Leaders and Enders–Have You Heard?

Posted on April 19, 2015 by zippyquilts

One of the best things about the blogosphere is that I get tips all the time from other quilters.

I recently learned from Melissa at Happy Quilting how I can be piecing two projects at once! What could be better?

I’ve always used scraps for starting and ending a series of chain piecing because that gives me all the pieces at once, still without having to cut off thread tails.

The scraps used to start and end sections of chain piecing end up looking like this–pretty ratty!

Here’s an explanation of chain piecing in case you aren’t familiar with it.

To piece a second top as “leaders and enders” instead of using scraps to chain piece, I figured it had to be a SIMPLE top or I’d end up confusing things for sure! So when one of my quilt groups decided to exchange improvised blocks (sometimes called slabs if they’re all one color), it seemed like a perfect opportunity to make the slabs while working on something else.

This is a pile of scraps..

I’m piecing slabs from scraps and they’re improvisational, so there ARE no mistakes, only opportunities for further improvisation! Woo-hoo!

And this is a block improvised from scraps and cut to size!

SO, while piecing the tops I wanted to consider for the Quilt Alliance challenge…

Cat Circus, my quilt for the 2015 Quilt Alliance challenge

I also pieced several improvisational slabs for friends.

Blocks improvised from scraps

Win-win! And most importantly, it was FUN 🙂

4 Quilt Tops–Help Me Choose!

Posted on April 5, 2015 by zippyquilts

The theme of the Quilt Alliance challenge this year is “Animals We Love”. It gave me a hard time–I tried for weeks to think of something–then all of a sudden I had more ideas than I knew what to do with! So here are 4 tops I’ve made, and I need to decide which one to submit. Please tell me which you think is best! It may help if you’ll tell me why you like it as well (or why you hate it). All are 16 inches square, which is a requirement of the challenge.

#1: Cat Circus was designed using EQ7 and made using templates.

#2: Barnyard Whirl was cut freehand. The black fabric is printed with animal sounds. (Why do we teach little children to make animal sounds, anyway? Oops, a digression!)

#3: We Love Clams will have a thread-sketched cartoon clam (presumably looking worried about all that love) as a focal point when I quilt it.

#4: Untitled (feel free to suggest a title) again with the animal-sounds black fabric.And that’s it! Yes, I made 4 quilt tops! Please help me choose one.

Year End Review

Posted on December 28, 2014 by zippyquilts

For better or worse, I published goals at the beginning of the year, so here’s the review of my progress:
I met all the goals! (Does that mean I didn’t set them high enough?) I retreated with my buddies THREE times instead of just two! I attended 3 big national shows as well as 2 local ones (all were excellent). I took a couple of fun and useful classes, one of which I still need to write up here so you’ll know about it. I submitted several quilts to shows/contests and 3 were accepted. The one I donated to the Quilt Alliance even won something, and sold for $300 to benefit the Quilt Alliance! And I had lots of fun, which was really the point of it all.

Here are pictures of a few of my projects from the second half of the year. The pix of projects from the first half of the year are in this post.

Spring Sun, a design by me, using blocks paper pieced from a totally different Judy Niemeyer pattern! It took about 2 years, but it’s now DONE.

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

Packet of Posy Seeds, done for the Michael Miller spring challenge

Zippy Star I, which sold at the Asheville Quilt Show in September. This was my “practice piece” for the MQU quilt shown above.

Donation quilt for Ronald McDonald House. I’m going to work more on using up orphan blocks next year.

And, despite the risk, here’s what I plan for the coming year:

1. I’ll retreat with my buddies at least twice, probably 3 times again!

2. I’ll attend one big national quilt show, maybe two. I’ll attend at least one local show.

3. I will limit much more strictly the shows and challenges I enter. It takes too much time and effort that could be spent on making what I want to make 🙂

4. I’ll continue to make donation quilts, including one for the Quilt Alliance. Please consider making one for the Quilt Alliance yourself. You can read about their mission here. Click on “2015 Quilt Contest” to learn about this year’s challenge.

5. I’ll continue my blog, and I think I’ll put up instructions for a few easy donation quilts just in case somebody is looking for ideas.

What’s coming up for you?

5 Favorites of 2014

Posted on December 21, 2014 by zippyquilts

1. Favorite quilt show I attended: Vermont Quilt Festival. You can see some quilts from it here and here. And here again is a detail of one of my favorites:

Detail of Fill the Void by Cinzia Allocca, at Vermont Quilt Festival 2014

2. Favorite thing about blogging: Meeting new friends, both in person and online. Read about a couple of them here and here, if you like.
3. Favorite modern quilt trend: some textures and low-volume prints (those that show more background, having the prints smaller and farther apart) to get us away from all solids, all the time. Some of my favorites include these from Carolyn Friedlander:

From Carolyn Friedlander’s Architextures collection

and these from Alison Glass:

4. Favorite new (to me) quilt tool: Frixion pen. It comes in lots of colors and erases when you iron over the markings. Only drawback I’ve found is that you can’t see the mark on dark fabric. For that I still love my chaco liner with yellow chalk. Show below: chaco liners on left, frixion pens on right.

5. Favorite lesson learned: I’d rather see my designs in print than at quilt shows. Yes, I entered several shows and contests, and I won something. But my favorite quilt of the year (from those I made) was the one that was published in Modern Quilts Unlimited. So here is a picture of it again.

And what were your favorites of the year?

Eye Candy x 10

Posted on December 14, 2014 by zippyquilts

I’ve been saving this treat, and today is the day. For those of us who want to escape for a few minutes from holiday-themed anything, here are 10 of my favorite art quilts from this year’s Vermont Quilt Festival.

Coves & Islands by Carol Anne Grotian

Torrid Dwelling by Molly Upton

Suntreader III by Michael James

Aspens Reaching for Bluebird Skies by Ann Schubert Turner

The Getty by Katie Pasquini Masopust

Remembered Vistas by Jo Diggs

The Wall, by Pamela Druhen

Double Wedding Ring #2 by Mike McNamara

Color Waves by Pamela Druhen

Detail from Leaves on Klee, by Mabry Benson

Now, get back to work on those holiday gifts 🙂

Beads on Quilts

Posted on December 7, 2014 by zippyquilts

I was waaaay into beads before I got waaaay into quilts, so there are lots of beads in the studio. Thank goodness they take up less room than fabric 😉

A few of the bead drawers

I’ve read a bit about using beads in quilts, and I took a class with Mary Stori a few years ago.

Here are a few of my uses of beads so far. Most recently, I added a row of tiny silver-lined glass beads around the edge of a star in my quilt for the Michael Miller challenge. It took most of a day to get this done! YIKES!

I outlined the focal point of my Michael Miller challenge quilt with beads

A while back I made this little wall hanging as a shop sample for a friend, and put beads both on it and hanging from it.

There are beads on the sun, and that’s how I learned that sewing on beads can distort the quilt! I used techniques from jewelry making to create a beaded fringe for the bottom of the piece with larger beads.

And beads were used to give Overall Sam a fish in one block and a toy airplane to fly in another block when I made this wall hanging from a few years ago. The blocks are based on a pattern from Eleanor Burns.

Finally, I used beads to make fancy zipper pulls for some of my pouches.

Give beads a try! And if you don’t have enough beads, let me know…

Around the World Blog Hop

Posted on November 3, 2014 by zippyquilts

I’m happy to be part of the Around the World Blog Hop, a chain-letter type project in which bloggers tag each other to keep it going! Here are my answers to the four questions:

What am I working on? My current project is the Michael Miller Challenge for QuiltCon. It is challenging in several ways that I’ll elaborate on in a future post. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of the progress so far.

Pieced quilt, Michael Miller Cotton Couture fabrics

Quilt in progress for the Michael Miller Challenge

How does my work differ from others of its genre? I enjoy making quilts with bold colors (one of the reasons the MM quilt above is a challenge with its pastels). I value good design over intricate workmanship and believe difficult quilts should be re-designed to make them easier. I focus first on the visual impact of the overall quilt, then on the details. Which is probably how I have more than once committed to making a quilt before I’ve quite worked out the details on how to do it.

This T Shirt quilt for a friend was not really planned ahead

Why do I write/create what I do? I write to make contact with other people and to promote quilting and quilters. I create for fun and to challenge myself. My idea of a good project is one in which I learn something new. Even if it’s a difficult lesson sometimes. The blocks below were made in a class. I enjoyed the class and learned a lot, but one of the things I learned was that I didn’t want to make any more of them 😉

Yin-Yang blocks from a class

How does my writing/creating process work? I read/observe/learn everything I can and then work on a problem off-and-on until a solution comes to me. Then I make the quilt. I’m sorry to say I can’t really verbalize it any better than that.

Around the World: I was tagged by my friend Melanie. Check out this post about the worst quilt book she owns!. And I’m tagging Ann at Sew Messy, who is a pattern designer; Ann doesn’t yet sell her patterns on her site, but she has some fun pictures, so stay tuned. I’m also tagging Lyric at LyricKinard.com, who is an art quilter and teacher. Check our Lyric’s website and classes for LOTS of new ideas!

12 Bright Quilts from AQS Chattanooga

Posted on September 14, 2014 by zippyquilts

There were lots of good quilts, so I’m choosing to show bright ones! Later this month, I’ll have an interview with a modern quilter from Chattanooga. Meanwhile, I hope you find these quilts as inspiring as I did.

Sherbert at the Beach, by Stacey Day

Art DeCOW, by Connie Donaldson

Winter Jewels, by Michelle Renee Hiatt and Barbara Bregman

Sunset, by Leanne Chahley

Quilt by Gina Abayan, part of a display of beautiful quilts from the Philippines

Freeze Frame in Motion, by Judy Holahan

Delaneyville, by Fran Stinson

Red Rectangle, by Judy Mercer Tescher

Rainbow Bright, by Jennifer Hynes

3 Sisters, by Veronica Hofman-Ortega

Fall Migration, by Tamara Watts-McPhail

A Feather Runs Through It, by Veronica Hofman-Ortega

Your Inner Designer 6: Copy Somebody Good!

Posted on September 7, 2014 by zippyquilts

Truly original ideas in design are really, really rare More often good designs are inspired by other good designs, and most designers start by copying other people. There’s nothing wrong with that–just give credit!

Glass window, designer unknown

For example, here’s a door I admire in a friend’s house. It got me thinking that it would be nice to make her a table runner with a design similar to the glass in the door, especially since the dining table is right by the door. I may start out by copying the design, but my table runner won’t be an exact copy. I want it to be obviously inspired by the door, but I probably couldn’t make an exact copy even if I wanted to. And I’m not going to sell it as my own “original” design without reference to the door, either.

Here’s the first attempt:That may be obviously inspired by the door, though in fact both are inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and Craftsman styles of design. If you don’t know much about those styles of design, Google them. There are many similar designs to be found, so I can make LOTS of designs of this style without copying any of them. Here’s the second try:

This one has a little more detail. Another master of this style, popular in the early years of the 20th Century, was Charles Rennie Mackintosh. William Morris textile and wallpaper designs were the same historical period, and you may have seen Moda’s extensive line of William Morris-inspired fabrics.

One last try:

So go look at some books on the history of design (the history of advertising works too) and make some designs inspired by what you see. It’s a good starting place when you think you don’t have any ideas, and you’ll eventually come up with something your really like. Then it’s time to make a quilt!

Here are the first 5 posts in this series:

Your Inner Designer 5: A Program to Make Your Own Palette!

Quilt Design 4: Choosing Your Color Scheme

Your Inner Designer 3: New Blocks From Old

Your Inner Designer 2: Many Block Arrangements

Find Your Inner Designer, Part 1

11 Favorites from AQS Charlotte

Posted on August 10, 2014 by zippyquilts

The quilts at AQS in Charlotte were inspiring, and there were more modern ones than at most AQS shows. Here are 11of my favorites. They aren’t necessarily the judges’ favorites; those are available on the AQS website here. I judge mainly on innovative or attractive overall design; the judges have another set of rules. I hope you enjoy my choices!