Quilt Show Pics, Continued

Here are more pictures from last weekend’s show.

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More Quilt Show Pics

More pictures from this past weekend’s guild quilt show.

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Quilt Show Photos – 1

Our local quilt guild, the Meherrin Piecemakers, had it’s annual quilt show this past weekend.  It’s always held at Village View, an historic house which is beautifully furnished and restored. It was great fun to look at all the quilts and to sit upstairs with the breeze blowing through between the two second story porches while demonstrating spinning, quilting, and knitting.  We had a wonderful time.

I’ll be posting some of the pictures I took over the next few days.

We created a guild quilt that is being raffled to raise funds for the development of the local Civic Center.  I think it turned out beautiful.  Someone is going to be really fortunate to win it.  Guild members made a block each, then it was sashed together and machine quilted.

Guild members also made baby quilts to be given away to the Jackson-Feild Home for teen girls.  Here are some of them.

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Chili Pepper Hot Pads

Here are the hot pads I made for the quilt show sale table.

The base fabric with chili peppers was purchased in Taos.  The log cabin fabrics are from my stash of hand-dyed fabrics.  Color run dying works great for log cabins.

Yesterday I posted a tutorial on how to make Log Cabin hot pads.

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Log Cabin Hot Pad

I wanted to whip up some quick hot pads for our local quilt show sale that starts tomorrow, so I pulled out some Christmas fabric to make a prototype before using the hand-dyed fabric I set aside for this project.

I wanted to make a hot pad similar to one that a friend made for me a few years ago:

While I was at it, I decided to make up a tutorial.

First, cut a 10″ square of backing fabric.

Then cut two squares of good quality cotton batting (leftover from another project).  I wanted the hotpad to have a nice weight.  If you have it (I don’t), you could add some special insulating fabric, but I don’t think it’s necessary with good batting.  Cotton is definitely better than polyester, though.

The batting is placed on top of the base square with the right side of facing down.

Next cut a 1-1/2″ center square.  In this case I was able to center a Christmas wreath right in the middle.

Then cut 1-1/2″ strips of six other fabrics — three green, and three red, graduating light to dark in value.

Now the fun begins.  Center the little square in the middle of the batting (with base fabric on the bottom).  That makes for about 4-1/4″ on each side.  Pin in place.

With the lightest of the green fabrics lay a strip down on the square and cut it to match exactly.

Lay the second square on top, right sides together and stitch with a scant 1/4″ seam.  On my prototype I stitched from end to end, but discovered that it makes for a nicer look on the back if you begin 1/4″ in and stop stitching 1/4″ before the end of the seam.  Be sure to anchor with backstitching or tiny stitches at beginning and ends of seams.  Trim threads. Finger press open.

Using the same fabric, lay the strip this time on the two squares and cut to that size.  Stitch.  I found it was much easier to cut the strips correctly to size if you cut before stitching.  Fold the strip back on itself evenly and finger press to get a fold, and cut on that line.  Then stitch.

Next, using the lightest of the red strips, cut to size, stitch. Repeat for the next row.

Alternate two strips of each color back and forth until you have completed the Log Cabin.

Did I mention how much better this works if you have a walking foot on your machine?  Mine worked great, but it can be done without it if you don’t have one.  You just have to use care to make sure the fabric feeds evenly.

Once the Log Cabin is completed, trim the batting to 1/4″ all around.

Fold in and finger press two parallel sides of the backing leaving about 1/8″ space between edge of fabric and edge of batting.  Fold over on top of Log Cabin.  Pin in place with about 3 pins.

Stitch with a decorative stitch or zig zag.  I used an applique (or blanket) stitch.

Fold in the other sides like the first two, but before turning and pinning, turn in the corners so you won’t have any fraying edges sticking out at the ends.  Stitch in place.

Voila!  It’s finished.  ’About 30 minutes start to finish, not counting digging the fabric out of the stash.

I didn’t add any kind of loop because I don’t hang my hot pads, but I think it would be easy to add one if you want.

After the prototype I stitched 6 Hot Chile Pepper Hot Pads using a chile pepper print for the base and 7 of my hand-dyed fabrics.  I’ll show the finished hot pads on tomorrow’s blog.

I’ll be at the show tomorrow demonstrating hand spinning yarn while people browse the quilts.

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Jelly Roll Baby Quilt

I have finally finished the first of the two “Jelly Roll” baby quilts I’ve been working on.  Not being very practiced at machine quilting, I kept putting it off.  But the deadline for at least one finished baby quilt was looming, so I took a deep breath and sat down at my machine on Saturday and did some simple straight line quilting.  It is definitely nice to have a walking foot.  I also discovered a quilt-look stitch on my machine but didn’t have the right thread to make it look exactly as it should, but it’s fine.

Once quilted it sat for several days while I tried to find the binding strips I set aside when I cut the backing.  Do you think I could find them?  NO!  I’ve looked everywhere.  I can only imagine that I must have somehow accidentally thrown them away.  But I also imagine they’ll turn up AFTER both quilts are finished.

So, I had to figure out what to use for binding.  I had lots of end pieces of Jelly Roll strips left over from the tops so I decided to piece them together.  I had EXACTLY enough to make binding for one quilt.  By exactly, I mean there was only enough at each end to turn under for finishing.  But I think it made a cuter binding than the plain peach fabric would have.  The quilt is now finished and I like the way it turned out.  The pattern is Pandora’s Box from Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott.

This one will be displayed in our local quilt guild show this weekend, then sent off to the Jackson Feild Home, a residence facility/school for girls that also has a program for teenage moms.  They are our charity quilt recipients for this year.  Each member of the guild was asked to make at least one baby quilt for the project, so there will be several.

I’m saving the other top I made with this jelly roll to quilt after I’ve been through a machine quilting workshop our quilt guild is having in October.  I’d like to be able to do free motion quilting on it.  I’ll have to figure out something different for the binding, though.  Unless those wayward strips turn up.

Now on to some hotpads for the quilt show sale!

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Stuff

I’ve worked some on my Jelly Roll baby quilt and completed all of the blocks.  It turns out there are enough blocks to make two baby quilts.  I sort of thought that would happen.  I spent some time laying them out in what I hope will be a good arrangement, and got one set all pieced together.

I bought peach colored fabric for borders and backing, but I’m not sure how it will look.  It was tough to figure out what would go with the fabrics in the roll until it was undone.  I’ll try the first quilt with the peach, see how I like it and whether I have enough for the second quilt before I decide whether to do that one the same.  I think I’ll be doing simply straight line and diagonal quilting on this, since I want to machine quilt it, but don’t feel confident yet with free motion quilting.  Straight line should work well with this design.

John and I visited the Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park in Scotland Neck, NC today.  Pretty interesting place.  I couldn’t get many good pictures because it was around noon and a lot of the birds/ducks were asleep, or were behind fences or cages.  But we saw some really beautiful birds and ducks, anyway. 

I had a great conversation with a beautiful toucan who tried to lure me into sticking my finger into his cage.  He got upset when I walked away, and when I went back he entertained me by showing me his beautiful beak and eyes up close and demonstrating how he could pick up bits of fruit and toss them down his throat.  Sadly, I couldn’t get a good picture with the cage in the middle.

I did get this picture of a Hawaiian Goose — I really like the coloring and design on this creature’s feathers as you look down on them.

And this guy looked so wise.  I don’t recall what kind of bird he is. I don’t even know if it was a guy, but anyway.

And finally, a couple of plant pics:  Caladium and Bougainvillea, one of my favorite flowers.

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JellyRoll Quilt Start

I’ve finally made a start on my JellyRoll quilt.  I’m using a Moda JellyRoll and a pattern from Jelly roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott called “Pandora’s Box.” 

The plan was to make it as a baby quilt for a charity project my quilt guild is doing.  But I’m going to have to wait and see how it looks when finished.  The JellyRoll concept is pretty cool, but the problem is that you can’t really tell what the fabrics look like until you unroll them.

These are not really “baby-looking” prints, but it could still work out OK for a baby quilt.

 

It’s nice to have the basic strips already cut for sewing together.  

It makes for quick work to put together 4-patch blocks that are then bordered with the remaining strips.  The hardest part is figuring out which border strips to use with which blocks.  They could be done totally randomly, but I want to make sure that I distribute the colors and print sizes well.  

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Gouache Mandala 1 – First Color

One of my D.Min. colleagues did a project with a mandala he designed and then painted with gouache paint.  It’s really nice, and it inspired me to sit down and do some playing around with mandalas myself.  I’ve always used them for quilt designs before.  Here’s one I made up several years ago.  It’s somewhere between 50 and 60 inches in diameter.

The mandala I drew Saturday night is only 6 inches in diameter.  That’s a huge difference.  But then the medium is different, too.  What you can do with fabric is TOTALLY different from what you can do with paint.  But, the interesting thing is that they are equally intricate.

Using the gouache I’ve laid in the first color which is a very lovely primary blue.  I’m going to be using a palette of hues between yellow and blue on the color wheel.  And there will probably be a touch of red, as well.  Here’s the first layer:

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February Quilting UFO

I have never been a good multi-tasker, and that especially applies to working on projects.  I like to start a project and work on it until it’s finished.  That means letting everything else go.

Obviously, that doesn’t work very well in my life, so I am trying to “retrain” myself by giving myself small tasks on projects that can be accomplished in short bursts.  I’m also trying really hard to keep my sewing room organized so I can work on more than one project at a time.

This week, the short burst strategy has worked well as I’ve taken a few minutes every day to work on the quilting UFO I have designated for this month from my local quilters’ guild.  I explained a couple of days ago that we were to list and number all of our UFOs and then work on the one with the number that was drawn for the month.

For me, that was a Churn Dash Table Runner that I bought as a kit a couple years ago.

I have managed to complete the top in short bursts of cutting and sewing.  Now it’s a matter of quilting it, which I’d like to do by machine. However, that will be a crunch point because I’m still not confident with machine quilting and I have to remind myself that one of the reasons I bought this kit was so that I could practice machine quilting.

I have to fight the urge to quilt it by hand, which would mean it would take a lot longer to finish.  But only if I don’t get up the nerve to start the machine quilting.

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