A Few Updates

Posted on May 28, 2017 by zippyquilts

Here is the couple I made the T Shirt wedding quilt/guest book for. They seemed happy with the quilt, and enjoyed pointing to the various shirts and talking about them.

Neither my submission nor that of my friend Clare will be touring with the Threads of Resistance show, but I’m glad I made the quilt anyway. There were so many interesting entries (550 in all!) that I’m just glad to have submitted something.

You can see the whole range of submissions here, and the ones that were selected for the show here. I was particularly happy to see several tributes to Senator Elizabeth Warren.

You can see Clare’s submission here, and my favorite submission here. Hint on my favorite: It’s titled “Trumpty Dumpty” 😀 If you want to see mine again, I blogged about it here.

And finally, an update on my project with Jane Sassaman fabrics. I decided on this layout, which sort of swirls the blocks in a spiral.The quilt is to be a queen size for my bed, so it needs to be bigger. However, I never found a companion fabric that suited me for the borders, so finally I ordered another 4 yards of the original fabric! More later…

Quilt as a Wedding Guest Book

Posted on May 21, 2017 by zippyquilts

One of our daughter’s former room mates is getting married and asked if I would make a T shirt quilt from shirts both she and her fiance have gathered in their various athletic pursuits.

She decided to use the back of the quilt as a guest book, then use the quilt on their couch as a wedding memento. I thought that was a great idea! Who ever looks at the wedding guest book again? The quilt, however, is a fun combination of “his and hers” and will serve a useful purpose after the wedding.

I ordered this cross-hatched backing, thinking it would be relatively good for people to sign.

Carolyn Friedlander fabric, 108″ wide

I used very thin polyester batting (Quilter’s Dream Request Loft poly) so the quilt will be fairly flat for signing. We’ll use fine point sharpies I am leaving the backing unwashed in the hope that the finish on it will limit bleeding.

The wedding is only a couple of weeks away, so I’m off to deliver the guest book!

Quilt Alliance Contest 2017

Posted on May 14, 2017 by zippyquilts

After 3 weeks and 3 quilts, here is the one I finally finished for the 2017 Quilt Alliance contest. The first two quilts were OK, but I like this one best, so off it goes.

For Quilt Alliance contest 2017, 16″ x 16″

The contest theme this year is “voices”. As I made this little maze, I thought of college students in their world of endless possibilities, talking all night about the meaning of life. I thought the bright colors and the maze were a good representation of that.

Detail of the quilt for the 2017 Quilt Alliance contest

The fabric is Cherrywood hand dyes, except for the bright yellow, which is a batik. I presume it is obvious that I cut everything with scissors and improvised the piecing as I went along. I quilted it on my Bernina, using lightweight medium grey thread to lend texture without showing too much.

Next week: a quilt to use as a wedding guest book. Thanks for visiting!

YOW! I’m teaching curved piecing!

Posted on May 7, 2017 by zippyquilts

To be exact, YOW is the name of the quilt, not my reaction to teaching a curved piecing class 🙂

YOW is the class I’ll be teaching at Studio Stitch in Greensboro

The class is at Studio Stitch in Greensboro (NC), one of my favorite shops. To my surprise, I don’t have a picture of the quilt I’m using as a class sample, so I had to lift this one from the Studio Stitch website. There is no pattern for this quilt; it is just what I did with some really bright batiks and some nice templates from Elisa’s Backporch Designs.

I’m going to teach at least 3 different ways to piece these curves, so most anybody with some sewing experience can find success with at least one of the methods.

I got out some examples of my quilts with curved piecing yesterday to have them for display in class, and I was surprised at how many there are. Then I found all these pictures of other things I’ve made with curved piecing, so here are a few.