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.