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

10 Quilty Secrets

Posted on August 31, 2014 by zippyquilts

Several of the blogs I read have recently revealed “10 Quilty Secrets” and I thought it sounded like fun, so I’m playing along. If you would like to see some other bloggers’ secrets, here are the links: The original post seems to have been at 13Spools.com, and the idea has been picked up by several blogs I follow, including Catbird quilts, wombat quilts, and Christa quilts.

And so, here are my 10 Quilty Secrets:

1. Although I’m participating in Marti’s UFO (unfinished object) finish-a-month this year, I had FAR MORE than 12 UFOs at the beginning of the year. Oops, still do! Here’s the August finish, a quilt for Ronald McDonald House made from orphan blocks:

2. My nearest LQS (Local Quilt Shop) is an hour away, which I take as an excuse to have a good stash at all times 😉

3. If I start a quilt and don’t like it for some reason, I abandon the plan and turn it into something else–another quilt design, a table runner, whatever.

4. And sometimes those I-don’t-like-this projects just become long term UFOs 😦

5. In my world, a good quilt is a fast quilt. I’m not patient enough for the zillions of little hand-pieced hexies, for example.

6. For that matter, I DON’T EVEN LIKE hexies! Yikes!

7. I value good design in quilts and in other useful objects.

8. I LOVE to learn new techniques and try new things, so I take lots of classes Even if they seem like stuff I could do easily without a class I always learn something.

9. We’ve moved a lot, and one of the best ways I’ve found to make new friends is to join a local quilt group.

10. I think every quilt needs a little purple!

So, what are some of YOUR quilty secrets?

3 Perfect Ideas

Posted on August 24, 2014 by zippyquilts

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

1. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

I made this quilt a long time ago to practice circles, and the quotation that inspired it came to mind recently when I was debating which quilts are “good enough” to be submitted to juried shows. It probably is obvious that the design above is more interesting than the “perfect” one shown below:

Perfect Isn’t So Good

2. “Perfect” is well enough done that you are satisfied when you look at it, but not so over-worked that you’re sick of quilting by the time you finish it.

To make a perfect quilt, It helps to start with:

The right pattern for your skill level
Fabric you love
Techniques you enjoy (e.g., paper piecing, applique, whatever)
The right tools, well maintained

3. You may be more capable of “perfect” than you think. It helps to have friends who keep you honest! I recently had trouble making my seams line up on a medallion-style block and my friend Jerri said, “You’re too good a quilter for that! You just don’t want to bother!” Oops, she was right.

And here’s a book that helped me with “perfecting” my blocks:

I found this book with lots of tips on how to improve piecing accuracy and got a lot better with just a little practice!

I recommend the book if you want to improve some of your skills, too.

Swap Block–88 little squares!!!

And look at this lovely swap block with the corners all matched up! It isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough 🙂

6 Orphan Blocks, 1 Donation Quilt

Posted on August 17, 2014 by zippyquilts

I’ve probably mentioned that one of the ways I’m motivating myself to get rid of the excess in the studio is by joining Marti’s UFO finish of the month over at 52 Quilts. As part of my ongoing effort to “clean it up, move it out” I’m making a series of donation quilts out of my orphan blocks.

Orphan blocks from a recent project

I had these 6 blocks that I liked, so I looked for fabric to go with them. The bright turquoise went well, but I had enough to join them only, not to frame them. Searching for something to make it wider, I found a piece of black/white chevron fabric and decided it needed to be used, and FAST.

My daughter recently point out, “When you find chevrons on your mouthwash bottle, they’re on the way out!” 😀

Finally, I had some colorful Michael Miller dots that seemed to fit in:

And WOW! A very “lively” improvised quilt.

I’m going to practice free motion quilting it on my new Bernina, and it will be the August UFO finish of the month. Then off to Ronald McDonald House it goes.

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

Posted on August 3, 2014 by zippyquilts

I mentioned Design-seeds.com in my last post as a good color resource, but there are SO MANY others! Today I’m going to tell you about just one, and I hope you’ll check it out and enjoy it. Others to come in the future!

—Today’s Feature: Palette Builder—

Here’s a palette from a picture I took

It’s free! It’s easy to use! Anne Sullivan and friends have a fun app accessible from their blog at Play-Crafts.com. Just go to the blog, choose PaletteBuilder from the menu along the top, and you’re IN. You can upload a picture of your choice and the app gives you a palette that looks a lot like the ones on Design Seeds with two fun differences: PaletteBuilder uses YOUR photo, and it gives you colors in Kona Cotton that closely match your palette!

Palette made from my quilt

But let’s say you love the palette in my “Study for New Mexico” quilt and want to use it for a quilt of your own. Just find the quilt on my blog, load the picture into PaletteBuilder, and there you go. The Kona cottons are chosen for you!

PaletteBuilder may “see” individual colors better than your mind does

This program may be especially helpful with a picture like the one above. First, I wouldn’t have thought to put those shades of lavender in there, but I’m pretty sure they would show up well as shadows if I were converting this picture to a landscape quilt. Second, if you’re working on a desktop computer instead of an iPad you can move some of those little circles to sample parts of the picture that might have been left out (like the purple crocus in the top picture.)

So if you have a photo with lovely colors that you would like to see in a quilt, you can start here for your palette. Now, go have some fun!

Here are the previous posts in this series (click on the title to go to the post):

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

It’s Out!!!

Posted on July 27, 2014 by zippyquilts

I’ve been WAITING to tell about my Zippy Star quilt, which appears in the Summer 2014 issue of Modern Quilts Unlimited, and here it is!

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

Didn’t they do a great job of the “glamor shot”? I love the setting

And the magazine has clear instructions with lots of helpful pictures. OK, I wrote the instructions and their staff improved on my pictures, so both are pretty good! There’s a pillow cover to go with the quilt, just for fun.

This is one of several pages of instructions

The Michael Miller company worked with me to choose fabric for the quilt and I’m very pleased with how it came out. The central square fabric is called “Tara’s Fireworks” and is a print made from a quilt one of MM’s employees created with their Cotton Couture solids. So of course the star points made from Cotton Couture solids match perfectly!

Some of the beautiful Michael Miller fabrics

The quilt is fairly small (48 x 58) so I quilted it on my home machine. This was such fun and I’m so pleased with how it is featured in the magazine!

Here’s the magazine cover. It should be at Barnes & Noble and Joann’s soon!

10 Favorites from Vermont Quilt Festival

Posted on July 20, 2014 by zippyquilts

I really enjoyed the Vermont Quilt Festival in Burlington the end of June. I expected a traditional quilt show, and there were some traditional quilts, but there were many modern quilts as well. Here are 10 of my favorites for various reasons. That fantastic quilting on the first one was done by Carrie Zizza of Zizza Machine Quilting (http://www.itsazizza.com/).

Look at the quilting on Love Those Liberties by Laura Clements!

Rainbow Bricks by Melissa Rolfe–this was her second quilt ever!

Full Circle by Rebecca Rohrkaste

Patch of Swiss Chard by Ann Feitelson

Detail of Patch of Swiss Chard

This quilt by Ruth Eissfeldt was all shiny metallic fabrics

These fish by Velda Newman were SO realistic!

Tied Together by Timna Tarr–a modernized bowtie quilt

Circles of Hope by Sylvia Einstein

Kaleidoscopic XX by Paula Nadelstern

Fill the Void by Cinzia Allocca–my FAVORITE!

Look at her beautiful quilting! I love this quilt!

Excitement x 3!!!

Posted on July 13, 2014 by zippyquilts

Woo! It’s been an exciting week!
My entry in the Quilt Alliance “Inspired By” Challenge won 3rd place! Here’s a picture of it, and below that is a link that will take you to a short video showing all the winners! I am SO excited!

Whirlwind, my 2015 Quilt Alliance challenge quilt

And HERE is a link that will show you all the winners in a very short youtube video.

The quilt will now tour with the other entries and will be auctioned on Ebay next fall to benefit the Quilt Alliance.

And here’s a picture of the second excitement: [photo] I finally finished my quilt for the Michael Miller challenge. It’s a packet of flower seeds with the new scanning code I now see on items at the nursery, composed of multiple colored triangles. I don’t think you can scan mine; I designed it based on the code but didn’t copy exactly.

Packet of Posy Seeds

Finally, I had a “very significant birthday” and my husband gave me a new Bernina

Bernina 550 QE

for the occasion! I’ll be reviewing it after I’ve used it for a while. For now I’m just enjoying trying out all the features!
So, as they used to say on the radio, listen in next week…I’ll have pictures from the Vermont Quilt Festival, which was really good.

Quilt Design 4: Choosing your color scheme

Posted on July 6, 2014 by zippyquilts

Of all the things people think they need help with, color is mentioned most often. Indeed, color can be complicated if you want to make it that way, but my preference is to make it simple. So here goes…

Example 1: Purple Quilt

A good starting place is your favorite color. You don’t have to think too much about what that is. So start with your favorite color and then add colors that you like to see with it. Never mind that stuff about analogous color schemes being restful and complementary color schemes being lively. Yes, they are true, but if you do it that way you’re likely over-thinking it. If YOU like the color scheme, then go for it! I love purple, so that’s what I chose for this first example. I like gold with it, and the thought process was “I like gold with it so I’ll use it” rather than, “Gold is complementary to purple so I’ll use it.” However, if knowing it’s complementary helps you, by all means use that framework. I chose a grey background fabric because grey is “good this year”, as my Mother would have put it.

But let’s assume you want a color scheme kind of worked out in advance. A common piece of advice is to pick a print as your feature fabric and then choose your coordinates from the colors in the feature print. That works fine, but it assumes you want a multi-color print as the focal point of your quilt.

One of thousands of color schemes all ready to use at Design-Seeds.com

There are lots of other ways that work at least as well. Color schemes are everywhere you look, and they’ve already been worked out by many design experts, from Mother Nature to New York City advertising specialists. Flip through a favorite magazine and choose an ad with colors that appeal to you. Take a snapshot of something pretty and use the colors you see there. Go to design-seeds.com to view thousands of color combinations. You can subscribe to a free daily e-mail featuring some of them. Start a Pinterest board where you save color combinations that appeal to you. Above all, have confidence in your own judgment: If YOU like it, that’s good enough!

Color scheme is from a visit to southern New Mexico

Now, go practice by finding some color schemes you like and designing quilts with them. As always, designing on paper counts! And if this wasn’t enough information about color to suit you, don’t worry–I’ll be saying lots more later!

Zippy Quilts

Modern Quilts With A Twist

Category Archives: Quilting

12 Bright Quilts from AQS Chattanooga

Your Inner Designer 6: Copy Somebody Good!

10 Quilty Secrets

3 Perfect Ideas

6 Orphan Blocks, 1 Donation Quilt

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

It’s Out!!!

10 Favorites from Vermont Quilt Festival

Excitement x 3!!!

Quilt Design 4: Choosing your color scheme

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