A Cute Little Bag

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One of the classes I took at Quiltfest last month was a little bag from a pattern by Penny Sturges.  It was taught by Carrie Licatovich of Tennessee Quilts, who did an excellent job.  Bag 3

Carrie had made numerous modifications to the instructions for the bag, and it was one time I was really glad to be making something in class rather than on my own.  Her changes were improvements in the construction process, and I would not have wanted to make the bag without them.  Carrie was a warm and encouraging teacher and the class seemed to go well for everyone, even relatively new sewists.

Here’s my bag:

I enjoyed the class and I like the bag.  Next time I want a cute little bag, I think I’ll buy one!

Indigo Dying with Debbie Maddy

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I recently took a one-day class in Shibori dying with natural indigo, taught by Debbie Maddy. This was part of QuiltFest, put on in Jonesborough, TN, by Tennessee Quilts. It was a good time as usual, and I’ll post more about QuiltFest later.

Indigo Dye

Debbie Maddy–her Shibori dying class was excellent!

Debbie brought many beautiful examples of Shibori dying with her.

In addition to the class, she gave a lecture about her adventures with Shibori.  To hear her tell it, she became interested in Shibori and immediately signed herself and her husband up for a 10 day Shibori class in Japan!  I can’t even imagine!

She gave us an introduction to how indigo is used for dying in various places around the world, then showed us how to mix the dye vats and prepare the cloth.Indigo dye vat

As always, the most fun was seeing everyone’s fabrics drying on the line!Shibori dyed fabric

Here are a few more examples made by students.  I’m sorry to say I didn’t get their names.

When we got home, we had to neutralize the dye in a vinegar bath and then remove excess dye with pH neutral detergent in hot water.finishing indigo dyed pieces

And here are my finished pieces:indigo dye

More about Quiltfest in future!  Stay tuned 🙂

Some Tiny Blocks

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My modern guild is making a charity quilt for QuiltCon 2019, and the requirements include a predetermined palate and blocks with pieces no larger than 1″ in at least one dimension.  The theme is “small piecing”.  Here is the palate:

At the last meeting, our guild had chunks of fabric about 8″ x 10″ cut for us to take home and make little blocks.  The blocks are going to be used to construct something else, so the only requirement is that they finish either 2″ or 3″ square.  I took these 3 colors:

And here are some little blocks I made.

The quilt has to be twin size, so it’s going to take a LOT of these babies!  It will be fun to see what other guilds do when QuiltCon comes around in February.

Thanks to everyone who offered an opinion about my choice of accent color for the shirting quilt.  There are two different blocks in the quilt that use the tiny accent squares, and I’ve decided to use orange for this one and rust for the other.  Here are a couple of the blocks with orange.  Those tiny orange squares finish 3/4″.  Eek!

I’ll keep you posted.

 

Potluck Plan to Save the Planet

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When we lived in Darkest Northern Maine I belonged to a women’s group that had potluck dinners from time to time. A frequent dish at these dinners was a meatloaf made with moose meat, no lie! Anyway, when we had a potluck, everyone brought her own place setting, including flatware, wrapped in a specially made carrier. In addition to being an opportunity to show off the fine china, it was a wonderful idea to save on waste! (My “fine china” is Corelle, but never mind that.)  You can even carry a cloth napkin with you for further savings to the planet 🙂

Aroostook County, Maine, land of place setting carriers. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

I got to thinking about this when a colleague brought his lunch to the office with a cloth napkin the other day, and then later that same day one of my guilds had a potluck.  Despite the fact that ALL of us CAN sew, nobody brought a place setting with her!  It was all paper and plastic, filling the trash cans afterward.  (The food was great, though!)

The truth is that, although I have made numerous place mats and table runners, I have never even made a place setting carrier for myself.  So I searched the internet for patterns, and here are a few sources:

Quilted Place Setting Carrier, photo courtesy of Craftsy

This is a $5 pattern available on Craftsy.  Click the label under the picture to go to the page where you can buy it.

Here is a link to a free pattern from the St. Croix Quilters.  I couldn’t get a picture, but the pattern is just one page and permission is granted to share it.  It even includes a pattern for a matching napkin 🙂

Here is a listing from Etsy for a place setting carrier that you can buy already made.

Place setting carrier available on Etsy, already made! Photo courtesy of Etsy.

Of course you could make one yourself, but sometimes there are too many projects in line already, and I thought this one was cute.

If you go searching for a pattern for a place setting carrier, most of what you’ll find are patterns for casserole carriers.  Those are good, too, but not what I wanted!  I’m pretty sure I can just develop my own place setting carrier by taking one of my dinner plates as a starting point for size and going from there.  If I end up developing a pattern, I’ll let you know.

On another note, look at the wonderful pattern on this moth I found on a recent hike:

Unknown moth, Western N.C., 2018

Have a good week!

Some Favorites from VQF 2018

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The Vermont Quilt Festival, which I attended in June, was wonderful, as usual. Here are a few of my favorites of the more traditional type.

VQF

Maine Coast, by Lynne Rainen

traditional quilt VQF

Port Kent Beauty, by Alyce Fradenburg (who is from Port Kent, NY)  I like how she put black triangles at the top to give the design a point there.

VQF

We Are Stardust, by Gladi Porsche

tumbler quilt

Twinkle Twinkle Little Tumblers, by Sharon Shea Perry. There are 3328 tumblers in this quilt, and they are tiny!  I love how she made the border darker.

vermont quilt festival

Night Sky, by Joan Duffy. This was eye-catching and beautifully pieced.

Barnum & Bailey quilt

Barnum & Bailey, by Daisy Dodge. This had many TINY pieces!

Detail of Barnum & Bailey. Those HSTs finish 1/2″ square!

quilt by Bonnie Morin

Buzz Saw, by Bonnie Morin. Look at the detail below!

As always, there were several special exhibits, including quilts by the teachers and some modern favorites from the last QuiltCon.  More on those later!

Dress Shirt Quilt

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I have been saving my husband’s worn out dress shirts for years to use the fabric for quilting. They are too worn at the collar and elbows for him to wear to work, but there is plenty of good fabric left for quilts.shirt quilt I made one quilt from them a year or so ago and used the pockets and plackets for interest.quilt made from shirts
A friend gave me a nice stack of shirt fabric that she had acquired from a custom shirt maker as discarded samples.shirting for quilt

The “Trail Mix” quilt from All People Quilt has been on my to-do list for years, and I decided it would be perfect for these shirt fabrics.  (The pattern is free; you can click on the name and link to the page.)trail mix quilt

I’ve made the first two types of blockquilt blocks and have arrived at time to make the blocks that provide the accent rows of tiny blocks.  I don’t think I have a shirt bright enough to make these accents stand out, so I’m considering solids from my stash.  Any opinions about which would work best?

Rust tone-on-tone

Mottled soft red

Solid red

Solid yellow

Solid Orange

Thanks for your advice!

NC Quilt Symposium–Teachers’ Show

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Here are some of my favorite quilts displayed by teachers at the recent North Carolina Quilt Symposium.  I wish I could have taken classes with all of them!

NC Quilt Symposium

Bending Star by Gyleen Fitzgerald

NCQS

Blooming Happy by Gyleen Fitzgerald

Quilt

Pursuit of Happiness by Gyleen Fitzgerald

Gyleen Fitzgerald

Jack and the Beanstalk by Gyleen Fitzgerald

NC Quilt Symposium

Even With Brown by Gyleen Fitzgerald

N C Quilt Symposium

Facets by Marge Tucker

Marge Tucker quilt

Hay Bales by Marge Tucker

Weeks Ringle, Bill Kerr

On the Dot by Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle

Susan Cleveland

Flowered and Feathered Frenzy by Susan Cleveland

colorful quilt

Bouncin’ Trio by Susan Cleveland

There were many other beautiful teacher quilts–these are just some of my favorites.

Next week I’ll show some of the award-winning quilts made by attendees at the NCQS.

Using Those Lines

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I recently took a class, with Rosalie Dace, focused on the use of lines in quilts. Coincidentally, I had a guild challenge to “make something” out of some fabric we had “modified” in a class at a previous guild meeting. distorted fabric 

Those are permanent wrinkles in the fabric, which is the desired modification.  I must say that everyone else’s wrinkles were in a more regular pattern–I had trouble with the technique.  However, the most frequent critique of my art quilts is that they should be “freer” with less predictable regularity, so this certainly is an “improvement” for me!

I got the piece built into a larger quilt square, layered with batting and backing, and started embellishing.  

Then I wondered what else to do with it:

The center piece is a fabric”jewel” made in the same guild workshop

I decided on more lines!  Here is the piece after adding more lines (sewn into the corners at irregular intervals!).

And I decided on multiple little beads instead of the big fabric “jewel”.  When we shared our creations at guild, I found that other people had also set their squares on point, and one woman had then incorporated hers into a bag!  Since the last thing I need is another art quilt, I think I will make this into a bag, too.  And I’m thinking of attaching a tassel to that fabric jewel and hanging that on the bag as well.  Stay tuned!

 

North Carolina Quilt Symposium–Rosalie Dace

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I recently took a class at the annual North Carolina Quilt Symposium, which this year was held in Asheville, relatively close to where I live. The class was taught by Rosalie Dace, an art quilter who lives in South Africa.  The focus was on techniques for putting lines into quilts.  Since she is an art quilter, there were many techniques that wouldn’t be used in utility quilts, but it was fun to try them out anyway.

Here are a couple of Rosalie’s quilts that were on display at NCQS.

NC quilt symposium

Here and Now, by Rosalie Dace

Rosalie Dace

African Blues, by Rosalie Dace

You can see more on her website.

And here are the items I made in class with her.  The first is not intended to be a finished piece; it was just made to try out various techniques.

I doubt this next block will be part of a quilt any time soon, but it was fun to make.

Later on I’ll have pictures of quilts made by some of the other teachers.  When I saw them, I wished I had been able to take more than one class!

What to do? Please help!

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Remember this fabric I was thrilled by?

I thought about how to use it for several weeks and finally decided on Turning Twenty Again. It’s an old pattern, but I’ve seen it made up in many different fabrics and it’s almost always spectacular and modern-looking.  The fabric I bought was 8 fat quarters, and Turning Twenty Again is a pattern developed for efficient use of fat quarters, so it seemed a good match.

I needed a little more fabric and found this dot in my stash–it had the same appearance of linen texture as the original fabric and I thought it went perfectly with the others.
The next question was what else to add. After auditioning several options, I decided on this cat fabric. The eyes are sort of of dots, too, and the color coordinated well. I made the blocks and put them on the design wall, and…Eek!  Is it too busy?  And when I see it overall, I do not like the tan fabric I added, even though it is similar to the beige-green that came with the fat quarter set!

I’ve had it on the design wall for a week trying to decide what to do. One option is to put the squares together with sashing and a border to kind of calm things down.  I auditioned a dark blue fabric and a turquoise fabric for that–both are Moda grunge, so they have the same linen-look texture.

Another option is to take the blocks apart in order to add these birds from the same collection, giving a greater variety of prints.  I think if I take it apart, I will remove the tan fabric I don’t like, so the birds could add variety AND get rid of the tan!
From there we go into the wild options. They are legion, and include the possibility of cutting the blocks randomly and inserting solid strips. Or I could replace some pieces with the birds and some with the turquoise grunge.

And of course there is the perennial option of putting it away for a month and then looking at it again to see what comes to mind.

Suggestions, anyone?