Shades of 2022

 

Today was a super fun sew day with friends and I brought one of my UFO's to work on. This was from a wonderful class with David Owen Hastings. A virtual class that I took way back in pandemic-times in 2022 with SBAMQG. It's based on a Salvador Dali print that we have up on the wall. 

It had been quite a while since I'd worked on it, so I propped up the note in all caps that I'd left for myself. The key thing I learned in the class (and in many others as well of course): when sewing curved pieces of fabric together, don't forget: CONCAVE ON BOTTOM. It just works better that way.

A fabric layout for the next block along with the sketch/"pattern" with color choices and sewing order noted. 

these were the three blocks that I'd finished in the class.

And here are the three I made today. Yes, that one on the bottom was the last of the day and I really should have quit while I was ahead, etc and I'll be re-making that one! And the one on the upper left, that pinned-on dark blue shape is tbd on whether it is staying or not.

Here they are all together. I think I might need one more that's got the red/orange/yellows happening.. I have to go check my class notes to see how this is supposed to turn into a quilt top.

Six by Six Top Complete

 

The last parts of the assembly of Six by Six went pretty quickly.

I love the little orange triangle in the seam line.

And there it is! Now to get the backing ready, sandwich it and start the quilting.

6x6 is Mostly 4x4

Got a lot more of the Six by Six piece together, now most of the pairs of blocks are sewn together in four block chunks. It will be very tempting to play around with these four block chunks and move things around like they're the original smaller quilt blocks. Or maybe I should just go with this arrangement and carry on trying to get this done by Sew Day.

I'm starting to consider how I will quilt this. I have a great big spool of orange thread that would work well. I don't think I'll do free-motion quilting and just do a walking foot grid sort of stitching. The question is, do I use something cool and/or boring on the backing?

 Every time I walk in my work room, I have a Woah!sort of reaction.This quilt is A Lot.

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...

More Mosaic

During Sew Day, I made some more blocks for my 1-2-3 Mosaic class project. I think it's heading towards being a table runner size project.

We got to have a little on-site field trip break to see inside the sanctuary at the church that we hold our Sew Days. The beautiful display of rainbow origami butterflies was being hung up.

And our guild member, Mary C. made this gorgeous banner that hangs in the entryway. 

Kawandi Finish

 

Since I got back from LA, I've been continuing to stitch the kawandii quilt. My goal was to finish in time for the BAMGQ UFO Challenge which is due on our Sew Day (which is today).

As I got closer and closer to the center I had to finalize it, added two last pieces into the mix, right before the stitching reached that area of the quilt.

I found the stitching got harder and harder to do as I got into the center. 

The pieces got smaller so there were a lot more edges to contend with and that meant more layers of silk to stitch through.

It has been a fun and challenging project and I’ve really enjoyed learning a new way to make a quilt. I started working on this project in a SBMQG class with Sujata Shah back in 2021

Here it is, all finished! 

I ended my last stitching line with an X just because, "x marks the spot" has always made sense to me.

The corners got a little ravel-y, but they're still looking nice. As Sujata said in class, "the Kawandi looks "naked" without a fula in each of the four corners."

And that's #2 on my BAMQ UFO Challenge list completed just in time to show at Sew Day.

Improv Mosaic Class

 

On Saturday, Lorraine Woodruff-Long taught BAMQ a great class called Improv Mosaic 1,2,3. This was the example of what we were working towards making in the end. Amazingly, some of us actually got there!

She brought so many great examples of her work, both those finished and others that were in process.

I loved seeing all the details of the piecing and the great straight-line quilting.

This one was on a table on top of stuff so it looks rather lumpy (but it's really not!)

Her "here's-how-I-do-it-demonstration" was really excellent and clear. A great example of how showing the steps several times gets the whole process across to your students. I learned some great ideas for chain piecing which were very helpful.

As we all worked on our blocks, Lorraine put hers up that she was making up on the design wall so we could see the process of how to assemble them. Friend Jaye was putting hers up there on the right hand side.

Here's how my block looks on the wrong side.

Lorraine took reaction shots of many of us with our blocks up on the design wall. Here's Tim getting his moment of fame. She then edited them all together in a super fun reel on Instagram.

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Hope it displays well for you above. It really highlights the fun we have as a group. And the diversity of how we all approached the work for this class. Always so interesting to see what we each come up with.

Here's how most of mine look all together up on the design wall. I made just a couple more of the small ones. It was a real challenge to use all these prints. The only solids I used were off of the free table, the dark teal on the big block on the bottom, the orange and blue checkerboard and orange center, as well as that one tiny square of neon yellow. I also grabbed two prints to add in with the ones I brought from home were the neon yellow grid in that block as well. And also the little blue fish in the center of the block above that one. I mostly stuck with using the FQs from the Advent Calendar.

This was a terrific class, I really enjoyed learning Lorraine's techniques for making this kind of quilt. She has a great teaching style, laid-back but very informative and clear. I liked that she was sewing her own blocks as we all were, and then showing us things as she went along. I'm really glad that our guild had her come in as a teacher!

Sour Grace

 

After working on the design with colored pencil sketches and paper cutouts, it's time for fabric (yay!). The orange will be the 10 stamens in the flower center, the purple will be the background.

Using fusible stabilizer to make pattern pieces, and drawing the lines with a micron pen. Apparently other pen ink can sometimes migrate to the front of the fabric and show up unexpectedly.

Lots of leaves.

Here's how the leaves are looking.

It was really sunny out so I did some weeding of my deck planters and found many Sour Grass plants thriving. They got dug out and washed off and brought up to my workroom.

There really are quite a lot of leaves for each stem so having that many leaves at the bottom of the design feel right to me. I also need to add in something to represent the many buds below the open flower somehow.

Here's how it's looking so far, with a new trick I learned in class- cropping your design with toilet paper. Turns out it really works and is quite easy to do.

Class Flowers

 

I'm taking a class with Jane Sassaman this month working on Abstracting From Nature. I've always really enjoyed her quilts and have been lucky to see some in person. They're all exquisitely created and so well designed. It's been very fun being in class learning from her.

For the class we had to chose a flower or plant to work with, I chose Sour Grass (aka Oxalis). Sure they're weeds, and invasive ones at that where I live, but I love them. These pictures were taken in my parent's backyard last week.

Not really clover, but the leaves look very clover-ish. Always three heart shaped leaves.

After a whole lot of sketches and studies using Jane's great class structure, I came up with this design. The rectangle will be the edge of the quilt. I think the title will be "Sour Grass Grace".

Using some colored paper I played with the shapes on the design wall.

Get In Line

 

I was lucky enough to get to take a class with South African quilt artist and teacher, Rosalie Dace. It was all done online through the Mancuso Brothers Quiltfest Virtual Schoolhouse. On a tech level it worked really well, she was presenting from her home studio so I had to get up quite early (for me) to attend, but that was fine as I didn't have to drive anywhere. Title of this post will end up being an upcoming quilt title.

This was Rosalie's class called, "Line Dance - play with Line and make it work in your quilts". It was more of a presentation/lecture than an interactive project sewing class which was just fine with me. Some of the other students asked some good questions. I just really enjoy her style of teaching. She's so very thought-provoking and inspiring. There were many new ways of thinking about Lines that still have me pondering several days later. Great stuff.

She suggested that we make a grid page with various lines as she talked through all the options. This is mine up above. I loved the ideas that were generated and the real world technical options to get them into your own quilt that she showed us. It was very fun to get see super closeup pictures of her beautiful work. It's very layered and complicated, to me that's one of the best things about art quilts.

If you ever have a chance to take a class or listen to a lecture from Rosalie Dace, I say go for it. You will at the very least be entertained, and she always shows beautiful, amazing pictures from her travels and her local area. 

Here's a complaint having nothing to do with this class in particular. After all these years of using Zoom and other platforms, there are still inevitably several people who don't mute themselves, it's very frustrating. I really don't need to have the instructor interrupted to hear someone complaining to someone in the room with them about how hard it was to login to the class. Honestly, just pay a little attention please. Are these the same folks who are interrupting in live audiences? Probably maybe? I think I'd be a terrible online teacher because I'd be mean or exasperated with people who did this during my class. It's disrespectful to the teacher, and to your fellow students. 

One of the things we did make during the class was to try out her Skinny Strips technique. This is the one that I had previously learned in the class that  I took with Friend Jaye at the Sisters Quilt Show back in 2018. It was good to re-visit the technique, and a reminder to use something that I've already learned. I had kind of forgotten the secret method that she uses (go take one of her classes!) because it really works.

Class With Uzoma Samuel

This was my view in the front row of Fabric Portrait class with Uzoma Samuel, who came all the way from Lagos, Nigeria to teach at PIQF.  The wonderful friend-Jaye-made bag and a bag of fabric "in great variety" as per his supply list. I thought it was interesting that we didn't need to bring a photo of someone we wanted to do, or a background piece of fabric, or anything to draw on fabric with.

And then we were all handed a piece of artist canvas with the same portrait sketched onto it by our teacher. Each one was done individually, so they were all slightly different. 

Here's Uzoma zooming in on the eye and talking about how if you don't get the eyes right, your portrait won't really represent the individual person you're trying to portray. He had a lot of great advice about how to go about this. I liked that he had this projector with the actual photo, it was so great to have it to refer to the whole time. And then being able to zoom in on the different features was very useful.

Here's how my eyes started out. We didn't measure or trace at all, we used what he called "eye-gauge", you look at the photo you're working from and cut the shape you're working on. Just like when you draw.

It really was time consuming, finding the right shades to represent the 3-d-ness of the forehead.

Here's where I ended up. My left side of the nose got a little lost, so  I may go back and switch out some of the fabrics.

We all put our work up on the wall and it was fascinating to see how different they all were.

Some of the students had a selection of fabrics that were pretty challenging to work with in this context, but everyone gave it a real try. The other students were all really helpful and fun to be in class with, I found it very enjoyable.

I'm so glad I got to take this class, Uzoma Samuel had recently taught some classes in the Bay Area through the SJSA as detailed in the Bay Area issue of Quiltfolk, but I wasn't free. I'm so happy that he came back to the area to teach at PIQF.

Using this detailed approach to making a portrait is so different than other types of faces I've made in fabric. It's trying for more realism than I usually attempt or want to do. Maybe I'll re-do the small piece I did twenty-three years ago of my grandma in this method.