The Art of Quilt Making, by the Pelham Quilters at DMA Gallery

I can't believe this is still sitting in draft.  This show was in April.  My sincere apologies, but this has been a crazy year.  I lost my mother in May.  She was 87 and lived a good life, but she was suffering and it wa very hard to see her in such pain.  She is finally at rest and reunited with her true loves, God and my father... The best husband in the world according to her :-).

Once I got myself out of my slump, it was time to focus on my daughter's wedding and her wedding quilt.  She was married on August 31st and was a lovely bride.  But that is for another post.  

So this is a show that 5 women in my local guild, Pelham Quilters, had in a local gallery, DMA Gallery.  Unfortunately the gallery closed shortly after the exhibit closed, but for us it was extremely successful. 

Opening night was packed and then the gallery held a book signing (first two pictures below) for two local authors, that also brought folks in to see our work.   

This is "Umoja, Goddess of the Sea" by Donna Chambers. 

Here is a local artist viewing one of my pieces, "In the spotlight". 

Donna is discussing her artistic process in the making of "Fashionista". 

The curator, Lynnette, welcoming everyone during the opening reception.  You can see my kimono inspired piece "Pathways" hanging in the window, and a part of one of my woven pieces, "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy" on the easel.   My piece "Sista Chat" is hanging on the front of the pedestal from which Lynnette is speaking.  

The next three pieces were made by guild member, MaryAnn Ciccotelli.  

Here I am, thanking everyone for coming and sharing some back ground on Pelham Quilters, and the five exhibiting quilters.

These three pieces are by guild member, Sandra Parrott.

This is my most recent piece, "Which Path would You Take".  I was very pleased that it sold during the opening reception.

Here's Sandra, in front of one of her small pieces, "Tumbling Blocks".  

To the left you can see a corner of MaryAnn's quilt and on the right is my parrott piece, "Jungle Paradise".  

This is another of Sandra Parrott's work.  She does wonderful small art quilt pieces.  

I know it is late, but I hope you enjoyed seeing our show.  I will have a solo exhibit in January 2015 at Etui Fiber Arts in Larchmont, NY.  

Deadlines are good...

So I guess I just needed a deadline to kick me in the pants and get me going!  I have made good progress on this piece.  I am loving the feathers.  One more setting triangle to go. 

Still need to figure out what to do in the checkerboard border.  But if I can get the last triangle and the outer border done tomorrow night after work, then Friday I can do the checkerboard border and block it.  Leaving Saturday to square it up and do the binding and Sunday morning to wrap it!!!

This is the first time I have quilted a whole top using the Quilter's Dream Wool. In the past I only played on practice pieces.  I love the texture it is giving the quilting.  The compass really looks trapunto'd once I outline it and stitched in the ditch of the top and middle layers of the folded compass.  The circle geese have the same effect, as I outlined them as well.

But my question for the night is....  has anyone blocked a piece that has wool batting?  Does it shrink a lot?  Anything I should be aware of?

Appreciate the input.

Night all!!!

It's been a long time coming...

Sandra from India posted a comment on my blog last week, asking me why I stopped blogging.  To be honest, I hadn't planned to stop posting.  It is just that I really only blog about my quilting.  Not the other myriad of things that go on in my life.  Unless that is, they relate somehow to quilting :-).

Well for the last 2 months, I have done very little quilting of my own.  My son graduated college... WooHoo...  we went on a family vacation early this year as I now have two 'working, supporting society' children.  My son started work on July 2nd :-).  Then 3 days after we returned from vaca, I spent two weeks in Mexico, Argentina and Chile for work.  It was all fantastic, but that meant in the month between Mary 25th and June 24th, I was home for a total of 7 days.  No quilting then.

Once I returned, I had to get back to the quilt I am quilting for a friend of a friend, who brought it on Etsy to give as a wedding present.  It is huge and it is a traditional double wedding ring that he wants quilted traditionally, so you know it is taking me a long time...  :-(.  So of course, I can't post progress pictures of someone else's quilt until it is in their hands.

So that brings me to this weekend, when I realized I will be having dinner at my best friends house (we have known each other for 39 yrs ...  yikes) on her birthday.  Neither of us picked the date.  It was picked by another women, she wants me to meet.  But in this revelation, I realized that the quilt I started for her almost two years ago, could really be finished for her birthday if I focused.  So today, a good friend (Thanks Teri Lucas !!) dropped me off a piece of wool batting and tonight I basted it and got all the in the ditch work done, as well as the free motion quilting in the center Mariner's Compass square.

You may remember this quilt, as I made the center compass in a class taught by Mary Anne Ciccotelli, using her 3D, folded fabric technique.  I then used the folded flying geese around the center medallion and then again for the outer boarder.  You can find more info about the top here, here and here.  Told you it's been a long time coming :-)...

But for now, here is the quiling progress for tonight.

I like my corners.  I can't believe I did them without a single marking.  I started to mark at least the straight line from the corner to the tip of the flying geese and decided against it. :-).  The photo's are a little blurry (or I am soo tired, they look blurry to me).  But either way I will try to take better pictures tomorrow and share it with you.

Night!

Country Quilter Fall Escape 2010 - Friday Night Fun

Hey everyone, so last weekend was my bi-annual trip to the quilt retreat sponsored by The Country Quilter.  While we were down in numbers this year due to the Jewish holidays and a few quilters who were sick, fun was still had by all those present.

I know, I know, I usually post pics of everyone from the weekend, but this time is different.  Yes, I remembered my camera, but I had forgot to charge the battery.  So my apologies....  no photo album of all the busy quilters and their fabulous work.  Instead, I came home and took a picture of the piece I made Friday night, during my normal Friday Night Fun.  For those of you who haven't seen the results of my Friday night pieces, my goal on Friday night is to make something fun and quick to get the juices flowing for the weekend.  I don't have a pattern, sometimes an idea, and yet other times I just cut fabric and go. 

This weekend, I had a sketch on my sketchpad and inspiration from a piece Ricky Tims had done earlier in the week.  Here is the result of my night of fun:

As you can see, she is dancing away, just enjoying the music in her head.  Hence the name "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy".  Here are a couple more pics.  One of the quilting in the center sparkling lime green background and the other a shot of the back.

It was fun to make. I once again, I did free form feathers in the boarders.  No marking, just let the machine guide me.  Both boarders were cut freehand, no rulers.

From the first pic, you can probably tell that only the bottom is finished.  I am 'facing' this piece, instead of binding it.  The bottom edge is faced, but not the other three sides. 

Still have to finish the facing...  but otherwise it is done.

I will post a pic of the other piece I worked on tomorrow.  It is another baby quilt, totally designed by me, including the appliqued drums.

Hope you enjoy it. 

A first for me....

I had been asked by one of my good friends to machine quilt a piece for her.  This friend is primarily a hand quilter, although she will stitch in the ditch from time to time on a small wallhanging.   She knows that I had been toying with the idea of quilting for others and as life has added a few years, as it tends to do, hand quilting just isn't as enjoyable for her as it used to be.  Especially when the piece measures 92" x 81"...  hey not small by my standards either :-).

Anyway, I finally said yes.  I reminded her that most of my quilting lately has been small tight decorative quilting, not the type of quilting I would do on a bed size quilt...  but that if she let me do what I thought I could do, I would give it a try.  I figured it would be a win/win for us both.  I would see, if I enjoyed quilting for someone else and all the mind games that come with that and she would have her piece done.  I told her I wouldn't charge her, as I didn't know what it would look like in the end.  Fair enough....  right?

Well I quilted it and when I called to let her know it was done and that I would bring it by the next day, she said 'Ok, how much do I owe you?'.  I reminded her of our conversation and she said...  "Oh no, I wanted you to see that you could do this, so don't bring it over unless you have figured out how to charge for your work.'  Well what do you know, I had been duped!  She had been telling me for quite some time, that I should make some money off of my quilting, and now she got me.  So thanks to some quilty friends on Facebook, I put it out there and they help me figure out a fair price, given all the facts above.  First quilt, not perfect, etc....

I delivered it the next day and she was thrilled...  she loved my feathers and said the person it was going to would love it as well :-).  So here it is....  my first commissioned quilting job, if that is what you call it...

Since it is a busy quilt, with lots of pattern in the fabric on the front.  I did a loose swirly all over pattern in the center, using a green cotton Aurifil 50 weight thread on the top and Superior Bottom-Line, almost white thread on the plain white backing. 

The quilting shows much better on the back.

As you can see I did free motion feathers in the boarder.  This is the first time using the 'hump' method and they were real easy.  I just marked the boarders with a curvy line to serve as a guideline for the spine and went from there...  even wrapping the feathers around the corners.  I was so happy when I had gone around both sides that the beginning and end came together so easily....  whew! 


I was pleasantly surprised in the end to see that the feathers did indeed show up on the front, almost as well as the white on white on the back.  I had expected that they would really disappear as the thread color was so close to the fabric color.  My friend really loved the feathers, she said they looked very graceful....  Whoo Hoo!!!

As I left her house, she said she would have more for me soon.  OMG...  am I really going to do this?  Yeah, I think so, but only for friends at this point.  I have not the time or inclination to do it as a real business just yet.  Don't think I am 1) good enough, or 2) ready for the pressure of, will they like it.  At least my friends know what I can and can't do and are able to make an informed decision when they ask me to quilt something for them.

So, as I said, another first for me...

Thanks to my Bernina 830...  I wouldn't have been able to do it without her :-).

Playing with Aurifil... first time fpr pebbles

I just finished two major projects and haven't had a time to just sit and play at the machine for awhile.  So I did so last night.  Boy was it fun!

I decided to cut a piece of fabric and play with my free motion machine quilting.  I have a couple of designs I use over and over again.  But working on Raven's piece (yes I know I owe you guys a finished picture..  just need the right light.) I decided I needed to add to the designs that I do without thought.  I also decided that I needed to play with the Auriifil Thread I have, as I have really only used the 40wt cotton.

So this is what I came up with....

I love the little leaves in the center.  This was one of the designs I picked up from 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting.  I thought it was pretty.  DH loved the spins in each of the leaves.  Not sure mine really look like hers, but I like them anyway.  I love the way they swirl, so decided to add the circular design around the leaves.  Isn't it interesting how this makes a nice little center design for a circular piece.  I will definitely need to remember this the next time I work on a circular project.  Next I decided to play with free form feathers around the circle.  I have a hard time doing feathers with a spine first, then adding the feathers.  I can always make the right side look great, but can never match the look on the left.  If I start on the left, the feathers on the right are ok, but they don't match the look on the left.  So I practiced making feathers without a spine.  Wow!  what difference it made for me.  My free form feathers took on a totally different look and feel.  It gave me the freedom to turn them any way I wanted and my feathers looked more natural as I wasn't always trying to hit the spine at the right angle :-). 

As I got closer to the edge of the piece of fabric, I decided to try my hand a pebbles.  I always like the tight look and feel they have and the added dimension they give the feathers...  contrasting the big and free feathers with the small and tight circle of the pebbles.  Take a look... 

I really like the way the pebbles frame the other quilting.  Having never played with the pebble design before, I experimented with making them all the same size and then mixing the size.  I also had to stop doing them all in a line and change up on how I circled back over the stitching line to move in a different direction.  I didn't like leaving a gap, so I had to figure out a way to ease smaller pebbles in between larger existing ones.  Fun...  I think I will start adding pebbles into my work, but will have to be careful to make sure I have even quilting across the top, so it doesn't warp the piece.

Now onto the thread.  I used Aurifil 50 wt with a Topstitch 90/14 needle.  On my Bernina 830, I dropped my tension to 1.5, which is typical for what I use with other threads.  To be honest, I wanted to use up bobbins, so there is a mix of bobbin threads.  Well to my surprise, I had NO tension problems.  I ended up using three different bobbins, with three different threads and each stitched as nicely as the last. I have never been able to do this with any other brand of thread....  NEVER!   Oh yeah, these was also almost NO LINT in the bobbin area.  Wow...  what a shock.  I usually have to clean out the lint in the bobbin area after an hour of quilting.  Not with Aurifil :-) 

I did not use the BSR functionality, I just used my round open toe applique foot and had at it!

Here comes one of my 'inquiring minds' questions....  How many people use Aurifil thread?  Do you like it?  What weight do you find works best for free motion quilting?  Do you find one needle size or type works better than the other?  Do you use the same thread in the bobbin?

Let me know.....

Fill the Space Freeform Feathers

I haven't quilted in a while. First my studio doesn't have A/C, second work has been crazy and lastly, my son had surgery. So, I have also been playing nurse. But tonight, he wanted to watch the pre-season football game on the big screen TV, so that meant helping him into the basement. So of course, I stayed down and sewed.

First, I played with my experimental piece. I added some small stars in lime green. Again, no applique, just satin stitching to create 'thread applique'. They looked nice and added a real punch. The only problem is the piece hasn't said it is finished yet, so I will hang it up for another day or two and see if it say's it is done. I still haven't figured out how to get the waves out of it, before quilting. I am hoping some of the 'easing' techniques I have read about on the APQS blog will help me out.

Next, I took out a quilt sandwich and played with my free form - fill the space feathers. I watched a video on YouTube this week and it looked sooooo easy, so I thought why not? Well, of course, it wasn't as easy as it looked@!@!@!.I have to practice making the feathers uniform throughout the piece and a little more curvey. The only thing is if it is freeform.... how do you make it uniform? I guess that is why they call it practice!@!@!@!

Well, that is it. Have a good weekend and I will talk to you next week.