilt has a sheen to it and I thought the fabrics might be silks, but they are cottons.

One last quilt for today, and this one was not in the show. It’s another of Melinda Bula‘s flowers that I spent two days in her classroom admiring. The day lilies are so realistic and I love the hot petals against the cool leaves.

A Quilt Mash-Up

We’ve had lots of lovely rainy days in Chicagoland and it’s perfect for working indoors. One project that I am still piecing is the streak of lightning quilt. I am planning for this section to be on the center of the bed and to be a background. My plan is to come up with a design to machine appliqué on the top.

Until I started watching Glee, I didn’t know what a mash-up was! Now it seems that I hear them everywhere. I’m not all that musical and so I am intrigued by how people find songs that will work together in an interesting way. But here’s an idea I thought of recently for a quilt mash-up. Several years ago I had the pleasure of taking a 5 day workshop with the very wonderful Philippa Naylor at Nancy Crow’s Barn Studio. It was a machine appliqué class and I enjoyed it immensely. We each designed our own quilt, and every day Philippa gave us lessons on a variety of machine appliqué techniques, as well as sharing her amazing quilting skills. I did some drawings and then I started cutting out some shapes and moving them around on fabric. I chose this wonderful, splotchy hand dyed fabric and brought some of my own hand dyed fabrics that I thought I might use. You can see how the paper pieces gave me a good idea of the scale and placement.

We were a small class and when Philippa wasn’t directly working with us, she was preparing samples for the next demo or noodling around. Here is her version of the leaves I was working on. I like the idea of putting a vine over the leaves – it kills two birds with one stone since the vein is taken care of as well.

Long story, but I was having an off week and didn’t get a whole lot done. Here is the piece before I packed it up to drive home. You can also look at the header on my blog to see a close up of the leaves and berries that I designed.

I liked the design a lot, but when I got home and put it up on my design wall, I realized that I had bitten off more than I could chew. There is a lot of blank space which Philippa encouraged me to fill with intricate quilting and her great trapunto technique, and she even drew some ideas for me. The more I looked at it the more I thought that wasn’t going to happen; my quilting isn’t up to that. But I liked the design elements so I ripped all the basted leaves and both hearts off of the fabric. They have been pinned on my design wall ever since. And when I started the streak of lightning, I looked over at them and thought – this can be a quilt mash-up.

So, next I need to figure out the actual design!

I am SO Frustrated!

You haven’t heard much about my quilt design from Gail Garber’s class…..because I become disheartened. I just read the last time I posted about it and I have been working on it since then with little result. I think my design was too ambitious, but because I have been working on it at home, there was no one to say this. I really want to finish it, but I am not enjoying trying to figure out how to sew it together. The result? I have not been sewing. That never makes me happy. So I have decided to give myself a carrot – and that is that I will work on an easier quilt along with this hard one. I will tell you about the new one later.

What – - – a mess! I really don’t know what happened to that piece of quilt that I showed you. I took it all apart and remeasured and put the pattern pieces back on the background fabrics and did more measuring and it all should have worked… It’s really frustrating when you don’t understand what the problem is. I guess I should put taking a longer class with Gail Garber on my to-do list. Now I am sure that my design was too advanced (curvey!) for my skill level. Gail warned us not to cut up our original patterns {sigh} so I have been taping everything back together to make the new background pieces. For a change, I have a lot of the background fabric so I am able to do this experimenting!

Quiltfever guessed it – my Plan B was always to appliqué some of the circles on the quilt top and now I will appliqué them all! Quiltfever also suggested appliquéing the flying geese as well, but they have lots and lots of seams with fat bunches of fabric on their edges which would be messy to appliqué , so I took a stab at piecing them. I would like them to have a smooth edge ….so far so good.

One side went together smoothly, but the other did not. I was about to throw the whole thing in the trash when I realized that a star was going to go where the rumple/pleat/baggy bit was. So last night I hand appliquéd the star on with this result. {whew)

Today I am on the home stretch of piecing the background together and am hoping for the best.

And I do have some good news. I have finally had my first lesson on how to use my Bernina! Peter was about to call the store and really give them grief for letting me hang so long. Customer service must not be their strong suit – the other woman in the class has had her machine since October and this is the first class she has been able to attend…  We were halfway through the 2 hour class when I realized we weren’t sewing! I said that I really needed to be able to sew a seam before I got home. The instructor immediately switched gears and we did seams. Garment sewers, home deco people and quilters all need to be able to sew seams for heaven’s sake! Can you imagine that the first lesson would not include that??? I guess the Swiss think they have a better way. The bad news is that the next class isn’t for a month….

Hearts abound…

… in my house!

Here’s an unfinished quilt idea from a class with Philippa Naylor.

And the mug rugs I hooked with one of my many heart themed mugs.

This quilt pattern was hand appliquéd and is called star of hearts.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you!

Seeing Double quilt show

My show is hung! Yippee!!! What a fun thing to do on Monday, the first official day of the new year. And what a relief! I have spent the last year thinking and quilting and worrying. I’m not sure why I did so much worrying, but I was concerned about a theme for this show. I did not make any quilts specifically for it, but I finished quilting several tops, and I was mulling over how to make these quilts “work” with each other. (Four of the quilts are new and four are old; I guess that’s not bad.) I came up with  variety of titles, like 2 by 2 and Duplicates, but Seeing Double seemed like the best one. As I thought about all my quilts, I could also have designed a show around triplicates; when I like a quilt pattern I often repeat it and since I teach, I make a lot of samples.

Since this is the second show I have had at the library, we are pretty organized. Here is the car ready to go.

This is the empty wall of the library’s auditorium. Looks like lots of room -

- but the quilts fill it up! I like this wall of samplers. I think people, particularly kids, will enjoy finding the squares that are the same in the quilts on this wall. The bright one on the left is my latest quilt, and the dark one that’s hard to see is my very first one.

Here is the opposite wall. This one looks less put together, since it has the “brown” quilts and the hand appliquéd ones. Peter’s comment on my dithering about how to make the quilts relate to each other was that all the quilts are useable and made to be enjoyed up close and personal. He’s not a big fan of art quilts!

And I must say thanks to my very DH Peter! Long story, but he is the reason that the librarian in charge of shows found me. He is so supportive and positive when I am discouraged or overwhelmed and always makes time to help me. We came up with the technique for hanging the quilts for the last show, but he gets out his tape measure and nippers and drill and makes sure all the hangers are perfectly prepared. And then he patiently waits for me to squint at the quilt and say “up” or “down” or “crooked” and he fixes it. And of course, though I consider myself to be a working Fiber Artist, in reality I make a pittance and so he is my Patron as well! {xox}

Should you be local and want to visit the show, you need to check the Morton Grove Public Library site. If there is a program in the Baxter Room, then it will be hard to see the quilts. And if you would like to look at the quilts close up, I have updated my website.

Happy 2012!

Now let us welcome the New Year,

full of things that have never been…..  (Rilke)

Let’s dream, design, make, create,

and fill our houses and lives with beautiful handmade things.

Yippee !

Here’s to a New Year and a fresh outlook.

Christmas Baby Blocks

Santas and snowman and nutcrackers are making their way out of the closets and into the house. I have a lotta stuff {;-D} and it’s not practical to drag everything out at once! Certain Santas come out very quickly; I love the cooking one below; and things like quilts and wreaths are easy to  get hung up in their traditional places.

One of my favorite quilts is the baby block nine patch at the top of the post. For those of you wanting to make a last-minute gift or decoration, it’s a pretty simple quilt. This pattern is also called tumbling blocks and it can be a daunting design. It is made up of 60 degree diamonds and you need to play with the values (using light, medium and dark fabrics) to get a dimensional effect. This design variation is made by sewing just one block and sewing it onto a background square and it’s just fun! In this quilt I wanted to use Christmas novelty fabrics for the top of the block, so I made it pretty big – 3″ on a side. I also played with the background colors; you can see above that I got a sort of checkerboard effect using lights and darks. But really, I just enjoyed playing with fabrics, especially all the fun Christmas ones I have collected. I have made several quilts like this for my great nephews. It’s a great graphic quilt for a child’s room and you can get really clever with it if you choose. Make all the diamonds green and use a giraffe on the top of the square…..hmmmmm….

I hand pieced the baby blocks and hand appliquéd them on the squares (which are cut 8″). No groaning, it really isn’t much work! But having said that I would probably machine appliqué them on now. I also hand quilted it. Remember, I like to work in front of the TV and this is a perfect project for that.

Ho! Ho! Ho! I hear some Santas calling my name….time to go!

gyfbfjj

More from IQA: Florals

This is a loose grouping of some more quilts. They were in several different categories at the show but they all have some sort of flowers in them, created in many different ways.

I took a Baltimore Album quilt class in the early 1990′s and I tend to whiz by those quilts at any show; sort of a been-there-done-that response. I did stop short at this one. Not only are the squares original and exquisite, but there is a dimension to it. Here is : “Mi Amor” by Margarete Heinisch of CA.

And here is one of the squares. Can you see that the lady’s skirt isn’t flat?

And I am generally not a fan of roses, but when they are done well, it’s impressive! Do notice, in this wonderfully made square, that the quiltmaker doesn’t take it too seriously – do you see the circle of bugs in the center? Very fun!

Here is a quilt by IL quiltmaker, Anne Lullie. It’s called “Flaming Mandelas”. This is a fused quilt. She designs and makes very stylish quilts, full of color.

Right next to it was a very bright and beautiful piece. This is “Spring Nouveau” by Heidi Lund of WA.

My floral category is a stretch for this quilt, but…. This is “Chromatic Transitions” by Rachel Wetzler of IL. The theme of this is certainly color. There is so much of it and she handled it so well. I also like the movement.

And I’m ending with a quilt with an unusual design. I really like this – I can’t say what it makes me think of, but it really stood out to me on the long walls of quilts. It’s called “B.S. I Love You” and it was designed and made by Jane Stone of KS.

And this ends the quilt show part of the IQA report!  ;-D

Happy Halloween from Louann!

I admit to being a cheater and using Louann’s wonderful Halloween quilt for my Happy Halloween post! I couldn’t resist! She works for The Golden Quilt Company in Colorado and is the resident expert on hand applique. When this great Halloween pattern from Pearl Piera came out, the shop owner asked her to make a few sample squares. Louann said that was all she was doing, but I wondered. (When I taught her I called her “The Finisher”!) And then came these photos of the whole quilt beautifully completed!

Be sure to click on the photographs to see all the beautiful applique and wonderful details. These owls are too cute with their vests and googly eyes.

This is the centerpiece square and it is full of incredible detail. All the candy pieces floating around make my mouth water and of course the witch and bats add the proper amount of spookiness.

If you have any questions to ask Louann about the techniques, or pattern or please post them. I am sure she will answer them!

Happy Halloween Louann, and thanks!