Batik Quilt with Borders

I asked for opinions earlier this month as to what color I should use for the narrow border surrounding my batik quilt center. I did listen to your feedback and bought some teal in addition to the gold I ended up using as well as a third option. It just turned out that when I auditioned them on the design wall today, the gold really sang to me, especially with the wide purple outer border.

I hadn't necessarily wanted to put purple in the outer border, but in the end, it was really the only option as my trip to the quilt shop was not terribly successful in identifying fabrics that would actually work with my center. I wanted a multicolored fabric to pick up some of the other tones of the center, but it also needed to be a relatively dark fabric. Unfortunately, not may options were currently in stock that fit the bill! However, I guess that made my decision-making process that much easier, right?

In the end, I do really like it. I have plenty of fabric left over in this palette and am trying to decide if I want to make one of the quilts from the February issue of American Patchwork & Quilting - Zen - using this grouping. I'm very much itching to make this pattern (I have the magazine and was dying to make it since I first saw it while on the Cape last month) and have these and loads of other batiks that I could choose from. But do I want my next quilt to be a bit lighter? Or will I like having two that are very complementary? Decisions, decisions!

Star of Wonder

Yesterday I placed in the mail the first completed Star of Wonder project! I'm so excited to be nearly finished with these projects. The next time I decide that it is wise to make 3 of something, someone please knock me upside the head! I'm sewing the binding on the second one, and the third is almost completely quilted.

The pattern for this was called "Reason for the Season," uses Nancy Halvorsen's "Star of Wonder" panel, and is free from Quiltmaker online. I think it's probably important to remember that you sometimes get what you pay for. The pattern had a few issues - why in the world would you let the squares in a square float around the border? I trimmed mine all down. And of course, their math was a bit fuzzy - add in spacers to make things fit, which I do understand when you are using a panel - but if you squared the blocks down, you were able to get in one full additional block on each side, and had a much smaller spacer segment as a result. I'm all in favor of using as many blocks as possible and fewer spaces. This was my first time using a panel this large and building a lot of quilt around it, rather than simply quilting the panel with some unpieced borders. Panels are not always square! Nor are the lines on them necessarily straight. I found that annoying, but I guess just one of those things you have no choice but to deal with if you want to use panels.

As you can see since my last progress photo, I sewed on the 36 buttons and tacked down the flange so that it "wobbles" back and forth. It's a very nice design element, and not as time-consuming as it might have been, given that Mary or Sandi suggested that I use the button sew-on program on my sewing machine! I honestly had no idea there was such a feature and it never occurred to me to sew on buttons with my sewing machine, so I'm forever in their debt for saving me a ton of time in getting those buttons sewn on! I took the same approach to tacking down the flange in the opposite position - just set a narrow zigzag with the feed dogs down and a quilting foot and I was good to go!

I'm hoping to get the second one bound so I can show it at our quilt guild meeting tomorrow night and to its new owner on Thursday, but we'll see how I do. And if I can finalize the third over the long holiday weekend, that will be awesome!

Progress Update

Last night I had time to sew together the 50 blocks I pieced on the "Native Rainbow" quilt, and this evening, I sewed together the second of four borders. Here it is on my design wall! I'm auditioning the gold as the color for the inner border and am thinking I like it. The same color goes outside the pieced border and then there's a wide border surrounding it all. Unfortunately, I don't have enough gold in my stash to make anything work so I might just have to go to the quilt shop this weekend!

I know there's not a lot of contrast in the fabrics in the center, but I'm really liking it. There are 16 different fabrics used and I have to admit that my only complaint thus far about the pattern is that it called for 3/8 yard of each fabric. Considering the fact that I only had to cut 6 1/2 inches from each of the fabrics, I have no idea why it was suggested to buy twice as much! I guess it's good fodder for another batik project. (Actually, one other niggling complaint about the pattern: why would you instruct someone to cut 2x9 inch rectangles and then subcut so that the cuts only add up to 8 1/2 inches? It's just silly and a waste of that half inch.)

Should I go with the gold inner border? Let me know. Earliest I'll make it to the quilt shop is Saturday, so you still have time to influence my buying!

Christmas Projects

As I mentioned, I didn't do much of a crafty nature in November and December. What I did accomplish were the following two projects, both of which involved rehabbing Goodwill finds with supplies from Jo-Ann's and elsewhere.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

I'll admit that this really still needs a bow, but I couldn't find a premade one that seemed to work and I am generally helpless with bow making. Perhaps I'll get one figured out by the time I hang this for next Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Yes, I know it's been ages since I posted anything on my blog. Part of the reason is that I really didn't do anything creative in a long, long time. Between the class I was taking this fall and traveling and preparations for holidays (Thanksgiving in Ohio, Christmas on Cape Cod), I simply didn't get much accomplished in Nov. and Dec. that was blog-worthy. I vow to be better this year!

Speaking of resolutions, I have a few quilt-related ones this year, including attempting not to buy anything new at the store unless it is something I need to help finish a project for which I already have the majority of the supplies. I have loads of projects around here (and loads of WIPs), and it's time to get some of them done and save my money for some other fun thing. Ben told me he thought it was a stupid resolution: I couldn't just stop buying fabric when I was inspired. I told him he probably didn't realize how many projects I had around the house and I'm torn between being upset at his lack of support for my resolution (OK, not really) and thrilled that he thinks I should continue my fabric purchasing habit! We'll see how long it holds; yesterday I had to buy some fabric online because I'd made a really stupid error in calculating what I'd needed for that particular WIP. I'm not in violation yet!

I am fortunate to have family members who totally support and enable my quilting addiction. This holiday brought me a new portable Sew-Ezi quilting table, a rechargeable OttLite portable task lamp, a gift certificate to Keepsake Quilting, a beautiful Mint Chip Bali pop, a Michael Miller Fairy Frost fat quarter pack, an OmniGrid portable pressing and cutting station, and a couple of quilting books. Am I set to have fun or what?

I have dug in and gotten some things done in the sewing room in the past two days. Yesterday, I pieced together three backings and cut batting for quilts to drop off to be quilted in the near future, and I quilted the first of three of Star of Wonder panels that I sewed at my quilting retreat in early November (unfortunately none of these were finished for Christmas). I still need to apply 36 buttons to the yellow inner border and bind it up, but I'm really quite pleased with how the quilting turned out.

Today, I sewed fifty blocks like these three to make a quilt from the Batik Beauties book by Laurie Shifrin. The blocks went together quite quickly. I think it might have taken almost as much time to cut out the pieces on Wednesday night while watching one of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies (seriously, he has got to be the hottest James Bond)! I'm not sure how pleased I am with the overall color combination, but I'll share photos soon, I'm sure.

Happy New Year and happy sewing!

IQF - Part 3

My posts on IQF to date have focused on the workshops I took. Obviously, the show is about a lot more than that, including a huge show of quilts. Today I thought I'd write about some of them and share photos with you. The winners were amazing, as usual, but none of them were really my cup of tea.

One of the more interesting sections was one of quilts focused on politics, especially given that the election here in the States was the following Tuesday. This one showing now President-Elect Obama was pretty impressive:

From IQF 2008 - Quilts

and there were quite a number done over the years by Fran Soika, with quite a distinctive style:

From IQF 2008 - Quilts

The Texas DAR had an excellent exhibition of 20 quilts from the organization's Washington, D.C. collection, titled The DAR Museum Collection: Quilts of a Young Country. The quilts dated from the 1750s to 1850s and were real treasures. Unfortunately, I was unable to take pictures, but after asking a couple of docents, I did learn that you can view the images on The Quilt Index by searching for the DAR Museum as a contributing institution. The search turns up 360 quilts, well more than those in this exhibit. While the quilts in that section were beautiful, I have to admit that I thought the docents treated me rather rudely. Apparently, if you look young, you couldn't possibly know anything about quilts. I'd asked a question of the one docent and she answered it and then grabbed another visitor and told her, "Oh, you know about quilts... Look at this one. Can you imagine she did all of that applique using the straight of grain rather than the bias?" as if I couldn't possibly understand what that might have meant. Well, there's nothing that turns me off more. In close to 9 years of quilting, I've picked up a few things, including an understanding of what the bias can do and just because someone looks like they have more experience doesn't mean that they know one iota more (some people don't even start quilting until they're older). Is it any wonder that young people might be turned off by women like this? I'll step off my soapbox now.

I think it is interesting to see what I end up taking photos of at each show I attend, as the photos seem to show trends over time. At some shows, I seem to take photos of bright quilts, at others, floral quilts. I'm not sure there was really a theme this time, and I think that many more of my favorites this time around were in portions of the exhibition where photography was not allowed. Nonetheless, here are some of my favorites:

From IQF 2008 - Quilts

From IQF 2008 - Quilts

Many more photos are available in my Picasa album. Ben also took some with his camera; I'll let you know when and where they become available.

IQF - Part 2

Yes, I know it's taken me a while to get to writing my second update about the quilt festival in Houston. But my delay doesn't indicate in any way a lack of interest or enjoyment. Life gets busy sometimes...

Today I thought I'd write about the second class that I took while I was in Houston. This class was with instructor Melinda Bula, to make a new daisy project based on the techniques and style of her book, Cutting Garden Quilts. I'd purchased the book a while back because I thought her flowers were amazing, and I probably could have made the quilt on my own without taking the class. But you know how it is: sometimes you need a class to give yourself the opportunity to set aside time to actually work on something.

I love the cover quilt on the book. It's a coneflower. And as many of you know, that's my absolute favorite flower. Unfortunately, her one-day workshop for that quilt was already filled, so I "settled" for the daisy class. After 6 hours of class time, here's how far I got.



And here's the finished project:


As you can see, I am nowhere close to being finished. And I was probably one of the people who got the most done. It's not a difficult technique, but it is time-consuming. You have to trace the patterns onto Steam a Seam 2 (her preference), fuse that to your fabric, cut out your pieces, and then position them on your background. I'll admit that I wasn't too exacting about the process and if I went off the lines when tracing or cutting, so be it. It's organic, right? (Some people were simply unable to break from the need to draw exactly on the line and cut exactly on the line, which is why their progress was much slower).

She had a beautiful grouping of her quilts there for us to see. Here's that cover one that I said I really loved (I bought a fabric kit so I can make it myself).



More images are available on my Picasa album.

What did I think of the class? My major complaint is that there weren't enough irons for a class based on fusing, and those that were provided were absolutely crummy. The Teacher's Pet for the class was able to secure additional irons for the afternoon, but it's amazing to me that the IQF staff people didn't understand that a fusing class would require more than 2 irons for 22 people! Given that this was the first time Melinda had taught this pattern (it'll be published soon), we were the guinea pigs for it and we did find a few minor errors. Hopefully she'll be able to take that feedback and incorporate it into her published product. I think it must have been a difficult class to teach because people worked a very different paces and she attempted to allow those who work quickly to continue to move along, rather than waiting for others to catch up. But I think that led to her forgetting to point out some important details along the way because she had to repeat herself to different people at different points in time and she probably couldn't remember whom she'd told what.

Overall, it was an enjoyable day spent looking at pretty quilts and making progress toward one that I'd had on my to-do list for some time.