The calm after the storm

Last night was the final event related to the Quilt Show……our guild meeting and wrap up party.

Deb and I had a wonderful team of women serving on our Core Committee and then heading up each of the other committees!!!! We wanted to do something to honor them and debated long and hard about what to do.

Then, one of us mentioned making 3-dimensional flowers and the ideas started flowing. We decided to give each chairman a flower, just like an actor receives after a wonderful performance!!!

I have already shown the process that we used to dye the background fabrics…check it out here, AND, I have shown some of the beaded flowers here.

We both had ideas that we wanted to incorporate…..I was enjoying playing with beads so wanting something “blingy”, and Deb really enjoys using words on her quilts, so we decided to do both.

The words were printed on “Extravorganza” fabric.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t get all of the quilts together to take a photo but here are my portion of the completed projects…..

In the next few days, I will post pictures of the individual flowers and tell a bit about how they were made.

NOW, as for this morning……I slept wonderfully last night, with no “disaster” dreams haunting me, I woke up relaxed and refreshed, my Husband and I skipped the gym and I had biscuits and eggs for breakfast!!!! Needless to say, I am in relaxation mode……at least until 10:00am…..then I have to get back to doing tax returns, but it is SO nice to know that I can sit at my desk all day and work, AND to know that the guild has pulled off another successful show!!!

Hot Threads, Cool Quilts Challenge results

On Tuesday night our quilt guild presented the results of the Hot Threads, Cool Quilts challenge. We were so excited to have 19 entries in this contest and we could tell that the challenged piqued the interest and imagination of many of our members.

Here are a two photos that show most of the quilts. There were a few that came in later and didn’t make it into this photo journal….

What a fun group of quilts……cant wait for the show!!!!!

A finished quilt and an anniversary!!!

First of all, today marks my 2 year anniversary of blogging. As I said on this day last year, I have truly enjoyed the people that I have met along the way, as well as the wonderful art that I have seen. Thank you all for adding so much richness to my life!!!!

A special thanks to Anita for her encouragement to try to write a blog and to my husband, Michael, for his continuing support of my art and my online journal!!!

Now, to celebrate this anniversary, I am getting to tell you about a completed project….the first that I have had in quite a while!!!

I am co-chair of our Guild’s upcoming show entitled “Hot Threads, Cool Quilts” and we had issued a challenge to our group to make a quilt that was 24×30, designed to hang vertically, with an “off-the-surface” embellishment of some sort, that somehow referenced our show theme.

WOW…..how many different ideas did I come up with!!!! We set the challenge about 2 weeks before my husband and I left for our epic 7 weeks in Italy so the theme was much in my mind as I wandered thru the beautiful Italian country and cities. Basically everything that I saw could be somehow combined into a Hot/Cool combination. I think that I about drove my husband crazy!!!!

But then it happened…….. while in Rome we developed two daily habits. My husband would always stop each morning for a cup of hot espresso and we would go down the street to the local Gelateria every night to have our cup of cold, heavenly delight. And look at those cute spoons that they serve it with!!!!

So, my mind started planning…..my friends and myself started collecting spoons and the quilt was in progress!!!!!

When I finally had a few minutes to work on the quilt, I began by planning the borders of the project as those had to be big enough to hold the spoons. Once I had determined the interior size, I started drawing boxes and rectangles that would fit within the piece. This is how the original version looked, although I made changes to the size of the pieces in later versions…..

I then started looking thru photos of Rome and started selecting ones that I would like to use in the piece. This was almost the hardest part as I had 1,510 photos of this beautiful city.

Once selected, I would open a copy in Photoshop, crop it to the size that it needed to be, use a contrast layer to deepen the photo and then apply a color mask to change the colors of the photos. I tried to keep the photos in the cool range of colors….mostly blues, greens and purples.

I printed the photos onto paper, cut them out and taped them to the pattern to see how it was going to look……

After adjusting a few color combinations, I printed the photos on fabric and started the tedious job of piecing it together. I tried to find groups that could be pieced together with only straight seams, but ended up with a few seams that had to be partially sewn first and then finished when other parts were added.

At this point I realized that somewhere between the original design and the 2 other versions, I had managed to mess up the dimensions of the piece so that it was going to be about 1-1/2 inches too long!!!!

OK…don’t panic….this is just a design opportunity!!! So I played with the borders until I came to an arrangement that I liked.

I had decided to quilt small spoons in three of the borders and hang the actual spoons like a fringe on the bottom. I was having trouble evenly spacing the designs on the border, so I got a length of adding machine tape (remember, I am an Accountant, so I have LOTS of the stuff), cut it the length of the border and then folded it again and again until I had a good spacing for the spoons. It was then VERY easy to draw the properly spaced quilting patterns…..

After quilting the piece, the final step was to attach the spoon fringe to the bottom of the piece. I found a large safety pin, heated the point in a flame and used it to burn a hole in each of the spoons. To attach them, I first added a seed bead, the spoon and topped it off with another seed bead.

Here is the finished product…..

I am very pleased with this piece that fulfills the challenge as well as provides my husband and I of a fun reminder of our wonderful month in Rome!!!!!

As important, it marks a return to the studio for me…..an event that I hope continues into the upcoming year!!!!

Fiber on a Whim

Last week the monthly meeting of the Cotton Patch Quilters featured a trunk show and booth by Fiber On A Whim. Their ad describes them….. “”FOR ALL YOUR SURFACE DESIGN AND EMBELLISHMENT NEEDS! FABRIC, PAINTS, DYES, THREAD, YARN, BEADS, and BUTTONS. I believe it…..not only did they have tons of embellishments, but had examples of most of them. The online shop is a Mother/Daughter duo, with Jan doing most of the quilts and her daughter, Kristen handling the business side of things.

Jan presented a wonderful trunk show full of gloriously embellished quilts, each with a story of how it was made, why it was made, and/or what else happened to it. Here are a few of the pieces that she showed……

This vine was made by attaching the cut out leaves to a piece of hemp rope and then attaching the vine to the quilt……..

What a fun way to finish up a simple bargello type quilt……

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An exercise in working with a monochrome palette produced this piece…….

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This piece started as a plain black piece of fabric. She first discharged it, then started adding color with paint and embroidery. When she finished it, it was 2 inches too short for the challenge that she was entering. Her solution….add 2 inches of beads to the bottom!!!! There is NOTHING like a quilter’s ingenuity!!

The “postcards” are painted on Lutradur and the spiral flowers are made from dyed batting.

The fish is made from woven fabrics that have been printed with various documents.

I loved this door……..

How about a closer look at the bricks. They are made with a mixture of paint and embroidery…….. gorgeous!!!

THANKS LADIES FOR AN ENTERTAINING AND INFORMATIVE EVENING!!!!!

Charity Work

Yesterday, I delivered a quilt to my Charity Bee that will be donated to the local Relay for Life event. They will raffle it off to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

Our guild (Cotton Patch Quilters) has made about 10 of these quilts over the last 5 years and they have raised a fairly large amount of money each year. The guild members are given instructions as to color and size of the blocks (mostly 4 patches and 1/2 square triangle blocks). When we receive them, the charity group trims them down to the actual size needed and one of us takes all of the blocks home and pieces the top. That was my job this time!!!

The proportions on this quilt ended up a bit whacky so we used some of the leftover 1/2 square triangles and pieced a border for the sides of the quilt.

One of our members (Ellen) will quilt it on her long arm machine and another member (Nancy) will put the binding on.

We are pleased with the final product and are already planning the next one to be made!!!!