Only as Good as Your Last Quilt?

Posted on April 10, 2016 by zippyquilts

There’s a cynical phrase, common in professional sports, that is used often in other arenas as well: You’re only as good as your last game. It’s a commentary on public opinion. Unfortunately, there’s a corollary in our everyday judgments of ourselves.

This little quilt, “Packet of Posy Seeds”, did NOT win anything.

One of the modern guilds I belong to had an interesting discussion last meeting about which quilts are selected for QuiltCon, and why. We pretty much all agreed that the show is used to further the MQG’s own definition of modern quilting rather than to reveal the depth and breadth of the modern quilt movement.

This little quilt was published, along with an article I wrote

So, am I a good quilter because my quilt was juried into an AQS show? Or a poor quilter because SEVERAL quilts were rejected for a QuiltCon show? A good quilter because I’ve designed quilts that were published? Or a bad quilter because every magazine doesn’t love every one of my proposals? There’s a temptation to feel great when a quilt wins a prize and to feel a bit down when one is rejected. But does that make sense?

Happy Squares, designed and made by me. I love it, but nobody wants to publish the pattern.

Of course there are some “competitive quilters”, but most of us quilt because we enjoy it. My quilts are made to please myself, not to please other people. Even when I make a quilt for a challenge or show, I make it the way I want it, and I expect that is true for most people. I doubt that quilting is a road to fame and fortune for most of us, and that’s fine.

Zippy Star quilt for Modern Quilts Unlimited. I won a contest with this design.

So, if QuiltCon didn’t accept my quilt, it is NOT a personal judgment about me, it is a programmatic judgment about where the MQG folks want the definition of modern quilting to go. And if some of my quilts are published or win prizes, that’s dandy, but I still made them to suit myself.

“In Fairyland” has been in 2 shows but won no prizes.

So much of life involves following other people’s rules, sometimes for good reason and sometimes not. Although I’m a serious quilter, I want to do it by my own rules. I’ll still submit to shows because I like to see my quilts displayed. But really, the quilt is an end in itself.

Spring Sun, a design by me, using blocks paper pieced from a totally different Judy Niemeyer pattern!

I designed Spring Sun using blocks paper pieced from a totally different Judy Niemeyer pattern. It was juried into an AQS show.

My friend Melanie has written a couple of posts on why we quilt. You might enjoy them:

Make Good Art

Saturation Point

Projects 2013–Part I

Posted on February 21, 2016 by zippyquilts

For some time I’ve been meaning to add to my blog with a gallery of projects for each of the past several years. I’ve been held up in part by the variable quality of my photography over the years, but I’ve decided to just start anyway. Here are some projects from 2013.

I entered several national contests in 2013, the year I also started this blog. Here is the quilt I made for the Quilt Alliance TWENTY challenge and chose as the header for my blog:

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

I made this quilt for the Michael Miller challenge in 2013:

Packet of Posey Seeds

And I made this little quilt for the Pantone Challenge:

Radiating Orchid mini-quilt for the Radiant Orchid Challenge

I attended some wonderful classes with Laura Wasilowski in 2013, and made this little art quilt:

Leaf, made in class with Laura Wasilowski

I did some “crafty” things in 2013, including chambray shirts decorated with orphan blocks and matching T shirts for a special baby and his special Dad:

A decorated chambray work shirt

Here’s another orphan block on a shirt

Here are a set of placemats and two table runners from 2013:

Table runner made from a strip of leftovers

Also in 2013, I made an apron for a special friend and a caddy for carrying my iron to classes and retreats:

2013 was also a good year to make pillows for friends and to use up orphan blocks:

Well! That’s it for special projects from 2013. The actual quilts from 2013 are up next–more to come!

Connie Brown, A North Carolina Quilter

Posted on February 14, 2016 by zippyquilts

Connie Brown

Connie Brown and I met at the Modern Quilt Guild of Asheville. She has been juried into membership in the Southern Highland Craft Guild, a prestigious organization promoting fine Southern Appalachian crafts. I thought you would enjoy meeting her.

Give us the quick tour of your quilting career. How did you get started?

My husband, son, and I moved to Asheville in 1989. I knew no one in the area, so I signed up for a quilting class at Asheville-Biltmore Technical College. The instructor, Mary Field, was the best. Along with quilting basics, she taught me many sewing skills and shared her knowledge and love of antique quilts and quilt history. By the end of the class she had encouraged me to join the Asheville Quilt Guild and a weekly bee. The first few meetings I attended featured presentations by quilt historians. I really enjoyed quilt history, so I started studying antique quilts.

When/how did you decide to “go pro” by studying quilt history and appraisal, judging shows, and joining the Southern Highland Craft Guild (SHCG)?

Connie demonstrates quilting at a Southern Highland Craft Guild event

After a few years of making quilts and entering them in both local and national shows, I put a couple in a gallery exhibit. To my surprise, one sold and visitors were interested in my other quilts. I knew about the SHCG, with its shops, marketing, and educational opportunities. After selling that quilt in the art gallery, I decided to apply for membership and was juried in during 2000. I have my quilts in their shops and participate in several of their events, including Fiber Day and Heritage Day (where I share my beekeeping), as well as others.

When people started calling me about the value of antique quilts, or what value to place on a quilt they were entering in a show, I saw a need for a local certified quilt appraiser. I put my years of studying quilt history and my knowledge of local quilt sales to use and focused on becoming a certified quilt appraiser. In 2009, I was certified by the AQS (American Quilters Society) as an Appraiser of Quilted Textiles.

What is your favorite of the quilts you have made?

I love making circles and Drunkard’s Path units! My 3 favorite quilts so far are:

Color Cascade

“Color Cascade aka Prints Charming” includes more than 500 scraps. The pattern for this quilt is in the September 2012 issue of American Quilter Magazine. This is machine pieced and machine quilted.

“V-Spot Target Attack” is also made entirely by machine.

Finally, “Tiffilippa” was inspired by a Tiffany lampshade. I couldn’t throw away the trimmed off “waste”, so I used it as a border.

How much time do you spend quilting? How do you have time to quilt, participate in guilds, keep bees, substitute teach, and still eat and sleep?

Every day I do something quilt related, whether it’s making quilts, studying, visiting an exhibit, or writing appraisals. I always carry something to work on in my down time when I substitute teach.

How far do you travel with your quilt activities? And what do you have coming up?

I’ll be at the Folk Art Center (on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville) for National Quilting Day (March 19, 2016). I’ll be hosting a quilt sharing day with an exhibition of 4 or 5 antique quilts, and people are invited to bring older quilts they have questions about. I won’t be doing appraisals that day, but it’s a free event and a good opportunity for people who may have quilts they wonder about. It can help them decide whether the quilt needs a formal appraisal.

This year I will be offering appraisals at the AQS shows in Paducah and Chattanooga as well as in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina during the Cobblestone Quilt Show. My fees for written appraisals are $75 per quilt, but during these events the charge is $50 per quilt. Each appraisal takes a minimum of 2 hours, including meeting with the client, travel, research and preparation, and typing the report.

To see more of Connie’s quilts, visit her webpage at southernhighlandguild.org/conniebrown

You may email Connie at mail2thebrowns@juno.com

Meet J. Michelle Watts

Posted on January 31, 2016 by zippyquilts

I make frequent trips to the Southwest, and you KNOW they include visits to quilt shops along the way. For years I’ve been seeing Southwestern-themed patterns by J. Michelle Watts, who seems to have that niche all to herself. So this last time I thought I’d ask her for an interview. Here she is:

J. Michelle Watts

Tell us about your quilts and your other projects, too.

When I started quilting in 1982, I hand pieced and hand quilted mostly traditional quilt blocks.

I designed my first original southwestern wall hanging, Adobe Sunrise, in 1987. In 1989, I started a small mail order pattern company with my own collection of southwestern quilt patterns. I have also designed a line of patterns that use the 9 degree wedge ruler and a couple of jelly roll friendly scrap quilt patterns, written 3 books, and designed 3 collections of fabric for Moda.

One of Michelle’s designs for wedge ruler.

“Stenciling Quilt Blocks” is my favorite class to teach right now. The technique is simple, fast and fun and the finished projects can fool you into thinking they are pieced or appliqued.

Pueblo Rhapsody

The black designs in “Pueblo Rhapsody” have been stenciled onto 40 odd shaped turquoise blocks and then the blocks are sewn together. My newest pattern collection, “It’s Simple With Stencils”, is a collection of quilt patterns that use laser cut stencils and Paintstiks to stencil quilt blocks and quilts. The collection features a variety of small traditional quilt blocks and some with a southwestern style.

Inquiring minds always want to know: do you have a “day job”, or do you teach and develop patterns full time?

I print and package all my own patterns. This is my day job, night job and weekend job. I now travel about 120 days a year teaching and vending at quilt shows. I manage a website that features all my patterns. I host a small quilt retreat each year near Ruidoso, NM. This year I want to try to make some short tutorials on several techniques I teach. When people ask me “So what do you do for a living?”, I love being able to tell them ” I am a quilter.” There is a quilted wall hanging in my studio that says “Love what you do and do what you love.” That pretty much says it all.

Casa Blanca, Michelle’s newest applique pattern. Thank goodness it will be available as a stencil, also!

What’s next?

My newest applique pattern, Casa Blanca, which is inspired by an old ironwork door. This design will also be available as a stencil pattern. The dark wine pieces are machine appliqued to a cream background. I have many other patterns in the works as well.

If you want to see all Michelle’s patterns, visit her website. Here are a few of my favorites:

Little House Class at Studio Stitch

Posted on January 10, 2016 by zippyquilts

I’ll be teaching my fusible applique class, called Little House on the Wall (with no

Samples for the Little House workshop

apologies to Laura Ingles Wilder) at Studio Stitch in Greensboro (NC) on January 30.

I visited the shop recently to talk with the staff about materials for the class, and of course I HAD to look at EVERYTHING. Well, I needed to look so I could discuss what would be appropriate for the class, but it’s OK to just drool on the fabric a little, right?

They had landscape fabrics and plenty of batiks that will be great for the class.

There was even a bundle that seemed just made for creating my little houses!

I even found 28 weight thread for embellishment in a variety of yummy colors.

28 weight thread can be hard to find, but Studio Stitch has plenty!

Of course I wandered a little…they had gorgeous batiks made specifically for use with the Jacqueline De Jonge patterns. They even had one as a kit, with a more restful background fabric than this sample I took from Jacqueline’s site.

Yummy fabrics at Studio Stitch, where I sometimes teach

The ladies at the shop were all friendly and helpful, and I’m looking forward to teaching there. You can find out more about the shop and my class on the Studio Stitch website.

Artsy Table Runner

Posted on November 8, 2015 by zippyquilts

I’ve been looking at lots of beautiful pictures of art quilts. Also, the monthly challenge for the Modern Quilt Guild of Franklin (NC) was to make something including prairie points.

For years I’ve had Susan K. Cleveland’s Prairie Pointer, intending to make something with prairie points “any day now”. (Raise your hand if you DON’T know how THAT goes!)The stars finally aligned, and here is my first crack at a table runner combining all of the above.

As expected, Susan’s Prairie Pointer tool worked beautifully. I’m a big fan of her techniques, and teach some of them in my classes. The starting squares for the prairie points ranged from 1-1/2″ to 2-1/2″ in size, so they were all pretty small.

Prairie Points

I like this runner pretty well, but I just KNOW I could do better! So here goes with another idea I’ve meant to try for some time: working in a series. I’ll keep you posted 🙂

6 August Projects!

Posted on August 30, 2015 by zippyquilts

As always, I’m taking part in Aunt Marti’s UFO challenge. The August UFO was actually finished back in February as a donation quilt:

February donation quilt. This started out entirely different, but I failed to take Before and After pictures.

That gave me all of August to work on quilting another UFO, my Swim quilt. It’s completely quilted, but I’m still thinking about whether to add more fish, some beads, or more quilting before I bind it.

“Swim” is about 50′ x 50″. I quilted wavy horizontal lines all over it.

I’m caught up on making quilt tops for donation. My goal is a quilt a month, and I made 3 tops in August. They still need to be quilted, but I’ll have a one-woman quilting party and get it done. They are 40″ x 40″, so not difficult to do on a home machine.

Pseudo Random arrangement starting with Kaffe fabric

This is a leaders-and-enders project

Quilt top made from khaki pants and 2 shirts

Finally, I made several new blocks for My Modern Sampler. You can read about the one below here, and I’ll be blogging about the others in the coming weeks.

The Modern Scrap Block will finish 12 inches square

And a good thing August was so productive, because every weekend in September is scheduled! Yikes!

What To Do x 2?

Posted on June 28, 2015 by zippyquilts

Here are two projects I need to “fix”, and I’m open to suggestions.

“Swim” is about 50′ x 50″

This first one, shown above, is an improvisation I did about 2 years ago. I haven’t finished it because the lines between the layers are more distinct than I intended. I joined the layers with curved seams cut freehand, and I changed the fabrics I used in each layer gradually, but the layers still aren’t blended as well as I’d like.

My “UFO finish” for June is to do SOMETHING with this top. (Mother used to say, “Do something, even if it’s wrong!” when we got stuck on a task.)

My current thought is to cut some freehand diamonds and applique them intermittently along the seams I want to blend. Any other ideas?

And here’s the second one that needs “fixing”:

This is to be the June donation quilt, 40″ x 40″

This is my second attempt to follow a Sherri Lynn Wood “score”. I followed her instructions more closely than last time, and I like it a lot less!

I chose a focus fabric from my novelties because this is a quilt for a child. I followed Sherri Lynn’s directions to make some “rules” and cut up 3 fabrics for the quilt, etc, etc. When I finished, I thought it needed something to “pull it together”, so I added a border of the focus fabric.

BUT, my friend who coordinates our donation quilts looked worried when she saw it. (PLEASE don’t tell me you think that’s a donation quilt?)

So help me out here! What should I do with this?

1. Leave it as it is and quilt it, already!

2. Cut it into blocks to be joined by solid color sashing to calm things down.

Option 2

3. Dye it black and use it to back something else (kidding!)

4. Another idea?

Option X

Hope you have a good week 🙂

Anniversary!

Posted on June 7, 2015 by zippyquilts

Zippy Quilts is now two years old! I’m still having fun, so I’m signing up for another two years.
Here are a few pictures of projects from the past two years and links to popular posts:

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

This is “Rising Star”, a quilt I made for the Quilt Alliance “Twenty” contest back in 2013. It’s still one of my favorite quilts, which is why it’s still featured on the blog’s header.

Here is a quilt I made for Modern Quilts Unlimited, where they did especially beautiful photos of it.

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

Readers seem especially to have enjoyed posts with pictures from various quilt shows, and I know I appreciate those posts when others do them for shows I can’t attend. Here are links to a few of those:

Here’s a picture from the post on QuiltCon Fashionistas, which was popular:

Julia of the Houston MQG

And here’s one from the post on AQS Charlotte, where I found the talented Jean Larson and her tessellation quilts:

This quilt by Jean Larson won the Original Design award at AQS-Charlotte

Finally, here’s one from the post on the Vermont Quilt Festival, one of my all-time favorite shows:

Fill the Void by Cinzia Allocca–my FAVORITE!

In the coming year, I’m planning to update the blog, of course. I’ll first revise my “About” page, then get to work on adding a gallery. Please stay tuned! I appreciate your comments.

9 Quilts from AQS Paducah

Posted on May 10, 2015 by zippyquilts

Many quilters consider the AQS (American Quilters Society) annual show in Paducah, Kentucky the top of the heap among quilt shows. So, I just had to go see for myself this year.

For Tanya, by Emily and Miriam Coffey, won first place in the Modern Wall Quilt category

Here are some of my favorite quilts from the show. If some of them look a little wonky, it’s because they hang the quilts in 3-sided booths and then don’t let you into the booth! The result is that, unless the quilt you want to photograph is directly at the back of the booth, you can’t get a straight shot of it. Enjoy the pictures anyway!

Flowers and Gears, by Robbi Joy Eklow, won a ribbon in the Longarm Quilted Small Wall Quilt category

I had a great time in Paducah, because I had a friend with me and we found COOKIES! Luckily my friend knew where to find good food and a good place to stay 🙂

It Takes the Case, by Karlyn Bue Lohrenz, won a ribbon in the category of Large Wall Quilts–Pictorial

I have pictures of a few of my favorite quilts here, but on the whole this show had fewer quilts that I really loved than any show I’ve attended in the past year. Probably because of the emphasis on “show quilts”.

In the Marsh #2, by Carol Bryer Fallert-Gentry

However, there were some outstanding quilts like the ones above and below. I suppose they are “show quilts” too, but they are not so heavily quilted that they appear 3-dimensional, and they don’t have rhinestones!

Canola Fields, by Leah Gravells, was made of 199 strips 3/4 inch wide–and she got them all straight!

One of the reasons I go to shows is to be inspired, and these quilts certainly were inspiring!

Boardwalks of Asilomar, byt Jody H. Rusconi, was one of the few improvisational quilts in the show

Playing It, by Pam Beal, was another nice improvisational quilt

Windows #1-Antigua, by Brenda S. Wall

Rainbow Play by Brenda S. Roach

Rhythmic, by Karen Neary

Zippy Quilts

Modern Quilts With A Twist

Category Archives: Art Quilt

Only as Good as Your Last Quilt?

Projects 2013–Part I

Connie Brown, A North Carolina Quilter

Meet J. Michelle Watts

Little House Class at Studio Stitch

Artsy Table Runner

6 August Projects!

What To Do x 2?

Anniversary!

9 Quilts from AQS Paducah

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