November Challenge - Snowball Block

November's challenge was to use the snowball block in our design.  A snowball block is basically a square of fabric with triangles sewn onto the four corners.  Depending on the size of your square and triangles, this sort of rounds out the block and makes it look a bit like a circle.  With red as the final color I had left from my rainbow challenge bundle of fabrics, I thought of flowers.

Initially I thought I could salvage last month's rejected blocks and use them like flower petals.  But that wasn't working for me either so I guess I'll just have to hang on to those for some other project down the line.  I'll figure out a way to use them eventually.

Still thinking flowers, I decided I would just quilt a flower shape, like a daisy, into each snowball.  So I started from there.  I got as far as piecing four snowball blocks together and then had to figure out what was going to fill up the rest of the space so I played with some various applique shapes until I came up with a design I liked.

I was trying to explain my vision to Hubby Tom but he just wasn't seeing the daisies in the snowballs.  Within seconds he had drawn out a new flower idea.  Brilliant!  I could make them roses.

Finally it was all coming together.  Once all the hand stitched applique was in place, time to quilt.  The roses came out great!  I wanted a pretty dense fill for the background so that the roses and applique would really stand out so I tried my hand at a quilting technique known as McTavishing - named after the woman who popularized it.  For a first try, I was happy with the results.  Since the overall design felt very traditional to me, I chose traditional feathers for the outer border.  All that was left was to come up with a name.

Snowball Bouquet

I like the backside too.

Don't forget to check out Persimon Dreams - Focus Through the Prism Challenge to see the wonderful pieces submitted by the rest of the participants in this fun challenge.

October Challenge - 9 patch

For the Focus Through the Prism Challenge this month, our inspiration block is the basic nine-patch.

As soon as I saw that, I immediately had what I thought was going to be a great idea on how to do a somewhat improvisational version of a nine-patch quilt.  I couldn't wait to get started.  I had several pieces cut and sewn and up on my design board in record time.  Then I stepped back to admire how my masterpiece was coming along and .... I didn't like it.  It needed something and I couldn't decide what.   Maybe a print fabric.  But since I have set myself the additional challenge of only using Cherrywood fabrics for these projects, that was out.

After several days of deliberation, I finally decided to scrap the whole idea and go back to the drawing board.

I recently saw a great book by Karen Combs called Celtic Pieced Illusions.  I was very intrigued by how she was able to create so many wonderful, colorful designs using only three basic blocks; and one of those basic blocks is a nine-patch. Almost infinite variations are possible just by altering the fabric positions and block placement.

So that became my new plan.  I have only red and indigo left from my challenge bundle to use as focus colors.  With my recent failed attempt at red still fresh in my mind, I decided to use indigo this time.  I drew up a few designs and tried a few color combinations until I came up with this one.

I got the main part of the quilt top completed within a few days.  Then it was time to add the borders and YIKES, I had run out of the violet fabric!!!  Luckily, I had another piece of Cherrywood in my stash that was an almost identical color so I went with it.

On to the quilting.  I had so much fun.  I knew I wanted feathers in the indigo spaces and the rest just evolved.  I'm extremely happy with the way it all turned out.

I even came up with a name that would give a little credit to the book that gave me the idea for my design.

Indigo Illusion

Don't forget to visit the Focus Through the Prism Challenge website to check out all the other fun, and creative entries.

September Challenge, Flying Geese

September's inspiration block was Flying Geese, an incredibly versatile little block/unit in the quilting world.  My mind was flooded with ideas.  I have always wanted to make something using curved paper pieced flying geese so that was my first thought.  But then I came up with an idea to make an underwater scene using the flying geese as part of the fish.  But then I came across a picture of a beautiful traditional block that used a lot of flying geese units that I thought I might use.  But then.....well, you get the idea.

As part of this challenge series, we choose one color from our Cherrywood challenge bundle as the focus color for our quilt, using a different color each month.  I had three colors remaining, red, blue and indigo.  While looking at my little stash of Cherrywood fabric, trying to decide which of my many ideas I would go with, my eye settled on the blue fabric which happened to be sitting next to the orange fabric left over from the first challenge.  This struck me as a very southwest color palette and suddenly I knew exactly what direction I was going to head with my design.

Once I got this far, I realized I needed some sort of feature element for the center.  The dancing, flute playing Kokopelli I see everywhere here in Arizona has always made me smile.  He seems like such a happy, joyful fellow.  So that was an easy choice to make.

Not having done a lot of hand applique before, this was a true challenge for me.  Lack of decisiveness and poor planning made the process more difficult than it had to be.  If I had it to do over again, I would go about the applique process in a very different way.  I'm happy with where I ended up, but getting there could have been a lot easier.  I learned a lot from this project and I'll be more prepared the next time I want to do hand applique.

I had only a vague plan of what I wanted to do with the quilting.  I knew I wanted to incorporate some of Angela Walter's Dot to Dot techniques but mostly I just made it up as I went along.

It was great fun and I was so pleased with the way it all turned out I wanted to break out into a happy dance.  So that is what I named this quilt.

Happy Dance  

Be sure to check out all the other fantastic entries at the challenge website Persimon Dreams

August Challenge - Pinwheel Block

August's inspiration block for the Focus Through the Prism Challenge, the pinwheel block, was revealed on August 1st, the same day we left for a four week road trip to visit Tom's sister and her husband in Waynesville, NC.  So I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to take part in this month's challenge or not.  But just in case, I packed up my bin of Cherrywood fabrics along with all our other luggage.  I figured there might be a chance to work on it once we got to Lise's house.

As we traveled across New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma we saw wind farms everywhere.  Windmills standing tall in green fields as far as the eye could see for miles on end.  Which of course made me think of the pinwheel block for the challenge.  So I had my inspiration and a plan in my head.  I saw the windmill blades in yellow and since that color tends to dominate even in small amounts, I decided my focus color this month would be yellow.  Now I just needed to find time to work on it.

Somewhere in the middle of our stay with Dave and Lise, I carved out a couple of hours to put my challenge quilt idea on paper and then a couple of hours the next day to piece the individual windmills.   I had a nice start on things but never managed to find time to work on it again for the rest of our stay.

We started for home on August 22nd with plans for several stops along the way and no exact time table for arriving back home.  Turns out we only spent four nights on the road and got home on the 27th.  After spending the following day doing laundry and unpacking and just generally settling back in, I got right to work.  I finished the quilting and binding today with four hours to spare on the deadline!  Whew!

Wind Farm

As always, the talented quilters taking part in this challenge have been submitting wonderfully creative, beautiful, unique and inspiring work.  Check them out at the Persimon Dreams - Focus Through The Prism (August) web page.

July Challenge - Log Cabin

July's inspiration is the Log Cabin block.  Such a versatile block!  So many ideas.  I love a wonky log cabin block but there are many traditional interpretations that are just as lovely.  How was I ever going to narrow it down and make a decision?

Before I could spend any time on July's challenge quilt, I was determined to complete a different project that I already had underway...a New York Beauty wall hanging for my mom, which is a story for another time.  But that did give me a chance to let the ideas percolate.  By the time I was ready to start working, even though I hadn't chosen a "feature color" for the month, a rough idea had taken shape in my mind.   With only about a week to bring my vision to life I reverted back to my design as you go and just see what happens method.

First step, create some log cabin inspired flowers.  Once I saw what I had created, it became apparent to me my color for this month would be violet.

In addition to using all Cherrywood fabrics, I have set myself the additonal challenge of using the colors adjacent to my feature color on the rainbow color wheel.  So if violet was to be my color, I would have to work red and indigo into my design.  My flowers would be set on a blue sky background so incorporating the indigo would be no problem.  But where to put the red?  Two more flowers with some red would do the trick.

Now to create the blue sky background.  Easy enough.  Wonky log cabin blocks using various shades of blue- including indigo of course.  And every blue sky needs a bright shining sun.

Really moving along now.  All the background blocks and flowers were finished.  But now for the hard part.  Deciding on a layout for the flowers.  I experimented with various arrangements and ultimately chose this one.

Which only lead to more decisions.  What color should the stems be?  What size should they be?  Where/how should they be placed?  To leaf or not to leaf?  What if I clustered the leaves at the base of two stem clusters, like Gerbera Daisies?  That works.  When trying to determine just how big to make the leaves, I placed some random triangle shaped scraps on the quilt top and eureka!  That was exactly what was needed to complement the whimsical look of the flowers.

Once everything was appliqued in place I realized these could just as easily be African Violets as Gerbera Daisies.  Perfect since I was going for violet as my feature color.

Without any conscious thought on my part, violet became the feature color, and the flowers became African Violet plants.  My friend Sheryl Z. suggested a name which I thought was just right.

 Everything's Coming Up Violets

To see all the other amazing quilt being created for this challenge, check out the 

July challenge web page

Rising Star

Ultimately I did choose to go with the design that would let me play with color gradation for my June challenge quilt.  And since I had several green Cherrywood fabrics already in my stash, I decided green would be my color this month.

I also decided my color run would go from the yellow to the blue of our ROYGBIV challenge fabric.  And I was hoping the final result would have a sort of 3D effect, as if the star were sitting on top of a pyramid and you were viewing it from above.

So then I had to figure out how to bring my drawing to life.  The more traditional way would have been to make a bunch of half square triangles and lay them out in a grid to create the diagonal bands of color.  But I wanted a cleaner look, less seam lines, so I decided to go with long strips sewn together and then cut on the bias into large blocks/panels.

To help me get the staggered placement right for the strip sets, I went back to my trusty freezer paper pattern method.

From here I was able to measure how long each strip would need to be and then how to stagger it so that I'd be able to cut the strip set down to a rectangle when it was finished and not have to waste too much fabric in the process.

I did run into one small hiccup with my color run.  Once it was all laid out, I wasn't entirely satisfied with the transition from the green to the blue.  I needed a blue/green fabric.  Which meant I had to do a little shopping.  Oh darn.  :-)  Luckily it was an easy matter to visit the Cherrywood Fabric website and place an order.

In the meantime I continued on with my construction.  Because the outside edges would all be bias, I wanted to wait as long as possible to trim those in order to minimize the chance of stretch and distortion.  I only cut two sides of each strip set to be able to sew them all together but still leave the outside edges intact.  And since I was still waiting for my new blue/green fabric to arrive, I was missing two strips from one of the panels.

Now all I had to do was wait for my fabric to arrive and hope the color would be what I was looking for.

Happily it was exactly what I needed and it was a simple thing to add those last two strips and then trim down the quilt top to prepare for quilting.

Now on to the quilting...which of course is where I almost always get bogged down.  I enjoy the process of quilting whether by walking foot or free motion.  In fact it may be my favorite part.  But I always have such a hard time deciding WHAT to quilt.  Simple clean lines or something more detailed and intricate?  An all over design or break it up into sections?  And even once those decisions are made, there are still more choices.  Does simple clean lines mean straight lines?  Wavy lines?  Close together?  Far apart?  What kind of thread to use?  Blending?  Contrasting?

So the completed quilt top sat on my table for well over a week while I agonized about what to do next.  With the challenge deadline looming, I had to do something and the quilting idea that was foremost in my head at that point was a spiral.  Finally, decision made.  Time to quilt.

Only one last element needed to be decided.  Binding or facing.  That choice was a little easier to make.  After auditioning several fabrics and fabric combinations for possible binding and not liking any of them, I went with facing.

But still this project needed a name.  I asked for help and suggestions from fellow challenge participants on the group's Facebook page.  Trisha F. suggested Radiant Viridescence which sounds quite grand and elegant and for awhile I considered using it.  But then GranRox P. commented on how it looked to her like the star was rising up from the green background and that led me to... 

Rising Star

Visit Persimon Dreams to see the rest of the wonderful and unique quilts created by the other participants in this challenge.

June Challenge Revealed

Our inspiration block for the June challenge is the Friendship Star.  I came to quilting through what I think is a fairly non-traditional path so I haven't used a lot of these very traditional blocks in my quilts before.   I did a web search for images of Friendship Star quilts to see if I could find some inspiration.  Wow.  There was so much to choose from.  But the one quilt that really caught my eye had a sort of star in a star design at it's center.  I decided to try playing with that idea.

For the first time in my quilting life, I actually sketched out some ideas before jumping in.  I've been wanting to try creating different color effects, like transparency, luminosity and gradation.  So I started thinking of ways I might be able to incorporate one of those techniques in this quilt.  Initially I was drawn to the sketch on the top left where I could play with transparency ideas but my eyes kept going back to the lower right drawing.  I'm pretty sure that's the idea I'll be using.  Hopefully I have the right fabrics to create the color gradation effect I have in mind.

I'm excited to get started.

Monkey Business

Yes, my previous photo is a little more artsy and interesting, but all the other submission photos for this challenge have been cropped to just a straight on view of the quilt alone, so that's what I'm going with too.

I already wrote about my inspiration and the process I used to make this quilt in more detail in earlier posts, but as part of the submission, we are supposed to share the story behind the quilt.  So I'm going to include some of that again in this post so challenge participants don't have to go searching for it.

I really enjoy improvisational piecing, So when the inspiration block was revealed as the Monkey Wrench block, I immediately decided my version was going to be wonky....like a monkey did it. Thus the concept for Monkey Business was born.

I had no real plan beyond that when I started.  I designed it pretty much on the fly, making some blocks and placing them on the design board and then figuring out how to piece them together.

Once I was finished, I wasn't completely satisfied with the result and I ended up picking apart some of the monkey wrench blocks and adding in more of the red and yellow fabrics.

Deciding on how to quilt a project is usually a challenge for me.  So when it came time to quilt this, I was very happily surprised to realize I already had a plan in my head.

My quilt has now been submitted along with the other finished projects from this challenge.  So far there are about twenty of them, all very different and unique.  As we are nearing the May 31st deadline, more are being submitted every day.   You can see them here.

This has been so much fun and such a great learning experience.  I am starting to understand why artists often work in a series.  As I was finishing this up, I had several ideas on how I might do it differently if I were to do it again and it would be fun to explore those.

I am looking forward to June 1st and our new challenge.

First Challenge Quilt is Finished

I didn't think I was going to be able to work on my challenge quilt at all this weekend.  Tom's brother Bill is visiting to help us celebrate Tom's birthday.  So my sewing room is currently in use as the guest room.

But when Tom and Bill went off to golf this morning, I knew they'd be gone for at least three hours.   I just couldn't help myself.  I managed to work around the sofa bed to cut and sew the binding strips and then I spent much of the afternoon completing the turning and handsewing.

I need to get a good photo for my official submission picture, but I took a few this evening as soon as I finished it while there was still enough light outside to see.  :-)

   

I'm so excited to have finished my first ever quilting challenge!

Making Monkey Business

Other than knowing I was going to name this quilt Monkey Business and that I would use some improvisational piecing techniques, I really didn't have any clear vision of how I wanted this quilt to turn out.  So I just started and pretty much designed it as I went along.

Challenge participants were required to purchase the ROYGBIV bundle  from Cherrywood Fabrics.   These are beautiful hand dyed fabrics with rich color and texture.  I have quite a bit of their fabrics already in my stash, but until now, they have been in that box of fabrics that are just too special to use.  Time to break out the box and cut into some of it.   We can choose any one of the colors each month as our focus color for the quilt, using all seven colors by the end of the 7 months. 

For no particular reason, I chose orange and found another orange in my Cherrywood stash.  

I started by making a few wonky monkey wrench blocks in various sizes.  I taped off a 20" square on my design board and played with block placement within the space until I came up with a layout I liked.  I realized I wasn't going to have enough of the light orange to complete the background area so I decided to add a "swish" of darker orange through the center. 

So now I had to figure out how to piece these blocks together while preserving the various angles I had placed them in.

I'm really not sure if I've seen this done before, or if I just figured it out on my own, but what I ended up doing was making a pattern by tracing the blocks onto a 20" x 20" piece of paper and then adding in seam lines where the various background pieces would need to be.

Then I traced each of those background pieces, adding a 1/4 inch seam allowance, onto freezer paper and cut them out.  I ironed the freezer paper templates onto the fabric and cut those out.  So now I had the pieces I needed to create the background.  

All that was left was to sew them all together.

Or so I thought.  Once I got this far, I liked it, but I just didn't think it seemed finished.  It needed......something.

My quilting mentor, Karen, always tells me to listen to my quilt and it will tell me what it needs. Well this one told me I needed to pick it apart and add more yellow and red to the monkey wrench blocks. 

I was not particularly happy about that idea.  Talk about a lot of work!  I am not at all fond of undoing the sewing I've already done.  I thought maybe I could find some other way to add in the additional color and I considered several options.. The quilt and I argued for about a week but in the end, the quilt finally won.

I spent a day picking out stitches and putting in new ones.   This is what I ultimately ended up with.

It is all quilted now and ready for binding.  As soon as it's done, I'll add more pictures.  Looks like I'll get this done just in time for the May 31st deadline and be ready for the new challenge starting June 1st.  

Starting a quilting challenge

I decided it's time to start stretching my quilting wings a little bit and try coming up with some of my own designs instead of following patterns all the time.  So I entered a seven month quilting challenge through Persimon Dreams/The Quilting Project and using gorgeous Cherrywood Fabrics. to give me some motivation and inspiration.

A new challenge will be issued each month for seven months.  Each month we will be asked to create a new quilt using a traditional block for inspiration and one of the seven colors of the rainbow.  A new block and a new color each month.  The inspiration block will be provided, we get to choose the color we want to use.  Each quilt should finish as a 20" square.

The first challenge was issued on May 1st.  The inspiration block was the "Monkey Wrench".  And since I really enjoy improvisational piecing, I immediately decided my version was going to be wonky....like a monkey did it.  Thus the concept for Monkey Business was born.

Here's a little peak at the almost finished project.

In the next post, I'll walk you though how I made it.

Major Oops

So how does one make a quilt top and get it completely quilted before realizing she has left off an entire row?  I have no answer for that.  But I am living proof that it can happen.  I compeleted the piecing on this quilt top (so I thought), took several pictures of it and even shared those pictures on Facebook.  So I saw this quilt top in person, on line and in photos multiple times.

Did I notice anything wrong with it?  No.  So I layered it with the backing and batting and quilted the entire thing.  It wasn't until I was about to trim off the excess batting and backing so it would be ready for binding that I realized the bottom was different from the top and sides.  At first I thought, what a strange pattern.  Why wouldn't the bottom row be the same as the other outer rows?  Finally I looked at the layout diagram.  DOH!  An entire row missing.

So now what?  Do I try to add it after the fact or just leave it as is.  Leaving it would likely drive me crazy and remind me of my major oops every time I looked at it.  So I decided adding the row on was my best choice.  I knew the steps I'd need to take in theory, but I hadn't ever had to do any thing like that before so I was a bit nervous.

Ultimately, while it was a lot of work, time consuming and sometimes tedious, it turned out that it wasn't all that difficult.

I'm happy with the final result.  Here it is before I trimmed it and added the binding.

new blog

It's been over four years since I posted in what used to be a pretty active blog about Tom's and my adventures while we were living in our RV.  So if it's been four years since my last blog post, why would I want to start a new one?  Well, I'm planning to use this as a forum to post pictures and stories about my quilting adventures.  So stay tuned.  More to come soon.