Sunrise quilt and a little more Madrona info.

One of my readers asked about my construction methods for the Madrona quilt - did I use a freezer paper pattern. The short answer is no, but it is mostly because of the size of it. I'll have to go into more detail in another post, however here is a quilt that I found I had forgotten to blog, that I did use freezer paper to construct the borders. When I looked for it's picture, it seems it wasn't blogged because I only had fuzzy pictures, and I have remedied that by taking some new ones:-)



The center panel, and all the fabrics were either hand painted by me with Pebeo fabric paints, or hand dyed with Procion MX dyes. The first thing I did was pin the center panel up on the wall and measure it, and then I tore two pieces of freezer paper that were longer than the quilt's size in either direction to allow for sewing together and squaring up. Each piece was divided lengthwise, then pinned around the quilt, and then the wavy lines were roughly sketched in place.

One strip was cut out to work with at a time and divided into sections when needed(offset from one another). The freezer paper was pressed to the front of the fabric, and then it was trimmed, leaving about 1/4" seam allowance. The seam allowance of the applique pieces that were to be on top was glue basted to the wrong side, and then the pieces were glue basted together. Once I had a couple rows complete, I began stitching the sections together with a tiny blind hem stitch.

A flange of folded fabric was basted in place around the panel and then the border was added. For the side panels, I made a clean cut on the side that was to be sewn to the panel, and then stitched them on and trimmed them to the same length as the panel, and then repeated with the upper and lower panels. I decided to do a free hand cut outer edge, and then a traditional binding and sleeve to finish it up.

Close up of the sun:



Here's a close up of the water:




And a close up of the sky:

My quilts both won third place!

On the first day of Innovations (Wednesday) I visited the quilt show after my classes were finished for the day. I wondered who had won what, as there were no ribbons on anything, but hoped to check again before the show was over. Well, that never happened, as Thursday I was in Bellevue, where I gave two lectures and taught a class to the Eastside Quilter's Club, and then Friday turned out to be very busy with just a short visit to a couple vendors before heading to visit our construction project.

Tuesday, while I was working on a quilt project with Alice from Block Party Quilters, there was a knock at the door, and I had to sign for a package. It was my quilts returning from the show, so I anxiously open the box, and was surprised to find 4 third place ribbons. Two were from the official judge, as they were filled out on the back, and I can only guess that the other two were from the peer judged votes from visitors to the show - I'm so Grateful and Amazed!!!

Creative Twist classes in June and August

By popular demand, I will be teaching you to create a water quilt, like mine, although you can take your own creative detour whenever you like, and end up with a more personal quilt. The dates for this class are June 9 and August 11, from 10am -2 or 3pm at Fresh Air Farm in Woodinville, WA, just up the hill from Gathering Fabric quilt shop. Please register for classes at Gathering Fabric. The current Creative Twist class schedule can be found on my website.





In the June class, we will do free hand piecing, making Angelina sheets, fabric / fiber collage, choosing / applying a layer of netting, as well as a bit of quilting. (There are 2 months between the first and second part to give everyone time to piece, collage, and quilt their project, even if they will be busy during the summer. )


The August class will repeat quilting the layers, making the 3D waves, beading, and finishing the edges. (At a minimum, you should have the quilt top complete before the second class, so you will be able to determine what size to make your waves.)

Even though this project is split into 2 classes, the Creative Twist classes are meant to be technique classes, so if you are only interested in the techniques covered by one of the lessons, or can't make it to both, feel free to sign up for just one, and email or comment if you have any questions.

Water quilt - finally more pictures!

It's busy around here, but we're just about caught up after all the storms, delayed deliveries, so I was able to get down to the gallery and take more pictures of my Water quilt. I'm hoping the full quilt photo is a bit clearer than the one I took at the opening, and you will be able to see the details in the close-ups.
Here, you can see a close-up of the quiting as well as a closer look at the beading,

and in the next two, you should be able to see all the details, down to the thread and each tiny bead - just about as close as you can get without looking through a magnifying glass.

Water Quilt - finished!

I was working down to the wire on this one, as I really wanted it finished in time for the gallery opening last night, and managed to make it happen, but just barely. In fact, I wanted it to be there so much that I was up until 3am Friday night, finishing the beading, and then the binding and sleeve still needed to be done yesterday before heading to the galery to hang everything. Yes, I ran a few minutes late, but it was finished and ready to hang. Since I ran out the door the minute it was finished, I took this photo of it hanging at the gallery (hey, at least I remembered to take a picture).

Of course it could have been finished without staying up that late if I hadn't volunteered to bake cookies for last night's opening, but it turned out ok, the quilt was finished in time, and we had chocolate chip, coconut oatmeal, and ginger cookies to snack on too.

Now today is my day to put my feet up and take a break, but since it's really difficult for me to just sit and do nothing, I'm going to be knitting a christmas gift. Of course it probably won't be finished today, and I won't be able to post it for a while (don't want to spoil the surprise), but I'll remember to take a picture to post later.

Water - today's progress

My lace is dry, and as you can see, it looks much different than it did on the stabilizer. It has also done a bit of shrinking, as I knew it would.

The waves have much more dimension with the lacy waves laid in place, and they have been pinned down, until I get them stitched. My plan is to only attach them along the top edges, leaving the lower edges free, and the lowermost wave will have it's edge folded out of the way when the edges are being finished. Right now, I think I'll face the edges, leaving the quilted back showing, and nice clean edges on the front, because I think that a traditional binding would be out of place on this quilt.

As soon as I get a chance, I'll do some free hand cutting and free motion lace so that you can see how they were created. It probably won't happen until next week, as the APNQ Quiltfest is this week, and preview night is tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm also installing the new software that was needed to continue creating my website.

Water - progress

The quilting is finished, mostly swirls and wavy stitching, and you can see it more clearly on the back:
However, there's more to come, and I've made some free motion lace on water soluble stabilizer to add to the waves. Another layer, more depth...
The stabilizer has been washed out, and the lace is drying, and then I'll place it on top and see if I still like the idea. I'm still thinking of adding some hand embroidery stitches and beads, but only time will tell.

Blue Background - water

So far, I've added more layers and begun the quilting process. The shiny areas are angelina fibers that were ironed into sheets, and then I tore them to make the wave edges. The lightest areas are cheesecloth that I washed to give it texture, and there is also some glitter dotted net. The whole quilt has been covered with navy netting to hold all those loose edges in place. Once the quilting is finished, I'm thinking of adding hand embroidery, beading, and maybe some lace.

BluE Background instructions

Judy asked how the blue background was pieced, and the answer is free hand cutting and sewing. Below, I'll describe the method, and if I have time this week, I'll post some in progress pictures of some other strips being pieced so that you can see how it was done.

Sometimes I roughly cut strips of fabric, then made a wavy cut across the doubled fabric. If one strip was longer than the other, I clipped into the longer one at the top of the shorter one. After removing the extra, overlapping fabric, the strips were flipped right sides together and carefully stitched. The stitching is slower than straight seams, as you need to keep matching up the fabric edges, but I just try to keep gently aligning them as I sew, and stopping when necessary. The seams in this quilt were almost all pressed towards the darker fabric, but if I was to cut deeper curves, I'd press in the direction that the seam wanted to go.

After quite a few strips were together, I laid it out and stood back to see where I needed to add more, or adjust the color. Wherever I wanted to insert another strip, I made a wavy cut. Since there are now two cuts that need another fabric inserted between, the wavy strip was just laid on top of the fabric that I wanted to insert, and I carefully cut along the raw edge to match it. Once that new seam was sewn, the new strip was placed under the remaining wavy cut, and another matching cut was made.

Blue Background

Thought I'd take a break from the other things I'm working on, and made this blue background. I'm going for the look of water, and am thinking I'm going to quilt it as is, then embellish, and use a facing to finish the edges.

( It only took a week to get this post done and uploaded due to blogger problems and computer problems - blogger said it is done uploading the photo, but refused to have the DONE link for me to click on to get it inserted into my text, and it hadn't wanted to autosave for a day or so either! At least everything seems to be fixed now!)