It is time once again for The Blogger's Quilt Festival, over at Amy's Creative Side.
I am entering a quilt that I finished just a couple of months ago, called Lightning Strikes. I made this quilt as a gift for my best friend from high school's son, for his graduation from college.
It measures 72" by 96". I hope it will come in handy for him, since after graduation he moved to Chicago! He does not see some colors very well, so I organized the design into lights and darks. All of the strips for this top came right out of my scrap bin, so I am entering this quilt to the scrappy quilts category.
I am not the greatest at machine quilting. I am trying to force myself to learn, but really, I usually just send my quilts out to be quilted by my very excellent long arm quilting friend, Regina Carter. I joked though, that to get a professionally quilted quilt from me, you have to get married. Graduating just gets you one that I quilted myself. I quilted it on my domestic machine. It was about as big, or a little bigger than I can comfortably handle on a regular sewing machine. Here is a close up of my quilting, such as it is. Anyway, it was quilted with love, and won't be any less warm for some imperfect quilting.
Don't forget to check out The Bloggers Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side. There are always lots of beautiful quilt to see, and you can vote for your favorite in many different categories. http://amyscreativeside.com/2015/10/23/bqf-scrappy-quilts-category/
Thanks for stopping by!
I have always been intrigued by the paintings of Gustave Klimt. Admittedly, sometimes there is a creepy aspect to some of them, but I really like his use of repeated pattern. It's his use of repeated pattern that has always made me think that his paintings would be a great reference for making a quilt.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine gave me a yard of this Kaffe Fassett fabric for a birthday gift.
It was really difficult for me to decide how to use it because I was afraid if I cut it up, I would loose the feeling of the print. Eventually, I decided to cut that yard into 4 fat quarters, use them like panels, and put a couple of borders around each one. It occurred to me to use some of the small, geometric shapes I had seen in paintings by Klimt. Here is a photo of the what I mean.
While I was working on the quilt, another friend often asked me how the quilt with the monkeys was coming along. This puzzled me. I have never worked on a quilt that had monkeys on it. I found out that Kaffe fabric just made her think of monkeys for some reason. For once, this quilt was very easy to name. I called it Missing Monkeys. This is the completed quilt. Like all of my quilts, it was quilted by Regina Carter of Jackson Georgia.
I totally enjoyed making a quilt that used a print as part of the design, with piecing added around it. I am really looking forward to making another quilt with fussy cut fabric, and simple piecing put around it. I have a couple of different fabrics that would work well for this, if I could only get the time to do this again.
This is the quilt I am entering in The Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side. There are always many inspiring quilts in the festival, along with interesting stories about how and why people came to make them on her blog. Trust me, you won't want to miss it. Just click http://amyscreativeside.com/bloggers-quilt-festival/
This weekend I am in Maryville Tennessee for the 35th Annual Quilt Show and competition, put on by the Smoky Mountain Quilters of Tennessee. I will be selling my patterns, and pincushions in the vendor area of the quilt show. If you are in the area, please stop by and say hi!
That is what I have been up to lately. Thanks for stopping by!
This quilt was inspired by doing a jelly roll race at a retreat. I got to thinking that it would be more fun if there was a narrow strip, added to the 2 1/2" strip. I actually made that quilt. Then, I decided to try to work my way out from the center in a giant spiral. My friend's husband saw it and suggested naming it: A Maze Zing. Like nearly all of my quilts, it was also quilted by my good friend, Regina Carter of Jackson GA. It was her husband that suggested the name. I made this quilt in a few evenings, which is really unusual for me.
When I was writing the pattern, I remade the quilt, to check out a few construction ideas. Of course, I had to use totally different colors this time. I couldn't enter this version in the Festival, because it is not bound yet. Notice that the first quilt is bold colors, so I joined my strips bluntly, but with the second, more blended version, I joined the strips on an angle. I have already taught this as a class once, and it was really nice to be able to show the students 2 very different colorways.
Here is the first of the series with the straight thick and thin strips. It was a graduation gift for a friend's daughter. This quilt was machine quilted by me. I am working on doing that with smaller pieces, and I thought that staying within the strips would give me some guidance.
There are many more beautiful creations at The Blogger's Quilt Festival. You won't want to miss it! Thanks for stopping by!
Here is my entry for the Large category at The Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side.
This quilt has quite a history. It was inspired by a vintage quilt that I saw in a book somewhere. I wish I could find it, but I think it was a friend's book. I think the original quilt was pieced from solid velvets. Can you imagine? I simplified, and rearranged a good bit to get something that I would actually want to piece. I held on to the design for some time before I got around to starting on it. I collected solid color fabrics in the mean time in preparation...I really love making quilts from solids. I thing all solid quilts have a strong, graphic quality, that you can not achieve any other way.
When I did finally get to work on it, I submitted a photo of it to McCall's quilting to see if maybe they would want to publish it. Wonder of wonders-they did! It appeared as a mystery quilt in 2009. I didn't come up with a name for it until I got it back from McCall's. I named it Shenanigans.
I had a great time making this quilt. Recently a friend of mine bought it, and gave it to her son for a wedding gift, so this has been a successful quilt for me!
This quilt was quilted by my good friend, Regina Carter of Jackson, GA.
There are lots of beautiful quilts to see over at The Blogger's Quilt Festival
at Amy's Creative Side. Many thanks to Amy Ellis for giving us this gathering place, and the opportunity to see each others work.
Thanks for stopping by!
