making, learning, teaching and sharing a crafty life
Look at how awesome all the Amish Bars Quilts turned out! Everyone in the class got to the point where they had attached their binding to the front and were starting to work on hand stitching it to the back side. Yay! What a fun way to spend the week.
I’ll be finishing up my binding, adding a hand embroidered label and maybe doing a tiny bit more quilting before posting a final photo of my quilt.
We made lots of progress on Day 3 with our Amish Bars. We spent the day happily machine quilting. The excitement of the day was watching a tv film crew shooting a chase scene (stunt doubles included) right out front of the workroom, over and over again. For about 5 hours.
All the Amish Bars quilt tops were finished in the early part of day two. How wonderful to make such a simple quilt top. We spent the rest of the class working together to layer and baste each of the seven quilts. The great thing about group basting is that with all that practice, you get really good at the process.
With all our quilts ready to go, we attached walking feet to the sewing machines and started to machine quilt. Many of us got some preliminary ’stitch in the ditch’ quilting done. Today we’ll look at doing some additional quilting and cut out our binding fabric. I think this quilt will actually be finished tomorrow!
ALSO – the new Liberty of London fabric arrived!
This week is the Amish Bars Quilt day camp. Since I get to be a student in this day camp, I thought I’d document each day.
I changed up the fabric selections that I had posted a few weeks ago. I finally decided who the quilt was for and that helped to finalize it. Some friends recently had their second baby boy down in Austin, Texas. I’ve chosen to make them this quilt in an aqua blue/brown/cream palette.
We put together our quilt tops today. I can’t wait to show you all the wonderful fabric choices that everyone made. Tomorrow we’ll be getting the quilt back ready and basting the top, batting and backing fabric together. The goal is completed quilts for Friday!
Back in 2002, I got to see The Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York. Those historical quilts made quite a stir at the time. I remember walking through the exhibit marveling at the colour, the re-purposed fabrics and perfect simplicity of the composition. Little did I know that this show would help push me towards the creation of the workroom several years later.
A few days ago, I traveled down to London, Ontario to see an exhibit of more contemporary quilts from Gee’s Bend and to participate in a workshop with some of the women of Gee’s Bend. Jacqueline of Soak organized a small group of ladies for this road trip, all I had to do was get up at the crack of dawn.
We spent the morning walking through the show. Though the exhibit seemed small at first glance, it is huge on substance. These quilts were all made within the last four years by various women from the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective and they are wonderful. I was so incredibly inspired by many of the pieces in the show.
After lunch at a local market, we joined a workshop led by four women from Gee’s Bend. Using scrap clothing, some solids and a couple prints, they led us through their techniques to create a couple blocks sewn by hand. The true highlight of the day was spending time with these lovely ladies from Alabama. Their sweet, enthusiastic and warm dispositions had us grinning and laughing, while we tried to soak up their teachings and their southern twang. The day ended with hugs and a class photo. Perfect.
I posted all my photos from the day here.
I’ve been thinking about my fabric choices for the upcoming Amish Bars quilt camp. It should be easier to pick, since I really only need two fabric choices, but I can’t decide. I thought it would be fun to mock up some options and see what this quilt could look like. These were done rather crudely in Photoshop, but it helps to get a visual. Sometimes with quilts it’s hard to imagine how all those fabrics will look together. I still haven’t quite settled on a combination, but luckily I have a couple more weeks to play around with it and get it just right. I love the graphic simplicity of this design so much.
Fabric selections : 1. Karyn (Blue Geo Print with Cream Text) 2. Jerisse (Black Dressmaker’s Form with Mauve Bramble & Vintage Lady Illustrations) 3. Rosalyn (Nectarine Mini Check with French General Plaid) 4. Debbie (Ash Grey Fusions with Aqua French General)
For one person out there, this post will present a little surprise. I made this patchwork picnic blanket as a gift for my friend Marie Beath. Surprise!! MB loves to picnic and is most deserving of a special blanket for which to do this on. Also, perhaps it would be good for outdoor re-readings of Harry Potter or Twilight novels?
The inspiration for the colours of this blanket came from some amazing ‘ribbon’/shoestring from Mokuba with all lovely shades of purple and grey. In fact, I bought three different colour ways of this awesome stuff and plan to make two more picnic blankets for two other girlfriends. This is a seriously fun gift to make.
The pattern was designed by Reva and features handy built-in pockets, along the ties to roll it all up for transport. I used a sturdy coloured canvas for the backing. In the class, we finish the blanket with embroidery floss ties to hold the two layers together. I opted to go the extra mile and ‘quilted’ on either side of all of the seams. (with variegated thread, of course!)
Lastly, my newly standard label. A tiny bit of patchwork attached to a hand embroidered label. I think I’ve actually turned making the label into a fun activity!
MB – let’s get together soon for a picnic and I’ll bring your blanket!
I had technically finished my buzz saw quilt a little while ago, but had dilly-dallied in completing a label for it. In the few quilts that I have completed, I’ve made sure to carefully label them. (you know, for quilt historians 100 years from now)
This ‘ode to green’ quilt is absolutely perfect for our couch. It worked out to be just the right length. For the backing, I used a large swath of Denyse Schmidt’s wallflower in piney woods green. I just love this vintage-y print! I also used scraps from the front to create the stripe down the side. To echo the buzz saw points on the front, I cut the scraps on an angle. I machine quilted it with two different Valdani variegated threads and echoed the buzz saw pattern about a half inch around the inside and then the outside. I really like the effect this gives.
The binding is also made from scraps from the quilt. I find this most satisfying when I get to the end to use up leftover bits to make the binding.
For the quilt label, I hand embroidered using the dark variegated thread I used to machine quilt. To make the label a bit more interesting, I did a teeny tiny bit of patchwork and attached it to the end. Cute! I think I will always do this for future labels.
Yay! I can finally cross something else off my finishing list. Which is perfect timing because tonight I’m starting to make the Cog & Wheel quilt!
I’ve been so curious about cathedral windows since I first heard of them from Jill. It seemed like a very complicated fabric origami process that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. In situations like these, it’s best to call in an expert. Lucky for us, Johanna is not only a quilting whiz, but she also has an uncanny knack for cracking open complicated patchwork and devising a clever and simplified solution. (see – English Paper Piecing & Double Wedding Ring Quilt)
At the first Cathedral Windows class, an eager group of quilters gathered round the table to learn Johanna’s wonderful new method for this sculptural patchwork. It does not disappoint. This method is quick, easy and saves loads of fabric too. I wanted to make a cathedral windows pillow to go with the new quilt I’m working on. The quilt will have lots of greys and purples. I chose to use the Moda Crossweaves as my background fabric. It has more texture than a plain solid and I love the soft feel of it. I had a really hard time choosing my ‘feature fabrics’ to go in the middle of the windows. I wanted to make them all different, but in the end went with some Liberty of London scraps from a coat I made a few years ago and a plum tonal print. I left the squares in the outer perimeter without feature fabrics and I really like the way that looks.
For my next cathedral windows project, I’d like to add some to a piece of clothing!
I have to warn you that what I’m about to tell you about is a bit addictive and you may find yourself hours from now completely obsessed. At least that’s what happened to me when Debbie told me about the V&A Patchwork Pattern Maker. In conjunction with the current quilt exhibit, The Victoria & Albert Museum has an amazing online tool on their website that allows you to upload an image and it will turn it into your own personal quilt pattern. You get to choose how many colours you’d like your pattern to have (up to 20) and the level of difficulty (larger squares = easy, small squares + triangles = expert). The pattern maker creates a complete pattern for you that you can download and use to create your custom quilt.
The day I found out about this, I spent about four hours searching through my photos and trying out quilt patterns for everything. So fun and so addictive! Since you get to work on the quilt project of your choice for our new Quilt Clinic class, I’m going to try doing the triangular quilt pattern (last photo). The original image was of a paper collage by Carl Kleiner. Most of the people taking the class are working on getting help finishing a current quilt project, but I can’t resist the opportunity to start a new quilt and get some help with that. I know Johanna will have some good advice on how to best organize this project and get it done with the least amount of fuss. I have the crazy notion that this is going to be a queen sized quilt for my bed. I think the expert supervision will come in quite handy.
p.s. I want to apologize right now, if you don’t get much work done today because of this.
