Category Archives: Applique

Susan’s Ideas Explode

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I took a class with Susan Cleveland at AQS-Paducah this year and it was excellent. Susan manages to be both pleasant and precise as a teacher and has many, many tricks for improving quilt making skills.

Thinking of Susan’s creativity and sense of humor, I decided to make my SAQA donation quilt a picture of ideas exploding out of her head.

Here’s the resulting piece:“Susan’s Head Explodes”, 12″ x 12″, a tribute to Susan Cleveland

Susan is known for (among other things) her binding techniques, prairie points, and Dresdens. All these involve her signature precision and attention to detail. I used some of her techniques in this little quilt and added several of my own. Here are some details.

First, the martini glass. Please note that I have no idea whether or not Susan drinks alcohol; I just couldn’t resist this use of a prairie point!

You can see my binding up close in this detail photo. I used a flange to accent the edge. The little spheres are wool balls cut in half, a technique I learned from Susan.

The red exclamation mark is made with Kraft-Tex to avoid any risk of fraying on such a small element.The flamingo is a plastic button! Following a suggestion from a reader (Elizabeth, in response to my Habitat House), I removed the shank and glued the button to the quilt.

For one of the prairie points, I put a clear spherical button inside to hold it open a little. This button was one of my happy finds in Paducah, so it deserves to be in the piece!

The wool blend felt used for batting was a suggestion in a recent book by Sue Bleiweiss. It worked quite well in terms of being stable and easy to use.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Susan’s Head Explodes!

Designed and made by: me, with inspiration from Susan Cleveland

Finished size: 12″ x 12″

Materials include: Commercial cotton fabric, hand dyed fabric (Cherrywood), hand dyed embroidery thread (Artfabrik, Laura Wasilowski), Kraft-Tex (C&T), plastic buttons, commercial rick rack, wool felt balls, a polymer clay button, wool blend felt for batting, and various commercial threads.

Note: As always, the links in this post are for your convenience. They are not affiliate links.

Happy Habitat House

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The Gate City Quilt Guild, which I recently joined, makes little house quilts for the local Habitat for Humanity. Each family then gets a little quilt as part of the ceremony in which they take over their new house. Of course I wanted to make one, so here we go!

The quilts are approximately 12″ x 12″, so I began by cutting two 13″ squares of fabric, one for the front and one for the back. I recently read in Sue Bleiweiss’s latest book that she uses a wool-blend felt for the batting in her art quilts, so I gave that a try. I cut the felt 12″ x 12″.

This is the back

I turned the edges of the front fabric to the back, turned under the edges of the backing fabric, and edge stitched the 3 layers together. The felt “batting” was easy to work with and avoided the puffiness that can distort a quilt when using regular batting.

I used Heat n Bond Lite to fuse the door, windows, and roof to the house, then fused the house to the quilt top.

The finished quilt front

I added stitching to the grass and tree for texture, and to make rays from the sun to show sunshine falling on the house. I collect fun buttons, so I had a round one for the door knob and some little flowers for the yard.

The buttons were shank-type, so I had to make little holes in the quilt to push the shank through so they would lie flat. The felt batting was extremely stable, which helped a lot with this process. Here’s the back, showing the button shanks held in place with little pins.

Although I like my quilt, I must say that there are some very talented quilters in the group and some of the houses were more realistic than mine! I look forward to learning a lot from these ladies.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Happy Habitat House

Size: 12″ x 12″

Designed and made by me

I hope the family who receives the quilt will enjoy it, though of course it is unlikely to look like their real house!

Can This Quilt Be Saved?

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Ha! Many, many years ago there was a column in a women’s magazine called, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” I have no memory of reading the content, but somehow the overly-dramatic title has stuck with me. (I just asked Ms. Google, and I’m not the only one who remembers this: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/can-this-marriage-be-saved_b_58404189e4b0b93e10f8dfdf)

Anyway, in moving I have come across some experimental pieces that I’ve kept. I learned something from each of them, but sometimes what I learned was that a particular piece was not especially attractive!

Well, this didn’t work

The above piece was an experiment after reading a book by Freddy Moran. It’s well made but not especially attractive. For me, the colors don’t “gel” and the prairie points are entirely too regular in their arrangement.

This unquilted piece, approximately 42″ square, is the THIRD attempt to make something with these dotted fabrics! The other versions were no better, but I’ve saved some of the fabric by cutting out circles and using them as applique.

Rescued Dots

I think the “rescue” was pretty successful, and I’ll probably do something similar with the rest of this fabric. So I guess that’s 4 iterations of a design with those dots before finding something successful! 

And then there’s the Stuffed Olive Block. Never mind why I designed it in the first place. I made it into a pillow, but really, we have more than enough pillows. I think it just has to go!

I’m a firm believer that no experience is wasted, so we’ll call it good even if some of these just go out with the trash.

Of course that’s nowhere near all the experimental pieces I came across, but that’s all for now 😀

P.S.: I enjoy seeing “barn quilt” blocks as we travel, but this one struck me as unlikely:

 

 

Eight Years

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I’ve now been blogging weekly for 8 years. One of the best things about it is “meeting” people from all over the world and reading about what they are doing. Some of them have been at it even longer than I have, though many of the bloggers I’ve “met” have since quit writing.

Here are my current favorite quilts from each of the years I’ve been blogging.

Rising star art quilt

Rising Star, made for the Quilt Alliance TWENTY contest in 2013

quilt photo

My Zippy Star Quilt and Pillow as shown in Modern Quilts Unlimited, Summer 2014

modern quilt

Happy Squares, designed and made by me, 2015

improvisational quilt

Cherrywood Toss, 2016.

scrap quilt

Scrap quilt made with strips that finish 1″ wide, 2017

Equilateral Triangles, 2018

My “Little Green Man” quilt, June 2019

“Clamshells? Really?” 2020

I’m going to delete many of the older posts since I doubt they are serving any purpose at this time. I have had a book made for each year, as suggested by my friend Linda, so I can always look back at them if I want.

A Preschool Project

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Our younger grandson is energetic and curious about everything, and one day he walked over to the sewing machine and said, “I want to see what this does!” He selected some scraps and sewed them together with a little help and a lot of watching to keep his fingers out from under the needle! Luckily, my machine has a speed control so I was able to slow it way down to lessen the risk.

The next time he came to visit, we got out the scraps. He chose everything he liked and we glued the scraps to a piece of paper (8.5″ x 11″, which we used to call “typing paper”!). I didn’t help with selection or placement, only encouraged him to cover the paper completely.

We then went to the sewing machine, where I operated the foot pedal and he guided the fabric-covered paper. He learned how to guide the piece under the foot, and we turned the speed up a little! (Note: If you do this, don’t let the child see where the speed control is!) We used a zigzag stitch to cover the edges more easily, and tried a few other stitches, too.

It took several visits for him to finish the piece with all the edges tacked down. He enjoyed the sewing and was very good at clipping stray threads. I then let him choose a tote bag to which we attached his art quilt 🙂

No, he isn’t old enough to have lost that tooth yet. It was a playground accident!

He was very proud of his creation, though he’s still at that age where kids do the fake smile when they see a camera. The lovey got to ride home in the bag along with a couple of other toys he had brought along.

If you have children who try this, please send me pictures of their creations so I can share.  And have fun!

 

2020 Review, Part II

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Here are the rest of my 2020 project completions.  As previously mentioned, shelter-in-place was an opportunity!

I designed and made Fiddlesticks after seeing a number of similar quilts on the internet.

Pineapple Fabrics requested pineapple blocks for a children’s hospital donation project, and my friend Chela and I each made several.

I finally finished this little art quilt, which was started several years ago

This quilt used up a lot of scraps!

I made numerous projects inspired by books I reviewed for C&T.  The quilt on the left is a modification of a pattern that appears in New Patchwork and Quilting Basics, by Jo Avery.  The block on the right is one of my favorites of the year; the pattern is in Quilt: Modern Curves and Bold Stripes.

The quilt above is modified from my friend Elizabeth’s Merrion Square pattern.  The pattern is available in her Payhip shop and includes several variations.

This quilt was made with a jelly roll I won in a contest!  The pattern is in Love Jelly Roll Quilts.

Who can resist the colorful fabrics by Kaffe Fasset? I made two quilts with them. This pattern is available free from Free Spirit Fabrics, here.

And here’s the quilt made with leftover blocks:

Above is another Scrap Quilt, 64″ x 64″. I was planning to teach it in January, but the COVID numbers have gotten too high here for that to be safe right now.

This is the quilt in crib size

The quilt above is another I developed for Studio Stitch.  I think they still have some kits left if you’re interested.  My friend Mary just sent me a picture of her completed quilt from the kit!

This next quilt, 12″ x 12″, was just a block for years after I took a leaf pounding class.  I finally quilted it, and I’m happy with the result.

Here are 3 that I know you’ve seen before, but they were completed in 2020, so gotta show them:

It’s always a great idea to offset the intersecting seams!
I finally bound this quilt, which was a practice piece for a pattern I developed last fall

And finally, here’s my end-of-year art quilt.  I’ve had this idea in mind for some time so I was glad to finally get it out on fabric.  I think the tree topper needs a golden starburst around it, so I’ll be adding that before the next holiday season, but at least the quilt is mostly done.

Xmas, 25.5″ x 31.5″

Whew!  2020 had some redeeming accomplishments despite all the “challenges”, as we like to call them!  I hope you find that the year had some good points for you, as well.

2020 Quilt Review, Part I

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Every problem being an opportunity, I think we’ll review the projects completed in 2020 because of the opportunity to spend much more time at home 😀  In fact, I got so much done that I’m splitting it into two posts so my head doesn’t spin.  Here’s part I:

Plaidish was made from a free pattern available from Kitchen Table Quilts

I designed the quilt above based on a barn quilt I saw every time I drove to town.  The design was created in EQ8 and Eileen Fowler at McCall’s Quilting transformed it into a design of her own, giving me credit for inspiration.

The above quilt was designed in EQ8 and made with scraps.  Studio Stitch offered the pattern free with purchase.  I loved using all my colorful scrap strips.

I made this after reading Happy Villages by Karen Eckmeier
This wonky house was inspired by a class I took with Laura Wasilowski several years ago
And this one gave me a chance to use one of my little antelope charms
This dragonfly has sparkly wings and a rhinestone, too
Finally, I couldn’t help making a card with this cow, who has been in my stash for some time!
This pine tree has green flannel for foliage and lots of free motion quilting for texture

I made a bunch of postcard-sized art quilts as samples for a class I plan to teach on making landscape quilts.  COVID happened, so the class hasn’t been offered yet.

I designed and made this little neighborhood after seeing similar projects online. Isn’t the internet a great source of inspiration?

Orphan Blocks
Orphan Blocks

I made a bunch of donation quilts, including the two above constructed from orphan blocks.  Several quilts went to a local at-risk infant project, and there’s another pile waiting to go to Ronald McDonald House.

I took a class with friends at A Stitch in Time and made this fall quilt.  They still have the pattern if you want to make one, too.

I made this orphan block up into a little quilt for the SAQA auction.

Like everyone else, I made a zillion of these. At least my model is cute 🙂

I enjoyed making this quilt and the templates from Elisa’s Backporch made it easy.

That is surely enough for one post!  To be continued…

An Easy Donation Project

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Pineapple Fabrics recently sent an email requesting blocks to be made into quilts for Brenner Children’s Hospital.  Some days I feel completely overwhelmed with making donation quilts, but this looked easy and fun.  They asked for applique pineapple blocks, using a template they provided.

Here are mine:

A couple of my quilting buddies made even more, and Chela even used Dr. Seuss fabric for hers!

Here is the link to the Pineapple Pieces Project if you are interested.  Full disclosure: these blocks were as fun and easy as they looked, I also appreciated not having to make a whole top and quilt it!

And I have donated this little art quilt of to the Studio Art Quilt Association’s annual auction.

Quarantine has provided a lot of good quilting time, though I miss getting together with my quilting buddies!  I hope you are finding benefits to enforced time at home, too.

 

7 Years and Counting!

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As of this month, I’ve been blogging here every Sunday for 7 years!  I’ve debated what to do for my blogiversary, having largely skipped it last year.  My decision is to show my favorite quilt from each year I’ve blogged.  So here we go…

First year blogging:

scrap quilt

My entry for the Quilt Alliance Challenge 2014; I think it won a judge’s choice award

Second year:

I designed this quilt for Modern Quilts Unlimited

Third year:

Improv Table Runner for Modern Quilts Unlimited

Fourth year:

Quilt I designed from a QR code used by Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Northwest, shown here with their staff

Fifth year:

My donation to the Quilt Alliance auction was used in their publicity

Sixth year:

My “Little Green Man” quilt included Kraft-Tex applique

Seventh year:

I’ll have more to say about “Fiddlesticks” next week

Thanks for reading, and please stay tuned for Year 8 🙂