Bloggers' Quilt Festival: Broken Windows

So the BQF totally snuck up on me this year. It was only a month or so after the last one that I fell off the internet and while I have been making and sewing, I was feeling like I didn't have anything I wanted to enter. However, there are a few things I haven't shared yet. Like this one...

As a mini with fabrics I would never choose, this piece was a little out of the box for me. And I dealt with it a little in the box, too.  At Saskatoon Modern Quilt Guid, we had a challenge to use a bag of someone else's scraps. I got Erin's and she actually enjoyed handing over the ugliest bag of scraps ever seen in Saskatoon.  She even taunted us as she threw the bag in the mix.  Fabrics? Not modern. Colours? Non-descript.  Size? Larger than your average scrap. Hmmm.... Workable?

I embraced the messy!  I started with the batik. Some folks love 'em, some hate 'em and I'm somewhere in the middle. I use them, sparingly, and not on their own.  But this one had nice little boxes in a regular pattern, like frames.  I freehanded some shapes,  stay-stitched the lines, trimmed the excess and folded the seam allowance back. Then I backed each opening with a little piece of one of the horrid little scraps, and reverse appliquéd it to the batik.

Then I quilted it within a sixteenth of an inch of its life.  I started with a neutral cream colour and decided it needed red!

The binding was made from another one of the scraps. I knew it was going to be difficult and there was no way I'd be able to hand-finish it with the density of quilting on the back - I even debated ways I could get a way with leaving unfinished.  Once it was trimmed, I felt I lost a lot of the rustic, broken quality I was getting so I recaptured it by attaching the binding to the back and stitching it down unevenly along the front.

This is the first quilt I've actually hung on my walls and I'm happy with how it turned out.

Title: Broken Windows
Size: 18x11"
Category:  Small quilts?
Pieced and Quilted by me.

Thanks so much to Amy and the sponsors, everyone who stops by, and everyone who shares their work with the rest of us to make this festival so much fun! Can't wait to see what everyone's been up to!

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Flowers Over Falls

Hello!  If you're popping by from the Blogger's Quilt Festival, welcome!  If you're a regular visitor, you have seen this one before...

This year, I participated in my first online bee, called Simply Solids.  The rules were simple, too - only solids allowed!

My month was June I stretched my brain for a while and was struck by the idea of a waterfall. To give it some visual oomph, I also decided flowers should be headed over the falls as well.

I sent my bee mates two different blues, two orange squares, and a strip of stone, asking them to make an abstract improv block - free-style, 12.5"x16.5".  And did they deliver!!

I added an irregular sashing, and some borders - the layout of the quilt actually looks like this if you get close to it.

I wanted the water look to be unbroken so I made the binding shift in tone as it went around.

Then I quilted it in wavy, watery lines, broken a little in places by imaginary rocks behind the 'water.'  It's a little hard to believe just by looking at it but there are actually eleven different Kona solids and three different threads.  There is also the handiwork of eleven different people, other than myself, and I can't thank them enough for the beautiful blocks they made.

The back was built around one block I received that I absolutely loved (it's based on Fibonacci - how clever is that?) but it kept popping out when I tried in the front layout.  I did my best to emulate the design and make it macro on the back.

You can read more about this quilt and how it came to be in this post here. And if you are in Saskatoon this weekend, you can see it in person at SaskatoonQuilts!2013 out at Prairieland. :-)

Quilt: Flowers Over Falls

Size: approx. 66" x 80"

Finished: August 2013

Category: Group/Bee Quilts

Contributors:  Myself and the other awesome quilters of Aeneous Group - Simply Solids Modern Bee, plus one super lovely friend from UK

Thank you to Amy Ellis for hosting, all the sponsors who are so generous with their support, and all the other quilters are participating (and you for stopping by!)




Past Festival Entries:
Spring 2013 - Random Containment
Fall 2012 - Homespun
Spring 2012 - Myself as a Teacher

Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2013: Random Containment

Hello! I'm thrilled to be participating once again in the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side. It's always a good time - plenty of inspiration and meeting new blog friends.  I even found some local quilters through the festival that I hadn't known before so it's definitely a positive event! I expect I'll be tough to drag from the computer as I check out all the fabulous entries...

My entry for Spring 2013:

Name: Random Containment
Finished : ~68"square
Category: Throw quilt

I had done a tutorial on random piecing for the Saskatoon Modern Quilt Guild and then wondered what to do with the product.  I ordered up some Kona Ash and decided to let my random pieces all where they may, so to speak.  To give the centre a little something, I improv pieced all the scraps.  The result is that this quilt ended up with less than a full handful of trimmings and scraps leftover! Yay!

(Please forgive the folds - it was a few days before I had photo-worthy light and helpers at the same time!)

I wanted this piece to embrace "modern"as much as possible so I went with very dense quilting using 40w orange thread and  mostly organic straight lines. I figured that the irregularity of the straight-ish lines would add more texture than pin-straight. And I'd be less likely to tear my hair out trying to achieve pin-straight.

The back is pieced entirely with scraps and stash.

Oops!  This was before the label went on...

This quilt was a challenge for me in that I'd never used a contrasting thread colour, done such dense quilting on something so large, or gotten terribly comfortable with purple before it.  I'm quite happy with how it turned out - the texture of the lines, the improv nature of it, and its modern aesthetic.

The early stages...

It's also a challenge to get things done on a deadline when the sun is finally shining and your sewing space is wee.

And just a reminder.... Check the back of your work frequently.  Trust me. Ripping ten 68" lines.... not terribly fun.  Picking up tiny threads from ripping ten 68" lines - even less fun. Thank heavens for lint brushes!

Thanks for stopping by! Thank you, too, to Amy and the wonderful sponsors of this festival.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. :-)

Previous Entries by me:

Fall 2012 - Homespun

Spring 2012 - Myself, as a Teacher

PS. This is how I baste during playoffs.

Nominated and other news

I have been very busy the last little while and most of my internet time has gone towards checking in with folks who were close to Hurricane Sandy on the east coast or near earthquakes on the west coast, OR soaking up the fabric beauty of the quilt festival! Speaking of the fest...

My quilt, Homespun, has been nominated in the Favourite Scrap Quilt category in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side.  Thank you so much to those people who did the nominating.  There were 621 quilts entered this time and there wasn't a dud in the bunch so I'm very flattered!

It's blushing!

Voting for favourites goes on for another three days - and you don't have to have entered to participate! Vote here.  And I won't take it personally if I'm not your favourite - there are some amazing quilts.... :-)

Other than that, I've had my hands full over here - mostly with stuff I can't show up until January - but there is the odd thing I've managed to complete/start/ponder.

I finished up my name tag for the local quilt guild and am very happy with it.  Except for the back. Because I'm just that neurotic.  The Newcomer Tea is this evening before the meeting.

Bad tension....

And it looks like the Saskatoon Modern Quilt Guild is a GO! If you're local and interested, get in touch.    It was great to meet some people in person that I'd only known through the internet before (Hi, Patti!) At our meeting, we also pestered the proprietor of our LQS for details about the fun in Houston last week.

Tiny piecing looks almost as pretty on the back...

I'm working on a randomly pieced background tutorial.

I'm battling a cold.  Again.  I tell you - I had an iron constitution and aggressive immune system.  Then I had a nephew.  Tiny people come with exposure to germs heretofore unknown amongst your regular circles. Viruses fierce and treacherous!

There was some luck related news this weekend, too, but that will have to wait until later this week.

So, yes, this post wasn't much more than a pop-in but I felt like posting a little and wanted to keep myself from a tangent.  I hope everyone affected by the hurricane and earthquakes are doing okay and life is quickly getting back to normal for them - you're in my prayers!

Bloggers' Quilt Festival: Myself, as a Teacher

This is my entry to the Spring 2012 Bloggers' Quilt Festival, which is a first for me.

The quilt, finished at the end of March, was conceived as a homework assignment for a class in my final semester in the College of Education. It ended up being far more meaningful to me than I could have expected.

The back - a metaphor for ways we learn.

After deciding to use the quilt as a way to learn new techniques and block styles while expressing who I am as a teacher and what I stand for as an educator, I sent out a call for help to my fellow bloggers to contribute.  Quilting, like education, is a community-based and collaborative activity.  I was lucky enough to have 5 special women lend me a piece of themselves for this project.

There are many different elements at work here.

Turning darts to feathers

An awareness of what it means to be an antiracist, anti oppressive educator, a commitment to being a lifelong learner, and a uniqueness that I hope to inspire in every one of my students.

Random crumbs - no contribution too small

Unpacking pop culture and looking at influences on our young people - all part of the job

Humour also plays a part, as does improvisation and working with limited resources.

Tiny piecing - this is about 9" square.

Firsts, such as free-motion quilting, paper-piecing, and new-to-me block styles are there; modern techniques and traditional knowledge are there, too.

However, the most important idea is love, which is not only the cornerstone in the quilt and hidden in the stitching, but the absolute foundation of my teaching practice.

You can read more about the individual elements of this quilt in this collection of posts.
"Myself, as a Teacher", finished March 2012.  Approx 72x80.
Pieced by hand and machine, machine-quilted.

Thank you to Amy for hosting, and to you for stopping by!