Using Those Lines

Posted on June 24, 2018 by zippyquilts

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.

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

Posted on June 17, 2018 by zippyquilts

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.

Here and Now, by 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!

Posted on June 10, 2018 by zippyquilts

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.