TWIST

This week I'm sharing another quilt out of the past (my past) with you.  I made this several years ago, using a technique taught by Ricky Tims called Rhapsody Quilts.  It's really a very simple concept, starting with a square sheet of paper folded in eighths like you would make a paper snowflake.  A "skeleton" of piecing is created, and then applique is added.  Actually the applique is stitched before the piecing, so the quilt is not so cumbersome.

Twist incorporates some applique motifs adapted from Owen Jones' The Grammar of Ornament, and some from Lora Irish's Great Book of Celtic Patterns.

And of course lots of quilting was added.  The binding has a flat piping inserted in the seam to give the edge an elegant look.

Fresh Snow

 No, it's not snowing in August!  I just thought this might be the time to "cool off" a little with a remembrance of what we complained about last winter. 
Fresh snow came about as the result of a year-long challenge on the Quilting Arts Forum several years ago.  I don't even remember the rules of the challenge now, but whatever it was, I used a photo I took of a scene I see on my daily walk.  There was fresh snow overnight, and just a couple of vehicles had passed by on the gravel road, leaving a muddy track.
The quilt is 41" x 58" and is freezer paper pieced, a technique I have been using for about 25 years. It has appeared in numerous shows, and has won several awards.

If you are interested in learning my  method of freezer paper piecing, contact me.  I'm willing to travel to guilds.

Heartsong

This week Friday crept up on me before I knew it!  So, for your viewing pleasure is a quilt I made a few years back.  I hope you enjoy it.

After attending a Ricky Tims seminar, where he explained how to design Rhapsody quilts, I went home and tried one.  When I opened up the paper after mirror imaging my sketch, I noticed the heart motif.  Over the next few months, I played with the design, adding the ribbons and the angel trumpet flowers.  To me, this quilt is a song of praise to God, with the hearts representing both His love to me, and mine to Him, and proclaimed by the angel’s trumpets. Bobbin trapunto with Razzle Dazzle thread and the addition of a few crystals add more sparkle to the quilt.

Lizzie is Sick and a Quilt Called Yellow

Lizzie is sick!  So sick I had to send her to the hospital.  She has been to the doctor twice in the last month for malfunctions, with brief interludes of healthy activity in between bouts of orneriness. 
So now she is off to the Lizzie Hospital in Utah for further examination.  That means about 3 weeks of quilting withdrawal for me, but maybe I'll get my house cleaned and my yard spiffed up, who knows? 
So here's a quilt I made a while back.  I named it "Yellow"  because that's what it is.  I adapted a design from Owen Jones' The Grammar of Ornament for the center, and added some of my own for the borders. 

It is fused, machine appliqued, triangle border is pieced, as is the background.  Flat piping in the binding to add a bit of zing (as if the quilt needed it).
See you next week!

Maple Leaf Quilt--Such Wonderful Fabrics

I don't know where this woman gets her fabrics, but I have never seen such a variety of wonderful and unusual fabrics in a quilt.  She left the choice of quilting designs up to me, her only specification being that the leaf needed some quilting in it.  I just did some wonky "veins" in the leaves, but all the background quilting in some way reflects the pattern in the fabric.
     The quilt was fun to do, in spite of the fact that first of all, I ran out of thread halfway through (misjudged how much there was on the cone) and had to wait for more to be ordered.  Then a week and a half later, when I got going on it again, I got down to the last row of blocks, and my machine malfunctioned.  So a 120 mile trip to the fix-it shop, and I had to leave it there for a week.  Meanwhile, I wanted to get the quilt finished, so I quilted the last row on my Janome.
     By the way, I called the repairman yesterday, and he said other than when I first brought the machine in, it has not malfunctioned after many many times of trying.  So no repairs, but he kindly did not charge me for shop time, either.  I still have to get someone to help me get it out of my van and back to work, so we'll see what happens then.  More quilts are waiting.

 Forty-two blocks, all different.  Only a couple of repeat fabrics in the backgrounds.

I had hoped the quilting would show up more in the backgrounds, but at least you get to see the wonderful variety of fabrics.  If you click on the picture, it will bring up a larger view, in which the quilting does show up a little better.

I'm hoping the saying, "Trouble comes in threes" means that things will go smoothly for a while.  Not only did the quilting machine malfunction, but the lawn mower decided to get finicky, too, and on the way home from picking up the machine, I picked up something in a tire, and had to buy a new tire.  So even though they did not charge me for machine repairs, it was an expensive trip.
Do you ever have days (weeks) like that?

Inspiration from the Garden

Since I spent part of the morning weeding the vegetable garden, I thought I would talk about vegetable quilts today.  AND the quilts don't have any weeds in them!  It seems like the weeds have been growing double-time this week.  I even pulled some radishes today.  I only planted them a couple of weeks ago.  They're really mild flavored, since they grew so fast and had plenty of moisture.
 OK, so much for the garden, and on to the quilts.
A while back, I was meeting with a small group of artists (mostly the painter types) at a person's home.  For this particular meeting, he made a trip ahead of time to the produce market and purchased several different kinds of fresh vegetables.  Then he set them up in still life arrangements and we were instructed to paint them.  I don't paint, so I sketched and took photos and came home and made small quilts featuring the vegetables.  They're roughly placemat size, but are not placemats, but wall hangings.

Cabbage and Celery

Eggplant and Onions

Swiss Chard

Tomatoes and Squash

One other time, I saw a too-far-gone tulip in a vase, and was amazed at the design in the center, which was much more visible with the petals fully open.  So I interpreted that in this little wall hanging called Full Blown Tulip.

Does your garden inspire your quilts?

Run Rabbit Run

Another busy week, so I'm sharing a customer's quilt for today's blog.  It's based on a poem, apparently an old one, which I never heard before:
Run rabbit run
Run rabbit run
Here comes the farmer
with his gun gun gun.

I call this kind of quilt "stone soup" and actually have a class which I teach, called Stone Soup Quilts.  It's a random sampler, taking the blocks you wish to use, and arranging them in a pleasing format, and adding other components, strips, squares, whatever it takes to make everything fit.  A very fun type of quilt to make.

This rabbit block on the corner shows a fabric that is used throughout the quilt, interspersed with pieced blocks of all kinds.
It's hard to see, but the borders are quilted with overlapping half circles, forming what looks like arches.

An appliqued rabbit, showing part of the poem.  I love quilting this type of quilt, making up the quilting design to fit each block.  It can be intimidating at first, but once the decision is made, it's fun and definitely not boring repetitiveness.

A Dutchman's Puzzle block.  Her color selections are so lovely.  She says she's using up her stash, quilting UFO's.  Sure wish I had a stash like hers!

Here's a little flower motif I designed.  It's a bit hard to see here, but one that can be used in a block, or chained together for borders.
I hope you like the rabbit quilt.  I'm pleased with the way it turned out, and hope she is too.