Reading Instructions is Important...

and advisable before you sew 160 or so half-square triangles and trim them up and then realize that the pattern designer did NOT want you to sew on each side of the diagonal line you drew on the back - you were supposed to SEW on the line!  So I have twice as many half-square triangles as I needed, and they're all the wrong size!  ARG.

And I no longer have enough of either fabric to continue work on this quilt.  This is a major bummer - I'd wanted to make some progress and can't really do anything else until I make the center pinwheels.  Here's the project - Atkinson Designs' Pearls 'n Pinwheels.

Maybe I can sneak out from the quilt show on Saturday to pick up some replacement fabric from Patched Works...  and now I've gotta figure out what to do with all of these ill-fitting blocks!

Anchor's Away!

Amidst the quilt show preparation, I found a bit of time to put this quick little project together.  It's not large (about 25"x29"), but I think it'll be perfect to hang on a nursery door, and it was nice to finish a quick project and feel like I'm getting somewhere!

Pattern is "Anchors Away" by Sandy Gervais, and the fabric is her Nautical and Nice line. I resisted this for a while, but ultimately, had to order the kit from the Fat Quarter Shop. I may be in trouble - when I just created those links, I discovered there's another pattern for a really cute sailboat quilt!!! Can I resist temptation?

Strips 'n Curves

About a year ago, at a quilt guild meeting, we were asked to write on a notecard a quilt-related "resolution" to finish a UFO (or more than one) and told to plan to finish it for a meeting at some point this year.  I decided to write down the Strips 'n Curves quilt from Louisa Smith's book of that name that I started in a class a few years back at Fabric Fusion in Brown Deer (unfortunately, no longer there). It got set aside because I needed to make some more strata and had to find some additional light batiks to do that.  Never mind that I did find some light batiks at the Chicago IQF not that long thereafter, yet I didn't pick up the quilt again!

Well... the show and tell reveal is next week, and I hadn't made much progress on my resolution by about 6 weeks ago.  I managed to get a few strata sewn in late January and then life got in the way once again.  I found some time this week to lay out the units and sew them together.  Here's the current progress:

I really do love the colors and need to decide if I want to put on a border of the orange-red batik.  Not so certain about the layout and geometric nature of the work.  It's certainly a bit of a departure from my normal work. 

I'd originally thought there was still some hope of getting this done by next Wednesday.  But now that I've got quilt show preparation duties taking up some time on both Saturday and Sunday, I'm not certain how reasonable that goal is (the top is about 45" square).  But I can still try.  Anyone have any good quilting design ideas?  Thoughts about thread colors?

Tuffets

I've squeezed in some short bits of sewing time over the past few weeks and completed the pincushions pictured here.  They're all from the Tuffets pattern by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co.  The pattern was great and I was able to make all six out of leftover charms from the Chocolat line by 3 Sisters for Moda that came out a few years back. I filled them with crushed walnuts (walnut bird litter), as recommended by the pattern and I have to admit it has a nice heft, fills the pincushions well, and wasn't as messy as I thought it might have been.

While I'm not personally much of a pincushion person (I keep all of my Iris pins in the tins they come in), these will go to the upcoming boutique for the West Suburban Quilter's Guild's show on March 19 and 20.  I'd actually be half tempted to buy (or keep) one or two of these... hopefully someone will be willing to pay $5 to take them home!

Where does the time go?

This month has been off to a pretty crazy start, which has not allowed for much sewing.  However, I'm a bit behind on the blog posting, so I figured I'd take a moment to post one of the projects I worked on a couple of weeks ago.

On the 30th, a small group of us from guild got together to work on making quilts for the guild's charity, the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin's Child Protection Center.  I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to work on, but decided to try to make something from my stash.  A fun pack of 12 fat quarters that I received back in February 2008 when I received the Fat Quarter Shop's Moda fat quarters every month caught my eye as it seemed perfect for an older girl who might receive treatment at the Child Protection Center.  Twelve fat quarters is perfect to sew up a lap sized version of Atkinson Designs' Yellow Brick Road pattern, so that made my decision for me.

The great thing is the pattern whips up quickly, so I pretty much had it done at the end of our session.  I looked briefly for a border for the quilt, but have decided to wait a few more weeks until I should be able to find yardage of Deb Strain's next line, Cherish Nature, which looks like it will be the perfect complement to this earlier line, called Daydreams.

Art Quilt Challenge

For our upcoming guild show, there's a challenge to design an original work inspired by a piece in an art museum at a size of 24x28 (+/- 2 inches).  My art quilt group visited the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum and decided that we'd choose one of Warhol's works as our inspiration.

I decided that I wanted to choose some of his work that probably isn't as well known (i.e. not his pop art).  I liked the oxidation paintings that were included in the exhibit, which Warhol created using metallic paint (which oxidized when urine was applied).  Now I have no plans to use any of the latter substance in my quilting, but I did really like the effect.

Here's an example of one of Warhol's works (Oxidation, 1978, Urine on copper metallic painted canvas):

I wasn't quite sure how to approach this type of work, but the Warhol Museum had a great resource for teachers to use in discussing these particular works of art and the science behind them.  The activity sheet suggested using Modern Masters Copper paint on a canvas and then applying a variety of acids and bases to see how they might react.  I thought this seemed like a reasonable enough place to begin, although I wasn't certain how I might quilt through fabric that had thick paint applied.

Local art supply store Artist & Display unfortunately does not keep the paint in stock and the very helpful salesman was worried that the oxidation process would not stop and that my quilted piece would simply fall apart.  He's still trying to talk to the vendor for me to see if they know of any uses of the paint on regular cotton fabric.  So I had to abandon that avenue for the time being.

One of my art quilt books had some information on gold leafing, and I discovered that Artist & Display sold copper leaf.  I purchased a packet of this and sprayed some lemon juice on it, just to see whether it would have any effect and whether any oxidation might occur.  Unfortunately, the lemon juice dried and one really could not see any effect, although if you did get up really close to the sheet of copper leaf, you could see tiny bits of color change in a few places.  But you'd never notice unless you practically studied it under a microscope.  I was also uncertain how this would look once I'd actually ironed it on to fabric - would the wonder-under or adhesive product eventually show through the copper leaf?  That couldn't possibly be appealing.

So on to another plan.  Could I get some sort of similar effect by bleaching some black fabric, recognizing that you don't know what color might be revealed in the process?  I'd not done any bleaching before, so decided to opt for Soft Scrub with Bleach and a bleach pen as two alternatives.  I wasn't certain how best to apply the bleach, but played around and in the end I don't think this process will work either. Unless I use straight bleach (diluted, of course), I don't really know how I'll get the splatter/spray/random effect I'm looking for.  I was also shocked at how long I had to leave these products on the fabric to achieve much of any effect - close to 5 hours or so, I think. Of course this fabric discharged to a ever lovely brown color.

All but the one on the right were done with Soft Scrub with Bleach; the one at right in the photo was done with the bleach pen.

 

It also occurred to me that maybe I could get a decent effect by simply dying my own fabric.  About a year ago, I purchased supplies to dye some fabric in the microwave using RIT, based on an article in Quilting Arts magazine.  So I figured, what the heck.  I ended up trying a few different color combinations and while I have some nice fabrics, they're still not quite what I was hoping for.

Here are photos of the fabric I did dye.

Color combo #1 (violets, blues, teals; the third from left is a combo of the two to its left):

Color combo #2 (green and red on either end with a combo in the middle):

Color combo #3 (orange and blue with the combo in the middle):

My art group met last week and Karen suggested that it might be worth an attempt at rusting one or more of the pieces. I think this has promise, but I need to dig up the articles I've seen on rusting to refresh my memory on the process.  And I'm not certain what I'll actually use for the oxidation process.  If I lived closer to my parents, I'm sure there would be all kinds of wonderful things I could steal from the barn.  But I don't really keep around a stash of random metal objects.  I think steel wool might work...

Hopefully all of this experimentation leads somewhere.  I'm running out of time and ideas, however.  And I don't know if I have the energy to resort to a completely different project.  I probably could do something inspired by his Pop Art works, but most others in the group are doing the same, and I'm not sure what every day item I'd want to elevate to quilt status.  Anyone have any brilliant insights into how I might achieve the effect I'm looking for?

Thistlepod Top in One Piece!

I'm very excited to have completed the piecing of Thistlepod as of Tuesday night!!  It's been a busy week and I've been rather tired, so I've just now found a few minutes to post a photo.  This turned out much better than I anticipated, which I credit to a really good pattern design. The curves went together really well, and while there are a few puckers in the curved piecing, I've not always had such an easy time, depending on the pattern.  Thank you, Judy Niemeyer!

Wasn't Ben a genius in his method for hanging the quilt top for the photo?  He mounted two quilt hangers on either end of a 2x4 and then just held the board in the middle, which was much easier than trying to hold just the top itself (and not having the wingspan)!

I've got backing fabric but need to wash and piece it before it's off to be quilted.  And there's quite a bit of extra fabric from the top; in some cases, a rather ridiculous amount.  They are beautiful fabrics, so I'm not all that upset, I suppose.  I'm thinking an complementary table runner would be nice, it's just a question of finding the right pattern (unfortunately, I have no extra foundations from this project, as they were all preprinted).