Florida Colors

I had just returned from our two weeks in Ireland, away from my studio for all that time, so all I wanted to do was to sit down at my sewing machine and just sew and sew and sew.

I had found one of these on sale, a set of jellyroll strips that were just not rolled up.

I also had a few yards of a light and happy background fabric, so off I went to find a pattern and get started.

The pattern was quickly found on YouTube.  Fons and Porter have a gaggle of free video tutorials and quilt pattern instructions.  For this one, search Fons and Porter, Quilting Quickly: Twice as Nice.  The video takes a whole 5 minutes.

This is the resulting quilt, which arrived in a miraculously short period of time.  I added a couple of borders, some very simple straight-line quilting, and Bob’s your uncle.

Florida Colors, 2018

 

Florida Colors, detail

This quilt will go to my sister-in-law, whose house is wonderfully decorated in all these fabulous colors.

The only problem now is what do I do with both of these?????

 

Black and White All Over–foundation-pieced triangles

I have written about this piece while it was in progress in two prior posts, and it was finally finished in time to be shown at my guild’s exhibit, EBHQ’s Voices in Cloth, 2018.

During the process of making this quilt, I tried numerous times to include color of any kind, and did not succeed.  Frankly, the result is super-pleasing, to me at least.  Seems not to have impressed many others.  But then we do what we do because we are following our own compass, not to please others.

Black and White All Over, 2017

 

Black and White All Over, detail

I started this in Ashland, Oregon, while on vacation at a great house, attending many plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  I wanted a portable project, requiring limited baggage, so I took only my Featherweight and black and white fabrics, just to get a new quilt started.

I made my own foundations on freezer paper using an unthreaded needle on my machine.  I do not include a seam allowance on my foundations.  I learned to love foundation-piecing a billion years ago in a class taught by Jane Hall and Dixie Haywood at Houston.  I’m so grateful to them for sharing their expertise.

Freezer paper foundations

Progress started out slow, until I got into a good rhythm.

Day One

And then it got easy.

Day five

 

I even found a beautiful bowl for the fabric trimmings, which became its own fabric sculpture after a while.

 

And here is what most people commented on about this quilt, since this fabric was used often:

ANTS!!

Still love it.

Triangles-in-progress

I have finished 133 of these puppies, and I think that may be enough. They look kinda cool on the floor, so I am really jazzed about how they might look on my design wall.

And here is the fun one:

 

 

BEFORE

 

 

 

AFTER

I will have to make a pile of half-triangles for the sides of the quilt and a few more blocks to see how I can get color into this piece.

Here is a sample, just because I happened to have this black-with-red fabric nearby. Don’t know if this will be enough color to compete with all this black and white.

 

 

And, now that I have finished all of these blocks, I am amazed to realize that I never once considered using the same fabric for all three sides of each of these triangles.  Oh, well . . .

Would have looked like this:

 

Maybe that is how the color can be used.  Hmmmmmm . . . .

And here’s another one of the CQP kits, just for fun:

 

A little different . . .

And now for something completely different—–

I duecided to take a break from paper-piecing isosceles  triangles when I had finished 92.  So I sewed together two tops for making into quilts for our Children’s Quilt Project wing of EBHQ’s Community Quilts efforts.

I made these tops from kits I made for the Project using my all-time favorites—the leftover 2″ squares.

Kits kinda come together on their own.  Scraps cut into 2.5″ squares begin to combine into interesting groups or color combinations, and these groups find fun borders and binding.  I love this process.

Sometimes, when I create a kit, I can’t let go of it and HAVE to make it myself.  Then, I usually finish the whole quilt.  And it does still feel good to know that some child/family will receive this quilt.  I know they really appreciate these cuddly comfort quilts that our guild donates to a wide variety of deserving non-profits.

The latest two—

———-

Still have three more kits that I could  sew now, but I think it’s time to get those last 40 triangles sewn (if they actually ARE the last triangles; I almost never know).

Enjoy.

Purple Geese

I just finished five quilts in time to get them photographed, quite a flurry of activity.

It was fun finally to finish this Flying Geese quilt, and I say “finally” even though I have no idea when I even started it.

When a class project more than 15 years ago did not turn out as I would have liked, I used all the fabrics I had gathered for the class and all the left over cut pieces and started sewing these geese on freezer paper, three geese to a block.  I worked on these randomly, and then there was a huge pile of them, which became this quilt top.

After that,  the top sat unquilted for the longest time.  The 2016 New Year’s resolutions to finish my projects really worked in this case, and here is the quilt that grew from that abandoned project.

Purple Geese, 2016

59″ x 63″   

The quilting is very simple.  I wanted the plaids to do all the heavy lifting.  I think they do a great job.

 

Purple Geese Detail

And I gratefully acknowledge Gerry Roy and Roberta Horton for helping to nurture a love of plaids early on in my quilting life.  These fun fabrics are a a joy to work with, and I try to include them in everything I do.

If I had known I would love this one as much as I do, I’d like to think I might have finished it sooner.  Oh, well . . .

AND

there’s one more, finished in 2009.  It’s probably the remains of the class project that did not please me and did not warrant finishing as a full-sized quilt.  Done. (Must have had strong New Year’s resolutions in 2009, too).

All Plaids, 2009

42″ x 44″

 

 

Happy Quilt II-much more fun

Surprise, surprise. . . . I just can’t stop playing with these bright, bold, geometric fabrics that I first began to put together when taking the Freddy Moran Parts Department class  (see previous post about the Happy Quilt).

 

So I made Happy Quilt II, because I still had more of these strata leftover (hooorrraaaaaay for leftovers!!).  And the yellow background fabric in this quilt in between the rows of strips reminds me of another quilt of mine, Yellow Rows of Seven.

When I started quilting a thousand years ago, people did not favor yellow and orange, thinking they were too bold and difficult to work in with other colors.  So it feels as though I have come full circle now, loving yellow and orange equally with all the other colors.

Happy Quilt II, 2015
60″ x 74″
Photography by Sibila Savage

And I had fun doing a very simple quilting pattern on this quilt.  Seems as though “simple” is my only style these days.

Happy Quilt II, detail

And stay tuned.  I am pretty sure that I am not finished with this “Happy” phase.  Guess it’s a series.

Here’s an option for another, although I’m not completely satisfied with it yet.  Must by why it’s not finished yet.

Happy work in progress

Grandmother’s Flower Garden

Here’s another of the “vintage” fabric quilts, but this one was not a top that I purchased;  it started as a small pile of finished blocks and scraps found at an antique store.  By the time I came across these beauties, I also had a small collection of vintage fabrics, so I hand pieced many more, enough to make a quilt.

This quilt was hand quilted by Quilting Plus and they did a wonderful job.

Grandmother’s Flower Garden, 1993
72″ x 79.5″

I can identify the blocks that I made from the different yellow in the centers.  I could not find an exact match, and had to settle for a duller, paler hue.  Most of the other solids are vintage.

The red block was in the original set I purchased.  Even though it stands out so dominantly, I just had to include it.  Love the scrappy look!!

Grandmother’s Flower Garden, detail

I remember piecing them together into the top while on vacation at a friend’s cabin in Tahoe, along with very young children.  It was a relaxing time.

Forgotten Quilt; Halloween Postcards

While looking through my old photo files for pictures of the Christmas stockings I had previously made, I came across a picture of a quilt that I had forgotten about.  The picture is one taken for the EBHQ historian at the Voices in Cloth 2008 quilt show.  I did not keep this quilt long enough for it to be professionally photographed.  It was donated to a women’s clinic in Africa, when EBHQ still had a means of getting these items there.

Triad II, 2008

I also remember that this quilt was problematic in many ways.   It started in an EBHQ workshop on color in quilts taught by Christine E. Barnes.  She uses “mock blocks” to teach color and other artistic concepts to quilters.  (see her book Color: The Quilter’s Guide for all the details)  Below is the mock block I made in class, and I loved it.

Time to make a full quilt.  I changed the center square to a red-purple (magenta), creating a triad color scheme.

Finding the turquoise, yellow-orange, and magenta fabrics for the quilt was difficult, especially when I needed them in different values.  There was not much dark turquoise in the local fabric stores.

Then, finding an appropriate fabric for sashing between the blocks was even harder, since I had boxed myself into this specific color scheme.  I love the puzzle aspect of this art form, but this one was not so much fun.  The sashing fabric turned out to be in my own stash;  it was a fabric manufactured by the children’s clothing company Mousefeathers in Berkeley, and a wild print it was.

Anyway, after struggling with finding fabrics, putting them together, working out the math, and developing a quilting pattern, I was happy to see this one finished, ready for display at the quilt show,  and I loved it.  But NO ONE else did.  Too bright, unusual colors, whatever.  So off it went to keep someone continents away safely bundled.

AND

Just for fun with the upcoming holiday—-some more postcards.  I loved making these from some old Alexander Henry fabrics I found heavily discounted after Halloween one year.  Some of these images were incomplete, but they still worked in this small format.  I even had to give the torn Frankie a few extra sutures on his neck;  seemed to do the trick.

Feed Sack Log Cabin

Made from another of the vintage tops I had collected, this quilt is made almost entirely of feed sack fabrics.  The red centers of the blocks give a big punch to this quilt.

Unfortunately I have no record of when I got this top;  it may be another from Eli Leon.  Regardless, I know I waited a long time before I had it quilted, and when it was finished by Nina Farrell, I saw how wonderful it really was.

Also quite wonky, this quilt’s appeal for me is not in the precision of the sewing, but in the fabric.  I know I’m nuts, but I love these old prints.

Feed Sack Log Cabin, date unknown

Here is a detail of the machine quilting done by Nina Farrell, who got one of these lovely flowers in each red center.

Feed Sack Log Cabin, detail 1

For the back of the quilt, I used feed sacks and feed sack scraps from my collection.  I tried to use the wildest prints I could find, so they could be showcased on this big back.  Click on the photos to enlarge, and also see the detail below of some of the prints–crazy, crazy stuff.

Feed Sack Log Cabin, back

Feed Sack Log Cabin, detail 2

All photography by Sibila Savage unless otherwise noted.

My learning process

I am immensely proud of almost all of the quilts included in these posts and galleries, and then along comes my most recent, about which I have mixed feelings.  Not everything is successful.

Firstly, this quilt is finished, and that is always a good thing.  But only now do I notice so many changes I could have made.  Sometimes the learning experiences arrive at the very tail end of a project, too late to make adjustments.  Such is the case here.

However, since I do not support anyone drawing attention to all the things they might consider mistakes in their works, I leave it to your judgment.

This piece was made in Roberta Horton’s African-American Quilts workshop at PIQF.   It was very fun to make since it uses a template-free construction method;  just cut and sew.

Gee’s Bend Churn Dash, 2013            34″ x 37.5″

And I did find one part of this quilt that is my very favorite, and it is what I learned in the process of quilting.

Since there were so many different patterned fabrics in this top, deciding on a quilting pattern that would enhance the quilt or even be visible was a challenge.

The solution was hand quilting with Perle cotton.  LOVE IT.  Using a Chenille needle made the process very easy, since the eye of that needle is large enough to accommodate the No.8 thread, and yet the needle is sharp enough to go through all three layers of the quilt.

Gee’s Bend Churn Dash, detail

This quilting reminded me of when I started quilting back in the early 70’s, all by hand, including piecing by hand.   I think a project I’m currently working on may call for hand quilting too, so returning to my roots may be a comfortable place.

The larger lesson for me is learning to become more comfortable trying something that I don’t usually do and failing.  Historically, some of my best work has followed mistakes.