Project Quilting Season 8 -- Challenge 5

When I read the fifth challenge for Project Quilting Season 8 on Sunday evening, I thought -- "what?" -- "a well-dressed man"?  No way!!

 

But Monday morning as I was waking up, there it was -- Doug's Market ties!

My husband was the marketing director for Paisley Farms (a local specialty food processor). 

He loved that job -- got to talk to people all day long about his favorite thing -- food!!

RJR had just introduced their first collection of veggie prints.

So I made him an assortment of ties to wear at trade shows -- proved to be quite a conversation opener!!

 

Now I don't have time this week to work on a "from scratch" project (prepping for my annual student retreat in Amish country) but I've been spurred into taking it along to the retreat to finish.

Just needs quilted and it's only about 30" square!

But after looking it at all day on Tuesday, I decided the borders need reworked.

Something was wrong and the whole quilt buckled.

At first it seemed like taking off the last two border strips I had added would enable me to straighten everything up and put the borders back on. 

Ummm, nope! 

Look how out of whack this is!?! 

In the end and in the interest of maintaining momentum (it's already been waiting in the "to be quilted" queue for about 20 years), once I took off the other two border strips, I decided to eliminate the green border completely. 

I'll bind it in green!

So it's layered and packed for a quick finish this weekend!!

Going to keep it simple with a crosshatch grid and my walking foot.

Watch for it's progress on Instagram (I'm @hueymary)!!

I hope you get to do lots of stitching this weekend, too!!

 

Mary

 

Monday, March 6

Here is the finished quilt.  As often is the case, I'm finding myself wondering why it took so long to finish it -- 20 years?!?  My plan is to hang it in my studio (once I get the casing added) and enjoy the happy memories it evokes of my husband and his cheerful attitude. 

 

The Texture Challenge -- Project Quilting Season 8

This week's challenge for Project Quilting is TEXTURE.

In the interest of personal calmness and minimizing stress, I've decided not to participate by making a piece.  It's an interesting challenge but right now I can't devote the time to it that I would like.

That being said, I realized on my walk late yesterday afternoon that I am participating to the extent that I'm observing "texture" and contemplating how I might achieve it in my quilting. 

I'm a nature enthusiast -- I peruse nature through birding and walking and a bit of photography.

So I'm going to share some photos from my "nature" gallery that were taken specifically for inspiration.

This is the bark of our native sycamore tree -- they are common along streams and in wet areas.

It's a stunning tree in the winter as it sheds the outer layers of bark to reveal smooth white to pale green layers of new bark.  Look at all this texture -- just waiting to appliqued!?!

These fan shaped fungi are common in mature woodlots and while the colors are typically subtle, I always think it would be fun to depict them with layered Dresden-plate style fans.  This one was particularly striking with the white outer borders.

The witch hazel shrub by my back porch never fails to enchant me -- it will be blooming soon!  One of it's charms is that it blooms while it's snowing and leafless here.  Ruth McDowell has actually pieced witch hazel  -- you can find pictures of it HERE on her website!  It's stunning!!

This field was filled with the webs of orb web spiders and they glowed in the early morning light because they were covered in dew.  There were literally hundreds of the webs and it was fascinating to see.  I've used the inspiration of these webs for a quilting design several times.

Last spring during a visit to Northwest Ohio, we walked through a marsh with a thriving population of leopard frogs.  These were the common frogs of my childhood but I seldom see them in my part of the state these days.  What I love about this photo is the blades of grass cutting across my view.  What do you think -- piece a frog with an oozing muddy background fabric and then slice it to inserts blades of grass?

Finally, I found this photo I took while camping with my family last August.  It's one of the hackberry butterflies that was hanging out in our campsite.  The shades of gray of the gravel is such a good background for this creature.  Will it inspire a pictorial rendering or perhaps a color scheme?

And then there is this beauty -- I stumbled onto this "still life" last fall while walking in the local park -- it's so lovely.  The colors, the arrangement -- perfect!!  It could have been "staged" by someone but if it was, I'm grateful that they shared their artistry!

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's experiments with textures when the voting begins on Sunday (2/5) over at Persimon Dreams! 

Hoping you have a stitchable weekend!!

Mary



A Discovery!!

I've made an exciting botanical discovery this week -- it's an exciting variation of the Carolina Lily!!

Carolina Lily is the challenge prompt for the second Project Quilt Season 8 project

(read all about it HERE).

Carolina Lily -- a traditional pattern with a difficult memory for me.

Many years ago, I started a Friendship group at my shop to exchange quilt blocks.  We met monthly and there were a dozen of us.  The third member to "present" a block for us to make gave us a Carolina Lily pattern that has some flaws so it was a hard make for most of us.

Then she quit coming after she got her blocks!!

 

I just have to think Carolina Lily and that memory flares up!

But I do like the look of the block and when done the traditional way with 45 degree diamonds, it involves y-seams -- easy for me to piece with Marti Michell's templates and the Set-In Piecing Simplified technique!

But how to give it a bit of a twist?

 

That Fierce Feathered Star I tested for Jesse (HERE) back in the fall must have been lurking in the back of my brain because I decided to supersize the block!!

 

I'm going to drag you through most of the process I used so if you aren't interested in it, just jump to the end to see the (almost) finished result.

 

I used the large 45 degree diamond template from Set E (8-pointed star) to make eight pieced diamonds.  The actual Carolina Lily (state wildflower of North Carolina) is orange and I raided my precious stash for three prints with lots of texture.

The piecing went quickly thanks to the trimmed points of the diamonds which take all the guess work out of matching. 

I do lay everything out carefully as it's easy to sew the wrong sides of the pairs together. 

No pin poking necessary even at this stage! 

If the seam allowance is accurate, this intersection lines itself up. 

The base of each flower is made from eight assorted green triangles using the large triangle template in Set E.

I arranged the orange prints with the lightest one at the outside points. 

Soon it was time to audition for the background fabric.  I had in my mind a print with a white or cream ground and green figures on it but as you can see here, I threw down as many options as possible and left the studio for the day.

The next morning when I returned, the prints that weren't working were quickly obvious and went back into the stacks.  I settled on a Moda grunge with a snow white base and some brighter white and soft gray highlights (at the top of the picture). 

The quickest way to figure out what size triangle was needed for the background was to lay Marti Michell's Small Diagonal Set Ruler in position -- the seam line on the ruler is lined up with the approximate seam line of the pieced units.  There it is -- no math required -- 7".

The advantage of this tool is that you use strips which often saves fabric -- always good since I'm often working with limited quantities of fabric that is no longer available.  Cutting them this way also assures that the outer edge of the triangles is on the straight grain -- very important!!

Perfect results!!

Time to create the lily pot!  Originally I was thinking green but then decided to try blue which is opposite orange on the color wheel so the best for contrast!  I was going to make it by piecing together 59 half square triangles.  As I was sorting through the blues, this beauty popped out from the bottom of one of the stacks!

Can you believe how perfect it is??

It's old -- a Free Spirit collection named Sarsaparilla -- over 10 years old.

It was easy to give up the idea of piecing all those HST's -- time is of the essence in this challenge!

The stem unit is a combination of piecing (the center stem) and applique (bias strips so they would arc beautifully).

When it was time to cut a BIG triangle for the pot, I realized I didn't have a large enough piece of the blue fabric, so it needed to be made in sections.  I also was concerned that the big floral area would be overwhelming so I made a square in a square block for the center of the pot to break things up a bit.  When I got the main part of the pot assembled it was too narrow across the top edge.

Arrggghhhh!

Everything had gone together so smoothly up to this point.

Time to take a break.

When I came back, I could see two choices -- start over or add more fabric.

Time is of the essence so I took the simpler route and added the outer blue strips.

The last thing that needed to be done was to calculate the large background filler pieces.  The 20" right triangles were easy but this large kite shape took some courage to cut. 

Happily it worked fine! 

Tuesday evening I completed the top and took this picture.

It's 59" tall and 48" wide.

L. michauxii subsp Amazonian

I left the studio for the day thrilled with the result but when I walked back in there on Wednesday morning, my eye went straight to that square in square block.

Not what I wanted!!

So out it came and a square of the gorgeous blue print replaced it.

Much better!!

All properly collected specimens must be labeled so I organized a label I could ink onto the background fabric using my light table. 

A little more searching through my stash found a backing fabric and I layered it up to take along to a retreat with friends this weekend.  I hope that by the time you are reading this, I've finished the quilting (it will be simple) and am working on the binding.

It's my hope that I'll finish by the Sunday deadline and get it linked up with the challenge #2 linky but if I don't, it's okay because I've had such a good time creating this piece. 

I intend to donate it to a local organization for a fund raiser . . . if I can bear to part with it!?!

Have a great weekend!

Mary

And just in case you ever need to name a new species, you can get the inside story on how to write it out correctly HERE.

Project Quilting Season 8

If you could see my "blog planner", you would know that today's post is not in the plan -- it came out of nowhere and surprised me.  When that happens, I'm grateful because it often gives me some breathing space when I'm flailing around for topic inspirations.

This picture from my post earlier this week may have piqued your curiosity -- it certainly did mine!

Over the New Year weekend, I stumbled into information about Project Quilting, the brain child of Nikki at Persimon Dreams -- it will be easier for you to just jump over THERE and read about it for yourself.   There are already over two dozen finished projects posted in the linky at the end of the post.

If you are new reader from the Project Quilting "linky", thanks for visiting!  I'm Mary Huey, I quilt in Northeast Ohio and have a long history as a quilt maker -- teaching, owned a shop, and now blogging!

 The above diagram was included in the first challenge -- "eight is great" -- guidelines.  I was intrigued, as I am with all things "star", and a coloring session (unusual in itself) helped me dissect the sphere and experiment with color and value options.

The basic unit of the block is the "kite" shape associated with 8-pointed stars!

I teach with Marti Michell's Multi-size Kite Ruler so I used the largest kite to draft a pattern for a 17" block.  It's a little hard to see my diagram but as a result of becoming reacquainted with paper piecing last year, I decided the quickest way to achieve the dissected kites would be paper piecing.

I made 5 copies of my patterns -- one to use as cutting patterns (check out this post for my previous comments about this) and four for stitching.  I'm always challenging myself to use my expansive stash and this time, I elected to try interpreting a contemporary color scheme (aqua and red) with older fabrics.

Once the pattern was organized and the fabrics picked, it didn't take long to settle in at the machine and of course, I found a chain-piecing aspect to the process!

Once the paper pieced kite units were stitched, I used Marti's ruler to trim them to the perfect size. 

During the cutting process, I decided to piece the alternate points without paper (seems quicker in my mind).

After pressing the seams, I centered my pattern on the fabric, set the kite ruler on top of it and trimmed them to size. 

I opted for a single background fabric to maintain the clean line of contrast and they are actually simple right triangles (though they appear to be otherwise in the original drawing). 

I made them slightly larger than necessary to give me a cushion or float around the finished star.

Here are the two finished units ready for the final construction of the star.

Of course, it's a y-seam but piecing those are easier than you are thinking thanks to the "set-in piecing simplified" technique which I have been teaching for the past 4 years (thanks to the insight of Mary O'Keefe in Watertown, NY.). 

How many times have you read my rhapsodizing about this technique?

Are you curious yet?

Time to buy my PDF teaching guide, Set-In Piecing Simplified, and quit avoiding y-seam piecing!!

You'll have it in a week.  It takes 30 minutes to view (though I recommend doing it in two sittings with some trial stitching after the first segment).  With some practice, you'll soon be able to apply the idea to any y-seam block working with any of the many tools currently available. 

My final decision was to square up the block with the slightly darker background fabric.  It was in the running for framing the star, but it softened the edges of the star too much so this was a perfect way to get it into the finished block.  Those background pieces are half-kites and easily cut with the Multi-size Kite ruler.  I just had to be sure to cut each pair together with the fabric right sides facing to guarantee the necessary "right" and "left" orientation.

I love the block and I can see it as the center of a fabulous medallion but part of the challenge is to finish within one week -- a completed piece!! 

As I finished the piecing, I considered my options -- small quilt, pillow cover, table topper, tote bag.

The colors don't work in my home color scheme which revolves around neutrals and greens so using it for a "good deed" quilt was the best option.  But finishing a quilt in 4 days (during the designated week of deep kitchen cleaning) was not the best option.

And I don't like to make tote bags.

If you follow me on Instagram (@hueymary), you know this is where I headed out to shop (vegetables and bird seed) because I was struggling to decide how to finish it. 

On my rounds, I stopped at a local park for a (birding) walk and came to the conclusion that making a tote bag to donate during my church's annual Lenten collection for a local young families support ministry would be just the thing!

Rather than dig or search for a specific pattern, I cobbled together a large sturdy lined bag that I hope will serve as a cheerful tote for a young mother with limited resources.

The lining and this whimsical fabric for the pocket came out of boxes of fabric I culled from my stash last summer.

I'm not even going to show you how I constructed the bag -- there are so many great tutorials and patterns from stitchers who enjoy making them! 

The lines of the original grid drawing inspired most of the quilting and were done with the walking foot.

And here it is.  I'm pretty surprised with the results!?!

All linked up with the others, too!!

The best part was making it quickly -- four days -- and responding to lots of spontaneous ideas. 

When I got stuck, I stepped away and let the ideas sort themselves out.

Are you interested in the pattern drawing (just the block) so you can make your own version?

It finishes at 18" square with the final wedges. 

I'll organize a PDF to post on Craftsy this weekend.

I still think it would be a terrific medallion center block!

There are five more challenges during the three month run of Project Quilting.  I'll miss one while on vacation but I look forward to the discoveries waiting for me in the other four!

In the meantime, I need to finish a UFQ this weekend!!

How about you?

Mary

If you can't find Marti's Multi-size Kite tool locally, send me an e-mail.  I keep them in stock for workshops even though I don't have a selling website.

maryhueyquilts@hotmail.com