Color Play

When I finally got some studio time today, I started by ironing out my freshly dyed colors. All that color, what’s not to love? And when you look up close they have a variety of patterns (this is dyed white on white fabric) plus with the wrinkles in the dye there is a lot to look at if you get up close.

I started building strip color ways… a bit tedious. But thankfully I had company in the studio today. Our exchange students were working next to me in my jewelry studio making fun things. It was fun to see how much they enjoyed making their necklaces and earrings. And who knows, maybe I’ll return to jewelry making when I get a moment. Ha ha!

I sliced them and diced them and this is how they looked. I have paired them with white and a pale taupe, I love the white, not so sure of the taupe. But with the taupe walls in my room, this seems like a reasonable choice.
Sandwich it between chunks of hand dyed fabric? Naaah… not lovin it. I shall have a better idea tomorrow. Right now I'm toast.

Jacob's Stairs

It has been a beautiful day here, warm enough to leave the patio door open and allow the dogs to come and go as they please. I played for a while this morning then spent most of the afternoon on the couch trying to sleep off a cold that I haven’t been able to shake.
I took all of the quilting that I didn't like out of the piece I started yesterday and tried again with different machine quilting ideas to get something that I liked.
This was unintentional, but I see a door in this piece. It looks like a set of stairs in the doorway, drenched in light so I’ve decided to call it “Jacob’s Stairs.” I like the clean graphic nature of it but think it still needs something so I’m giving some thought to some embellishments
And so I picked out some beads that might work. It might be fun to suggest stars in the darker blue area above, I considered making them from polymer clay or going shopping for star buttons. Then there is the Swarovski crystal sort of sparkling star, that might be interesting. I have seed beads in any color and a bunch of other options. And I ran across this little tiny old skeleton key in my box of antique sewing stuff and it seems fitting that the key go on this piece somewhere. I have some floss and who knows what else. It will be interesting to see where this takes me!

There is a joy in this journey!

PEACE, joY and hoppiness...

Progress! I've got one row added to the center square now. Lots and lots of dancing frogs!! I've still got more blocks staring back at me on my table and it's only about 50 x 50 now. So I'll let it rest a while and then see what it needs when I come back to it next. It is fun to see the pieces go together!

Five Point Quilt Star Pattern Tutorial Part Two

The first seams have been sewn at this point, the star fabric to the background.

Press the star fabric open.

Turn the section facedown and trim the points of the star leaving an extra .25 inch seam allowance.


Holding fabric up to a light source, carefully trim the extra fabric away from the star leaving an extra .25 inch seam allowance. This will become a guide in sewing the next sections of the fabric to the star.

You can just barely see the pencil mark through the fabric so that you know where to cut. Try to avoid using ink for this purpose, having the ink run when the finished quilt is washed would be rather annoying.

Choose ten coordinating fabrics for the second row of the star and cut 2 inch strips or strips of various widths for a more funky look. Choose fabrics one step darker in value than the color of the star.
Lay out the fabrics until you are satisfied with the colors and balance.
Carefully place the chosen colors on the star face down, sew leaving a .25 seam allowance.
Sew each star point starting on the right hand side so that all points of the stars “go” the same direction.
Iron fabric open and trim.
Place the second strip of fabric against the first, carefully sew and iron open then trim.
Continue to add rows to the star points until all the backing fabric is covered. Iron each section open and trim each section carefully.



Carefully sew two points of the star together matching the lining fabric and iron.
Carefully sew two other points of the star together, matching the lining fabric and iron.
And the final point to a pair and iron.
Sew the final two sections together starting in the center of the star and sewing each side to the edge and iron.
Your star is complete and ready to be trimmed. Add a border fabric or two, or piece several stars together in a quilt design. The options for using this star block in quilt designs are endless.

I have to admit, making a tutorial is kind of fun!

Stars

The first one, way to complicated.

Trying another style... hmmm...

Try #3 hmmm....

King Sized Quilt Top Project

Last week my Mother-in-law and I made a quilt top in two days. It was an easy pattern, large pieces and it went together without giving us any trouble whatsoever. I designed the pattern using an existing block pattern. I wanted to do the traditional Amish diagonal set inside block. It could have been rather difficult but it came together as easy as could be and I was grateful for that. I chose the colors over a year ago when I visited the last time. And the fabric has set in storage this whole time. I made sure to purchase extra at the time because we knew that some of the fabrics were being discontinued. I am certain that there is plenty left over of everything except the white.

We talked about making a quilt for the Mennonite Relief Sale annual auction. Women (that’s an assumption on my part – certainly some men get in on the fun of quilting) from all over the Mennonite (and other) church make quilts to be sold and some fetch quite high prices. We talked at length about what features people really seem to like and the two main things were 1) contrast and 2) lots of quilting and less emphasis on the actual piecing. And we are both big fans of the work of Mennonite Central Committee – their focus is Relief, Development and Peace. See their website for more information: http://mcc.org/ So with these things in mind we started work on this project.

We had already chosen to use the pinwheel as the block. Our next major decision was which blocks would go in the center, we chose the ones with more black and white and I'm happy with this choice.



It is our tradition for me to design and cut the quilt, Sheril to sew, and whoever is available to help - irons. With three people working at these tasks, it doesn't take long to go from fabric to quilt top. As long as the designer/cutter (me) gets her part right. And if I don't get my part right then we end up ripping out seams which is pretty annoying.

Here we laid out the blocks to get a feel for how it was going to work. Thank goodness they have a large living room with carpet because we end up being on the floor alot.

I cut out the triangles for the center diamond while Sheril sewed a border on the central diamond of blocks.



Then we were ready to sew the triangles to the central diamond.

After that Sheril sewed on the next row of blocks while I cut out fabric for the next border.

Sheril sewed on the final border then, and when I walked back in the room there it was with that black and white border on it and I've got to tell ya, that was a sweet moment. It was exactly the right border to bring it all together and I was really ticked pink with it at that point.



Since it's a King sized quilt, it's hard to get it all in the picture when trying to photograph it - even standing on a chair. So here are a few shots of the details.

So this stage of the quilt is complete. Next it will be carefully marked where all the quilting should go. That's tedious but fun. Then it will go to the women of Sheril's church who will lay it out very carefully in a frame. They will start with a backing fabric, followed by a layer of polyester quilt backing. This top will be stretched out over this and fastened carefully. The women of the church will gather round to hand quilt each part of this quilt, rolling the quilt up as they go. When the quilting is finished, it will come off the frame and be bound with a black binding. I'm really looking forward to seeing it after it has gone through all that. There are many hours of labor that go into a project like this. I'm sure everyone who is involved hopes that it fetches a really high price at auction. Because it's all for an excellent cause.