Improv Color Block Quilt for Coats and Clark

I'm so excited to finally be able to share this quilt with you! You might remember that I shared some photos of it while it was in progress a couple of months ago. This is my Improv Color Block quilt and I made it for my friends at Coats & Clark.

It is made out of eight fun FreeSpirit Designer Solids and the binding is Anna Maria Horner's Ghost Print in Dusk from her new Field Study linens.

The linen is so amazing, and it ties all of the solids, which are Slate Gray, Spark Gold, Salmon, Chamois, Soldier Blue,  Lime, Orchid, and Bahama, together perfectly. I quilted it on my domestic machine with straight line stitches that echo each rectangle in contrasting Coats Dual Duty XP threads, which are my go to threads. The colors are really so great!

The Improv Color Block quilt was on display in the Coats & Clark booth last month at Spring Quilt Market in Portland, Oregon, and it will be used in their ad campaign this fall and winter.

Here's my sketch for the design. I wanted to create a quilt that had an improvisational element to it, yet wasn't completely unstructured. This pattern allows you to rely on your own creative intuition and construct each of the six columns that make up the design in an improvised manner, with varying widths and colors combinations of the strips of fabric. All of the columns are then trimmed to the same length and the quilt top is put together. The result is that each quilt that is made following this pattern will be completely unique, which I love the idea of.

And here are a couple more photos of the finished quilt that I shot in my back yard before I sent it off to Coats. You can see the quilting and binding a bit better in these, I think.

You can read more about the quilt on Sewing Secrets, the blog of Coats & Clark, and find the complete pattern as a free pdf download here.

everyday inspiration lecture for the CMQG

If you're in the Cincinnati area, please join me at the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild on Wednesday where I'll be giving a lecture on how I find inspiration for many of my quilt designs from every day places. I'll be sharing about my process, how I record my inspiration and then translate it into quilt designs. I'll also be sharing some finished quilts as well, including my Silo quilt, shown above, with the inspiration below, which is still one of my favorites to date.

My lecture will take place at the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild meeting this Wednesday, June 12 at 7:00 pm the Centennial Barn, 110 Compton Road, Cincinnati 45215. Hope to see you there!

guest curator on CRESCENDOh this month

I'm so incredibly honored to be a guest curator on CRESCENDOh this month. I'm a huge fan of Jenny Doh and I was so excited when she asked me to share my story on how art saved me, as well as some of my favorite blog posts with her readers.

It's funny, because before Jenny asked me, I never really thought about how I was saved by art. But now that I've spent some time looking into what lead me to where I am now, I see that art making and creating was an integral part of so much of my past, as it will undoubtedly be to my future. So, please check out my story here. I'm so glad to be able to share it with you all, and I hope it is meaningful to you in some way. I truly believe that we all have been gifted with creativity, and art is in each and every one of us, in many different expressions. We just have to believe in ourselves and our own creativity. The rest will come to us.

Be sure to follow along with all of my curated posts on CRESCENDOh throughout this week. I hope they inspire you as much as they have inspired me.

twenty shades of pink

I created this mini quilt, which I've named Twenty Shades of Pink, for the Quilt Alliance's TWENTY 2013 Quilt Contest, Exhibition, and Auction. The theme of the challenge was really broad; basically, you could create anything that celebrates "twenty:" the numeral, the concept, the quantity, the word, etc. 

It probably comes as no surprise that I would choose a simple approach to this task, so I used twenty different shades (technically speaking, hues) of pink solid cotton fabric, ranging from pale pink to deep fuchsia. I arranged the colors so that they were in order from dark to light, and then back to dark and light again, giving the quilt a bit of an ombre effect.  

I sewed the twenty fabric strips together and then I cut the pieced section into three segments of varying widths, which I then rearranged and sewed back together. The quilt measures 20 inches square in accordance with the guidelines of the challenge.

I machine quilted it with straight lines of stitches in pink cotton quilting thread.

And I used a solid light gray cotton for the binding and backing, which I thought worked well and didn't compete with all of the pinks. 

My favorite part of this quilt is that little strip of patchwork at the bottom. I love it, and I think it really makes the design, if I do say so myself. 

And I think this design would look really stunning as a bed sized quilt, don't you? Large strips of solid pink fabrics, or perhaps twenty hues of another color? Blue would be kind of amazing....

Twenty Shades of Pink will be on display at the Original Sewing & Quilt Expo in Paducah later this year, as well as some other venues, and it will be auctioned off as a benefit for the Quilt Alliance. I'll keep you posted on the auction as it gets closer.

Spring Quilt Market 2013 video by Creativebug

My super talented friends at Creativebug put together this short little video about stories that inspired new fabric collections, after talking with some designers at Spring Quilt Market in Portland a couple of weeks ago. It features Amy Butler, David Butler, Denyse Schmidt, Heather Ross, and Liesl Gibson and I think it's so fun to get a bit of a glimpse of what inspires designers and how they go about creating their work.




So great, right? They really are the best, and if you haven't had a chance to check out Creativebug yet, they are offering a great incentive to do so. If you join by May 31, your first month is only $9.99 with the code MAYSPECIAL, which gives you unlimited access to all of the online workshops that they offer. You can take my new Mod Stripes quilt class, or my Diamonds in the Sky quilt class, or any of the other amazing workshops, anytime you'd like, from the comfort of your home.

gelassenheit

You may have noticed the photo in my header up there that I changed a few weeks ago. It's a detail from my quilt, Gelassenheit, and I'm excited to finally be sharing more of it with you now.

I took these photos of it in front of the barn at our new house, using the ladder to the tree house.

I really love the contrast of the modern quilt with the rustic wood of the ladder and barn. 

But, I wasn't able to get a full shot of the quilt, so I had a bit of a photo shoot last night.

Gelassenheit is my modern take on a traditional Dresden Plate quilt design, and it measures approximately 53" square. I made it as a design exercise while I was working on my Diamonds in the Sky quilt for Creativebug. I was playing with the idea of strip piecing, specifically how large pieced sections could be cut up and and put back together in a completely different arrangement. I used three different shades of solid cream cotton, a pale blue solid, and a light gray solid for the border and binding. Those colors feel really soothing and tranquil to me, and those are the thoughts that kept popping in my head while I was constructing the quilt. So, as I was thinking of a name for the quilt, I started to look up the word tranquility in different languages and I found Gelassenheit,  a German word, which I thought was quite fitting for a Dresden Plate quilt. But it has an additional meaning in the Amish culture, which I found equally as fascinating. It is an important part of Amish life in which one humbly yields to the will of God, which derives from the Biblical passage, Luke 22:42, in which Jesus says, "not my will, but thine be done."

I was also on a deadline to complete a quilt for an exhibition at the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild had been invited to participate in a special exhibition of quilts that were a modern take on the Dresden Plate, so I decided to applique one large Dresden on top of the pieced section. The printed fabric is Amy Butler's Alchemy Organic Paisley in Sky Blue, which is so gorgeous, and I love how its design is also changed when it's been cut and pieced back together. 

I turned down the edges of my Dresden Plate and topstitched it to hold it in place.

And I used a chartreuse green solid as the center of the plate, which I also appliqued, although I used a fusible webbing to hold it in place, coupled with zig zag stitches around the perimeter of the circle.  

 

I quilted Gelassenheit it with straight lines, my absolute favorite, spaced about 3/8" apart. I just love the result of all those line of quilting.

While I do love the result, it's really tough to quilt so densely on my domestic sewing machine. There is a lot of straining of my neck, back, and arms that occasionally happens as a result of spending so much time in front of my machine, so I'm hoping my friend Jill will be able to help me out with her new machine.

Here's a better shot of the border and binding. I used the same fabric for both of these areas because I didn't want the binding to be a distraction from the rest of the quit design.

And for the back I used a lime green solid cotton, with a bit of the gray solid pieced in. I really love the unexpected pop of color that happens as a result of incorporating a new shade that isn't on the front of the quilt. 

I took a few photos of the quilt in progress too, and I thought it would be fun to share those with you as well. Here it is as I was getting ready to stitch the Dresden plate section down to the front of the quilt. 

And here it is, all basted and ready to quilt.

Here a shot of the quilt about midway through my straight line quilting.

My constant companion didn't help make things any easier during the quilting process, but he seemed to really enjoy the quilt. 

And here's a shot where you can see just how much the added texture of the dense straight line quilting adds to the finished look of the quilt. It's really amazing how much it changes everything; although at the same time I feel it doesn't compete with the design of the quilt top, just enhances it.

My son Aidan loves the quilt too, and in fact, he actually claimed it before I was finished making it. I explained to him that it would be a while before he could use it, knowing that it had to be on display at the Festival in April, and I finished it back in November. That didn't matter to him, and he even made a drawing of himself in front of the quilt, so of course, I had to take a photo of him, holding that picture, in front of the actual quilt. The cool kids call that meta, right?? 

So, I added this dedication to the label on the back of the quilt. Looks like Aidan might have to wait a bit longer for the quilt because it may be traveling to a few more places. Our Dresden Plate exhibition was really popular at festival and there has been talk of it being shown in a few more venues around the world. More on the show soon!

to help Otilija and Orlando

photograph from whipup.net

You may have heard about the horrendous tragedy that happened off the coast of Australia last week which left Kathreen Rickeston, the founder of Whip Up, and her husband Rob dead, and their two children, daughter Otilija and son Orlando, without their parents . Kathreen and her family were spending a year on their dream trip, camping around Australia and going on all sorts of adventures, which would culminate in a book. That trip was cut short last week when Kathreen and Rob accidentally drowned in Coral Bay, while their two children and other campers watched in horror.

Kathreen was very supportive of my work, and we had worked together recently when she asked to feature me in an article that she wrote for Australian Quilters Companion. She was so kind and incredibly talented and it was clear that her children meant the world to her. Kathreen was hugely responsible for helping to form the online craft community through Whip Up, which will no doubt feel a void with her absence.

photograph from whipup.net

A trust fund has been set up for Otilija and Orlando and you can donate to it through Paypal at otilijaandorlando@gmail.com. You can also read more about the fund here and other ways to donate, especially if you are in Europe or Australia.

Rest in peace, Kathreen and Rob, and Godspeed to Otilija and Orlando. Sending you all lots of love.