Category Archives: Guild Challenge

On to 2024!

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Having reviewed my faves from 2023, I’m looking at plans for 2024.

First: My MQG is having one of those UFO challenges where you pick one each month, so I’ve made a list and started that. The current project is cutting up some of the orphan blocks, shown here…

…and making them into different blocks. Some are on the design wall here:

Who knows where that will go!

Second, having enjoyed the Bloem pattern by Libs Elliott, I’m making her pattern La Fin Du Monde.

Next up will be some map quilts. I took Timna Tarr’s map class via Creative Spark in 2022 and have been enjoying my experiments since.

It’s time to actually finish some of those map quilts…

And speaking of map quilts, I’ve been facing these and hanging them as usual, but the Chief Consultant (AKA husband) thinks they need to be framed. I’m considering adding borders to frame them, or mounting them over stretched canvas (still without a frame). Or maybe a poster frame? Or maybe just stay with the facing.  Anybody have an opinion?

One more thing I’d like your help with: I’m on the program committee for one of my guilds. Has your guild had any outstanding programs you can recommend? We are in Greensboro, NC, and we need either someone nearby or someone who presents via Zoom in order to stay within our budget. I’d appreciate any ideas.

 

Scraps Happen, Part II

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Many of my scrap quilts are inspired by other quilters.  I still find it useful to start with a collection of fabrics I think “go together”.  In that regard, I do NOT worry about color per se, though I recognize that color is a big “bugaboo” for many quilters.  I do find it useful to decide at the outset whether the quilt is to be bright or muted colors, but beyond that I don’t worry much.  And of course I break that rule sometimes, too.

One of my first inspired-by-others adventures was a series of quilts I made after reading Gwen Marston’s books.  I just love her aesthetic, and wish I had been able to take a class with her while she was alive.  Here is a quilt I made for the Quilt Alliance annual contest a few years ago, based on Gwen’s published quilts:

improvisational quilt

“Gwen Visits the Farm” is a quilt I made for the Quilt Alliance contest; the black fabric has words representing animal sounds such as “quack”

I also used a collection of Cherrywood scraps to make this quilt based on Gwen’s “liberated log cabin” idea:

improvisational quilt

Cherrywood Toss, 59″ x 61″, 2016.  My favorite part of this was making the background out of a mixture of dark colors.

Also, taking a cue from my friend who makes a small art quilt each week, I made these 3 quilts based on lessons in one of Gwen’s books:

I continue to learn from the quilters I consider “the best” by making quilts inspired by their ideas.  A recent one was inspired by Maria Shell’s tutorial on improvised flying geese:

The colors of the quilt blended with the colors of my chimney, where I stuck it up to be photographed

Of course, not all such experiments are particularly successful.  I love Freddy Moran’s aesthetic, but this table runner based on her ideas didn’t turn out very well, in my opinion.  I expect to make more things using her ideas, and they’ll improve 🙂

I designed and made this runner for a guild challenge

Since, at this point in my quilting career, most of my fabric collection is scraps, there will be many more scrap quilts to come!  Next week I’ll discuss how I use scraps in quilts made from patterns.

 

 

Some Tiny Blocks

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My modern guild is making a charity quilt for QuiltCon 2019, and the requirements include a predetermined palate and blocks with pieces no larger than 1″ in at least one dimension.  The theme is “small piecing”.  Here is the palate:

At the last meeting, our guild had chunks of fabric about 8″ x 10″ cut for us to take home and make little blocks.  The blocks are going to be used to construct something else, so the only requirement is that they finish either 2″ or 3″ square.  I took these 3 colors:

And here are some little blocks I made.

The quilt has to be twin size, so it’s going to take a LOT of these babies!  It will be fun to see what other guilds do when QuiltCon comes around in February.

Thanks to everyone who offered an opinion about my choice of accent color for the shirting quilt.  There are two different blocks in the quilt that use the tiny accent squares, and I’ve decided to use orange for this one and rust for the other.  Here are a couple of the blocks with orange.  Those tiny orange squares finish 3/4″.  Eek!

I’ll keep you posted.

 

Blue Ridge

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My modern guild is having a challenge to produce quilts for display when the traditional guild has its next show in the fall.  The guidelines are: no more than 36″ on any side, and using some Riley Blake solids whose colors were extracted from a landscape photo chosen by the guild.  The quilts aren’t due for several months yet, but I had a brainstorm and produced mine already.  Here we go:

art quilt

The quilt is faced rather than bound

And here is a detail.  In case you haven’t caught on, this is the one that was stained by basting spray.  However, that came out just fine with dry cleaning.art quilt

Name: Blue Ridge

March 2018

Finished size: 30″ x 17″

Fabrics: Riley Blake solids

Quilted by: me

Another Fun Guild Program

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This is part of my occasional series on guild programs, with the hope that it will help others who need to come up with program ideas.

Our modern guild has no money to hire speakers, so we are taking turns sharing our talents. One of our members recently volunteered to teach us block printing on fabric, and she furnished all the materials herself!

block printing quilt fabric

Suzanne brought a beautiful print she had made as an example

A few of us had done block printing in the past, but these blocks were much easier to carve. Apparently the block medium is now made of soft rubber rather than linoleum–a big improvement for the hands and wrists.

block printing

Some people carved abstract designs, using the whole block

Everyone got a square of rubber to carve. Some people carved a design on the square using the entire thing. Some carved an object and then cut out around the object so that it could be glued to a board backing for easier handling.

It was fun to see what everyone did.

 

Then we were given ink and encouraged to mix the colors, either to produce a variegated print or to produce a secondary color.

The prints were amazing and fun.

I didn’t get a picture of the block used for these fish, but they were very successful.

block printing fabricOur challenge for next month is to use the printed fabric in a project.  Can’t wait to see what everyone does!

Guild Program, Guild Challenge

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Since somebody has to be in charge of guild programs, and this year I’m “it” for my modern guild, I’ve been publishing some ideas for guild programs and challenges. Hopefully, if you are in charge of programs and challenges for your guild, you can use some of these.

quilt, tessellation

The familiar “cat” tessellation

Nobody volunteered to do the program this month, so I read up on tessellations, starting with this post my friend Jean did for my blog a couple of years ago.  I found a couple of great books on tessellations, one by Jinny Byer (yes, that Jinny Byer!).  They are:

Designing Tessellations: The Secrets of Interlocking Patterns, by Jinny Byer

Introduction to Tessellations, by Dale Seymour and Jill Britton

And if you decide to develop a program on tessellations for your guild, feel free to e-mail me.  You can have my “class outline” and list of exercises if you want.

wonky house block

Wonky house drawn with Electric Quilt 7

The challenge for next month is to make a 12-1/2 inch (so it will finish 12 inches) wonky house block. I made up a couple of blocks to illustrate the idea and drew a couple of additional ones for people to take home for inspiration.

Another wonky house drawing for inspiration

I cut the pieces for this house freehand, with scissors, to make it really wonky

This one was made with fused fabric, using techniques I learned several years ago from Laura Wasilowski

We’ll vote on whether to have a “dirty Santa” swap or a drawing where one person gets all the blocks to make a quilt.  Seems like most of our members are really into the swap thing, so I’m betting that’s what happens!

 

Fabric Postcards Again

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I’ve been blogging about the monthly challenges and programs at my modern guild, hoping it will be helpful to some of you who need challenge or program ideas. Here’s a recent one: we made fabric postcards.

I gave out pieces of Peltex 71F cut 4″ x 6″ to use as the stabilizer and backing for the cards.  I gave no further guidance, though I did bring an example to pass around.

fabric postcard

Here is the example

I probably should have provided a handout with some basic instructions, since we have members with quite variable skills, as do most guilds.  Anyway, here are some of the postcards people made.  As you can see, they varied in technique quite a bit, and all were fun.

fabric postcard

Kim’s clever Bee Kind postcard–she paper pieced the bee!

Somebody had some cute quilt lady fabric and put a nice frame around it

Coffee is always popular, and the fusible broderie perse worked well

Somebody else stitched elaborate designs like Zentangles on hers

Bev made a bird with a nest of torn strips and beads sewn on for eggs

Mine was titled “A Different UFO”. I’ve had that UFO button a long time!

Guild Challenges, Part I

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When I volunteered to arrange programs for one of my modern guilds this year, I didn’t realize the job included coming up with a challenge each month.  Luckily, there were lots of ideas for guild challenges in internet-world, so the challenges weren’t too much of a challenge.  (Sorry, that just slipped in!)

I thought it might be helpful to other modern guilds if I posted our proposed challenges, since I’m sure other folks are in need of ideas, too.  So here’s the first one: slabs.  If you don’t know what a slab quilt block is, Canadian quilter Cheryl Arkison published the idea in her book Sunday Morning Quilts.  You can see a picture and instructions here.

modern quilt challenge

Slabs can be addictive!  And a quilt of many colors is fun.

In January, each member received brief instructions on how to make a “slab” of a single color of the rainbow.  Sort of.  While trying to figure out how to set up the rainbow challenge, I found this quote from Isaac Asimov (one of my heroes):

It is customary to list indigo as a color lying between blue and violet, but it has never seemed to me that indigo is worth the dignity of being considered a separate color. To my eyes it seems merely deep blue.

So our colors for the challenge are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.  Seems like the main value of indigo and violet is that they let us spell out ROY G BIV.  Huh.

Our slabs are 15-1/2 inches square, to be 15 inch finished blocks.  Each person makes one in her assigned color, then can make as many others as she wants in as many of the six basic colors as she wants.  At the next meeting, we’ll put all our slabs in a pile and each person’s name will go in a basket once for each block she turns in.  Then we’ll draw a name and somebody gets all the blocks.  Of course she’s expected to make something wonderful with those blocks before the next meeting!

I e-mailed examples of slab quilts to guild members as part of the challenge and also took some of my quilts to show.

slab quilt

Jerri Szlizewski combined her purple slabs with neutral slabs, then appliqued purple dots on the neutral backgrounds

Improvised slab quilt

I cut up the yellow-orange slabs I got in a swap and inserted blue

Does your modern guild have some great challenge ideas?  Let me know!  I’ll be posting about our other challenges as we go along so you can use them, too.