A Few Finishes From Fall

Below are more photos of some quilts finished over the past few months.

This diamond quilt is from a pattern in Quilting from every Angle by Nancy Purvis.



I changed up the colors and quilted it with loose, informal feathers and swirls. Quilting on solid-color fabrics shows up better than on prints, particularly if the thread color contrasts.



This squared-off dresden plates quilt was based on a Missouri Star Quilt Company online video tutorial. I used three different colors for the setting squares. The dresden plate blocks have a lot of graphic punch and the solid squares let your eyes rest. I like the way this one turned out.



I finally finished the tumbling blocks quilt top I found on eBay in 2015. This queen-sized quilt took about 14 hours to machine quilt.



This was my first try at machine quilting feathers (I've been machine quilting for more than a decade, just hadn't tried feathers before).



This improvisationally-pieced modern quilt was started and finished this year. I quilted it with straight diagonal lines done with a walking foot on a 1-inch spacing. Some of the half-square triangles are leftovers from the diamond quilt shown at the top of this post. The floral print in the border needed to be used in large pieces to let the design show.

Holiday Quilting

I finished three quilts before Thanksgiving. The first was a bargello pattern. This one went together very fast; I added a pieced border for more interest. These were fabrics that my niece selected from my bin of 2-1/2 inch strips when we went up to Tennessee for a visit last August.



I call this one 'Videogames' because it reminds me of the Pac-Man screen. This herringbone pattern came from the book Modern Quilt Magic by Victoria Findlay Wolfe. It looks a little like a log cabin pattern, but the construction was different. It went together like a puzzle with partial seams, building down and back up to the side in columns.



This is the second time I've made this pattern from Making Quilts by Kathy Doughty (I gave away the other quilt). I like the energy and balance of the pattern.



I decided not to start any more new quilts this year, so I've been focusing on working on a few unfinished projects. This string diamond quilt was started a few years back. It was inspired by patterns in Kaffe Fassett's Simple shapes, Spectacular Quilts.



I finished the quilt top, but wasn't satisfied with it, so rather than quilting it, I put it away. I wanted the large diamond shapes to be more defined, but I didn't want to rip the quilt top apart to add borders to them. I finally decided to applique thin purple strips on top to define the diamonds without deconstructing the quilt. I pieced a backing for this quilt, but it won't get basted until next year. There isn't enough floor space in the living room for basting with the Christmas tree up, and I really haven't even begun to consider how I want to quilt it.

Canyonlands and Spools

There is some noticeable quilt lag as I finished these earlier in the year, but I need a sidekick for more photos of my most recent work and haven't gotten to photographing it yet.

The red spools quilt is finished. It is very, very red. Maybe even a little too red.

These spool blocks were really fun to make. I am tempted to make one of these in blue or green. Something a little easier to live with than the red.

I love the way this Canyonlands quilt turned out. The scrap triangles contrast with the curves and their colors add just the right amount of lift to the autumn colors of the curved arch blocks. It works. It is hanging on the wall in my office.

I have been doing a lot of machine quilting, and I have 3 quilts in the binding process. Lots of hand-stitching in my future. I am swearing off starting any new projects for a bit. I want to finish machine quilting 3 charity quilts by the end of the year, and complete some other projects that are already under construction.

Vintage photos

Mom, circa 1969. She didn't teach me how to quilt, but she taught me how to use a sewing machine.

A Little Sci Fi, But Mostly Quilting

I finished a few more movies on the sci fi marathon. Passengers was pretty good. Ex Machina was really good but also a bit creepy. And Gravity sucked (I found myself yelling advice at the main character since she was doing so many obviously stupid things).

I have been doing some machine quilting.


I didn't sew this quilt top together; I found it on eBay and got it to practice machine quilting. This is my first time trying machine-quilted feathers. The quilting turned out well and adds a lot to the quilt, but it took 14 hours to complete. I stalled out on it in about 2016 and it spent a couple of years folded up in the closet, half-quilted. I used a wool batting, which is lighter than cotton and has more loft. I am working on putting on the binding. I am looking forward to finishing this one.

I realized that I had 2 quilts basted and ready for machine quilting, and 5 more completed quilt tops in the closet. I took a break from machine quilting this weekend, and decided not to start another quilt! Instead I basted one of the quilt tops and then pulled out a couple of old projects. I finished sewing the borders on a red, white, and blue quilt (add that quilt top to the stack in the closet). Then I added a row of blocks to another old project and auditioned several possible borders (I think I need to add a pieced border). As you can see, my cats were "helping."

More Movies, and Quilting

The sci-fi marathon has continued. I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which was more about wonder--or possibly obsession--than science, and not very thoughtful) and Forbidden Planet (was everything that cheesy in the 1950s?). I also saw Annihilation, which was fascinating, thought-provoking, ambiguous, and beautiful. It got a lot of bad reviews, mostly from people who thought it would be a conventional action movie (with aliens) or who like everything neatly explained and clear at the end. I can see why the trailers try to paint the movie as a fast-paced action/thriller--they want to hook people in--but it misrepresents the film. It is always easier to do conventional genre films, sequels, and re-makes than original movies. You have a built-in audience; people know what they are getting and there is a sort of comfort in that. With Annihilation you definitely don't know what you are getting. And even after watching it you aren't quite sure about what exactly happened--I found that intriguing instead of frustrating, though, so I liked the film.

This week I have been working on more dresden plate blocks. I had enough blocks for more than one quilt, but I wanted to experiment with different shapes so I made a hexagon template and am combining the hexagonal dresden blocks with equilateral triangles.



The triangles form star points and allow you to piece the quilt in rows without a lot of set-in corners. The color seems a bit off in this photo, in real life the triangles are periwinkle (halfway between blue and purple).

.

I'm also working on a quilt that uses partial seams to create a herringbone-type design; I haven't tried any patterns that use the partial seam technique before (where you sew part of a seam, then go back later on and sew the rest of it). This is what my sewing room looks like in the midst of a project.



I like piecing this one, it's like a puzzle. There is a pattern to it, it is almost like interweaving strips together. I made some mistakes at first and had to rip out a few seams, but I got the hang of it.

Slow Sci-Fi Movie Marathon

So, a friend loaned me 2001: A Space Odyssey.
And I watched it.

It was long. Very long. And slow. I am not really sure if it is a movie at all. It dispensed with common movie elements (such as plot, a narrative thread, character development, etc). The cinematography was amazing, though, especially considering it was filmed in the mid-1960s before any kind of computer special effects. It seemed more like a piece of conceptual performance art than a movie. It made you think about afterwards, though. Which maybe makes up for some of it's flaws (one Amazon reviewer called it easy to appreciate but difficult to enjoy).

So that started me on a drawn out slow sci-fi movie marathon (which has already stretched out over weeks). So far I have watched (or re-watched) Moon, Contact, Arrival, Interstellar, Oblivion, and Wall-e. I am trying to lean more towards thoughtful sci-fi (so no Star Trek or Star Wars, although space opera can be fun too sometimes). I think of the ones that I watched so far, Oblivion was probably the most conventional (and least interesting). Up next on the list are Annihilation, Gravity, Passengers, AI, Ex Machina, ET, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

In between watching sci-fi movies, I have been quilting. I pieced this modern quilt earlier this year, experimenting with minimalism and limiting my fabric choices. This is inspired by a Nancy Purvis quilt in her book Quilting From Every Angle, but I changed the pattern design and measurements so it isn't really the same quilt, it's more like a cousin of her quilt.

I started machine quilting this dresden plate variation, based on a Jenny Doan tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Co. I used a template ruler to cut the pieces and then cut the circular blocks into squares. I am still experimenting with quilting designs for the setting squares, so I stalled out a bit on quilting this one.

This modern quilt top is based on using improvisational piecing (it has been informally dubbed the eye doctor quilt...all those Es). Some of the triangles came from scraps of the first quilt above. Sewing this top was a slow process, it sat on my design wall for a couple of months. I was experimenting with not using rulers to cut when I made the blocks, so nothing was square or a consistent size. I cheated a bit and squared some things up as I sewed the top together. I used two different green background fabrics because I ran out of the first one. I hope they blend better after it is quilted. I am glad to get it off the design wall.

This is the second version of Kathy's Doughty's 'Fractured' pattern I have made--I gave the first one away, but liked it so much I pieced a second one. I sewed the blocks together into a quilt top over the past week.

Machine Quilting in the Summer

The heat, humidity, and rain of summer have arrived. I returned from my quilting break and have been quilting away, but not getting any projects finished. I have already started 5 new quilts this year (okay, I just revised that number upwards twice, there are always more projects than I think there are), 2 of which are now finished quilt tops. Then I decided I need to get some more machine quilting done, because even though I worked hard to finish several quilts last fall/winter, I still had 4 basted quilts sitting in the closet after the Christmas quilting rush. I started with a scrappy charity quilt that someone else pieced and I agreed to quilt last fall (no pictures of that one). Then I pulled out this extremely red quilt with little 3-inch spool blocks.

I finished quilting and binding the red spools quilt, but haven't finished sewing the hanging sleeve on the back so I'm waiting to get a good full picture of it. I also finished quilting this quilt that I call 'Canyonlands.' I love the colors on this one.

I need to start hand-sewing the binding on the Canyonlands quilt, and then sew on the label and hanging sleeve. I have been basting quilts as I quilt them (I have a limited amount of the safety pins I use for basting, so as I remove them while machine quilting one quilt I can baste the next one). But even when I machine quilt 3 or 4 in a row, I never quite catch up! I got a little crazy with dresden plate blocks--I made a set last fall, and then I cut more this spring to use as an easy, portable hand applique project to take to sit-and-stitch groups. I sewed some into a quilt top that I started quilting last weekend, but I cut out even more blocks over the weekend, so there will definitely be another dresden plate quilt in my future.

Wintertime Non-Quilting

I have been lazy about taking pictures and updating the blog because I did a lot of bigger quilts last year and they were too large to photograph without a sidekick, a truck (for the sidekick to stand in so the quilts didn't drag on the ground), and a long 1x2 board (to run through the hanging sleeve of the quilts so they hang evenly). And now they feel like I finished them months ago (because I did) and are old news. In fact, I gave most of them away for Christmas.



This block pattern came out of one of the Nickel quilts books--I started the blocks while in Atlanta during Hurricane Hermine.



This is a Kathy Doughty pattern.



And a detail, because it turned out awesome.



This set of blocks from a Bonnie Hunter pattern made two quilts that look different because I changed the sashing and the setting.



I did a mad dash of machine quilting and hand-binding to get several quilts done before Christmas, and I have basically done nothing since, for over a month. I've been doing a lot of reading and watching movies, but I have effectively zero quilt momentum. I spent time over the weekend looking at quilting books, and now I have at least three projects I definitely want to start on, and I have stacks of fabric in my studio (there, I just upgraded my sewing room, ha!), but I haven't even turned on the iron.



I took a class in Seminole-style patchwork last fall, and got inspired by using solids (I mixed in a few dresden plate blocks as leader/enders). Seeing what happens when cultures blend is always intriguing.



I also joined a modern quilt sit and stitch, so I've been looking at books on modern quilting. I've used prints so much, it will be interesting to try using only solids. Of course, I am plotting out ways to change the patterns I see to make them my own. I want to try exploring minimalism and negative space in upcoming projects.