Friday, April 30, 2010

The Stories Told by Quilts

I'm so fortunate to have made such good friends through quilting.

Carol Duncan invited me to go to the Shelby County Historical Society Quilt Show this week.  I had planned on doing something else but she twisted my arm (didn't take much twisting) and off we went.  The main draw, aside from the quilts, was a presentation by Lois Griffith.  I've mentioned Lois in a previous post.  Lois taught me to paper piece and has taught me several other things, too.  You'll see more of the things I've learned as I complete the projects.  But I digress.

Lois was the speaker at this gathering.  She gave a wonderful talk on the stories told by quilts.  I've seen several of her quilts and they are wonderful.  But the stories behind the quilts make them even more special.  And Lois has such a wonderful way of telling stories!  She also has a quilt journal that is just phenomenal.  It includes not only what's going on but has sketches, pictures, and ideas for quilts.  I've not really journalled in the past but seeing the types of notes in her journals was inspiring.

Now - the good news is that Carol and I volunteered to hold up Lois' quilts while she was giving her talk.  That meant we could see them up close and personal.  Unfortunately, that means I don't have any pictures of her quilts.  (Sob)  But...
Lois (in black with her back to the camera) talks with Becky Mathison and Sara Millis while others examine the details of her quilts.

Close up of Lois' African Quilt.  What I learned here was that including the selvage of the fabric can sometimes provide valuable information about what is used in the quilt.  Often the selvages include the date of the material design.  You can see it above the jug.  I didn't get the picture rotated - Sorry!
At the conclusion of Lois' talk and a delightful lunch, we toured the quilt show.  I've found that I sometimes don't take pictures of the entire quilt.  In fact, I found that I'm more intrigued by the quilting patterns so my pictures tend to be of specific designs of interest.  For example... 
 


Look at the beautiful quilting done by Jackie Foster on this Lone Star quilt.



Margaret Eck Feitig made this beautiful quilt in 1900.  Stunning.

Just look at the quilting.  Exquisite!


Harriet Colby made this quilt in 1860.  Her trapunto on this quilt was quite interesting and this particular motif was used only two times on the full sized quilt.  I love the effect.  She included trapunto vines the length of the quilt.


After we toured the museum, we stopped at Rivers Edge Fabric to check out their fabrics.  They are housed in the same building as Hospice of Shelby County and I spent some time catching up with a wonderful friend who works there.  Hi Charlene!

We also shopped at the Hospice of Shelby County Thrift Shop.  We found some items that will make their way into our Quilt Boutique at our quilt show this fall.  We'll have to see how artsy I can beome in the next few months!

Cheers!

Margaret

Monday, April 26, 2010

Just a Little Dab will Do

There are some expressions that fit all sorts of occasions.  I'm not sure where I first heard today's title, but I associate it most often with cooking.  As in "just a little dab of chili powder will do." In today's case, it applies to fabric.

Last Spring, I was asked to make a quilt for my sister-in-law, Dorothy.  The only requirements were that it have fabric showing black bears (very specifically must be black bears and not brown bears) and that it fit a queen size bed.  Lana, Dorothy's daughter, and I went shopping for fabric and found what Lana thought would be the perfect backing.  It had the right colors for Harold & Dorothy's bedroom.  This is probably the first time I bought backing before having any of the fabric for the quilt top!

Lana and I both looked for black bear fabric and found a couple of examples online.  No black bear fabric locally - go figure!  Not many black bears in southern Indiana.  I thought I might find some during the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat last Fall but none of the shops in northern Michigan carried black bear fabric, either.  So I ordered a few samples from the online sources and started to look for coordinating fabrics to make the quilt.

This was also the first quilt pattern that I drafted.  I used some cheapie software that I got at JoAnn's on sale and was pleased with the results.  Based on the black bear fabric that had the best color combinations, I made the blocks rather large (16" square) and decided to alternate Bear Paw blocks with the bear fabric.  The only real problem with the software is that it didn't provide total yardage requirements.  That would have been extremely helpful.

On one of our quarterly fabric shopping excursions, Kathy, Deb and I explored a new (to us) shop - Pohlar Fabrics.  There I found lots of fabric that would be perfect for the black bear quilt top.  I bought several yards of the fabrics for the inner and outer borders.  But for the Bear Paws themselves, I didn't buy very much of the light fabric - not sure why.  Having gotten that far, the materials and pattern rested until I went to Cambria in March.



At Cambria, I embarked on making the "biggest honking Bear Paw blocks" that one of my fellow Cambria-ites had ever seen (probably any of us had ever seen, to be honest!).  I got help making the half square triangles from the group as I hadn't made any before.  It was starting to come together nicely - one of the reasons I stayed up until 3 a.m. sewing with the Kit Queen!  I was really making progress on this quilt.  And now for the real reason I didn't stay up later than 3 a.m. that night with Sherri...I didn't have enough of a tan batik that I was using as the cross pieces in the bear paw block.  I was also beginning to realize that I needed an additional piece of light fabric to complete the final bear paw's toenails.  Sob!

I checked all over to locate at least a scrap of that fabric - all I needed was enough to make 2 Bear Paws.  Remember that they are honkin' big so that amounted to 4 squares of 4" square fabric - a fat quarter would do it.  But could I locate a fat quarter locally?  Of course not!  That fabric was at least a year old, perhaps older and was apparently very popular.

In checking around, however, I stumbled on a web site that showed the fabric.  You should bookmark the Quilter's Joy site as Betty Oatsvall was the absolute greatest help.  When I called, she remembered the fabric and thought there might either be a scrap that would work or that she might have some at home.  She checked and called the next day saying she had found a fat quarter and would be happy to send it to me.  When I got her letter in the mail, it was too small for a fat quarter - she had found that scrap she thought she had and, sure enough, it was just the right size to complete the project.  Just that little dab of fabric did it!

And here's the size of the fabric scrap - next to my big foot!


Betty - thank you so very much!

I worked on the quilt and just need to add the borders before loading it to quilt.  Stay tuned to see the completed quilt in the next few days! 

Cheers!

Margaret

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Fractured Quilts

Where has the time gone since my last post?  It has been a busy week and a half - fun stuff and some not so fun stuff but things are coming together. 

 I became enamored of fractured quilts when a friend showed me her fractured quilt last fall.  I found what I thought was the perfect fabric while shopping at a quilt retreat last fall and bought it.  Since I wasn't sure of how many copies of the motif I needed and since it was the end of the bolt, I bought the remainder and went home with 6 copies of the motif. At some other shop, I found a fractured quilt pattern to guide me.  When I looked at the pattern, it said to use a grid and cut individual pieces before sewing on the 2" x 2" grid.  That's not me AT ALL!
Finally found a book by Brenda Esslinger - Fabulous Fractures.  It talked about strip piecing.  That's more my style!  So, at the Cambria quilt retreat in March  I worked on a fractured quilt and loved the way it came out.  The original motif was small - roughly about 20" x 20" yet the finished piece is 45" x 49", a large wall hanging.  Interesting to me that it looks so bright in the picture yet in my living room it appears much darker.  Perhaps that speaks to the light in the bedroom where the picture is taken and the lack of good natural light in my living room.

Moonlight Flight - how's that for a title?  Quilt pieced at Cambria retreat with 4 repeats of the primary pattern.
Anyway ... I had some time that I was calling spare time the other day.  In that spare time, I thought I'd work on a quick fractured quilt with the two remaining panels of the fabric used in the above quilt.  In her book, Brenda had used the same fabric and fractured the pieces vertically.  While I thought that look was interesting, I wanted to fracture my remaining two panels horizontally to get the moon rising.  I also used a lighter gold fabric for the border to give it a slightly different look.  What do you think?
Moon Rising - using only 2 repeats. 


They both need to be quilted and I'll get to that this week (I hope).  I've been thinking about how to quilt them all week and think I've finally got the quilting plan figured out!  I do like it when a plan comes together!

In the meantime, I've been working on some other projects that have due dates coming up.  Blog to you later!

Cheers!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Sarah Sue

Quilt Fest was interesting for another reason - they had some terrific door prizes.  About 30 minutes after I walked in the door, my name was called as the winner of a door prize!  Here's Sarah Sue!  Doesn't she have a sweet face?
Sarah Sue
The show at Rising Sun had quite a few doll-related vendors.  There were also several doll related entries in the show - doll quilts, doll clothes and dolls.  I had an interesting conversation with Nita Keeler, owner of Bumbershoot Studios.  Nita is the dollmaker that contributed this wonderful door prize.  It's hard for me to fathom the amount of time she spends crafting all of the components for this doll.  Sarah Sue is sophisticated enough to stand up by herself.

As a child, I had very few dolls.  While I might have had one, my sister and I were reminiscing the other day and our memories were that we played with the dolls at our next door neighbor's house.  The four girls in that family had lots of dolls.

Now, it seems, I'm starting a doll collection.  In addition to Sarah Sue, Wendy gave me a Quilt Angel at our Cambria quilt retreat.  What I don't know is whether or not Wendy named my Quilt Angel.  Wendy???  She's very cuddly and I love her wings and the flower she's holding.  I just haven't come up with an appropriate name for her yet.  We'll just have to see if the right name surfaces.

Cheers!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Rising Sun Quilt Fest

Hard to believe that it's been almost a week since I've posted anything.  There's been quite a bit going on in my quilting world as well as in my non-quilting world. 

The quilt I entered in the Rising Sun Quilt Fest didn't win any ribbons (boo hoo) but I learned a valuable lesson!  Be careful in the category you choose for your entry.  Now this may sound like a no-brainer but it's not always obvious to me which category I should choose.  Understand that I've entered a grand total of 2 quilts in 3 different shows so I'm still new at figuring these things out.  So I entered the quilt in the Machine Quilting category since that's what I am, right?

When Morning Gilds the Skies


Metallic thread emanating from center of the "sun"

Because I did such a nice job on the piecing (if I do say so myself), I perhaps should have entered this in the Pieced category.  The blocks were paper pieced, a technique that local teacher extraordinaire Lois Griffith made very easy to understand. She gave us great tips about improving our paper piecing technique and I'm no longer scared of this technique. I think another quilt using New York Beauty blocks will be in my future.



Misty swirls in the wake of sunrise.
Although I was particularly pleased with the way the variegated thread and metallic thread in two different areas of the quilt added different highlights to the quilt, I can see some areas where the quilting could have been improved - some of the circles perhaps more concentric.  As much as I appreciate uniformity in some quilting designs, I also enjoy the irregularities that sometimes creep into freehand quilting as I think it adds interest.  The rays emanating from the sun in the upper left are metallic thread as are the swirls in the upper right part of the quilt.  The remaining thread is a trilobal polyester variegated thread that has some sheen to it but is also slightly darker - the morning mists surrounding the rising sun are sometimes murky. 

Understand that Rising Sun is a dinky Ohio River town.  They do, however, have a relatively vibrant arts community including a wonderful art quilter and the Quilt Fest was being sponsored under the auspices of the Ohio County Historical Society.  While there were several quilts (I'm guessing maybe 35 - 45), there were also miniature quilts (4), dolls, wearables (maybe 6), purses, ceramic things and a hodge-podge of other stuff.  There were also multiple quilts entered by the same person - several local quilters had two or three apiece and one well-known quilter from Kentucky had three entered and another on display that won last's year's Best of Show award.  Guess who cleaned up on the ribbons???

Comments from the judge were complimentary along with a note to improve my binding technique so it was a worthwhile experience for me.  The quilt is actually closer to square than it looks in the picture - taking pictures is an area where I can obviously improve greatly.

Something else fun happened - subject of tomorrow's blog.

Cheers.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Columbus Star Quilt Guild Meeting

Our local quilt guild meets the first Wednesday of every month and I'm usually scrambling to get things put together for this meeting.  My goal this year was to have at least one thing for Show & Tell at each meeting.  So far, I've been hitting that goal with some help from my friends!

As I'm one of the co-chairs of the Sewer's Boutique for "A Gathering of Quilts," our biennial Quilt Show coming on October 2 - 3, it was a thrill to be the recipient of neat gifts at the SeaSide Stitchers Retreat.  You can be sure the ideas shared at that retreat will be finding their way into gifties that will be at the boutique.  I have to say that the entire guild fell in love with the Snap Bags.  Here's a sample:

We had a lesson at the retreat on how to make the bags.  Of course, being the rebel in the group, it took me longer to complete than the others.  I just couldn't wrap my mind around why you would stitch a 1 1/4" seam allowance and the very next step trim the seam allowance to 1/2".  Still can't figure that one out.  So I reworked the measurements so that I didn't have to trim that seam allowance.  Saved  a whole 1 1/2" of fabric!!  By the time I was done, everyone else had completed all of the steps of their Snap Bag and moved on to other projects. 

Even though I didn't have one of my own quilts to show at the Guild meeting, I had completed the quilting on one of Jeannette's quilts.  She showed it and there were lots of Ooohs and Aaahs - particularly as the back was a plain piece of muslin so the quilting showed up well.  I had used a red thread to outline quilt the leaves and berries that were on an inner border (next to the green triangles).  It was part of a two piece border.  The second part of the border got quilted daisies that were in the tan fabric so they're not as visible. 

Here's Jeannette's quilt.  Stitching around all of the applique was time consuming!  The dense quilting in the light areas around the applique helps it stand out from the body of the quilt.

The back looks great, too!
With a little bit of breathing space, I now have to decide what to do next.  I do have a customer's quilt but I'm waiting for her to drop by with a book showing the quilting design she wants.  Although she described it to me, I'd really feel better seeing what she's talking about so I quilt it to her expectations.  Sometimes (most of the time?!) my interpretation of what someone describes is not quite what they intended.  Remember that exercise where you sat with your backs together and your partner tells you how to draw something by telling you where to put your pencil and which direction to go?  My drawings NEVER turned out like the original picture!

I've been enjoying the Spring flowers that are now blooming all over the place.

Cheers!

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Easter Bunny Brings More than Eggs!

The Easter Bunny visited me this weekend in the guise of my parents. 

My Dad has developed a talent for making lovely furniture from lumber purchased at a variety of auctions that he has attended through the years.  He has made a variety of bookshelves, end tables, desks and hutches, blanket chests, quilt racks and other items for me and my siblings as well as the grandkids.  Although you can't really see the bookcase very well, you can see how well I've stocked it with books.  Isn't the table lovely?

A couple of months ago I was asking how his latest woodworking project was going and he didn't have anything in progress.  I saw an opportunity and jumped right in.  Having just bought several spools of thread, I was running out of space to store them.  I kept knocking them over and couldn't find what I wanted without searching and searching and searching...you get the drift.  So I asked for a thread stand.  I'd seen a large thread stand at a longarm dealer's showroom but the price blew me away.  Couldn't find anything online that looked close enough to hold the large cones of thread that I buy for my longarm.  So I explained what I was looking for and sent the measurements for my cones of thread.  Just look at the result - fits a nook near my longarm, too!  It's an elegant solution to my obsession with threads.  While I still have quite a few cones stocked in a drawer, this is a great way to store and find the thread I use most often that was previously just piled on top of a small table in the basement.  Best present from the Easter Bunny I've ever received.  Better than chocolate, even!

Cheers.


Thursday, April 1, 2010

SewBatik - So Fun!

Did I mention that I had applied to become a Longarm Associate with the SewBatik company?  They accepted me and I now have an official associate number - LAP 1377!  They have a line of batik fabrics that is just beautiful - both in flannels and regular cotton batiks.   Just look at some of the samples below:
Center leafy pattern on just one of the possible batik options

Side Border that goes with the leafy pattern

As a longarmer, I love the 108" wide line of fabrics they have.  Having made several full size quilts now, I really appreciate not having to seam fabric for backings.  While that's easy enough to do, having a 108" wide fabric eliminates that one step and that saves me time.  I don't know about quilt shops in your area, but shops around here don't carry a large selection of 108" wide fabrics.  And their selections are usually limited in scope and color.  I love having color on the back of my quilts just as much as I love it on the front.  So these batiks are a dream come true for me. 


I just love the random dots and the color gradations on this fabric.


Aren't the colors on this batik lucious?  And this is 108" wide, too!
What really caught my eye several years ago were the beautiful colors. I was initially drawn to the pastel shades that are my first love.  This year I saw some darker colors - browns and blacks - made up into a quilt that was stunning. So I'm a convert!

Check out their web site to see their gorgeous fabrics. And next time you go to a quilt show, look for their booth. If you purchase something from them either at their booth or online, I would appreciate it if you would mention my number as that helps them know who is spreading the word. I'll be honest - it helps me and who knows - might help you, too!

Cheers!