Improv Piecing

More progress on my Improv Piecing Project. I finished piecing and trimming all the blocks. Then I spent a bunch of time rearranging the blocks until I came up with a setting I liked.

When that was done, I sewed up the rows and added a border. The border ended up being a little scrappier than I planned, but that seems to fit the overall design. Next step: quilting. 

Improv Piecing

I've been making some more progress on my Improv Piecing Project.

I pulled out my blocks and sewed some more into bigger blocks.

I pulled out a stack of black fabric to try to frame in some of the arcs. I really liked the black, but the pieces were becoming terribly large and more difficult to sew together.

I grabbed the biggest square ruler I have. I have the Omnigrid 15 inch by 15 inch square. It seemed the perfect size to cut out some blocks to build in some structure and still have some great, big blocks. I starched, and pressed and trimmed.

I cut and pieced. I think I'll stop at 25 blocks. That should give me a nice throw size quilt. I have two more to make before I can start arranging them. I don't have a plan right now, but I'm sure when I'm done I'll have a quilt.

Long Arm Quilting Panel

I was asked by my guild, the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild, to participate in a long arm quilting panel.

I am not a professional long arm quilter. I would love to be a professional quilter, but with a full-time job it just isn't in my schedule. I do quilt for charity quite a bit and love, love, love doing it. I put together some informational cards and stuffed a bag with quilts for the panel. I sat on the panel with two professional long arm quilters. Their work is amazing. Their knowledge was impressive, too.

I figured I could share a little bit about what I shared during the panel. I took some thread color cards and more than a little thread.

Needles for comparison.

Bobbins for comparison.

A selection of threads.

I will admit, I asked as many questions as I answered. It was a great experience and I hope I didn't ramble too much for people. There is so much to quilting that I know I will never be able to learn it all.

The Color Challenge: A Charity Quilt

Do you remember the fabric challenge I participated in during the last meeting of the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild?

Well, this is what happened. I made a huge stack of half-square triangle blocks. This isn't the final placement of the squares. This spent at least a week on my design wall while I moved blocks about.

This is what I finally settled on. Slightly different. Loads of movement.

Even the quilting has movement, but not in those straight lines. I used some of the scraps for binding. I managed to squeeze the Baltimore MQG's label into the bottom corner.

I really like this little quilt.

Nametag Swap and Fabric Challenge

At the last meeting of the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild I participated in a wonderful name tag swap. The first design I made was an embroidered cat based on an image from her website.

Then, I worried that it wasn't quilty enough so I quilted one. My free motion isn't perfect, but I'm really pleased with the outcome of this name tag.

I also received a fun name tag in exchange from yet another maker. I love it when a swap goes well.

There was also a fabric challenge as part of our quilt making for charity. The challenge works like this: bring 1 yard of fabric and your scissors. Snip you fabric and rip it into two pieces. Drop one piece at your feet. Pass the other piece to your right and take the fabric from the person on your left. Repeat until you have seven pieces. This is my stack of fabric, in descending sizes. The smallest piece is big enough to cut one 4" square.

I was really digging my color choices until that little snippet of lavender sneaked in at the end. I'm going to use it, though.

I've pulled some other solids from my stash and I think this will be a fun one. This is my final pull of fabrics. I've been merrily cutting the fabrics down into 4" squares to make into an equally tall stack of 3.5" half-square triangle blocks. This will likely lead to the whole project spending too much time on my design wall, but I don't mind.

Have you joined in a fabric or color challenge recently? This one sounded great and I'm glad I joined in.

Quilting for Guild

As you may know, I'm a member of the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild.

Recently I was asked to participate in a guild quilt for our out-going president. I said I would do it and I'm so glad to share it with you. The blocks were made by the many members of the guild and assembled by the most amazingly generous Janet, our new president.

This quilt is a wonderful collection of different improvisational blocks that come together is such a great way. I loaded it onto the frame and hoped it would speak to me a little. Sometimes I know exactly what to quilt. Other times I have to wait to see what I can come up with.

I finally decided to use an all-over wave but include triangles that appeared randomly and were more densely quilted.

The triangles were stitched with rulers and then filled in free-hand.

I like the overall affect and I'm glad I decided to mix an organic fill with very structured pieing and ruler-work.

The back of this quilt is pretty awesome, too. I handed the quilt back to Janet and it was handed over to Amy for the binding and during the Sunday meeting it was given to Deb, our past president.

I'm really glad I got to be a part of this project.

Charleston MQG: Love and Support

Recently the Charleston Modern Quilt Guild put out a request for blocks to make a quilt in support of the community forever changed by the shooting that occurred at the Emmanuel AME Church in June 2015.  Follow the link above to get the information on the block size, how they want it prepared and where to ship the finished block.

I made and sent along my block to arrive before August 1st as requested.  If you want to see how many blocks they have I recommend checking out the Charleston Modern Quilt Guild's Instagram account.  The last count I saw 552 blocks had been received.  They were still looking for blocks from several states (Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming).  If you have a couple minutes I hope you consider sending them a block to add to this project of love and support.

Guild Name Tag Swap

The quilt guild I belong to (Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild) did a name tag swap in April.  I decided I wanted to play and threw my name into the hat.  This swap was for secret swap partners.  We all filled out a quick note that had our name and a thing or two we like and our preferred name tag size.  This taught me quite a bit about what people want for a name tag as well as how challenging it can be to work in 4" by 5".  

I really struggled with this project.  I wanted to make an embroidery design but my confidence with my embroidery software just isn't where it should be for that kind of work.  I must have worked for 6-8 hours with that software and I couldn't get a design I liked enough to stitch onto fabric and actually use.  In the end, I drew this simple mushroom and just started working.

Step one was to pick a background fabric and get her name embroidered on to it.  I even used one of my machine's built in fonts for this one.  I thought it was playful.  Then I traced the shapes of my rough drawing onto some fusible web.  I really took advantage of the fabric for the mushroom top.

Thankfully my fusible web was forgiving.  I forgot to applique stitch the stem before I pressed the mushroom top on.

I lifted the bottom edge of the mushroom cap and stitched down the stem.  Then pressed the cap back down and blanket stitched it down.  These are the kinds of projects that use up those bits of batting you don't know why you saved.

I did a little thread painting along the bottom to make it look like the mushroom was in the grass.  

I added some texture to the mushroom cap and the stem.

I quilted the background to give it some movement but my main goal was to really give the entire piece an equal level of overall quilting.  Time to trim and bind.

I used the same fabric for the backing and the binding. 

I wrapped it up for Monica. 

This was a great small project that I think took about two hours to complete.  Working at this scale isn't easy but I think I learned a great deal from this.  Mostly I learned to trust my instincts and know when to just go for it.

Modern Quilting Mania

As you may know, I am a member of the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild.  You may have also noticed that I'm not an overly modern quilter; nor do I identify myself as a traditional quilter.  I like to say that if you need to give me a title, an arbitrary label (that is as unnecessary as any other label that our society places on the humans that reside within our society) I would like you to use quilter.  That's what I am.

At a guild meeting I was the lucky winner of a stack of charm squares in Modern Neutrals by Amy Ellis for Moda Fabrics.  (You can pick up your own charm pack from the Fat Quarter Shop.)  I grabbed some coordinating solids and started working on some improvisation.  I didn't have a plan.  I just started working to see how big I could get the piece with the fabrics I had at hand.  There was much rearranging of blocks before a final layout was determined.  I would even build the blocks to fit where I wanted them.

I pieced the blocks together in to units that were then sewn into the top.  I managed to make it so I only had to sew one partial seam.  If I had planned a little better I wouldn't have had to sew any partial seams.  This isn't the kind of quilt that wants a border, so it didn't get one.

I don't often piece backings to this level.  This is the kind of quilt that sort of asked for this kind of backing.  I embroidered the label into that little 5" charm before sewing it into the backing.

Once I got it loaded onto the frame I needed to pick the right thread.

I ended up using the So Fine from Superior Threads.  This is a great thread for blending work.  I wanted to use the gray, but it just didn't seem like the right answer.  The resulting texture really shows.

I decided to quilt it with this wood grain motif.
I think this gave the quilt just the right amount of movement.

The backing shows the quilting really well in some spots.

I used more strips from the stack of fabrics for the binding.  Scrappy bindings are the best!

This is a pretty modern quilt.  But I'm still just a quilter.

DISCLAIMER:  None of the links in this blog post are compensated.  I include them because you may be interested in some of the things I have used or talked about.  I do not receive anything from sharing these links.

In The Mail Monday: Books, Bags and Zippers!

I realized that I haven't done one of these in a while.  I've gotten a few smiles in the mail the last few weeks.

I mentioned that I joined a swap to make some wonderful bags using the pattern and tutorial from Noodlehead.  I found I didn't have very many zippers in the proper size, so I ordered a fistful to make up for my general lack of 12" zippers.  It seems I am not able to buy just a few zippers.  I ended up with 50 new zippers!  Don't tell my DH. 

If you want a fistful (or two, or three) of zippers in a rainbow of colors I highly recommend checking out the great deals you can get from ZipIt Zippers.  I now have 25 new 12" zippers and some 10" and 14" zips in case I want to make different sized bags.

This is the bag I won from the fun give-away that The Green Bag Lady hosted.  Here it is stuffed with a charity quilt for Quilts for Kids.  The Green Bag Lady is doing another give-away.  If pink is your color you need to go there and enter, but hurry "DEADLINE FOR THE FREEBIE IS 9pm (MST) Tuesday, Jan 20."

At the last meeting of the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild our president passed around her brand new copy of Patchwork City by Elizabeth Hartman.  I loved all the different blocks and had placed my order for a copy before the end of the meeting.  I think I may have to pull from this one for the bee I have joined with other members of the guild.  I need to get to work!  I'm the queen bee for February!

Have you gotten any happy mail recently?