What Shall I Be?

Another quilt for my friend Mari!



The name of the quilt comes from the theme fabric which features different "occupations".  You can see more on the back of the quilt:

OK - so most of them appear to be sports related, but so what.  Let baby Jaxson decide.

The quilt itself is a simple block pattern using a theme print.  I tried to make the blocks colorful, and then found a rainbow-colored fabric for the sashing. Then, I reused the block border fabrics in strips to make a multi-colored binding.

Begin Again

Earlier this year, after 20+ years in a big old house in Oak Park, my brother- and sister-in-law, Mike and Brooke, downsized and moved into a condo in Evanston.  That is the origin of the name that she chose for this work.

Brooke has very eclectic tastes, and the furniture and accessories in their new place reflect this. Among these accessories are some stained glass panels.  But she saved the wall over their fireplace for a unique piece and commissioned me to make it.

Brooke is an artist, and she came up with this design as a starting point:

It picks up on other colors in the room, and also echoes some of the elements of the stained glass.

I took that rough design and put it into Excel and began playing with the colors, the arrangement, the sizes, and the shapes.  We went back and forth over a number of iterations (discovering in the process that an iPad does NOT always accurately display the Excel graphics!), and eventually agreed on a final design.

Here is the result:

Rather than using a traditional piecing approach (except for the light and dark gray backgrounds), I decided to cut the pieces to size and then fuse them on. This is the same approach I took with   Reflections [Visualize Whirled Peas]. Then I stiple quilted the background and did horizontal, vertical, and circular (as appropriate) free-motion quilting in the objects.

Finally, the finished quilt (46 x 28) was mounted on wooden stretcher bars.

And here it is in its place of honor:

STAND BACK!!

POW!

The name of this quilt refers to the "explosive" nature of the optical illusion, and also as a suggestion to the viewer to get the maximum effect.

Here is the illusion: ALL of the squares are actually square, and ALL of the lines are actually straight!  Yes!!!  Go ahead....take a ruler or whatever and match it up to any line on the photo. I'll wait...........SEE!!!!!!!!!!

This illusion is known as "The Bulging Checkerboard".  Here is a link which shows how the mind overrides what the eye is actually seeing. Watch what happens as the slider moves and the small squares disappear.   And here is another link showing this effect created using Legos!

One thing that I find very interesting is that the effect is way more evident in the photos than in the actual quilt (although, as I said, if you stand back a ways and squint it is readily visible). Can anyone out there explain why this is so?  Could it be that because the camera's image is smaller the effect is more pronounced?

This FREE pattern was created by Krista Zaleski.  Her version is a huge 102" square. The blocks are 6" x 6" finished. Since this really needs to be hung on a wall to get the full effect, I scaled mine down to one-quarter of hers. So it is 51" x 51" (3" blocks).  Even so, it still contains 1,275 pieces! The smallest ones are 1 3/8" x 5/8"! TINY!!!!  Each of the "diagonal" blocks is actually a modified 9-patch!  The horizontal and vertical axis squares are made of 7 pieces each.

I quilted it on a diagonal (black thread in the black squares; cream in the cream) to emphasize the bulge.

There is a hanging sleeve on the top of the back. I also put corner triangles on the back bottom so it can use a wooden dowel (or other similar oblect) to add a little weight and keep the quilt taut. All the better to promote the illusion.

And here's the good news: I am giving this quilt away for free* to one of my faithful readers!  Just email me your name by noon Central this Friday. I will put all the names in a 55-gallon drum and pull out one lucky winner.

*No legalese; just a disclaimer:  If you are not in the Chicago area and you are the winner, you will have to pay either:  a) postage for me to send it to you, or  b) airfare if you want me to hand deliver it. Your choice.

Update:  The drawing for the quilt was won by Mibby Novak, a fellow quilter and travel friend from Pennsylvania. Congratulations Mibby!!!!!

ShweShwe Diamonds

About a year ago, when Emily first visited us from South Africa, she brought with her some authentic brown ShweShwe fabrics.  There was about a half meter of each fabric; not nearly enough to make a decent sized quilt. So we agreed we'd wait until she came home (last December) to decide what to do.

Once she was settled back in good ol' Deerfield, we set to work looking for a good design. We didn't necessarily want something that said "Africa", but we did want to take advantage of the fabrics.  We looked and looked and finally found a design on Pinterest that we liked.  Because the design was made up of little squares, I set about to find a way to make it work. I discovered that not only was it possible, but this type of thing even had a name -- "postage-stamp quilt".   This is a quilt whose design is made up of hundreds or thousands of tiny squares, usually cut to 2" (so they are 1.5" finished).  I had never made one of these (though I did make a watercolor quilt with 2" finished squares).  So it seemed like a good challenge and we began working on the design. We went through many possibilities and versions and setled on one with colored diamonds on a brown background. To get the effect we wanted, but still keep it lap quilt size, we determined the squares had to be a meager 1" finished!

Great! So we had the brown background fabrics...but where to get the other fabrics?  Most of the time, people make postage stamp quilts to use the piles of fabric pieces they have accumulated in their stash. But, even though our design was not specifically "African", we did want all of our fabrics to be authentic ShweShwe cloth. So the stash option was not going to work.

Side note: What is ShweShwe? The name of the quilt refers to the Indigo Dyed Discharge Printed Fabric. It has a long history, and was originally produced only a couple of times per year, mostly for traditional ceremonial uses in rural African areas.  The process was done traditionally whereby 100% cotton fabric was fed through copper rollers which have patterns etched on the surface, allowing a weak acid solution to be fed into the fabric, bleaching out the distinctive white designs. This created a beautiful pattern. To learn more, click here. 

A trip to the factory in South Africa was out of the question! So we turned to the internet.  There are a number of sources for this fabric in the US, South Africa, and Australia (apparently it is very popular all over the world!), but the one that had the best option for us was The African Fabric Shop in Meltham, Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom! We ordered a pack that had 25 assorted fat quarters; it arrived 6 days later! So we began to cut them into the two-thousand and thirty five squares we needed for the top.

As we were researching possible patterns, we came across an amazing technique to make the actual sewing process way less tedious and almost fool-proof. It is on Elizabeth Hartman's fabulous "Oh, Fransson!" quilt blog. She uses fusible interfacing (I went with Shape Flex; get the thinnest you can find), fuses the squares onto it, and then sews in the seam allowances! Sounds crazy, I know, but it works great and gives you perfect corner points 99% of the time. Click for step-by-step instructions.

The quilt top is 37 x 55 finished, so we divided it up into 9 sections (so that each section would fit on one width of interfacing. Remember, although it is 37 x 55 when finished, the cut squares measure about 55 x 83 prior to fusing and sewing). The pieces from each section were fused on and then sewn across and down. Then the 9 sections were joined together.

Here is a photo of the first section of 216 pieces after they have been arranged and fused to the interfacing...

...and here is the same section (upper left), after all of the seams have been sewn in, next to the adjoining sections (on my design wall, prior to fusing and sewing):

And here (FINALLY) is the front of the finished quilt:

 
Then we had to decide what to do for the back!  We did not have enough of any one fabric for a one-piece back, so it was "back" to the drawing board. Emily came up with a design that sort of mimicked the diamond shapes on the front, and used almost all of the fabrics. And the best part was that the original four brown fabrics are highlighted in the middle and the border (the border was included to ensure that none of the triangle / diamond points would be lost after the quilting and trimming were done).  So we began to fit the leftover scraps of fabric to the design shapes, and....OH NO!  There were not enough pinks and reds to make it work! What to do?  The store in England did not have the colors we needed. Hello internet!  This time we found just the right fabs at French Connections in Pittsboro, NC! At last, all the pieces were in place:

For the quilting, I used clear monofilament on top and a variegated brown on the bottom. The pattern is a straight-line spiral in each of the diamonds on the front (though it might be easier to see in the picture of the back).

Thanks to the thought and effort we put into the design, it truly ends up being a quilt with two "front" sides!

Em's Knitting Bag

My daughter Emily is a knitter, so when I saw this pattern at Quilter's Heaven, I knew we had to make it together!

Em picked out the fabrics and a nice chunky button.

Here is a shot of the inside showing the two pockets.



My quilting buddy Donna loves to make bags, so we arranged for a sewing date at her amazing studio for the three of us.  Here are the two finished bags.

Since Donna does not knit, we decided her bag was perfect for a baguette and a bottle of wine!

Hexadaisy

Another excellent 3D paper-pieced pattern from Piece By Number. The keys to making this pattern work are the alternating color bands and the precisely matching points. This was easily accomplished using the  pattern's instructions and templates.

For this piece I chose to use mottled Batik fabrics instead of the usual bright solid fabrics I've used on other 3D pieces. The light- and dark-colored strips give the illusion of interwoven 3D cubes.

The quilting was done using smoky transparent monofilament on top and black thread in the bobbin. I ditch-quilted just around the inner and outer edges of each of the 6 cubes.  Thus the quilting is almost invisible. Another example of using the quilting as a totally functional element of the piece.


For sale: 21" x 21"  wall hanging  $100

Poppies In Bloom

I made this striking double bed-sized quilt for my cousin Bobbie.  She loves blue and white, so she picked out the fabrics. It is difficult to see in this photo, but the top background fabric has a white-on-white swirl pattern that looks somewhat like rose (or poppy!) blossoms.  The back has a small white-on-white wonky geometric pattern.

The pattern, called "Poppy!" (by Ruth Powers), is really just one poppy, and it calls for using freezer paper. However, to look better as a bedspread, we decided to make four flowers. I then adapted it to use the paper-piecing technique.

This is probably the largest paper-pieced work I have ever done. Each petal square is 24" x 24" and contains 144 pieces (spread out over 14 subsections)!  Though all four use the same fabrics, each is slightly different from the others, just as all natural blossoms would be.

The quilting: For the flowers, I used a medium blue thread, and a free-motion pattern like this:



I did this separately in each mini-section of the petals to simulate veins (or at least striations). So some of the lines are lighter than the petal section, some are darker, and some blend. The purple and gray areas were done with matching threads.

The background was stippled in white with my usual squiggly lines to reinforce the swirl pattern of the front fabric.

And, as I did for Karen's Kwilted Kubes, this quilt was made in 8 sections; the four flowers, mid-top and -bottom, and the two side pieces. They are clearly visible in this photo since it was backlit. This allowed me to easily quilt each section on a standard machine and then sew them together when the quilting was done.

Laptop Bag Experiment

My daughter Emily got a new lap top recently. Of course, it was a different size (bigger!) than her old one, so the padded sleeve she had did not work. What to do!?!?!?!  Checked several local merchants, looked on-line at a bunch of sites.  Lots of different sizes....how could we be sure if any particular one would fit the new PC snugly? And the colors and styles available....not exactly what she wanted.

What to do?!?!?!?!?! If only there was a pattern available to make one!  So we searched and found this (free!) one at Sew Mama Sew.

Em and I worked on it together. We improved the pattern by adding a front pocket and doubling the interfacing to add extra cushioning.

The pattern includes the formula to determine the size for any laptop. We wanted the end result to fit the dimensions of hers, but be just big enough to hold the PC snugly. Since we added the extra layer of interfacing, we had to tweak the formula. Hence the experiment!

We first made a "test" model of just the outside front and back using muslin. When we slipped the PC in, it was already snug. Uh-oh! So we made a second version a 1/2" wider. This seemed better, but without the double-interfacing and lining fabric, there was still a significant margin for error that hung over us as we began the real case.

Though the directions were pretty clear (and had excellent accompanying photos), we made a few mistakes along the way (like using the wrong color thread). So we both got practice in ripping! But nothing that we couldn't easily recover from.

Finally we were done!!! We put the PC in! The side dimensions were right on, but it was sticking out just a tad on the top. So we ripped the bottom seam and resewed it at 1/4" instead of 1/2".

Here is the result:

With a strong Velcro strip and a matching yellow lining.....

A perfect fit!

Bennett Hears A Whooo!

Emily's friends Jessica and Mike had a boy, Bennett, on November 5th. Jessica likes owls (hence the name), so earlier in the summer Em and I looked for an owl pattern and/or some cute owl fabric . We found the fabric and decided to use it in this scrappy, colorful log cabin block.

Em and I had worked on this quilt while she was visiting in September, but we could not give it to them until today, as Em just returned from her two-year stint in South Africa. 

And here's Bennett making his best owl face!  Whooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

Dominique's Garden

Yet another quilt for my friend Mari's new niece!

Mari asked for something with flowers and butterflies.  I was able to find this colorful group of fabrics called "Snail Trail" made by Studio E fabrics.

The center is a panel with a garden full of flowers and cute creatures. I stiple and shadow quilted around them.

The border fabrics also feature butterflies and snails and flowers.  The quilting in the wide outer border is a meandering white line, to mimic and reinforce the dotted butterfly "contrails" on the fabric.

 

 

The center panel fabric also came with its own set of large-scale flowers and garden friends.  Since the front design was too wide for a single width of fabric on the back, I cut out these extra pieces and put them in a strip down the middle of the back.  

 

 

Altogether a bright, cheery, and fun quilt for baby Dominique!

Stay Connected

So my mother-in-law found one more small space of wall in her apartment that did not already have a quilted piece on it, and asked my to make something "narrow and colorful".

This is the result.

I took the pattern for "Eternity Knot Block" by Piece By Number and stacked the blocks 1 x 3. Of course I used my favorite six rainbow colors (poor indigo loses out again!) on the black background. Quilted using stipling. 

Since the piece is rather small (10" x 30"), I was afraid it would not hang well, so for the second time (see Reflections [Visualize Whirled Peas]), I chose to mount this on wooden stretcher bars instead of using a regular sleeve. 

In order not to lose any of the pattern on the edges, I added 4" of "border" all around (before sandwiching and quilting of course!), but no binding.

So the finished piece is more like a painted canvas.

Now.....will she be able to find any more open space?

I hope so!

Karen's Kwilted Kubes

In May, many of my quilts were on display at the Deerfield Senior Center. My friend Karen saw my 3-D Color Study (from 2003) and asked me to make her a king-sized bedspread version. We worked together to come up with the design.

Of course, I was not able to use the same fabrics as I did 9 years ago, so I got some of them at  Quilter's Heaven in Northbrook and many others on-line from the Hingeley Road Quilt Shop in Minnesota.

First, since she wanted the cubes as the center medallion on a large expanse of black background, we increased the size of the original cubes by 1/3. As in the original 3-D quilt, each cube is made from triangles (and strips); 6 cubes, 6 rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet - sorry indigo), and 3 shades in each. So 18 total different fabrics. The center hexagon is made up of the 6 dark-shaded fabrics. Here is a snap of the finished section with those cubes.

 

I say "finished" because this quilt was actually created in 8 separate sections! There was no way that I was going to try to quilt a king-size project (the biggest in size that I have ever done) in one piece!  Nor was I going to send it out to get long-armed; the price would have been exorbitant. And, as my quilt friend Alice says: "Why would I pay someone to do my hobby!"  Indeed! So each section was pieced, sandwiched, and quilted individually. Then all were machine joined together. 

I have made bed-sized (twin and queen) projects before, and have, at times, done them in 2 or 3 sections. But nothing ever like this! To help, I took an on-line class from craftsy.com. This class, "Quilting Big Projects on a Small Machine", was taught very well by Ann Petersen. Based on what I learned, and the design of this particular quilt, it made sense to do it in 8 sections.

Back to the design: Karen had the brilliant idea to place the "border" so it would sit on the top edge of the spread! This really helped define and frame the top of the quilt.  The quasi-border is made from triangles of the same 18 fabrics, going through the ROY G B(I)V sequence all around. There is no top border, as that part is covered by the top sheet and pillows. The binding is made of 8" strips of the 6 dark fabrics, again repeating in the rainbow sequence.

The eight sections are: 1) center cube medallion, 2) top center (all black), 3) bottom center (black plus border), 4) left middle (black plus border), 5) left outer (all black), 6) right middle (black plus border),
7) right outer (all black), and 8) bottom (all black).  So there were still some big sections to quilt; but it was very manageable this way.  All of the quilting is free-motion stiple.

To see more pictures of the quilt process, click here and scroll down.

 

Above is the finished quilt flat on the floor (since the quilt is so large, it was difficult to get a good photo of it).
Below is the finished quilt on Karen's bed (the extraneous background objects were photoshopped out).

We were both really happy with the way it turned out.  Hope you like it too!

Eliza's ABCs

Baby Eliza Page was born June 13th to Melanie and Ken (and joins big sister Avery). So earlier this year my daughter, Emily, and I decided to make an ABC quilt for her.  But it had to be special! So we found a very cute pattern (SarahBellumQuilts) that had a square for each letter. Each was traced from a pattern, fused to the white background fabric, and then I zig-zagged around each one with matching thread.

Each block has an adjoining sashing piece that also reflects the associated letter.

Then, we set out finding a fabric for each letter that featured an object beginning with that letter. "Apple" for "A", "Buttons" for "B", etc.  Some were easier than others. But....since the family lives in NOLA, we also wanted to find some fabrics with a local interest. Thus, for example, "Fleur de lis" for "F" and "Mardi Gras masks" for "M". "Q" was a little problematic, but we eventually found a "Question mark" fabric, and I made a miniature "Quilt" for the sashing. The hardest was "X". The only true X fabric we could find was one with "X-ray cats"! Seriously! X-rays of cats!!! But that was too wild even for us. So we had to cheat and go with "eXclamation points" fabric.

The border is also made of one square for each of the 26 letters (plus the 4 corner ABC squares).

The back fabric is a riot of ABCs on black. Due to the width of the quilt, I decided to piece the back. What better way to do it than to have a strip of all 26 letters running down the middle (with some alternate appropriate fabrics)!

The final two squares were reserved for the baby's name and birthdate. I rejected having them embroidered on; didn't think it would work well in such a small space. Thought about tracing the info onto fabric and then fusing on, but finally decided to find a fun font (went with one called Curlz MT), reverse printed it onto "Print-n-Press" (what I use for my morsbags labels) and then ironed them on. Perfect! (if I do say so myself.)

Hope you love it Eliza Page! Learn those ABCs!!!!!!!

Play Time

My friend Mari's family keeps having babies! This means she is one of my best customers. This bright, fun quilt is for new grand-nephew Max.

This is the seventh baby quilt, and tenth overall for Mari and husband Dennis.

Have fun, Max!!!!!!

Antipodes

This pattern has been in my "want to do" queue for a while, and this seemed like a good time to do it.

The name "Antipodes" means "places diametrically opposite to each other on the globe." To me, this pattern has that same look. Indeed, by following the instructions in the pattern (from Toad-U-Sew Patterns), each pieced square is then re-cut and resewn so that it forms two oppositely-hued squares.

Does it look like a reflection? Or rain? Or a waterfall? What would you call it?

This beautiful quilt has found a home in Houston, Texas!

NOTE: This quilt, along with a number of my other quilts, will be on display during the month of May in the Patty Turner Senior Center in Deerfield. If you're in the neighborhood, stop in and see them in person!