Clara's Quilt

Clara's Quilt is done! This is another barter quilt and at the end of this post is the item I got in return. The quilt is a Double Four Patch that has the color melding in a spiral. I did the quilting on my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen.

This first photo is a close up of the quilting in one block. Doing ruler work, I first laid down straight lines in the white squares. I think this was the SLOWEST part of quilting this quilt. After that was done, I quilted back and forth lines from one square to the next.

There is a center formed on this quilt by the blocks, so I did a variation of the quilting pattern that I used elsewhere. The fern-like vine that you can see in the colored portion on the left in the above photo, was modified to look like a peacock feather in that middle section.

The outer border was quilted with a piano key design. See that white inner border? That is only 3/8" wide and it is pieced into the quilt. I just ditch quilted on each side of it. I used the tutorial here, go about 1/3 of the way down the page.

Here's the photo of the back again.

And here is the over-all quilt. It was a very windy day today (wind gusts up to 70mph!) and I NEEDED to get the photos taken this morning before handing the quilt over. So the only place that works is my bed. At least with the low light, the quilting shows up.

I traded the quilt for this bronze sculpture. He is life size and I move him around the house. I call him Kitty Gato.

Linking to Design Wall Monday.

Quilting has happened

I know I have been fairly quiet here on the blog, but I've been under a deadline to get this quilt done. Here's a shot of the back taken with my phone. This is before washing. It was too dark outside (after all  it is the Winter Solstice) so I am going to try to shoot one in the morning. 

Belated Design Wall Post, September 10, 2014

Clara's quilt is progressing nicely. This is the starting layout that I really like, but not with these blocks. Those blocks will finish at 8" and this layout just seems clunky with that size block. If the finished size of the blocks were smaller this would look so much better.

 

All the blocks came off the wall and were put back in this configuration. I need to tweek this a bit. I am not happy with the bulls eye effect so I am going to move the centralish area down and to the left just a bit. Plus the gold/yellows need to be feathered into the greens and reds. The golds and reds just seems to be too color blocked.

I am late to post this to design wall Monday, but here it is.

Design Wall September 1, 2014

I spent the holiday weekend cutting and pressing fabric for Clara's Quilt. The 2-patch blocks (480 units, but who's counting?) are done. The marathon pressing and cutting is over for a while.

It helped that I purchased a package of 40 light batik strips at the quilt show in August. But I realized when I was pressing them before sewing, that some of them were bowed. These were obviously cut by hand. I ended up cutting a section out of the middle of several strips so they could be used.

I'm linking to Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Another barter quilt

I have another barter quilt to work on. Once again, it is for sculpture -- a bronze cat this time. There are going to be 97 different fabrics in the top and number 98 will end up on the backside. You can see a portion of the design there on the upper right of the college 

Very earthy looking, isn't it? The design needs to be fiddled with a bit, but overall it is good.

I will be referencing this quilt as Clara's Quilt.

Savor the Flavor of Red

Another barter quilt has been started and finished. The recipient is an ardent (rabid?) University of Alabama alumni. Using EQ7, I worked up the design using information from Mary's post on some quilts she and her Mom have been making. Most of the information I was able to gather on the University of Alabama showed red & white. But occasionally, I saw an elephant, so the gray represents that elephant.






The words are machine appliqued using the back basting method; as much as I would have liked to do liberated letters, I know the recipient would not like them so I have chosen to do a nice clean font. The quilt size is roughly 55x75.






The center 'A' is quilted in a cross hatch and the rest of the quilting is loopy meandering. There is a little bit of the gray used in a flange in the center block.

I'm Seeing Red

Work on the Alabama quilt has progressed nicely. Oops! I guess I forgot to say anything about this one didn't I? It's another barter quilt. Yes, I know I said I was not going to do this again but really now, what better way to get a nice bronze sculpture than to barter? Anyway, if you stand on your head while looking at this photo you can see the nice cursive letter 'A' that is so familiar to the University of Alabama fans. This is the back side of the quilt. I am using red thread exclusively on the back and for the majority of the front. But this section on the front needed white thread and it is showing up on the backing as white dots. Once the quilting is finished, I will take a red pigma pen and touch each one of those white dots and POOF! they will disappear. 

Are you counting the barter quilt/sculptures? This one make #4.

Emergence

Remember the Double 4-patch barter quilt? Here's what I got in trade: a lovely solid bronze statue.

It's a beauty, isn't it?