My latest strip quilt

Time for another change in direction!  Making strip quilts to donate is fun, and I’m really enjoying it.  It’s been a challenge to come up with a way to make them quickly, and I think I’ve finally figured it out.

Here’s a picture of the strip quilt I finished yesterday.  It went together very quickly, even though I got a little arty with piecing the back.  That was fun to do, though.

There’s no binding either.  I layered the quilt, backing, and batting and sewed them together, leaving an opening to turn the quilt along one edge.  I whipstitched the opening closed after turning it, and then pin-basted to keep the layers from shifting while it was machine quilted.

Pieced back of strip quilt

The quilting is long wavy lines along the long axis of the quilt. The quilting only took about an hour. Not bad!

This kind of strip quilt is very easy to do, and it’s fast.  By varying the width of the long pieced strips, getting a slightly different look is easy, too.

This quilt is about 39″ by 47″.  Haven’t washed it yet, but it will probably shrink up a couple of inches.  I’ll have to remember to measure it once it comes out of the dryer.

OK, so one challenge down.  Looks like I’ll be able to do some serious stashbusting this year, especially if I can make two or three strip quilts a month!

So what’s next? One of my other goals for the year was to develop my own style as a quilt artist. I got off to a pretty good start with “Winter Journey,” shown here.

"Winter Journey," my first AAQI Priority Quilt!

This quilt definitely was a stretch for me.  I had never done anything like this before.  Maybe that’s why I haven’t done another.  It did take a lot of time and effort.

But good stuff doesn’t come easy, does it?

So my new goal is to spend two or three mornings a week working on art quilts.  This includes dyeing fabric and playing around with new techniques.  I have some ideas that I want to explore.

I’ve also decided to join the Studio Art Quilt Associates.  According to their webpage, “SAQA is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the art quilt through education, exhibitions, professional development and documentation.”

I’d been tossing around the idea of joining, but kept putting it off because I didn’t think I was enough of an artist yet.  But Leni Weiner had a great post on her blog about why people should join SAQA, and she convinced me.  So I signed up earlier this evening.

I’m also thinking of entering Fabrications 2, a show open to quilt artists in the Upper Peninsula.  It’s being run in conjunction with a SAQA show, Points Of View, which will be on display this summer down in Escanaba.  Having never had the nerve to enter a show before, this is a big step for me!  So first, I need to make some quilts to enter, and second, we’ll see if I get through the jurying process!  Whatever happens, this is bound to be a learning experience.

Strip quilt made in quilt-as-you-go style

Here are the quilt pictures I promised yesterday. The first picture is the front of the quilt-as-you-go strip quilt I finished on Saturday. It came out pretty well, I think. It seemed like it took forever to make it though. I think I’ll save the quilt-as-you-go technique to join wider and longer strips together, instead of to join individual blocks.

Back of strip quilt

The back does look cute, though.  It could almost stand alone on its own as a quilt.  So this probably makes this quilt reversible, which is a handy thing for a baby quilt. This one will be donated to the local women’s shelter.

Diagonal strip quilt

The next quilt is a long over-due picture of the diagonal strip quilt I made for the ALS Hopes and Dreams Challenge. I really like the back of it. I saw some quilts for sale online that remind me of this quilt backing design.  They were going for an amazing price.  Maybe I should be focusing on quilt backing designs instead! 

Back of diagonal strip quilt

Now that this quilt is finally washed and dried, I’ll be packing it up tomorrow with my other two ALS quilts, and getting them mailed off.  About time, huh?

I finally got my two AAQI Priority Challenge Quilts in the mail today.  Now I can think about doing some more.

It got above freezing today, but it was still pretty cold outside.  My poor little hands got cold taking pictures of my quilts.  Just think, someday the snow will melt, and I won’t have to wear snowshoes for my quilt photography!

Spent most of the day sewing today.  I finished the long strips for my next quilt.  Tomorrow I’ll join them with sashing.  This time I’m going to dispense with binding by sewing the top, batting, and backing together as a sandwich.  Then I’ll turn it right side out, sew the opening closed, and machine quilt it after it’s turned.  I’ve done this in the past, and it works well.  Don’t know why I didn’t remember it til now.

So if all goes well, I may finish up another baby quilt for the women’s shelter tomorrow.

By the way, my city of Marquette, MI, WON the 2010 Dozen Distinctive Destination Contest!  This is really great news, and everyone here is pretty jazzed up about it.  Hopefully it will mean an increase in tourism for the area in the coming year.  There’s always something going on around here, even in the middle of winter!

The beginning of my hand-dyed fabric collection!

Here are the fruits of my dyeing labors on Saturday!  It’s hard to see the yellow, but you can see a little mottling on the left.  The light blue and green are solid, and the dark blue and the fuschia are both mottled.  I’m really pleased with how well it came out.

I’m planning on trying my hand at batiking the yellow fabric with gel glue.  You paint your designs with the glue, and then dye the fabric again.  Then you wash the glue out, which leaves the designs in yellow.  I think I’m going to cut the yellow in two.  On one half I want to do spirals, and on the other little fish.  I think I’ll dye the spiral one orange or peach, and the fishy one green or blue.  But who knows what inspiration will strike down in my basement!

This fabric was white, with a white print. It's more purple than this. I wanted to show both sides of it.

The second picture is some white material that was printed with a white figure.  I never used it cuz I like colors, so I decided to try dyeing it.  Sorry the picture is blurry.  I turned off the flash so it wouldn’t wash out the color, but for some reason, turning off the flash makes it hard to take a clear picture.  It’s really a lot more purple than pink.  I really like how this came out.  I have lots more of this fabric, so it’ll be fun dyeing it different colors.

My first attempt at quilt-as-you-go!

The third picture shows another stashbuster I started working on yesterday.  This strippy baby quilt surprised me by coming out as a square!  I think it will finish around 40 inches on each side.  I didn’t really know where I was going with this design, but I’m pretty happy with it.

The center section (four strips) is sewed together.  I need to finish sewing the two triangular side pieces together.  I’m trimming the sides as I join the strips.  I’m not real happy with all the bias edges on the outside, but I stay-stitched them very carefully, which will hopefully keep them from stretching until I can do the quilting.

I’ll quilt the three sections individually, and then join them together, using the tutorial at Quilting Twin.

The next time I make this quilt, I’ll use a long strip instead of the squares, so there’ll be less sewing to do.  But I still have oodles of pink squares left, so I wanted to use a few up!  I  may modify the design so that it’s a rectangle, too.

Working out this design took a little time, but I think it will go a lot faster the next time I make it, especially if I’m not dealing with all those squares.

Nora's Big Girl Quilt

While the Liberated Quilters have been having their virtual quilting  retreat yesterday and today, my own private retreat took  place over the weekend.  And it will continue this week, since my husband is headed for TN today.

I spent Saturday and Sunday basting and quilting and binding, and I have TWO quilts to show for it!  Here’s a picture of Nora’s big girl quilt.  I had to hang it sideways on the clothesline to keep it out of the snow.  (How many people do you know who wear snowshoes while taking pictures of their quilts?)  You can click on it for a close-up.

I wound up quilting it in a diagonal grid.  Since time was of the essence, I needed to something fast, and this worked out well.

Brody's quilt

Here’s the quilt for Andrew’s new grandson, whose name will be Brody.  I quilted it in a diagonal grid, too.  Not real original, but it looks good, and it’s finished!  This UFO had been banging around in my closet for a couple of years now, so I’m happy to have it done and on its way to its new home!

Andrew will be heading out shortly.  We’ve were concerned about the big snowstorm, but we think we have a route planned that misses most of it.  At least we put new tires on the truck last week, so that should help him if he does hit a lot of snow someplace.

Brody will hopefully be born tomorrow.  They’re inducing Jenny in the morning.  She wanted them to wait until Andrew was there, so that’s why he’s leaving today, even though the weather isn’t the best, instead of waiting til tomorrow.  So be sending good thoughts and wishes Jenny’s way!  And also for Andrew to have a safe trip.  (He has ankylosing spondylitis, and is a chronic pain patient, so these long trips are hard on him.)

My hubby will be gone for a week, so I intend to quilt my brains out!  The weather has turned off COLD, so I probably won’t be taking any real long hikes this week, unless I’m feeling especially brave.  The extent of my travels will probably be to walk up to the neighborhood grocery store for milk.  I stocked up on cat food and frozen dinners yesterday, so Molly and I are ready for our girls’ week together.

I want to quilt my Barn Dancing quilt, and get going on some more stashbusting quilts.  You’ll be happy to know that I actually went into a fabric store yesterday and didn’t buy anything but a quilt batting and a needle threader!  I practically had to cover my eyes and not look at anything in the store while I made a beeline to the batting area.  But I did it!  And I had a 30% off coupon, which made it even better!

Molly the watchcat

Molly was watching me out the window yesterday as I was taking pictures of the quilts.  She looked so cute that I couldn’t resist taking this picture!  Kinda makes up for when she gets up on the table and knocks everything in the floor!

Front of quilt. The spots are from snowflakes that melted on the camera lens.

Here they are!  Pictures of the finished baby quilt!  It was quite an adventure getting them.  I was all set to shovel a path to the clothesline when my wonderful husband, Andrew, said, “Why don’t you just put on your snowshoes to walk out there?”  Duh.  And he didn’t even laugh at me for not thinking of it myself.   His comment was, “I hate to see you shoveling all that snow for a path you’ll only use once.”  Now you know why I married him.  I wasn’t letting him get away!

Or course, it was dark and snowy and windy, so it’s not the best picture. I even managed to drop the quilt in the snow, too.  But if you click on the pictures, you can see somewhat bigger versions.  Click on the little icon on the picture, and it will get bigger yet.

Wish I could have shown more detail, but it was COLD out there!  It was also very windy, so I had to wait for the quilt to stop flapping in the refreshingly frigid breeze to take a picture!

I appreciate my warm gloves every time I have to do something bare-handed outdoors.  They were $60 gloves that I got at the end of the season for $15.  I would never have paid $60 for a pair of gloves, but these are definitely worth it.  My hands do NOT get cold when I wear them!

With this quilt, I started out to do the Crayon Box design from Quiltville.  If you’ve never been there, go visit right now, and check it out.  I’ll wait for you to come back.  This is a totally awesome site that I highly recommend.

I had bought a panel of Laurel Burch cat pictures a while back.  Each little picture is a portrait of a cat family.  I thought of Sarah right away when I bought it.  Of course, I forgot I had it, but I found it when I started digging through my scraps.  I cut the panel up into individual pictures, and used the Crayon Box idea to sew the quilt.  It was a fun quilt to make.

I emailed Sarah pictures as I was working on it, and she showed them to my grandsons.  The oldest one, Tal, said, “Granny sure does like cats, doesn’t she?”  He’s right!  Three out of the four baby quilts I’ve made for Sarah have a cat theme!  I didn’t even realize it til he mentioned it.

Back of quilt.

The back could almost stand on its own as a quilt.  It was an experimental piece that took off on its own.  The strips were an experiment with the Wave Runner tutorial from V at Bumble Beans.  I was intrigued when I read the tutorial and wanted to try it.  I couldn’t imagine getting wavy seams like that to lie flat, but it worked!  I will definitely be doing more with this technique.

The purple cat (who’ll you’ll recognize from my blog header) was my first experiment in liberated piecing.  I just sketched the kitty on a piece of paper, and pieced it without a pattern, or anything.  Now that was fun!  I was really tickled at how well it came out, and it was easy, too.

Between shoveling the driveway, running to the library and grocery store, and fixing lunch and cleaning up, I haven’t had a chance to work on my AAQI quilt yet today.  I might later on, but Andrew may go fishing this afternoon, and if he does, I’m going to go with him so I can go snowshoeing.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress with that project!

Before quilting; pretty, but flat and one-dimensional

Don’t you just love how a flat, one-dimensional block of patchwork suddenly comes to life when you start quilting it? Something that was flat and lifeless is magically transformed, with a soft texture that just begs you to touch it.

Can you tell I’m jazzed? I’ve been working away diligently on Sarah’s quilt. There are nine blocks, and I have six done. It’s slow work, what with horsing around with the walking foot, but it sure does look nice when the block is done. At least I only have three blocks left to do, so that’s not so bad. Then I just have to quilt the outside borders, which should go really quickly.

After quilting; suddenly it seems to come to life!

I did two blocks this morning, and was going to do another this afternoon, but wound up running to the store with my dear hubby. His wireless mouse quit working, and we had to go exchange it so he could play games on his computer tonight.

Yesterday was stormy and blustery, with about three inches of snow and lots of wind. But today it was sunny, and much warmer than I thought it would be. It was a gorgeous winter afternoon, so I took advantage of it. I scooped the snow out of the driveway and walked up to the store to pick up a few groceries.

Andrew went fishing this morning at the Chocolay River. If he goes tomorrow, I may go with him. He said it looked like a great place to go snowshoeing. I can go exploring while he tries to hook into a brown trout, or a steelhead. He nearly caught one this morning, but it got away.  So we had pizza for supper instead, which was OK, too.

Molly in her favorite spot

Here’s a shot of my favorite kitty.  She really likes this spot.  It’s warm and cozy, right in front of the heating vent!  Where else would a cat hang out in the winter?  On sunny winter days, the sun shines through the kitchen window, right onto this spot for an hour or so!  No wonder she likes it so well.