November Stuff

November is all about getting the Christmas quilts for clients done.  It is also about making an earnest effort to get my 2015 show quilts finished.  Both of these tasks are keeping me busy, despite having quite a few school closure/holidays this month.  My kids are older, and can manage to entertain themselves some of the time.  But as the temperatures are dropping (and those flakes start to fly) they don't want to be outside nearly as much.  It is hard to sew in the basement with the pitter-pat of 6 feet overhead.

Here's a rather poor (sorry) pic of a recent client quilt.  It is actually a lovely machine appliqued redwork quilt of birds  I wanted to keep it traditional, so the blank 4-patches are quilted with feathered wreaths.  These are free-hand quilted, so there are naturally some anomalies between each block.  The redwork blocks are always a quandary as to how to quilt them.  Sometimes I outline embroideries and backfill the background, but because these are machine appliqued, there is a LOT of detail...too much to stitch around.  I decided upon the pumpkin seed rather than my second choice (cross-hatch).  It makes the birds blur in  the photos, but they look fine in reality.

 This shows the birds a little better.

The border is simple, but pretty, and ties into the blocks with the feathered wreaths nicely.  I like this line of fabrics - they are really pretty in person.  Don't hold me to it, but I think that they are French General (or something like that).

 Right now, I have moved onto three edge-to-edge quilts.  It is so refreshing to do edge-to-edges when so much of my quilting is full custom.  It is always that double edged sword - the customs are where I learn techniques and improve my skills, but they are harder on the eyes, back and body.  I need a nice mix of both.

So...with that said, if you have quilts you might like an edge-to-edge on (AND you want them before the holidays!!) I can still take some of these.  Pass this on to your friends too.  Just drop me an email msolomo1@maine.rr.com

 I spent a couple days last week working on one of my next show quilts.  It's only a 40"x40", and still needs some "fixit" work, but most of the unquilted areas are now joyfully quilted!  That's a great feeling.  The quilting is very busy, but I am good with that.  The design of the quilting has altered the look of the original top (scroll to the bottom of this post for a before pic).  I also plan to add a good bit of bling.  I have held off adding crystals to most recent quilts, but this one is screaming for some.

I have one more bit of great news...actually a picture of the cover came to me while I was at Houston. On the first day I was home, this arrived in my mailbox!  I am tickled to have Autumn's Surrender on the cover of Quilter's Newsletter's next edition.  The article my editor wrote is great.  She did a fantastic job including several detail photos of this quilt (which really show all quilting details too!), as well as nice text about the quilt.

Quilting for the Holidays...some spots still available

I do still have some spots available for quilting that I could have done and mailed back to you prior to the holidays.  No huge customs, but plenty of edge-to-edge possibilities or smaller customs.  Email me if interested msolomo1@maine.rr.com

Houston 2014

The 2014 International Quilt Festival (aka Houston) is finishing up this weekend.  I flew home yesterday.  It is astronomically expensive to stay there too long.  Plus it coincides with Halloween every year.  My daughter didn't appreciate my absence last year, so this year I came home.  Next year, Halloween is a day later, so who knows.   Really, though, a couple days at the show is plenty. 

I arrived Monday evening.  On Tuesday, I took an all-day class on machine applique with Sue Nickel (surely you know who Sue is...she and her sister Pat Holly have made several award winning quilts).  The class had good content, but really did not leave nearly enough time on the machines to practice.  Heaven knows I don't have time to practice now that I am home, but maybe.

Monday evening was the awards Winner's Circle.  It is a rather elaborate ceremony where each ribbon winner is called to the stage.  If you receive a first or one of the top 8 awards, then your quilt will be revealed around the boundary of the ballroom for people to look at after the ceremony.  I was truly hoping for a nice placement ribbon for the Geisha's Garden.  This is like my favorite quilt right now, and I remember all the thought that went into it's details.  Right off the bat...first award given was the judge's choice and it went to the Geisha's Garden.  It's not entirely what I was hoping for (hoping that this doesn't sound sour), but that is life.  Many enter with hopes of a ribbon and don't get that. We were about 1/3 of the way through the awards, when I realized that my quilt was hanging there though!  This made my day.  I was able to talk to people afterwards, and discuss things I did and why.

The judge Marti Michell gave the award.  She really loved the quilt.  She's a really nice woman; I had a light dinner after the ceremony with her and a couple others.  Sad though, is that she told me that it would have taken a high award in its category but the "judges" thought that the white was too white.  WTF?!?  it is a creamy ivory and in all honesty, I can't imagine it any other color.   Gracious for the award?...yes.  But that doesn't change the fact that I think this particular quilt show is overly, if not excessively obsessed with things that don't pertain to the quality of the quilt's construction.  I received that type comment last year and it is, plain and simple, wrong.  Winners should  be chosen because they are technically more correctly made.  Rant done, for now.

The next evening was the preview.  It was nice to see quilts without it being overly crowded.  I spent most of my time standing near each of my quilts talking to the many people.  Some knew me from seeing other quilts at AQS shows, while I got to meet many that know and read my blog.  That is cool because some days I feel like I have about three readers!  Thanks!!

This is my other quilt at the show - Autumn's Surrender.  It is in the Merit Machine category.   It is only one of a couple pieced quilts in this "sea of white wholecloths" category!  It won a 3rd place. Seriously, IQF, the ribbons shouldn't be so small.  This is Houston, afterall.  Make us feel like we won a ribbon in the most prestigious quilt show in the world.  They just love to taunt and mock AQS with the fact that their winners get to "keep their quilts", but do they realize that a 3rd at any AQS show wins a mere $750 (more than twice my 3rd place award) and a big ribbon, the same size as the 1st and 2nd.

This year marks IQF's 40th annivarsary - they are calling the show the Ruby Jubilee.  They have copied the red and white exhibit that was in NY a few years ago.  This display of modern-day red and white quilts is very cool.  Beside it is an exhibit of miniature red and whites.  It's a beautiful exhibit, very appropriate.

Houston is seriously the largest quilt show out there.  There are 350 competition quilts and about 3-4 times that in exhibits.  I stumbled upon this quilt...It's not so pretty or anything.  It was in an exhibition of solids quilts made from the American Made brand of fabric.  Last year I participated, and sent in the Maine license plate (middle row)...

 Here's a closeup...Cool to see all plates assembed together.

 While I do have WAY too many pictures to post here, I will try to show some of what was here.  Most of these are from the competition.  I think that these are from the abstract wall (?) category.  Seriously, there are WAY too many abstract, and animal and whimsical type categories to keep track of them.  What was interesting was one, the variety, but two, that sun quilt is made from something like 1000 1" circles, fused to the background - only 8 shades of orange and red to make that.

This quilt was made by one of last year's winners.  Honestly, their's all look very similar...Asian kids and that same dog, but what is most cool are the bubbles.

 Look closely at the bubble...all raw edge fused (and you do know how I feel about raw-edge!), but check out the colors used to make them so life-like.  Very cool.

 This quilt of mine hung at one end of the row.  It was a nice spot.

 Here's a peek at some from the hand-made category.  Do you sense a Japanese influence??!  Their handwork is amazing.  Lots of taupe.

 Some animals...

IMHO, this was the best animal quilt, but it didn't ribbon at all.  It is by Ferret, if you know who she is.  It is wonderful.  Sadly, it did seem to be a trend that great quilts went unadorned, and others that make you furrow your brow received very top awards.  Overall, the top award-winners seemed better chosen this year as compared to last year, but there were still some that made you go "huh".  Ferret's wolf is amazing.

This next quilt took a top $5000 award.

My friend Andrea had 2 quilts in the show...both very beautiful and well constructed.  She did not get a ribbon on either.  Point proven.  It just makes you wonder what the judges (and they are all non-NQA certified) are truly looking for.  Her hand painted, then appliqued silk flowers are exquisite.

Here's a glimpse at the Innovative piecing category.  I do like the double wedding ring a lot.  It has me thinking about taking this quilt off of my bucket list.

 Innovative applique... "Hurricane" (below) is awesome and I think it was 1st place.

This is the Best of Show.  It is probably not what you were expecting to see...It's by Nancy Prince, quilted by Linda French.  Nancy said it had 75000 yards of thread in the figures.  They are thread-painted, and then added to the background.  The detail she put into the people/animals was really amazing.

Here's another interesting exhibit...there were over 2000 star blocks collected in honor of an astronaut/quilter Karen Nyberg, who was on the space station.  They were put together into a sea of quilts - over 20-25 probably!

Here are a few from the Frances Benton exhibit.  She passed away a few years ago, leaving more than a dozen applique tops to IQA.  This year they got several finished.

I did the middle one on this row.  They didn't block the silly quilt, so it is hangs kind of wonky.  Oh well!  You can look back to sometime like May or June of this year for my closeups.

I flew home on Halloween so I could take my three little gouls trick-or-treating.  It is definitely back to the real world...trying to prioritize the quilts to be done.  I have several Christmas deliveries to get quilting on, as well as actually getting my own 2015 show quilts DONE.

Halloween is coming

Yes, Halloween is right around the corner, and so is my very timely departure to Houston!  This is a crazy week for me with numerous things I hope to get done, and then there are 1-1/2 days with kids not in school and 3 conferences to attend.  I probably should just cut my To-Do list in half before I start it.  So, rather than thinking I might blog later in the week, here is a Halloween quilt I did early in September.  The client wanted light stitching so that the quilt remains soft and cuddly.

 It is stitched in Glide -- a few colors.  The candy-corns (which are really one of the more gross candies) were her favorites.

 I got her consent to add a spider to the quilt.  I think she was hesitant, but did give me the go ahead.  I honestly loathe these creatures, but a lime-green spider hanging from a web seemed OK for a Halloween quilt.

 When the fabrics on the front are so heavily printed, it gets hard to select quilting motifs that really show.    There's bats and webs, and checks...much print!  Here's a peek from the backside.

 I like to quilt pieces like this because they quilt up relatively quickly, and allow me to just go from one row to the next being creative.  This is all freehanded, with a little ruler-work thrown in.

Have a good candy-holiday (and wish me good ontime airline thoughts as I try to be home by 3pm on Halloween!!)

Fall Finishes

 Yesterday was a day of small quilts.  These two were brought to me by the same local client.  I did one of these fish quilts for her last year, only the larger version.  This was a fun and quick 13" square!  The only real challenge is that there are many threads needed, so I am constantly changing thread color, and it is raw edge appliqued.  She brings them to me just ironed, without any stitching around the pieces, so they are very delicate at the edges.  She will do the fish eyes - hence the expressionless swimmers.

 Her second quilt is this one...and I just LOVE it.  Really wish I could keep this one.  The applique is all needle-turn and is very well done.  I chose a white So Fine and dark brown Glide to let it shine.  I used 2 batts - a thin cotton and a piece of what I think is polydown (yes, I have loads of scraps for the pick-n-choose).  I wanted the appliques to puff, and a single cotton batting does not accomplish that.

 The white area, where the quilting shows easily, needed pretty feathers, leaves and curls.  In the brown, I wanted to break up the border just a little bit.  The circles do just that - nothing overly complicated because it is a narrow space, but just enough variety.

In between finishing at least one client quilt each day, I am working on way too many other things (besides 2 unfinished show quilts, a magazine article, and prepping for teaching in April).  This is a piecing project I have started whose mess is beginning to consume my studio.  I have some of the sections put together, and am currently working on the center, which has a little handwork.  The brighter fabrics are Moda Weave, and I simply love this line of fabric.  It is a great weight and has wonderful sheen for a cotton.

Teaching?  Did you catch that I am teaching at MQX in April?  It is official.  I hope those of you coming to the show will check out my class listings here!  I've got some work to do this winter to get my samples and notes all congealed!

Falling Leaves

This quilt was finished over a week ago.  It is nearly home by now to it's Washington owner and client Sherrie.  This is a kit she purchased while in Paducah.  It's all hand-dyes, and in person is so much prettier.  Somehow, the yellow comes across overly sunny in the photos.  Since the leaves outside my window are sadly turning already, I figure it is an appropriate quilt to show.  Sorry guys, it is not that the colors are not pretty, but I am a summer person, loving the heat and truly hating to be cold.  Snow is not my thing.

Designing for this type quilt is very challenging.  It forces my brain to think about different layouts, where you would have a visual focal point, and how to make the eye move about the quilt.  Block quilts are much simpler from that regard, as well as from the standpoint of creating secondary designs.  Coincidentally, the client asked for secondary patterns, referencing my Zen Garden quilt (shown at the bottom), but in all honesty, it's not feasible for this type layout.  I had to find other ways and places to put design into the quilt.

The most obvious place is this honking wide border!  It is doubly effective that it is a pale shade too, because that will show the design easily.  I have combined a detailed cathedral window into the border, placing 1/2" cross-hatch and raying lines into the spaces.  Feathers fill the smaller triangles. Now I know that this border has little to nothing to do with falling leaves, but I believe that the unstructured nature of this quilt can handle a very structured border.  It helps to ground it.

nevermind those ugly (and clean toes!)

The body of this quilt is huge.  The overall size is 82"x102".  It is impeccably pieced, but color is the only connecting feature.  For my design, I have created cascading, and swirling feathers (which are actually made up of leaves).   These feathers are very much like what I used on my Shenandoah Falling show quilt.  In fact, this is similar to a huge version of that, in a way.  The blank space around these has some free-placed leaves, and LOTS of fillers.

 I made 2 leaf templates out of a used cereal box - one is an oak, and the other a pseudo maple. They were traced with chalk.  Nothing had been prewashed, so I was not about to have bleeding.  My water-soluble pens were out.  The cascading leaves and free-placed leaves were stitched in a Rainbows thread.  It was quite the pain in the neck to use, as it sometimes is, but this was a perfect variegated thread color(s) to use.  I outlined the leaf twice to make it more visible.

There is a string of large-ish pebbles from the stems of these free-placed leaves to help them to show. I envisioned this exaggerating the look of falling.

This quilt has just one wool batt.  Background quilting is done in three shades of 50wt So Fine thread. I chose a duller, non-shiny thread so as to only see the texture.  Each of the three colors of fill, has its own filler too.  The gold thread does this free-feather fill.

 The aqua/teal thread does a leafy filler (all sections have these occasional sections of parallel lines thrown in, just because).

 The fuscia thread has this organic flame-spiral thingy that came from a Judy Woodworth class some years back.  All filler designs fill nicely into cracks and seem to fit the theme of the quilt.

 Stitching this detailed border around all these leaves was as hard as it looks!...and time consuming.

I thank you all for your nice comments about the progress on my next show quilt.  It is still on the machine, with another 4 days allotted in my schedule.  I am seriously hoping to get to the bottom by then!  Better get to work!...

In the meantime, I will leave you with a couple images sent to me from the AQS Des Moines show, running right now.  My quilts have done very well, again.  Big Bertha is sporting what may be my favorite ribbon of all time - lime green!  It is for best Machine Quilting, also for this business I am in, a treat to receive.  It is like they chose that ribbon just for this quilt!

And here's the side of Zen Garden, which received best Wall Quilt, with yet another lovely seemingly color-coordinated ribbon.

Both quilts will be coming home for a couple months.  They have been gone since July, entrusted to AQS to keep safe.  Zen cannot go to any more AQS shows, but Bertha has one in January.  Hard to fathom that these two dames will be soon in retirement.  There are 3 weeks until I leave for Houston.  Would love to meet up with folks if you are there too - let me know.

Starting the giant

On Tuesday, I started quilting this quilt.  It is mine, and I am almost scared to predict how long it will take until it is actually finished.  It measures 82" square to the outside of the scallops.  It's been a while since I quilted anything close to this big for myself -- Big Bertha was the last one, and it was 100", so by all estimations this should be done in 64% of the time.  Bleh - that is nearly 4 weeks!

Anyhow, I have given myself 2 weeks right now to allow it on the machine.  This window has been in my work schedule for a while now.  It allows me to get show quilts done, and to keep the client quilts on a predictable schedule too.  The design details on the macro level were planned out, the quilt was marked (on the silk), and it's Go-time.  I have 2 layers of batting - Hobbs 80/20 and Pellon wool. This is the first time I have used the Pellon.  I have heard good things about it from Kim Brunner and wanted to try it.  It is dense compared to the Hobbs, but not overly thick.  I have many different threads in use, so ask if you wish to know.

My outer border is a typical MG design - overly complicated, lots of motifs, etc.  I like designs that appear to "float" behind the applique.  Because this green print has a textural print (it is Sketch, for those that know this line), it is very difficult to actually see the thread, or where you are quilting.  The flowers are stitched in a brighter green so that they show a little, but in all honesty, I am a little timid using a thread bold enough to see it above the print of the fabric.  All other thread on the border is a dark green silk - just to leave behind the texture.  So, my job is to ensure that the design has a good textural imprint, and not a bunch of busy quilting (as is often done with fillers).

If you are observant, as I was not, then you realized that I did not stitch the design I drew!  You are right...I had designed for a pretty feather spray with a large leaf (see attached link).  I had filled 2 or 3 of those arches with the leafy fill before I realized my error.  Needless to say, what I quilted looked WAY better than 4 hours of ripping out 16 spi stitches.

When working on prints, it is critical to use framing effectively.  You will see the multiple frames of these arches long before you see what I quilt within them.  The same is true for those squiggly ribbons that connect the flowers.  They are wider than I often leave unquilted because I want the relief to be visible.  Having 1/8" parallel lines beneath them (to the quilt edge) ensures that they pop! Other motifs like the pebbles are 3/8-1/2", which is a little bigger than I might use on the silk areas, but the increased size guarantees that there will be visible relief.  On the textural prints, simpler geometric quilting motifs like the 1/2" cross-hatching will always show better than feathering or more random-type patterns.  

After I designed the silk patterns, I had a stroke of genius.  Don't laugh, these don't happen every day.  But I decided that the serpentine border between the silk and the green needed further definition...aka more framing.  So, I added this simple bit of 1/4" parallel lines, with a 1/2" border, and viola!...it is perfect.  Or at least it is for me :-)

I still have quilting to do on those green and gold silk appliqued ribbons, but that can be done last. Some additional SID too appears to be needed on the shoe-string bows also.  Details, details.

This is one of four blocks that are at the center of each border.  In all honesty, I hate them, but I didn't know what else to do, so they were not removed from the quilt.  I am fairly sure that when the quilt is done, I won't care, but I really need to tie in the flower theme of these floral-shaped blocks to the middle of the quilt.  I am already having 2nd thoughts about the raying lines, and have another plan I suspect I will quilt instead.  Must sketch one first though to be certain.  I will remove stitches from this one block, but to do it from all 4 (I haven't gotten to the other 3!) will tick me off royally!

These are 8-1/4" Lucy Boston/Patchwork of the Crosses blocks.  There is an Inklingo pattern for them available, but I drafted my own.  My blocks have fussy-cut modern prints, and they are all hand-pieced.  Each block took me about 6 hours to make.  Fun times (there are 25!).  The quilting on the "flowers" is done with a Glide thread.  This is a considerably heavier thread than the 100wt silk, with the intent of it showing some over the print.  The block above uses a YLI (color "Prickly Pear") polished poly thread (their equivalent to Glide), but the other blocks near the border are done with purple.

The corner blocks are set with squares of silk and setting triangles.  The silk is pretty and shows everything that you quilt on it (good or bad!).  I designed this motif for these blocks.  I will go back later and do something in the other areas around the detail stitching, but for now it is stablized.  I love how this turned out.  It is garden-y, classic and sophisticated.  

 I got brave on the ivory silk stitching - the detailed block above is stitched with the Prickly Pear (a golden, or pear colored thread).  Non-matchy threads are hard to work with as they show every error. These quilted up so effortlessly.  I have to attribute this to the new Handi Quilter wheels and carriage rails that my machine got last month.  They are wonderful!  I may never need my micro-handles again, I have THAT much control.  The next picture also gives a good view of the printed blocks.  Love how the 1/4" cross-hatching reminds me of spider webs.  Now...I loathe and completely HATE spiders, but the essence of a spider web just goes in a garden quilt.  I am on a mission to find a dragonfly motif, or to design one that should read.

While I haven't made it quite to the halfway point (HA...heck I can't even see the center block yet!), I did get to the inner green border.  It is a very busy leafy/cabbage print.  While it goes with the printed hex blocks very nicely, it is a challenge to quilt on this stuff.  It seems near impossible to see, and even harder to find motifs that show.  Back to the basics of stitching with heavy print...

(the pic above shows the colored thread on the champagne silk very well!)

My first plan of attack on this green border was to SID the borders, and to add a 3/8" additional frame beside the green silk piping (left side).  One border is good, two is better.  Next, I mimicked the pebbles of the outer border, and placed a pebble border here.  Rule #2 of a good quilting design: repeat motifs throughout the quilt.  I knew I planned a cross-hatch of sorts here, but it is kind of large to just do that to the entire border.  Plus that would be only a little (OK, a lot!) boring.  Sometime between midnight and 5am, when sane folks are sleeping, I dreamed up these feathery scallops, thinking that they would bring just enough simple variation to this space.  They are not so complex that they will get lost on the print, but simple so that they should show too.  If there was any doubt, I double lined the frame to make it more prominent.  I may also go back after and densely fill the background around the feathers to give them added punch.  These slow details can wait.

 My cross-hatch is different.  Hopefully when it is off the frame I will like it!  FYI, the feathered scallops are stitched in deep green Glide, and the hatching is the fine silk.

It is coming along, slowly but surely.  Hope you enjoy learning about how and why I have done these things!