Selvedges Showing

Another year means another challenge from MQG, and this year's palette is pretty great. Using six colors of Windham Artisan Cotton. These fabrics are really lovely to work with, so I'm looking forward to sewing with them. They're now available in 90 colors. Along with the challenge fabrics I got the two prints in the picture from Sewtopia.

Because of how they're woven, (cross-weave)  I really love the look of the selvedges. I'm going to try to find a way to utilize those in the design. I would probably not use the blue and pink fabric's selvedges as that bright white might be too much.

I started playing around with a design in EQ8 with some fairly simple blocks.

I'm trying to imagine this design if it was pieced so that some, but not all, of the seam lines would have the selvedges visible on the front of the quilt. Not a thing I can sketch out in EQ8. Just a starting point design idea here, not likely to be the final one I go with.

Sour Grass Stems

 I've been working on my Sour Grass flower a little at a time. "Sour Grass Grace" is taking shape and changing a little as each shape is decided on. 

I worked on adding in 10 orange pistils in the flower center.

This is how it looked up on the design wall and seeing it from far away, I think the center color change is too small in proportion to the size of the petals.

 I  re-cut the center of the flower shapes to make them larger and hopefully more proportionally accurate. I also transferred the stem designs into stabilized fabric and re-positioned them.

That's better for the center of the flower, but now I'm thinking the pistils are a bit too small.

Here's how the fabric stems look when they're pinned up. I used one of the acid greens that I dyed last year when I was trying to match a green for the Temperature Quilt. I think it works because it's very subtly variegated.

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.

Granny Squares?

 

I saw this great idea for making a crocheted granny square for each book that one reads during the year based on the colors in each book cover. This would take a whole lot more colors of yarn than I will ever have on hand (and I'm Not Buying Yarn) and a whole lot more crocheting skill than I currently have. But the idea of it got me thinking, wouldn't it be fun to do a quilt block for each book you read per year?  There's got to be a whole lot of crossover between quilters and readers, right? Or maybe it's just the quilters that I happen to know? Anyways—I am a quilter who really likes reading, so I'm going to work on this project and see if I can get it going for this year. I've already read 12 books so I'm already behind.

This got me thinking, are there any quilt blocks that look like granny squares? I found this one, and this free one. but they don't really come off visually as a granny square to me. They're lacking the laciness of the patterns I think, too block-y (hah!).  This one is much more of a crocheted look, but doesn't appeal to me at all as a block making experience. And certainly not for the number of blocks I'd be making.

This sort of variation of color placements and arrangements from block to block works a bit better when you have them all together in a quilt. After checking out that one version of a quilt block based on granny squares, I realized I had just one version of granny squares stuck in my mind. That meant looking into what exactly are crocheted granny squares? Turns out that they are not just several rounds of color around a central square, there are a whole lot of variations out there. (hey just like quilt blocks!) Interpreting that wide variation in quilt blocks would make for an even more interesting quilt imo.

I got a digital magazine out of the library and started sketching on my iPad inspired by the pictures. I didn't spend time trying to interpret the look of the crocheted squares into quilt blocks that would be able to be pieced (piece-able?). Just getting the idea of the blocks down. I think it could work as an overall project if you used the same fabric as the negative space or openings in the crochet.

Then I went into EQ8 to see if there were any blocks available that would substitute. As you can see I got just a little carried away with my choices. I was going for variety here. Most of these blocks are way beyond my piecing capabilities, this is just for fun. The one block at the bottom that I repeated and filled in with seemed like a really good crochet looking block, when several were put together. I think a combination of circular, diamond, and square/mosaic types of blocks could work out really well to get that Granny Square Sampler look. Or I could just do a bullseye block, and vary the number, size, and shape of the rounds. hmmmm so many options—more thinking on this is required.

Word Window

 Whether to be legible or not is still the question. Further complicating the original look of this text on sheers piece that I made last November is cutting it up into four pieces and then reassembling them after rotating their positions.

I used my new fabric glue stick thing- Odif 505 temporary adhesive which goes on blue and then disappears.

Arranged the glue-y sheer pieces on some grey fabric and then cut to size.

I chose to use the black and white Wonderfil D-twist thread for some zig-zagging between the pieces. This is Weird thread, it is very wound up, more so than usual thread. So be prepared when you first unwind it. It sews up just fine though.

I think it looks pretty good. I wanted it to be visible and just a little bit more interesting than a solid color.

First try at which fabrics to use for the sky part of the quilt.

Adding in the acid green of the sea, and the red-framed window of words. Just getting started.

32 Kites

 

Well, all 32 of the "kites" are assembled up to the same point. I'm calling them "kites' because they are vaguely kite-shaped looking, at least they are to me. Before I make any more additions to them, I'm going to put them up on the design wall with the finished Metro Twist top to see if they'd look good at this size flying around in a border. Otherwise, they'll each be enlarged somehow and set into a blue background of all the weird blues I seem to be accumulating lately.

Still Assembling.

Time to put the parts together of Running Out of Rain Cloud on a day where the sky outside is just about this grey-blue color.

Pretty good at the match-ups.

Looks like the upper two sections are going to line up well.

Almost there, but that last section is much too big. So it's time to un-sew, re-measure or re-make. One of the half rectangles was supposed to be smaller than the other but they're the same size for some reason. I want to get this top done so I can start in getting the quilting done.

Colorful Cornerstones

 

An array of corner stone pieces cut out and ready to sew into the sashing for the quilt I'm making for the BAMQ group exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair. I really love the color palette represented here. I also like seeing the real difference between commercial solids and my hand-dyes.

The final arrangement before stitching.

I got most of the way there and managed to keep the points pointy. That will be more apparent after I press the seams open. Now I'm starting to think about the quilting I want to do on this....circles maybe?

Sashing Decisions

 

I decided to put up the four blocks on top of a possible sashing fabric.I think this one works well, it's different enough from the darker grey triangle. It has hard to read handwriting in German, just looks texture-y to my eye.

Looks pretty close to the design I originally started with. Except, I don't want to use all yellow cornerstones.

I think using colors from the blocks will look better. Only the center one is a square, the others are rectangles  as the outer sashing is going to be a bit wider to give me some trimming/quilting shrinkage room.

This might just work out!

Start of 3 I's

 

The challenge this year for the BAMQ group exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair is "Work In A Series". The details are to make four quilt blocks, minimum size 4x6", quilt size max 40" square. Here's my first pass quilt design in EQ8 for a 24" wide by 36"long quilt. I like this size, it'll match the other ones I've made in this size. The four "blocks" are quite big, sized at 11x17" unfinished with a small sashing all around. The quilt block I used is called "Ribbon Border".  The quilt will not necessarily be these exact colors. My main idea is each of the four blocks will be very different from each other, they'll only have the same block design. The quilt has a name before I even start sewing: The 3 I's (Ideation Iteration Implementation) 

Starting out with Ideation first, what forms concepts do I want to work with within the parameters. The main thing is each of the four blocks are different one from the other, but they must all four work together as a whole.

The first idea group for the four blocks that I'm starting with is to have the blocks be made as follows:

1. All Prints
2. All Solids
3. All hand-dyes
4. All black/white/grey

My second idea is:

1. Each, or some of the, elements of the block design are pieced prior to using in the block
2. Each element of the block design is machine embroidered in its own design before piecing or as part of quilting process
3. All the pieces of the block are manipulated by tucks and folds and gathers before piecing
4. All pieces are very different textures within a block

These two sets of ideas may combine as I proceed. I think the sashing fabrics will be letter/numbers fabrics. Such an orderly start to a creative project, usually I don't write it all down like this.

I've printed out a foundation piecing pattern.

And here's the first fabric choices for the block that will be all prints.

How About Texture

Continuing work on the Stretching Art & Tradition '24 quilt. In my original sketch the centers of each of the seven shapes were grey-silver. Different than the background. My notes included the idea of having some sort of texture. Here is my first attempt with the seven centers made with grey fleece.

Here's one with grey fleece on the right, and on the left, grey suede. (I had grey suede?Huh.) Good, but needs more texture.

Out came the rarely used embellisher aka the needle felting machine.

 This circle is gray cotton fabric with wool roving, suede scraps, fleece scraps and stitching. It's not sewn down yet, so it won't be raw-edged.

The roving color was a little too brown instead of gray on that last one, but I still wanted something else that was wool. Ages ago I bought a bag of wool penny circles in random colors and sizes. I chose the ones that were grey, grey-patterned and embellished them on to one of the fleece circles.

I like it with the wool patterned fabrics.

This one is just pinned on so far, but I'll stitch it down with a zig-zag.

I think I'm really liking how this turning out.

At this point, I'm thinking that I'll embellish one more circle, leave the small one with the suede center, and leave another one of the circles just plain fleece.