Now Six by Six

 

I've now moved onto working on my BAMQ UFO Challenge for the month, my #6 which is the 5x5 class quilt. I started this in a BAMQ online class with Carole Lyles Shaw in 2022. Right on schedule. 

I made three more blocks to fill in the left side column. This quilt was initially titled 5x5, and it is now 6x6. This is how it looks in black and white.

I think this is the final form. I've started sewing together two blocks at a time. Will I be able to get this quilted and finished by Sew Day? We shall see...

Ocean Effect Finish

 

As promised, here is a finally really finished just-in-time picture of my latest quilt finish, Ocean Effect. It is now all turned in and ready to display in the Bay Area Modern Quilting group exhibition: Modern Art to Modern Quilt at the San Mateo County Fair - June 5-14th.

Quilted Books at the Library

Bay Area Modern Quilting is having an exhibition at the main downtown branch of the Redwood City Library of small quilts made representing children's books. It will be shown in the top floor exhibit space starting in June. Here are the majority of them informally laid out during our meeting today when we turned them in to the exhibit organizers. We all got to choose our favorite books to illustrate, as you can see there is quite a range all the way from Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to The Secret Garden. Such a great variety of techniques and range of books represented. I love our group's creativity!

Here's the quilt that I made, it is 12" square and I'm using several of the fabrics that were released based on the original book illustrations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, along with some other prints and one of my hand-dyes (the green at the top). I used many of my machine embroidery stitches, and I particularly like the one that I chose for the "yellow brick road."

And here is Erin getting the very best photo to use for our group's social media postings.

Ocean Facings

Time for facings on Ocean Efect.

for the top facing I used a strip of my green hand-dye that matches the top green color strip.

This is how it looks with the facings pinned, I'll post a final picture when I get the hand sewing done and iron the edges.
 I'll be turning this in tomorrow at the BAMQ exhibit.

Community Giving Blocks

I'm getting ready for Saturday's Bay Area Modern Quilting (BAMQ) meeting, and that means stitching up the Community Giving quilt blocks that I took the supply kits for. One of the kits was  short by two 2.5" squares, so I cut some from the fabrics I used for my mosaic table runner. They were on the top of the pile so they were easy to grab. 

It's a really easy block to put together, and here are all four. And this time I pressed all the seams open after the experience at the March Sew Day when we were all making these blocks without any seam pressing guidance. It makes a difference when you're putting a quilt together.
 

The Bottom of the Ocean

 

I'm doing the facings a little differently for Ocean Effect, the bottom one is going to be a "self"facing, I'm using the excess of the whole cloth front of the quilt that extends below the green upholstery fabric and blue sheer and pulling it around to the back and hand-stitching it down. But first, I decided to take the time to stitch out a quilt label using the digitized alphabet options on my machine.

I had to test drive it for the tension, and I forgot which way the letters stitch out! It's been a while since I'd used the alphabet feature, so I made a little sample and wrote myself notes. Then I had to pin it on and make sure the words of the label would be right-side up as they're at the bottom of the quilt. This will be a handy thing to have for next time, so I'm storing it with my iron-on embroidery stabilizer.

Closer to Ocean Effect

 

All the hand-dyed fabric strips have been applied, and I've trimmed two out of the four sides.

This picture has the two un-trimmed sides pinned to the wrong side, just so I could look at how it looks at this size and "crop".

I'm pleased with how this top section turned out. It matches up pretty well with my original sketch, and looks "painterly" enough for me.