Working in a Series

July 21, 2012 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

I think part of my discouragement this week was fatigue. I’m working a stack of Kaffe Fassett fabrics. There’s probably 40 to 50 different fabrics that I’ve collected over the years, and in this pattern it’s a challenge to get the fabrics to talk to each other within the block.

I can see, though, that working in a series has improved my ability to see what works, as I change out the leaves and some other smaller pieces, as well (above). I found that I was less enamored of one of the earlier blocks, but it was already appliqued down and I would have been crazy to mess with it.

Here’s the final version of that block.

But I did mess with this one. The brightly colored circles with red in them are a different line of fabric, Amy Butler, and they stand out among Kaffe’s florals. (Although I am using some Phillip Jacobs, and others from the Westminster line.)

I think the Anna Maria Horner fabric does harmonize well in terms of detail and color (the aqua circles at the top, and the second large circles down from the top, with feathers and berries).

All in all, I am glad I pushed on. I do love looking at them on the pin wall, although now I’ve turned my eye toward the borders — with more design decisions. When I went to the Springville, Utah quilt show last summer, a version of this Kim McClellan pattern was done up in softer greens, a lovely quilt and a contrast to the bolder hues usually seen. In this, you can see the border design.

It was certainly deserving of its blue ribbon.

And you are all blue ribbon readers–many thanks again for your encouragement!

Classes · Creating

Becky Goldsmith/Quilt Class

June 14, 2012June 13, 2012 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

I had asked to be put on the waiting list of Becky Goldsmith’s class, hosted and organized by Orange Grove Quilters Guild, and by some incredible stroke of luck, I was in!. I arose at 5 a.m., and was out the door by 6:45 for the long schlep across Orange County; traffic was thick, but not brutal at the early hour of 7:30ish. I was among the first there, and watched as Becky Goldsmith of Piece O’Cake Designs set up. She is very prepared. She also set out an array of tools and notions and books and patterns for us to choose from. I picked up a few new tools and a couple of Piece O’Cake books.

After she was set up, she indicated that now was a good time for photographs, and she was gracious admiring about the quilt I’d made from one of her patterns. I’ve taken loads of classes from many of the more renowned quilt masters, and what I appreciate most is when they know how to tamp down the ardor from fans, while acknowledging the fan herself. I found Becky to one of those excellent teachers who are intent on teaching, not on ego-stoking and I knew it was going to be a good day of learning.

We were learning a type of appliqué that was on top of the appliqué piece, with clearly visible stitches that would act as almost an embroidery of sorts.

I took several pictures, but only this one was not blurry. You can see the stitches here, a technique she calls “Applique with Attitude,” and for which the Piece O’Cake team has written a book. I had been contacted by Marie from the guild about the spot in my class, and she had recommended a place for me to order some of my supplies. I was really grateful for that, as I felt well-prepared even though I only found out the week before.

One of the techniques she covered were tracing the design onto a vinyl overlay so as to place the pieces accurately.

I didn’t take a picture of every step, but another tip was the idea of how to pin: we should use the shorter appliqué pins in order to really anchor our appliqué pieces down for stitching. She taught us a fine technique for marking (place your fabric on a sandpaper board, or fine-grit sandpaper, so it doesn’t shift, then mark a strong line). At each step, she helped me refine what I knew about appliqué.

Some really speedy quilter in class finished up their class sample. I know you are thinking what? Just a tulip? But in between we were taught about why we should wash our fabrics, not use spray starch, the importance of good and useful tools, the use of color, the idea of varying our quilts, and of not using a ruler to cut–allowing a bit of wonkiness to slip into our art. I took eight pages of notes, and we only had about a 20 minute break for lunch!

She gathered us round to point out differences in ways of doing things, and I must say as a sidelight, I was really impressed with this guild and this class; such lovely ladies and they made me–a stranger–feel very welcome in their midst.

I liked the little vignette of this quilter’s station. About all those balls of color: we were using perle cotton for our Applique with Attitude and I look forward to fall when I spend less time in major quilt projects and more time hand-sewing to finish this up.

Then it was picture time.

That’s Marie on the left, Linda (I think?) on the right.

Another quilt of appliqué. I found it really interesting when she talked about how she laid out her quilts. While it’s not easy to see, nearly every block background in this quilt is different. She said she cuts out her backgrounds, smooths them up on her pin wall. Then she cut the shapes out of her fabrics (sometimes cutting up to 10 different fabrics, if the first one doesn’t work) and lays them over the backgrounds. She then moves to sashing, then borders, making sure the colors balance and work well together, harmonizing but interesting. By the way, I love the border treatment.

Not the best lighting for a quilt, but I’m trying to capture the varied colors and shapes. I like it when the flowers “break the border” of the block, continuing the eye in movement across the quilt.

The label contains the title, info about the maker, date, her address (blurred out for privacy) and the fiber content. Both labels were of the same type on these quilts. I don’t know if you noticed that she also appliquéd her initials and the year on the front of the red quilt (above).

During class, a folder circulated and we all wrote a short note to Becky Goldsmith. I’d never seen this done before and I thought it was quite sweet. And speaking of sweets. . .

. . . people brought little snacks to share, again reinforcing my belief that this was a really neat group of quilters! I had a great day, leaving right at the end of class to make it home in time for a reception at the outgoing university dean’s house. We were a little late, but I was able to take the class and still make it.

I found this quote by Daniel J. Keys:

Accomplished artists are those who have proved themselves to be the best at what they do. ‘Master’ is the title often given to such a person, and rightly so: They’ve established themselves as worthy of the title through many years of study, and devotion of their lives to their craft.

I have taken many quilt classes in order to learn from the masters of the quilt world. Only a few times have I been disappointed; nearly always I have learned something. I have my favorites, and I have to say the Becky Goldsmith is in that group. A most enjoyable day!

Creating · eQuilt Universe

iPad Quilt Drawings

May 15, 2012May 12, 2012 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I’ve been quite curious to see if I could use any of the iPad’s apps to draw quilts, or even attempt to draw anything. I had fallen in love with the press for Pages, and spent quite a bit of time looking at reviews of that. I also typed in Penultimate vs. Noteshelf (mainly because I kept seeing that app mentioned) and to find a review that talked about the latest upgrade, I had to keep clicking away.

I have the following productivity apps, as they are called sometimes, because you’re supposed to be productive when you use them (links are to websites that reviewed them or to the developer’s site):

Pages–used mainly for word processing documents; can be sent to your email as a PDF or Word document
Cloud-on–have not even opened it up yet, but it’s supposed to function like Pages, yet you can save documents to a Dropbox folder (one drawback of Pages is that you cannot save to Dropbox)
Notability–I have no clue how to use this yet, but an up-and-coming young man at church recommended it; he uses it all the time in his business
Penultimate–I purchased this because they talked about its ability to draw and to use it like one of the Moleskin notebooks. I envisioned sitting under a tree with a great landscape in the distance, sketching away. Right.
Noteshelf--has more pens, more papers, and the possibility of buying more papers. I liked that they had different thicknesses of pens (one is a marker-tip and one is a fine-tip), and more colors. The use was fairly intuitive for me, but I’m pretty used to Macs, Apple machines and their programs, having had a Mac around the house since the mid-1980s (yes, I’m that much of an Apple geek).

But even though I’m supposed to be “productive” I was more interested in the play aspect, specifically for quilting. Here’s my first attempt:

Hmmm. New frontier, indeed. In the above image, I drew shapes with a fine-tip pen, colored them in with a marker, took a photo of my iPad cover and popped it down into the image (resizing it to the size of one of my “blocks”) and then handwrote some notes as I was sitting in the airplane on the way to see my parents; it was turbulent all the way. Yes, I used a stylus–went to Wal-Mart and picked one up–and I like the way it writes.

This visual is from Beautiful Designs/Gadget Tech website, which has a fairly in-depth comparison of the three programs, but here you can see that the same person produces three different types of script, depending on the program.

But on the way home, the plane ride was more smooth and I had about 90 minutes to really play around. I needed it to be WAAAAY more capable than the silly sketch above, because although messiness has its virtues, I needed precision.

So I loaded up a grid paper (be sure to take the time to do the tutorial–it’s seventeen pages, but you’ll need all that info to even get started) and tried to draw a representation of the windows of the Ogden City Hall–an interesting proportion. Then I “drew” a rectangle around it, copied it and became an object I could paste anywhere on the page. Using the little buttons on the side of the object, I could rotate it and set it into place.

When you have no idea where you’re going, anywhere will do. I practiced this technique, varying where I put the quilt block/object until I’d built myself a “quilt.” Since my quilt block was uneven, I left some spaces in places for interest. I haven’t figured out much since I arrived home as I plowed into grading pretty heavily, but I have to admit I was fairly encouraged by this initial foray into trying to draw a quilt.

Obviously the lines are a bit wobbly as the pen can’t “snap” to the grid like it can in my quilt program, and there’s no preset templates for triangles, etc. But I feel I could make a reasonable stab at this. And if I were a programmer, I’d try to develop a quilting app that actually drew quilts, not just told me about how much yardage I need to buy.

Have any of you experimented with this? What have you come up with?

Creating · Quilts

Pieces to Scrappy Stars

April 26, 2012 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I finished the first gift–a pillowcase for my son Chad who is always traveling. Because of the London Olympics this year, there is lots of fabric with British themes, and the whitish area has a map of the London tube system.. The black fabric is a piece I picked up in NY when we were there last fall– and met Chad for a day of touristing around. (Chad is the little tyke in the last post.)

I wanted to show the pieces I used in Scrappy Stars. They are all a variation of that diamond.

I copied off extra diamonds and added seam allowances to make these extra pieces. For the half- diamond insets in the red inner border, just fold the diamond in half and add some seam allowance.

I’m waiting here at the airport, waiting to take off to see my parents in Utah, and am posting via my iPad. Have any of you converted to this device? Do you find the posting tedious or convenient? I did pick up a gizmo that allows me to upload photos from my camera. I showed my son while we were at lunch and he said, Oh yeah. I have one of those! Why is it that I always feel about two skips behind everyone else? Story of my life.

Have a great weekend!