Category: Quilt Making

Quilting for Charity (and practice)

A little ways back I posted a video about how to spray baste a quilt. As I mention there, it was a charity quilt top that was given to me so that I could practice some quilting.

I normally quilt with a 50 weight thread and have been happy with the results, but when I was at the Houston show last year, I started thinking about trying some heavier threads. I bought three, two 30 wt Aurifil threads……

…..and one 12 wt Superior thread…..

I did a little bit with the rulers but didn’t have much luck with making it look okay (sometimes it is just that way) so I ended up doing most of it freehand. These were both done with the Aurifil……

I did a very SMALL amount of quilting using the 12 wt thread but it kept breaking so I quickly put it aside.

For the border, I turned to an old favorite thread….a 30 wt Variegated Sulky…..

I did not end up spending as much time on this quilt as I had planned but am okay with how it turned out……

I have learned that I REALLY like working with the 30 wt threads but am not sure that I will ever use a 12 wt thread again…..at least not without a LOT of practice!!!

Kew Quilt – Fabric Selection

Okay….pattern is made. Now comes the fun part of choosing colors. I will say again that it is so sweet to be able to see all of my fabric at one time…..

….especially those that don’t fit naturally into one color family.

When I was telling my friend Linda about my ideas for this quilt, I said that it was going to be abstract with bright colors. But, as I thought more about it, I just wasn’t sure. Here are some of the questions that went thru my mind…..

  • Make it abstract with colors?
  • Solids or prints?
  • “Crazy” print in the windows?
  • Gradation colors coming up the sides?
  • Gradations in “steps”?
  • Gradations in “windows”?

As I pondered the last two questions, I came to a decision that I really wanted to do gradations in the steps and windows. As I looked further at the design, my resolve became even firmer AND I decided that I wanted to keep the center section in blacks and greys. I can always add some color to the outside rigging, making long strings of color….but that decision can wait!!

Now I needed to put together the gradations of blacks and greys. I started with grey and made a layout of what I “thought” was a good gradation…..

Normally, I would look thru these with my value finder….

….but for some reason it has gone missing!!!

Instead, I took the above photo and edited it to black and white…..

Okay….I see a few that need to be moved.

After repeating this procedure several times, I came up with a decent gradation…..

Next, I did the same thing with the blacks…..

Since the gradation will be from light to dark with BOTH sets of fabrics, I needed to put them side by side to see how they looked…..

The final step was to use the Q-Pins (that I reviewed HERE) to mark the fabrics so that I can keep them in the correct order…..

NOW comes the REALLY fun part…..how am I going to put this top together???

My new “thinker” quilt!!

When I posted the Inspiration Tuesday photo last week…..

…..I mentioned that it really was calling to me. I kept thinking about it more and more so this weekend, I made a start on the project.

My first task was to put the photo into Photoshop and start cleaning it up as much as I could. I started by applying the “Poster Edge” Filter to help further define the lines…..

photo with Poster Edge Filter applied

I knew that I didn’t need the lights that ran along the top so I started by roughly erasing those….

Finally, I knew that I didn’t want the hooked lines that ran out from the middle ladder, so it was off with their heads…..

When I was happy with the clean-up job, I put the photo into Powerpoint so that I could play with the sizing a bit. I made the photo 6inches by 9 inches and then printed it out using the poster function. This enlarged the photo so that it was printed on a 3×3 page grid, making the finished product about 18 x 30 inches…..

I cut out and taped the 9 pages together…..

….and voila….my full size pattern was born!!

Now, you may have noted that the orientation of the photo has changed. When I printed out a full size photo, Michael and I both looked at it and decided that it needed to be upside down…..

  • The original version
  • the NEW orientation

It was simply too top-heavy in the original version.

I started looking at the full-size pattern and realized that there were other unnecessary lines so I started cleaning up some more…..using correction tape this time!!….

So, the final pattern is ready to go…..

Now comes the fun part……

Inspiration Tuesday

How about this for some geometric inspiration……

This photo was taken inside one of the greenhouses at Kew Gardens in London.

We were there for Michael to speak to a group of scientists and had spent the night with two of them. That morning, as we all walked into the back gate of Kew, one of our hosts asked what my plans were. I said that I was going to stick around the area until the gardens opened. He said that there was no reason to wait and that I could enter at the back and wander by myself!!!

SO….I had almost two lovely hours to stroll thru the area without any other visitors…..just me, my camera and the odd gardener!!! It was heaven!!!

BUT….back to the inspiration. It would be fun to use this as a pattern for a quilt using blocks of color and trying to get the perspective to work!!

And now as I think about it more I am getting really excited about this one. Who knows, maybe it will be my new “BIG” project!!!