2013: The Quilts

Posted on March 6, 2016 by zippyquilts

Most of the first post about 2013 showed special projects. Here are the quilts.

This quilt, made from a Batavian Batiks pattern, hangs in my husband’s office

quilt, donation quilt, bright quilt, blended border

And here is a donation quilt made from extra blocks. I used it to try out blended borders.

Here are two more donation quilts, made for Ronald McDonald House in 2013:

Happy Plaids is my own design, but there are MANY similar quilts out there

Twinkle, a pattern by Swirly Girl Designs, was made because I had some fabulous leftover fabric

This is made with bright batiks and templates from Elisa’s Backporch Design

This is the back

The first post about 2013 projects included a table runner made from leftovers after I finished this next quilt:

This quilt, pieced improvisationally from bright batiks and black, is one of my all-time favorites.

This quilt was for a special baby; and yes, that’s me with my beautiful daughter 🙂

Quilt for a special baby!

I found a pattern for this little miniature while on a trip, and just couldn’t resist making it–all from scraps, of course.

Miniature quilt–I’m sorry I don’t recall the name of the designer.

Here’s an improvisationally designed T shirt quilt I made for a friend:

Modern T Shirt Quilt, using my favorite method of designing as I go

And finally, the last Ronald McDonald quilt for 2013, made from blocks that were just too wild without solid sashing!

That’s what I could find for 2013! More years later.

My Modern Sampler: Using Linen in Quilts

Posted on February 28, 2016 by zippyquilts

After finishing the blocks for my modern sampler, I ordered several shades of Essex linen/cotton blend to consider for the background. I know I said I’d never use linen again after the last struggle, but I’ve learned several things since. So, if you’re thinking of using linen in your quilts for its nice texture, read my tips at the end of this post.

Here I’m trying various layouts on two different potential background fabrics. I hung the ironed fabric and pinned the blocks to it, trying out various layouts and different colors of background fabric.

Here is the Pewter background

Here is the Natural background, with a different attempt at layout

I decided I liked the natural background better than they gray. Then I took it all down and made a rectangle on my design “wall”, outlining the approximate finished size with blue painter’s tape.

Here is the layout I decided to use, with some of the sashing in place

And here are my thoughts on using linen in quilts:
–The linen I used the first time was “real”, 100% linen. Remember that from your childhood, when summer clothes were supposed to be linen? Think wrinkles! And avoid 100% linen for your quilts
–The “linen” of the Essex brand actually is a linen/cotton blend, so it has a nice texture but is less wrinkle-prone and tighter woven than the linen I used previously.
–Pre-wash the linen blend, even if you don’t pre-wash anything else. Wash in warm water and dry on warm so it will get its shrinking done and be more dense and stable.
–Before you pre-wash, serge or zig-zag the raw edges together to prevent fraying! This worked great and “wasted” only about 1/4″ on each raw edge, much less than would have frayed. And there was no mess of threads in the washing machine.

How have you done with using fabrics other than quilting cotton in quilts?

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

Crunchy Numbers

Posted on January 17, 2016 by zippyquilts

The WordPress people send me two statistical reports a year regarding my blog, and of course I can look at statistics on my administrative page at any time. I don’t stress it or check very often, so I was quite surprised when the recent report from WordPress said people from 61 different countries viewed my blog in 2015!

Most of the countries were predictable: the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. But there were views from every continent except Antarctica! The place I got the biggest kick out of was Iceland 🙂

This improvised log cabin block, which was made into a pillow, appears to have been the most viewed picture on the site.

improvised log cabin block

Jo Glover

And my most popular post was about Jo Glover, who first developed Big Stitch quilting but doesn’t always get enough credit now that everybody does it. You can find that post HERE if you missed it.

Another popular topic was my ongoing modern sampler quilt, and there’ll be much more about that coming up soon. A few of those blocks are shown below.

This block was made with curves cut freehand

The stats show my readership growing steadily over the 2-1/2 years I’ve been blogging. The growth is slow, but I’m blogging for fun (and I’ve kept my day job!) so that’s just fine. I’ve made some new friends, which is even better.

As always, I’m amazed by the power of the internet. I’ll skip the chance to philosophize about that and just wish anyone who reads this a very happy 2016!

Final Finishes!

Posted on December 27, 2015 by zippyquilts

I got these two quilts back from the quilter last week, so I put the binding on and have my final 2 finishes for the year!

Improvisational quilt, orange and blue quilt

Red Pepper is made from a pattern entitled “Yellow Pepper”

This binding was made from the remaining black and white chevron fabric

I finally finished the eternal paper piecing for this quilt and I’m having fun arranging the blocks.

The pattern is Lombard Street, by Sassafras Lane Designs

Here are a few of the other projects I’ve done this year. You can click on any of them for more detail.

Sew Together Bag, pattern by Sew Demented

Another runner for my “Try Improv” class

Divided basket made from pattern by Noodlehead

I designed and made this runner for a guild challenge

Happy Squares, designed and made by me, 2015

Here is one of the samples for my improvised table runner class

Karla Made Me Do It

Cat Circus, my quilt for the 2015 Quilt Alliance challenge

Tote bag made with Kraft-Tex for the bottom section

Toddler Quilt, designed by me

This was made using the Quick Curve ruler

And finally, here are a couple of things I had published in Modern Quilts Unlimited:

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

Can’t wait to start next year’s projects! Woo!

2015 Finishes: Part I

Posted on December 13, 2015 by zippyquilts

Ronald McDonald House is the chosen recipient of donation quilts from one of my groups, and EACH of us made 12 quilts for that cause this year. I finished the last 2 this month (yes, a LITTLE behind!).

These are a good illustration of why a dark border is a good idea to make a quilt feel “finished”. I’ll try to remember that next year!

And here are the other 10 donation quilt finishes for the year. I love how different they are! I got to try lots of new things 🙂

Design by Cindy Williams

Pseudo Random arrangement starting with Kaffe fabric

This is a leaders-and-enders project

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

The “New! Improved!” quilt

Flower Fairies

Donation quilt made from orphan star blocks

February finish and January donation quilt

More finishes coming soon!

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 🙂

Narrow Accents!

Posted on October 18, 2015 by zippyquilts

Modern Quilts Unlimited just published my article on how to add narrow accents to your projects. It’s a very easy method for sewing crisp, even accent strips from 1/8″ to 3/4″ wide.

Notice the Narrow Accents article featured on the cover, along with the beautiful quilt by Bev Getschel

There are so many uses for narrow accents! Here are a few of mine:

narrow accents, Modern Quilts Unlimited magazine

This is a corner of the piece I made to illustrate the MQU article

These blocks from my modern sampler all include narrow strips:

The samples I made for my improvised table runner class all include narrow strips, as well. Here is one of them:

Here is one of the samples for my improvised table runner class

Here’s a Mondrian-style block I made several years ago with narrow inserts

There are options too numerous to mention! Go get the magazine and make some accent strips, then please send me pictures of your creations.

Sandi Suggs: Finding Her Way to Modern

Posted on October 11, 2015 by zippyquilts

Sandi’s work was featured in a special display at AQS-Chattanooga, and I was lucky enough to get to interview her. I took some pictures, and if you want to see more of her work, check the links at the bottom of this post.

Sandi designed this nontraditional arrangement of split 9-patch blocks

While I was waiting to interview Sandi, I heard her tell someone, “Any time I make a quilt, I do it to learn something.” My sentiments exactly!

Sandi made this quilt from a pattern, adding modern colors to the design

Sandi started quilting over 25 years ago, using cereal box templates because rotary cutters weren’t yet used for quilting. She still uses templates when appropriate, but a lot of things have changed! For one thing, she now uses freezer paper when she needs templates so she can cut several layers of fabric at once.

Sandi designed and made this quilt using her own quilt-as-you-go technique

Sandi teaches several classes, including her own version of Quilt As You Go. (I’m going to keep an eye on her website because I’d like to take that class if she teaches it anywhere near me 🙂 )

The AQS exhibit included both quilts Sandi designed herself and quilts she has made from designs by others. This was a round robin quilt; Sandi made the final arrangement of sections and did the quilting:

Round Robin quilt by Sandi Suggs and friends. Look at Sandi’s quilting!

A couple of hints from Sandi: she likes to use the multi-stitch zigzag (stitch #4 on Bernina machines) in her quilting. She starches all her fabrics before cutting to make them smoother and less likely to fray. She says starching also equalizes the weight of the various fabrics. She likes to wash her quilts after they are finished to achieve a crinkly look that emphasizes the quilting.

Sandi does her own quilting on her home machine. This quilt is called “Roy G. Biv”

Sandi also has her own way to successfully select fabrics for a mystery quilt! I’ve only done one mystery quilt and was unhappy with the result, so I asked her about it. She showed the quilt below, designed by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr as a mystery quilt, and told me how she selected her fabrics.

Mystery quilt designed by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr demonstrates Sandi’s successful fabric selection

Sandi looked at the fabric requirements for the quilt and figured the largest fabric requirement was for the background. Once she had chosen gray for the background, she decided she would need bright fabrics to contrast with it. I think her decisions were very successful!

You can find Sandi’s blog at: www.FrogPondStudio.blogspot.com

She has many more pictures of her quilts there, including these five posts that show all her quilts from the AQS exhibit:

Finding My Voice

Finding My Voice, Two

Finding My Voice, Three

Finding My Voice, Four

Finding My Voice, Final

10 From Chattanooga Quilt Week

Posted on September 27, 2015 by zippyquilts

Despite a change in plans, a friend and I got in a quick trip to Quilt Week in Chattanooga to see the quilt show. No time for classes this year, but we had a great time. I was especially happy that there was a large section of modern quilts. Here are 10 of my favorites.

Celebrate, by Jean Larson of the Chattanooga Modern Quilt Guild

A Slice of Pi, by Connie Griner. This quilt has the numerical value of pi quilted into the border to umpteen decimal places!

Love in the Digital Age, by Kristin Shields

Motik, by Mary Ramsey Keasler of the Chattanooga Modern Quilt Guild

Tiki Dilemma, by Jodi Robinson. She says her “quilting designs were chosen to add interest without overwhelming the overall design of the quilt”. I like that!

Door Into Summer, by Joni Morgan

I see that gray backgrounds are still very popular! (You KNOW who I’m talking to!)

Forgotten Chicago, by M. A. Cramer. She asks whether the object shown here is rising or falling!

Pink Flamingos with Lemonade, by Connie Brown of the Modern Quilt Guild of Asheville

Through the Open Window, by Amy Anderson of the Modern Quilt Guild of Asheville

Initial Inspiration, by Vista Scruggs Mahan of Rising Fawn, Georgia (just outside Chattanooga)

Of course, we had a little time for chocolate as well, but what’s done at Quilt Week stays at Quilt week 😉

Later on, I’ll have an interview with Sandi Suggs, whose quilts were a special exhibit at Chattanooga Quilt Week.

Zippy Quilts

Modern Quilts With A Twist

Tag Archives: modern quilt

2013: The Quilts

My Modern Sampler: Using Linen in Quilts

Connie Brown, A North Carolina Quilter

Crunchy Numbers

Final Finishes!

2015 Finishes: Part I

Artsy Table Runner

Narrow Accents!

Sandi Suggs: Finding Her Way to Modern

10 From Chattanooga Quilt Week

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