Quilts

City Quilter Gallery

June 11, 2013 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

I love to visit City Quilter in New York City, for not only do they have amazing fabrics, they also have an attached art quilt gallery. The exhibit when I was there was Deb Hyde: Sunshine and Shadow.

Sunshine and Shadow–Yellow

All the quilts were made of tiny pieces of fabric, fused to a grid, sewn then finished. That makes it sound so elementary and perhaps the technique is, but it is Hyde’s use of color and pattern that elevate these quilts to a new level.

The above are increasingly detailed photos of the opening image, and it’s easy to see that she makes good use of fabric that we might relegate to the side of the fabric closet.

Pink Dress

One of her talents is the way she defines the body, the shapes, but also makes the background interesting with varied tones and values.

Sunshine and Shadow–Turquoise

Check out the use of batiks to make the eye realistic.

Wishful Thinking

Detail

This quilt was up over the desk at the front of the gallery so I couldn’t get a good shot, but I love the way the light falls on the shoulders.

I became interested in how she quilted these. In my recent post I talked about Colorwash quilts and how we sewed millions of little squares together. The newer method — of fusing them down — is an easier way, but it does make the quilts stiffer, so I wondered how the quilting would enhance and become a part of the composition, since it would be more noticeable in the thicker texture. This is a simple diagonal quilting style.

Random box pattern.

All over. This piece (not shown in its entirety) is interesting because the grid appears to have been appliqued on top of the darker borders, with a scuffly, random stitching adhering and melding the two pieces into one.

The New York Times recently profiled the shop in this video:

And while there, I glimpsed Amish With a Twist II, the newest Block of the Month quilt; I signed up for it, and the two installments of this BOM were waiting for me on the doorstep when I arrived home. Quilting has kind of come to a halt around here, as my daughter and her three children have arrived for a week (circus circus, but really fun). Yesterday, while I watched waaay too many episodes of Wizards of Waverly Place (with Selena Gomez as the star witch), I started cutting out the first two kits. Other than losing my marbles with trying to figure out which color was which (Putty and Williamsburg Blue gave me extra fits of crazy), I successfully finish up the cutting last night.

Now I’ve got to run–time for breakfast for three little people and their Mom!

It’s Wednesday, so WIP on

May 8, 2013May 8, 2013 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Finally! I have a use for my phone app, purchased so long ago and hardly used. Anyone else like that?

Yep, it’s Wednesday so that means I’m thinking about my works in progress.

Well, today, it was Schnibbles. I really had fun making last month’s quilt and although I’m fairly certain I won’t be able to keep this up, winning a prize for my Schnibbles certainly helped my motivation. It hasn’t come yet, so I can’t tell you what it is, but Mr. Random Generator Number HATES me, so I was pretty surprised when Sherri emailed me with the news. But as I lay in bed the other night, listening to the night sounds and thinking about if I should do this month’s pattern, all of a sudden I knew exactly what I wanted to do. It involves old sheets. But not vintage floral sheets.

Long before Martha Stewart ruled the linen universe and long before everyone’s beds looked the same, you could go down to the department store and there’d be all kinds of sheets in all kinds of patterns, mostly percale, but a variety of eye candy for the bed. One day in Wisconsin, in their department store, a set of Porthault knock-off linens were in the marked down bin.

Porthault? I was stunned, and snapped them all up: pillowcases, top sheet, bottom sheet and an extra sheet. The cool part was that the top sheet and pillowcases had a gentle scalloped edge that was taped with blue linen tape. Verrry classy. Well, I wore out the bedding, but still had that extra sheet. Some years ago, I cut it into large squares to use as table decorations for something-or-other, and I knew I still had those lovely lily of the valley pieces of sheets. Somewhere. I rummaged through the boxes in the garage last night and found them (you don’t have fabric in the garage? Really?), and went to work today making my Schnibbles. I have a set of papers coming in on Tuesday when I enter the Grading Galaxy, hoping to return just before my sister and her husband arrive for a week. Now you know why I thought I ought to get busy and get this done.

Here’s the second iteration. The fabric has two-toned blue lilies of the valley and yellow mini-tulips with green stems and little red dots here and there. So I added some red thread and some green thread to two of my spools, along with some yellow spools just for interest.

Here’s a close-up of the fabric. I have my row tag on there, ready to sew up the blocks into the top. I have enjoyed digging into the stash for this quilt, pulling blues from all sorts of different kinds of fabrics. I do like sewing with one line of fabric, I guess, but I always seem to sneak an extra bit from what I have so as to break up the quilt. (I guess that means I don’t really like sewing from just one line of fabric.)

I cut strips of my Porthault knock-off sheets into strips for the first border, and angled the ends to help disguise the seams–I have a lot of seams because I’m cutting from those squares from long ago.

First inner border with cornerstones is on in one of those dreaded nighttime photoshots. I stopped here for the night, and will figure out the outer border in the morning. I was able to slide in three blue blocks made with fabric from my very first pieced quilt (#3 on my 100 quilts list, never blogged about). I like using this fabric in quilts here and there. I like tying both ends of my quilting life together like this.

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced. For sure, I will be at the end-of-the Linky list tonight!

And here’s the only picture I could find of the sheets on the web. Sorry it’s so teensy!

I just went and looked up Porthault *online* and a sheet set is going for about two grand. Yep.
Of course, it is the real thing, and not the knock-off. Makes quilt fabric look like a bargain.

WIP

WIPs, early

April 30, 2013 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

I have the Four-in-Art reveal tomorrow, so am writing about my works in progress today.

DONE

Take Me Back to Italy, both a Schnibbles quilt and a Finish-A-Long quilt

Four-In-Art #3 (check back tomorrow)

Snapshot Label completed

And if you read my Instagram, you know I cleaned out my sewing studio drawers this week as I was looking for a spool of thread and one thing lead to another (plus I was doing Grading Avoidance, a truly marketable skill I’ve developed), but while doing all that, found this sweet little Polaroid patch that Debbie sent to those who participated in the Polaroid Swap last summer. So I was able to get that stitched next to the label on onto Snapshot, and calling it FINISHED.

Not one, but two quilt squares for the Mid-Century Modern Quilt Bee. I don’t tend to press the heck out of my blocks, as I don’t believe in wearing out my quilts before I get to use them. So maybe the one on the right doesn’t look quite as spiffy as its twin. But it is just fine, really.

WORKS IN PROGRESS, or LOST IN SPACE

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m still thinking about it. It’s my EPP quilt, and the top is completed, but I’m not going to show it until I’ve finished it. It’s coming.

A new crazy idea that surfaced one day last fall, and has taken this long to bubble up. I’m showing you the bitsiest vision of it I can, because frankly, at this point, it’s really really a Work-in-Progress.

Can I show the fabric that is headed this way? I finally dipped my toe in the Spoonflower water, and purchased a ten-pack of fat quarters from their weekly contest. I already have an idea. This:

Yep, I swiped this photo right from Anne’s website (she’s having a sale on her patterns). I think the chickens will look fabulous running around this quilt.

Don’t we all have too many ideas? And not enough time? That’s my set for this week.

Linking up to Lee’s WIP Wednesday.

Creating · Housekeeping · Quilts

QuiltPro Quilt Software

April 28, 2013April 28, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

I’ve used QuiltPro software for about a decade now, choosing it first because it worked on a Mac as well as a PC (I’m a Mac user, and Electric Quilt has ignored people like me). I’ve been reading about another quilt software program that you rent monthly, and thought I ought to talk about an alternative to that, especially since QuiltPro is having a sale right now of 30% off.

What I like about this program is its simplicity. It didn’t take me long to figure it out–click on the square icon and draw a square, click on the triangle (there are two kinds) and draw a triangle. Click on the paint can and color in your shapes. It does have a fabric library, but after a few times, I’ve skipped over that and just use the solids, coloring in what I want to show value and placement. (And sometimes I wonder if that’s not why we’ve had such a surge of popularity in using solids–we see them in our quilt software and then want to make those quilts? Who knows, but I’ve thought about it.)

And if I want to, I can change the colors by double-clicking on one of the little squares.

There’s a block library if you want it, but I use QuiltPro mostly to work up a design that’s in my head, like this one:

Which became this:

and this

Or this design, to make use of some lovely bits and pieces from a cherished set of fabrics, which became this:

A quilt for a friend who needed some quilty hugs. And I’m now thinking about how to make this one, dreamed up recently:

Sometimes when I read quilty blogs, I get the feeling that whatever is being shown, or pitched, becomes an extension of that quilter. That is to say, that if you buy this, or shop here, then that’s like a ‘vote’ for that quilter, and you say you like her better. I don’t really care if you use QuiltPro or not. I do use it and I’ve had great success with it as a tool to help me get done what I really do love: quilting, so I thought you might want to know about it. I used to draft blocks using graph paper, pencils, rulers, drawing out the templates by hand. This program does all that for me (yes, it prints the templates too, so I can measure them to use with my rotary cutter and rulers). It’s my tool. I’ve used this tool in my little quilt group, Good Heart Quilters, when we do our block swaps, or someone needs me to draft up how their chevron quilt will look. It’s been very helpful in a lot of ways.

Here’s a photo of Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs in combat. She was recently profiled in the New York Times–go read the article; it’s short and sweet and makes you want to cheer. But I liked what she said here:

“Q: When you wake up do you feel a sense of loss when you realize what happened to your legs?
A: Of course. But I have a different perspective for what my legs are now. Now they’re just tools, you know? If I still had my legs, I would be in line for a battalion command, and instead I’m flying a desk.”

I want to fly my version of a desk–my sewing machine–making quilts and sewing and playing with cloth and squares and triangles and designs. I love quilting and am happy to have my rotary cutters and rulers and yes, my QuiltPro software. It’s just a tool, you know, to get the quilting done.