Something of my own

Some of you may remember this from last September.  Boy how time flies when it is winter!...I haven't touched it since before I went to Houston at the end of October until last weekend.  It had been laying around with numbered labels and I just decided I needed a couple "me" days while the kids were still home.  Client quilting resumed on Monday.  Though I do plan to rip apart the center compass and alter it's alignment (aka - it is slightly not centered up and down!), here is the center portion of this next quilt I am working on.  Even though I loathe paper piecing, I do like to have a pieced quilt to work on.  It is generally fast piecing, and easy to make good progress without massive invested hours.  It is definitely colorful, which I am just fine with, but I am constantly thinking about ways to "ground" it so it's not a colorful runaway.

I have the papers printed for the outer border of spikey things.  They will be the colors shown - purple and aquas, but I am playing with the other colors a little to tweak the cohesion.

 I am playing with the color of the outer square ~2" border, considering the deep red, a cherry red and green.  I have also done a small 1/4" bias applique strip in one of the pink fabrics on some of these.

 Each possibility has its merits to the design so I have some thinking to do while I make the NYB sections.

 Who knows, maybe I will get these pieced before summer vacation is over!

 I have a Baltimore Autumn on the frame right now which is occupying most of my working time, but to have the pieces and papers cut and ready, I can sneak a little piecing time here and there.

Do you have a favorite layout, and why?...

Happy Fat Tuesday!

This is indeed Fat Tuesday, and brings me back to memories of my teenage years, when I lived in the south and we celebrated Mardi Gras.  Now I am old, and live in the northeast, and get to lookout at all the snow!  It is vacation week for us.  I am doing a little quilting, but mostly playing catchup on doing nothing and maybe a little paperwork/writing.  This is a quilt I finished up on Sunday.  I was having issues with the timing on my machine, so against my desires, I finished it on the weekend so I could take my machine to Sanford Sewing yesterday for the annual check up.   Jean sent me 2 seasonal quilts...it's well past fall, but this should be all ready come this fall to display and use. Sorry...I do not know the designer.

 It is a 50x51", and I found a scrap of wool batting large enough for it in my studio.  If you have visited this blog, then you know that I am a reap advocate of using wool on applique quilts so as to get the poof under the appliques.  I just hate to see someone put all that work into appliqueing only to have them lay flat and lifeless.  A thin poly batt on top of thin cotton is also a good solution.  Poly and wool will not compress like cottons.

 All appliques and piecing are ditched, and then a simple custom quilting is stitched.  I like to keep the background quilting light and fun, throwing in some leaf motifs.  The main goal is to quilt it densely enough that the appliques pop, and that the designs are featured.  Dont you love the candy corns?! (not to eat though - bleh!!)

 I used several shades of SoFine 50wt thread.

 Nothing is overthought.  There is simple variety in the quilting, but not enough to hopefully be busy.

 My next quilt from Jean is a Christmas quilt, but it will wait until I am back from MQX!

Quilt Finished and Home

Here it is, at long last.  This is Jackie Kunkel's (of CV Quilt Works) Bird of Paradise quilt.  If you are lucky enough to live in Arizona, you'll likely be seeing this in a couple weeks!  You are lucky for many more reasons too, not the least of which is that it's not really winter there!

This quilt is 76-77" square, and is hard to lay out anywhere to see the entire quilt!  Lighting in my hallway is hit or miss.  This is a Judy Neimeyer quilt.  It has a single layer of QD wool batting, and is stitched predominantly with YLI polished poly (my personal fave!) and Glide threads.

 It is so heavily pieced/appliqued, that it is indeed challenging to find places large enough for infusing quilting design into the quilt.  The other thing of difficulty is that many Neimeyer quilts, and this is no exception, are made from batiks, and the prints tend to obscur the quilting.  My client requested denser quilting and ditching so that the appliques and points are preserved.  There was A LOT of ditching - something like 8-1/2 hours!  Many quilters omit ditching out of their personal aversion, but this quilt really needs it.

 The appliques have limited quilting on them.  They are a little stiffer than typical appliques because there is a foundation still in tact.  I wanted some quilting on the appliques, but not enough that I had tension or shredding issues.

I like the color palate of this quilt a lot - would love to see it done in Hoffman 1895's with a less printed look!!

 Jackie has her hand's full getting this bound in just a few days (shall we all say "better her than I"!!), but it should be home today.

 There are a variety of dense fillers to contrast each other.

It was a fun quilt; hope it is liked!

Followers Button and No Reply

In the last week I have received numerous requests for "how do I follow you"?...Sorry, though relatively tech-minded, this wasn't something I knew.  I have researched it and added a button to the right in my sidebar.  Give it a try and see if it works.

Likewise...if you leave me a comment, and have your settings still set to Blogger "No Reply", then you will never receive the answer to your questions from me.  Please alter this in your settings.

Thanks

Much Awaited Reveal of the Ladies of the Sea

I first saw this quilt when I went to Paducah 2 years ago...The original design has massive and densely appliqued borders.  I thought "there's no way in my lifetime I could (or would) ever do all that applique"!  It is a phenomenal Sue Garman design.  Each block has so much detail...just wait!...

As you know, we have had nothing but snow, snow and more snow.  All my photos with flat light, so squint and look closely.  Some of the textural details are hard to catch.  FYI...this has a single wool batt and is stitched with So Fine 50wt thread in ivory and Madiera Monolon for the ditching.  There were 12 bobbins worth...nearly 3 miles of thread.

My client Stephanie (thankfully!!) left off the busy borders, and opted for 7" plain.  The fabric she chose is a good quality muslin.  She'll probably tell me it a specialty sail cloth or something else.  It looks similar to muslin, but is heavier, resembling a sail.  It finishes somewhere around 95"x 65" so it is challenging to get all of it into one photo.

My first challenge was to create interesting quilting for that wide open border.  The blocks had limited space for immense creativity, but that border is screaming for fun.  Quilter's fun.  I copied the mariner's star from the corners to the center, but only on the top and bottom borders.  The others were shorter and I left them off those.  I have wanted to use this undulating feather design for a while now. It does take a little bit of marking to know where the straight section will intersect it, but I was free to mark on the borders.  Fabrics on the main quilt were forewarned to potentially bleed so no blue pens there!

The outer area of the border was densely stitched because I wanted that feather to pop.  I think I went over it 3 times in fact -- the last 2 times in a slightly more tan thread.  I was attempting to give it a subtle color shift.  This next picture might show it a bit...it's kind of like scribble with thread.

The star has lovely, crisp points because it is completely ditched in clear nylon!

 Here is the stitched star, just to copy the pieced motif into the quilting.

One of the more challenging aspects of this type of quilt is trying to find good places to put creative designs.  There isn't much room in each block.  I chose the sashing corner-stones. I treated them as though they were not part of the sashing.  My goal was to bring the feathering of the borders into the main body of the quilt, as well as give some variation to the quilting of the middle of the quilt.  I didn't want it to look like block, sashing, block, sashing, etc.

Every ship is different.  I have hunted for some description of each, but I guess that only comes if you buy the patterns.  You'll have to just see them through my photos... This particular ship has some massive rigging, which is all embroidered.

 The backgrounds of all 15 boats are identical.  The rays was a last minute decision - I knew it would look fabulous, like looking at a sunrise, but at the expense of time.  Going in all those rigging cracks took a while.

The blocks also supposedly have appropriate floral/fruits that would be indigenous to where the ship came from.

 Being from the Navy family, her anchor is great.  Too bad I don't know where the boat is from!

I am not a fan of the dimensional flowers...they were a bit of a headache to work around.  Too bad the designers don't realize this.

 

 I am thinking that this must be one of Columbus's boats...seems fitting.

This is one of the simpler ones.  The stitching done on the masts to make it look like bamboo is amazing.  There were a couple done like this.

 Now onto a little bit of backside eye-candy...

 In case you are wondering, I opted not to quilt on any of the appliques.  They are all ditched, but I wanted them to retain their loft since the quilt itself was heavily quilted.  The other factor in this decision was that I did not want green and brown threads messing up this beautiful view.  The unobstructed texture is perfect.

And with that...its time for  me to go be Mom and make dinner.  Coming in a couple days...Jackie's Neimeyer quilt which came off the frame today.

This and That

As the title suggests...I have several little things in this post, very much unrelated!  That is sort of how my pea-brain works some days.  It's been a blur of 2 weeks, with more snowy days than not. Today we once again got 4-5"!

If you are interested how silly I look and sound, here is a clip of a Quilt Alliance video that was done in Houston last October.  I am describing my 2014 quilt "Springtime in the Geisha's Garden".  I kinda wish they'd posted the hearing impaired/subtitled version!

Today was Block that Quilt day here. I need to get the binding machined onto this quilt next week at the latest, so there was no more delaying.  I did presoak the fabrics so I wasn't really expecting any bleeder surprises.  Nevertheless, blocking is time consuming and no fun.  It is cold, especially when you are handling a wet quilt!  Here's my play-by-play...

...the trimmed quilt, awaiting the bath.

...OK, clearly the first order of business was removing the filth from my big bathtub.  Nobody should have a screen in their tub during blocking (but it did need removing from the window to rid the roof of snow!).

I draw a tub of cold water.  Cold limits the bleeding if it is to happen.  If it is summer, I use ice too, but in February, trust me -- that water is frigid!

 I ill-timed the blocking because I happen to have all of my show quilts home right now (and they usually lay on the foam-core boards that I block on!).  Should have, intended to have done this last month, and didn't!  So...my studio is littered with no less than 9 show quilts laying about on every horizontal surface!  Good thing I don't need the tables immediately because I am still up to my eyeballs with Jackie's quilt.

 If you are curious about my blocking process, subscribe to Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine.  I have an article on this very topic in one of the summer magazines!

Here is the wet and managed beast, all pinned and squared onto my boards, drying.   Sure will be glad when this is done!

 In my spare (choke!...like I really have spare time) time, I am contemplating a new quilt using this lovely aqua gradient.  It's not my typical palate, but I am intrigued about doing a blue and white quilt, with lots of applique (that's the part I want to start on...soon as that binding is done).

Next week I must ready 1 quilt for AQS Lancaster, and 2 for Mid-Atlantic.  The next round of shows is right around the corner!

Just to prove I have been hard at work on this Neimeyer quilt for Ms Jackie, here are a couple more peeks.  I can't wait to see it off of the frame!

 There is so much dense quilting, and so little space to get really creative with sub-designs.  I am doing my best with the limited space and time.  Golly I need this done in a couple of days!!

Next time, I promise...Ladies of the Sea.

Ditching, Ditching, Ditching...

I am happy to say that the Ladies of the Sea quilt is done, and off my machine.  But I am waiting to show pictures of it until I have a non-snowy day so good pics can be taken.  It is gorgeous!

We had yet another snow day today, with everybody home under one roof yet again.  I got started on a newer Judy Neimeyer quilt that Jackie Kunkel made.  She's teaching this in a couple weeks, so this must get finished!  As many of you know, she is also a longarmer, but has less and less time to longarm because of teaching.  Never the less, the fact that she's a teacher makes me want this quilt to look good.  

Here is what the whole quilt looks like...It has loads of piecing and applique details.  Today I started it, stitching some of the aqua , but mostly just doing the SID.  I am only 1/2 through the quilt's SID after 4 hours!  Because this is near and dear to me, and my philosophy as a quilter, I want to show a couple of before and after shots.  Too many quilters avoid SID because they don't like it, or they believe it takes too long so clients don't want to pay properly for their time.  Whatever the reason, it truly MAKES the quilt, and I wouldn't ever quilt one of this level of detail without it.  I'd sooner turn down the job than do it in a substandard way.  

This picture shows the appliques with just background fills - no SID.  Notice how the edges of the piecing and applique are poofy?

Fast forward a couple hours...Below I have ditched the details using Madiera Monolon clear nylon thread.  There are quilters that don't like the clear threads, and it is days like today that make me understand why.  I was fighting the monolon and the batiks left and right.  Sadly, batiks are fine 95% of the time.  It's the one rogue case of trouble that spoils it for all!  Anyhow, the SID makes the applique look great.

 Busy batiks don't show details of quilting very well, so I will be adding more detail after the bulk of the quilt is ditched, and easier fills are done.  This will help to stabilize it.  Here's another section without ditching...points aren't very pointy are they? (points at the top border are SID, but the spikey flower isnt).

 And after ditching... nice and crisp.  It is a two-part equation...or maybe three part.  I have used a wool batting which retains loft, there is dense stitching in the background, AND the SID.

 Happy stitching, shoveling, and whatever else you are doing.  Just know that if we get anymore snow, I won't be seeing anything out my window but. white.  In the last week, 50+" have fallen here!