Wonderful New Book

Last night I finished the last of my major teaching duties and am greatly looking forward to cleaning out my studio this morning and getting organized for a new project….. probably a quilt for a friend’s wedding coming up in December.

But, last night, after the Trapunto class had ended, one of the participants pointed out a book in the Quilt Shop and asked if I had seen it before. It is called “Sophisticated Stitches” by Don Linn and is a collection of really cool quilting designs.

Linn Book

These designs are not the classic feathers, wreaths and other standard patterns, but are wonderful contemporary designs. You could make a beautiful Whole-cloth quilt just using the designs here….who knows, I might just do that!!

Here is a scan of one of his ideas……

The designs could be used for quilting, applique, or embroidery, and would be wonderful worked as a trapunto pattern!!!

There are 66 quilt patterns in the book, with ideas for how to combine them to make other designs. I am looking forward to spending some time with this book and see what transpires.

Have a good (and quilty) weekend.

A VERY different quilt

This week I finished up a small project that had been in my mind for a few weeks, and one which is a very different style for me.

Back in August, my friend Deb H. and I spent a day doing glue resist dyeing. Here is the original post. One of the pieces that I created was a simple vase of flowers and I knew almost immediately what I wanted to do with it.

The first step was to add some embroidery to the background. I used examples from a fairly recent article in Quilting Arts Magazine. The only difference was that the examples there used nice quality variegated threads and all I had were some cheap ones that I had bought some time back. But, I persevered and came up with a fairly nice background.

I felt that the vase and flowers needed to be highlighted too, so I trapuntoed them with 2 extra layers of batting.

I am NOT a paisley person, but this old fabric from my stash called to me and so I succumbed and used it as the final border.

The quilting was fairly straight forward, and I was happy to complete the quilt so quickly.

I took it to my local charity bee and, while showing them the finished product, realized that I didn’t like it because several of the threads were too light in color and the detracted from the background. So, while we were looking at another member’s quilt where she had painted many of the designs, I thought about using fabric pens and coloring over the “too bright” threads.

Voila …..I like it MUCH better now.

Nothing like a good soak in the tub!!

Well, I have finally finished quilting the Wholecloth piece that I have been working on for the last few weeks. The final border took about 10 hours to quilt!!! It has been squared up, binding applied, and now I am crossing my fingers that the blue lines will come out!!!

As I have mentioned previously, the first step is to soak the quilt in cold water.

As I took this photo, I realized that the water was really blue, so I emptied the tub and started again.

At this point the blue has disappeared, but you can still see grey lines on the top, but I will continue to soak and see what happens……next step, Shout and Oxi-Clean!!

ARGHHHHH………

I have run out of thread in the middle of a quilt and now have to order more and wait for it to come in……and I really don’t like WAITING!!!!

I have been working a lot on the whole cloth trapunto quilt that I have shown here before and I am really happy with how it is looking. However, it is now at a standstill until I receive the new thread. There is only the last border to complete, but it is a large border with a fill design in it so it may take a while to get it done.

I am getting prepared to teach a class in Machine Trapunto and want to use this as one of my examples, so I am anxious to get back to it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am not sure that the blue lines are going to wash out since the piece is about 8 years old, but, with the help of friends, I am developing a strategy …..

First step will be to soak and wash it as suggested.

Second…..Spray with Shout and then add Oxy Clean to the water and soak/wash again.

Third…… Start fresh with new water and add Bleach

Fourth…..If the above have not worked, I am going to overdye the entire quilt with a blue/green mottled design.

If none of these work, I will simply say that it has been a wonderful way to practice my machine quilting stitch…..I will no longer be afraid to tackle a Queen Size quilt on my home machine!!!!!

Sunflowers in the Rust

Well, I can happily report that I have finished the rust piece that I have been working on for the past couple of weeks. I wanted to enter it in an Atlanta show and the deadline was today, so I was working down to the wire.

In doing some practice work (see previous post), I realized that I was going to have to do some thread work on the piece, so I started out by backing it with a very lightweight fusible interfacing.

I used Golden Threads tracing paper to draw the sunflowers…..wasn’t game to try to freehand them with thread.

I then sewed around the paper design.

…..and removed the paper.

I did the same thing with the leaves, and then sewed around the designs 2, 3 or 4 times, depending on how heavy I wanted the lines to be.

As I did the thread work, the fabric started to draw up slightly, making the fabric look wrinkled in the flowers, so I decided to trapunto the flowers and ended up adding extra batting to all of the elements, including the grass at the bottom.

I am happy with the borders on the piece as the first one on the right and bottom used fabrics that I had stamped.

Final step was to baste and quilt the piece. All of the rust colored lines were quilted just following the design of the flowers. Then I had to decide what to do to the background. I started with even lines at the top, but moved into curvy lines in the interior of the piece. The main reason that I did this was because it was easier to do, but, in retrospect, I really like the way it looks.

I decided to face the quilt rather than bind it.

It is always a good feeling to finish a piece…..now on to the next 4 or 5 that are in my mind!!!!