Buy My Quilt

Here is the last little quilt of mine up for sale on the AAQI site. This little 9"x12" quilt is made using the last bit of a vintage panel. I embroidered it using silk ribbon, machine thread painting and some 3D effects. The addition of dragonfly charms adds a bit of glitz.

 

http://www.alzquilts.org/13118.html

Thank you for looking.

Meadow Dancer and Garden Delight

Did I ever show you this AAQI Priority quilt? It is "Meadow Dancer". Here are the specs:
Materials/Techniques: I used a vintage fabric panel, hand embroidery with DMC floss and perle cotton, and a fused butterfly, then machine quilted.
Artist Statement: Legend says that if one follows the Meadow Dancer, the secret of protection from any enemy will be found.

This next one is the last of that vintage panel and the last AAQI Priority Quilt that I will make. This has been such a fulfilling project and I am so glad that I have been able to participate.
Materials/Techniques: Vintage garden panel, machine thread work, hand embroidery, silk ribbon embroidery, 3D fabric embellishment, embellished with metal charms and hand quilting.
Artist Statement: A garden is always a delight especially when dragonflies dance among the flowers. There are three dragonflies on this quilt, can you find them?

I am linking to Judy at Patchwork Times.

Questions?

Have you ever appliqued or embroidered something AFTER the quilting? How did it turn out? Did you like it? I have an idea floating around in the ole brain but it's iffy.

Old Textiles

The only quilt shown at the lecture was made from layers and layers
of old saris using reverse applique and a big stitch quilting.
The batting is assumed to be more saris.

I attended a wonderful lecture last evening. It was the January program of  The Rocky Mountain Creative Quilters. Linda Carlson, Curator of the Avenir Museum at CSU's University Center for the Arts discussed and showed special items from their collection that illustrated the rich history of textiles as it pertains to quilting and creating with fabric. There was yardage and garments and other special items that included laces and molas, ikat and mudcloth . I learned tidbits of information like the style of a Japanese kimono probably relates to traditional Mongol clothing. And the early tie dyes that were shown and discussed were astounding!

Laying on top of various embroidered saris,
this Pre-Columbian textile was astonishing in it's complexity.
The weaver spun the cotton using only her fingers and thigh.

If you ever get the chance to attend something like this and you are really into textiles, and what quilter isn't into textiles, I urge you to go!

C.O.W.

This block is in the hands of the USPS and is on it's way to Nancy, Near Philadelphia. I originally drew the cow many years ago for a scrapbook page and thought it would work well for this. Hope you like it Nancy!

A Christmas Wish

This is the other Focus Quilt that I committed to finish in Finn's New Year's Eve UFO challenge. Simply quilted with diagonal crosshatching using a walking foot on the sewing machine, it measures 37x15".

The embroidered blocks were stitched at bee over the course of 2010 as the blocks were released from Gail Pan Designs: A Christmas Wish BOM. Another wall hanging was not needed around Casa del Quilter, but a runner would be nice under the class on the coffee table so I commenced designing an additional block because Gail's only contained nine blocks. You can find the pattern on my Freebies Page.

Once the embroidery was completed, I tried to match up fabric from the stash to frame the stitchery blocks. Nothing in the stash was quite right. Off to the LQS* and as it turned out, Thimbleberries fabric was the perfect match and so two FQ** came home with me. But I forgot about something -- the binding. Once it was backed, basted and quilted I realized I had to go shopping again for MORE Thimbleberries. O the horror! So another FQ came home with me and I was able to get enough binding out of that one 18"x21" piece of fabric to complete this table runner.

Whew! Finished just in the nick of time.

*FQ: fat quarter
**LQS: local quilt shop

Trick or Treat!

Did that get your attention? One project down and one to go.

Remember when I posted about Finn's New Year's Eve UFO Challenge? Thinking it was doable, I committed to finishing two projects. This is the larger of the two projects, coming in at 60"x60". It is my first real attempt at liberated piecing in the form of the words.

The last year was spent working on those stitched blocks every other Friday at bee and they are obviously different sizes. I used twisted frames to bring them all up to a consistent size. One block got twisted in the other direction, but I left it alone. I made one too many blocks so the extra one was turned into a label for the back.

Some of the designs came from various internet sites, some were clipart, and some were my designs. To see a full version of the blocks (and to be able to read them) click on the corresponding links below the photo mosaic.

1. Halloween001-th, 2. Halloween0009-th, 3. Halloween0003-th, 

  4. Halloween0004-th, 5. Halloween0002-th, 6. Halloween0005-th, 

7. Halloween0006-th, 8. Halloween0007-th, 9. Halloween0008-th

I am either way behind or getting ready for next year

This is one of the Focus Projects in Finn's New Year's Eve UFO challenge. For lack of a better name it is just called the Hallowe'en quilt. So what are you looking at here? Well, these are the various strips to make some liberated letters for a very appropriate Hallowe'en phrase along the border. This quilt is totally from the fabric stash but I managed to have enough of the same fabric for the background of the letters and the frames for the blocks in the center of the quilt. Imagine that! The two main orange fabrics even somewhat resemble each other and are a much closer match in color than what you see in the photos.

Here's a sneak peak at one of the blocks. These blocks are embroidered and dye painted. Some of the blocks are my design and others are pulled from various sources including but not limited to Bird Brain Designs and Kaaren of the Painted Quilt.

Remember when I was asking for quilting ideas in a recent post?  This is the quilt I had in mind. As you can see there are words; in fact, each of the blocks has words on it. This is a very wordy quilt. Anyway, I still haven't decided how to quilt this thing. I'm still open to suggestions.

Embroidery and Quilting Opinions Needed

I've been working on some stitchery blocks, 9 to be exact. The smallest is about 6x6" and the largest is a whopping 10x10". This is one of my committed UFOs, you can find the challenge over there on my sidebar. Over the weekend I started sewing them into a flimsy. This is not really a question about embroidery or stitchery, but a question about putting embroidery in quilts and then quilting it.

Have you done this? How did you quilt it? Did you quilt up to the embroidery and then leave the embroidery alone? Did you disregard the embroidery and quilt right over it?

I am tempted to disregard the embroidery because of the disparate sizes of the blocks. I have done this before but because the blocks were a uniform size and was being hand quilting, I just quilted a big X in the block; it really is not that noticeable as you can see in the photo above. This new piece, however, is begging for a leafy vine.

Your opinion matters to me, please leave me comment! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

One of My Five Applique UFOs

I have been quilting lately -- a lot. The Father Christmas triptych has been renamed The Gift Bringer because it is now one block not three and has a pieced border. Don't ask about the other two blocks, okay? I tried for some snow drifts in the lower portion of this wall hanging, but the snow morphed into shells. *shrug* The upper portion is quilted in a swirl that occasionally goes into a five pointed star. The color is terrible in this photo but I was working in bright sun with a north wind and was lucky to get it to lay flat.


This is actually my first real finish of the year. It's bound (remember the last post?) and labeled. Onward!

Autumn Leaves

Auntie needed a new decoration for her door and this pattern has been languishing in the 'some day' pile. After working on The Firewood Quilt for months and months, a quick project was needed for instant gratification.

The pattern is from Quilter's World August 2008 magazine, which, BTW, has the cutest little quilt on the cover of the December issue. This small 18"x18" quilt is a product of the stash: backing, batting, fabric, buttons, thread.

There are several balls of Candlewicking Cotton in the stash that have provoked thoughts of usage in quilts. The first attempt is shown here as big stitch quilting. My opinion? Meh. The thread is much too soft to do a larger quilt and will be used for embroidery, as it was intended.

Small projects such as this are a great way to try new techniques