Projects from 2014

Posted on June 19, 2016 by zippyquilts

As part of my effort to develop galleries for this site, here is a review of my projects from the first half of 2014.

The design and tutorial for this zippered pouch came from Noodlehead.

I made a series of these little zippered pouches, and they have been useful.

These next two bags were made from a book entitled Ruby Star Wrapping. You can read my review of the book here, if you want.

I continued my interest in improvisational piecing in 2014, making this confetti block…

Confetti Block, 2014

…and this entry for the Quilt Alliance annual contest:

Whirlwind, my 2014 Quilt Alliance challenge quilt

I made this quilt for the Pantone Challenge. It looks better in person than in this picture, and now is used to decorate one of the rooms at our local free clinic:

Radiating Orchid, my mini-quilt for the Radiant Orchid Challenge

As always, I made a number of donation quilts for Ronald McDonald House. I used them to try out a variety of techniques and other experiments:

Nine Patch Quilt

Donation quilt top is the finish for June!

One of my quilts for Ronald McDonald House

I made this baby quilt because I loved the fabrics:

Baby Dots–Front

Baby Dots–back. I may like it even more than the front!

And I participated in several swaps, including one involving these blocks. Don’t even think about the 88 little pieces in the block on the left!!!

Swap Block–88 little squares!!!

Swap Block

I’ve reached my (self-imposed) length limit for a post, so the rest of the 2014 review will be coming up next week! Please come back 😉

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Thread Review

Posted on June 12, 2016 by zippyquilts

Note: I received no compensation for this review, either in products or payment.

I have used Superior So Fine thread for piecing and a lot of my quilting for a long time now. It comes in a wide range of colors and runs smoothly, without leaving excess lint in my machine. I use it for hand sewing as well, on the rare occasions when I do that.

I buy a lot of thread, so I subscribe to the Superior Threads newsletter in order to get bargains when they come along. They recently ran a special to encourage folks to try out new threads: You could get spools of several threads for half price if you let them choose the colors.

I’m all about trying new things, so I bought several. I sewed a little sample of each and stapled it in my Superior Threads catalog so I can refer to it when I order in future.

The first thread I tried was Fantastico, a 40-weight trilobal polyester.

Fantastico thread sample–I didn’t balance the tension, as you can see. I just wanted to see the thread.

I’ve been interested in trilobal thread since my friend Melanie over at Catbird Quilts showed a nice piece she’d quilted with trilobal thread–it was shiny! (The thread she used was Glide, and she uses a long-arm rather than a home machine for quilting.)

Next up was another 40-weight trilobal polyester, this one variegated:

Sample swatch done with Superior Rainbows thread

I still didn’t balance the tension, but you can see the sheen more with the variegated thread. I like this one, too!

Superior Razzle Dazzle is a thread developed by Ricky Tims and intended for couching or bobbin work. I bought this years ago for a machine quilting class I took and I never got to use it. So, since I was trying out threads anyway, I wound it on the bobbin, put Superior Bottom Line (a thin polyester) thread in the needle, and gave it a try:

Superior Razzle Dazzle sample

I think bigger stitches would be better, but I like this! Razzle Dazzle indeed! I’ve never used bobbin work for quilting, but I think I can feel it coming soon.

Superior Magnifico is another decorative trilobal polyester thread, again 40 weight. I don’t know how many colors it comes in, but there are EIGHT pages of color charts in my catalog!

Sample using Superior Magnifico

Finally, my FAVORITE, a metallic thread. I’ve tried several metallic thread and usually had trouble with them, even in my Bernina.

Superior Metallic thread

Ad you can see, this one gave me no trouble. And I did take time to balance the tension 🙂

All these threads ran smoothly with no problems. The recommended needle (#90) was printed on the end of each spool, which was very handy. I’m happy to have tried these and expect I’ll use them soon in my home-machine quilting.

The Rest of the Story

Posted on June 5, 2016 by zippyquilts

Here are the other two quilts I made while doing the Gwen Marston class on iQuilt.

This first one is my version of one of her quilts, and again I made it 12″ x 12″. I faced it, which I don’t usually do, so that was a learning experience. I like the way it turned out.

This second one was made of scraps from the other quilts in the series, which makes me happy.

This started as a liberated Roman Stripe design, with a center of 4 larger blocks and a “border” of smaller blocks. The size of the blocks worked out fine, but the pieces got more and more “liberated” so that I’m not sure it looks much like a Roman Stripe any more. Which is fine, actually.

I quilted it using a pattern of wandering lines, all in one direction, and I like the result. After considering several threads, I used a thin medium grey polyester. I think it blended well so that the quilting didn’t obscure the design. Here’s my “trial” of several threads.

How do you choose your quilting thread for a project?

More Inspiration

Posted on May 29, 2016 by zippyquilts

I bought two of Gwen Marston’s books some time ago…

and have been channeling her in my designs for over a year (you can click on the pictures below to see their captions):

“Gwen Visits the Farm” is the quilt I made for the Quilt Alliance contest this year

I made a bunch of Gwen Marston-style blocks at a recent retreat

Recently I saw that the (relatively) new iQuilt platform had two video classes taught by Gwen Marston. The class I chose was quite short–a little over 2 hours–and I decided to watch the class over a weekend and make several little quilts using her techniques.

I’d already made a refrigerator quilt in Gwen’s style for an upcoming guild challenge,

Refrigerator quilt inspired by Gwen Marston. Bev Manus came up with the idea for refrigerator quilts.

so I decided to make the new quilts 12″ x 12″ as well. This is a great size for trying new things because there isn’t too much commitment of time or materials.

The first quilt was composed of half square triangle blocks, so I was able to try out the (fairly expensive) Loc Bloc ruler I recently bought to make trimming these blocks to size easier. The ruler worked great with just a little practice, and I got to practice my machine quilting on the finished quilt.

Quilt Front

Gwen’s instruction was to pair the triangles up into squares just as you picked them up, with the caveat that the pairs should have contrast between the fabrics. Then the squares were to be sewn together into rows just as they were picked up. She did allow that it would be OK to lay the rows out and look at them before sewing them together, but advised against spending a lot of time fussing over the exact layout.

Quilt Back

I was pleased with this result. The class doesn’t really cover anything that isn’t in her books, but I was happier watching a little and sewing a little than I am to just sit down and read a book. I made a couple of other quilts, too, and I’ll show them next week.

Fixing an Oops

Posted on May 22, 2016 by zippyquilts

I’m quilting a lap size quilt on my home machine. I’m not fond of the process, but custom quilting isn’t in my budget, so here I go. About half way through the process, I discovered a loose seam where, despite paper piecing, one seam allowance had been TOO small and the seam had opened up. There wasn’t enough fabric to allow me to just overlap and top stitch the seam. The edges barely met and, while one was a folded edge, the other was a raw edge.

The opening was about an inch long

Luckily, I have a tool from garment sewing I used to fix it.

using stitch witchery to fix a quilting mistake

Stitch Witchery is a heat-activated glue in a strip

I used the Stitch Witchery to bond both sides of the seam to the batting. This also stabilized the edges so they won’t fray. Then I zig-zagged across the place. Thank goodness it was a black-to-black seam so there’s no problem of one side of the zigzag showing on a colored block.

Fixed with minimal fuss

I’m not glad it happened, but I’m satisfied with the fix. I will NOT be pointing it out to anyone looking at the finished quilt 🙂

Now I’m back to the quilting. The piece is about half done. I’ll show it to you when I finish.

Refrigerator Quilt

Posted on May 15, 2016 by zippyquilts

A very artistic quilter in one of my guilds is making a series of “refrigerator quilts” as a challenge to herself. They are 12” x 12” and intended to be displayed on her refrigerator for one week, until she finishes the next one!
The guild took her idea as the challenge for May, so I’ve been making a little refrigerator quilt myself. I took my inspiration from Gwen Marston (again) and made a bunch of little freeform stars.

Refrigerator quilt inspired by Gwen Marston. Bev Manus came up with the idea for refrigerator quilts.

The best part is that, because it is small, it was made almost entirely from scraps. I had enough scraps to make all the stars different yellows and all the backgrounds different blues.
The back is a piece of fabric I dyed in a class many years ago.

Quilt back. This was dyed with Setacolor dyes

And I used it to practice my circular quilting.
Done!

Outdoor Quilt Show!

Posted on May 8, 2016 by zippyquilts

Two of my guilds participated in the “Airing of the Quilts” yesterday. This is an event to attract tourists to our area, and it certainly does!

There were a number of guilds there, as well as several shops with tents. I just walked around and took pictures.Unfortunately, the makers were not identified since this isn’t a “real” quilt show, so I have all these lovely pictures of unidentified quilts. However, since they were on public display, I think it is fair to publish them. A few are mine 🙂

This is the Smoky Mountain Quilters raffle quilt this year

I hope you enjoyed these, even though you didn’t get to walk around in the beautiful spring sun to see them!

Quilt Alliance Contest

Posted on May 1, 2016 by zippyquilts

Here’s my entry for the 2016 Quilt Alliance contest, “Playing Favorites “. The design is inspired by Gwen Marston’s work, and the piece is titled “Gwen Visits the Farm”. The black fabric has animal sounds printed on it: “peep” etc.

“Gwen Visits the Farm”

The “Playing Favorites” theme of the 2016 Quilt Alliance contest is intended to capture a picture of quilting in 2016 by asking contestants to make quilts using their favorite techniques. I love improvisational quilting, and Gwen Marston was doing it long before anyone thought of the “modern” quilt movement!

In addition to making the quilt in Gwen Marston’s improvisational style, I quilted it using decorative stitches. I’ve used several of the decorative stitches on my machine for quilting for a long time now. However, I recently took a Craftsy class in which Jackie Gehring suggested using even more of the decorative stitches. I think the stitching reflects the state of the art of quilting in 2016, as well.

I’ve been thinking for YEARS of doing a series of quilts in the styles of my favorite quilt designers, so this is the first in that series. Please stay tuned!

Layer Cake Quilt

Posted on April 24, 2016 by zippyquilts

I bought a terrific layer cake was bought a couple of years ago and it has been “waiting”, along with its solid coordinates, for inspiration to strike.

Future projects are stored in boxes…oops, sometimes for years! (Found a nice set of these at Costco.)

Then the other day I decided I wanted to insert strips of the coordinating colors into the squares. As you probably know, a layer cake is a stack of 10″ x 10″ squares. That means fat quarters (18″ x 22″) of solids will work well for insert strips.

I started by sorting the layer cake squares into stacks with the solids I wanted to use with them.

Layer Cake and Coordinates

Then I cut strips of various widths from the solids.The strips varied from 1″ x 18″ to 2″ x 18″, in 1/4″ increments. I cut a variety of widths from each solid color.

Strips ranging from 1″ to 2″ wide in 1/4″ increments

I had NO idea what I was going to do with these blocks once I got them modified; I just liked cutting them up and inserting strips–it takes very little to entertain some of us 😉 Then I remembered John Cage’s “prepared piano”. So I called these “prepared fabrics”.

I did the inserts in several ways, still working on this just for fun:

When I looked at my “prepared fabrics” together, it was apparent I wasn’t going to just sew them together along the edges (for several reasons)!

So the next step was to go to EQ (Electric Quilt, a computer program for quilt design) and make some designs:

Option #1. I’ve always loved concentric blocks, and alternating them like this produces a nice design easily.

Option #2. Concentric blocks off-center are even better!

Option #3. Flying geese are always a lively design element, and I just bought a special ruler for trimming!

Option #4: I haven’t done anything with gentle curves for a while. These look like flags to me.

What do you think? Anybody have a strong preference for one of these designs? Whatever I do, I think it will be fun to see how the inserted strips turn out in the final design 🙂

Quilt of 5496 Pieces!

Posted on April 17, 2016 by zippyquilts

A friend who loves TINY things recently finished this postage stamp quilt of 5496 one-inch squares!!! She will donate it to be raffled as a fundraiser at the retirement home where she works.

Postage stamp quilt–all 1″ squares! Made by Jerri Szlizewski

Jerri says this is “the ultimate I-Spy quilt”. She has found many, many, little novelty prints to put in the little blocks. She even has Elvis, though I didn’t get him in this close-up.

A close-up showing a few of the little designs in the quilt

Here are just a few of the projects from the design walls at a recent quilt retreat at a “secret” hideaway:

One retreater came up with this design to use slabs we had swapped previously

One person made several dozen of the cute half-circle napkins that fold into a Christmas tree. She made a lot of place mats, too, but I didn’t get a picture of those.