Progress on the Petal Quilt

As a quilt associate said, if it appears in my backyard, it gets its picture taken and I love Pileated Woodpeckers.  He started on our wood pile and then moved next door to sit on the top of this tree stump.  I was quite a distance away but the picture came out pretty well!!  So far this season, I have seen Red-bellied, Pileated and Downy Woodpeckers in the backyard.  Years ago, I saw about every kind of woodpecker native to our area back there in the wintertimes.  We have a LOT of trees back there and our neighbor keeps his feeders full!

I have continued to work on the Petal quilt, trying to get in some machine quilting each day.  I had a mild recurrence of an old whiplash injury which bothered me for a couple of weeks and that kept me from doing any quilting as I was trying to be gentle on my poor neck and was wearing a cervical collar.  I am back at it now and hopefully will be done before next week rolls around.  I am doing a LOT of quilting in this piece!  This is basically a quarter of it.  It is a queen sized quilt and I don't have a nice wall big enough to show the whole thing!!

This is a closeup where you can see what kind of quilting I am doing.  All the extended hexagons are getting feathers in them.  The background of the stars is swirly lines and the backgrounds of the flowers (the orange pieces) are getting arches.  In all the square pieces I have quilted more flowers.  Doing the feathers is my favorite part!

This is a random ice dyed piece from last summer that I found and hadn't even ironed yet.  It was made when I was doing just folds (but not around a center point like I do with the mandalas) and is about a yard and a half long.

A Couple of Days of Mandalas -- Some Experiments with Folds and Techniques

Well, I had just about five yards left of pfd fabric on my last old bolt!!  So I decided I would go all out and just do the 22 inch squares with all that was remaining which resulted in 18 new pieces, most of which were pretty successful.  I also decided to try some different folds this time around and press them all nice and tidy before I soaked them.  These were all just folded into quarters and then  into eighths so that there were not as many layers for the dye to go through.

With all of the pieces in this blog, I also tried something new.  One of my problems has been that if I lay the pieces flat on the grate that I use, I get the markings of the grate which is annoying so I always had to kind of krinkle them as well which was difficult with these small pieces.  So I decided to use a "drop cloth" underneath each of these pieces.  I scrunched up random pieces of soda ash soaked fabrics and placed them on the grates.  Then I laid out the spiral folded pieces on top of these and I laid them out flat.  This worked really well to eliminate the lines I had gotten and gave me some pretty impressive random ice dyed pieces as well!!  I had tried leaving pieces sitting on the bottom of the pan last  year and they were hideously ugly for the most part but this worked really well.

This is a closeup of one of the pieces that I folded into fourths and then eighths.  

This is a closeup of a piece that was folded into thirds and then sixths.

This was the result of another experiment I did.  I used very few colors just so I would be able to identify the pieces after they were washed.  In these three pieces, I used a liquid version of the dye (a 10% solution that I made up) and squirted the dyes over the ice.  I was hoping for a good penetration through the layers.  I just used a couple of shades of green and some intense blue on these pieces.  They are much more subtle and I don't think the coverage is any better than with the powdered dyes.  I may try this again with some varying colors.  I did use my "drop cloth" under these as well.

These were all made using the "snowflake" fold -- hexagons.  I have yet to figure out why some are more successful in terms of concentration of color than others.

This is a closeup of the one I deemed to be the most successful of the above bunch.

I had bought a bunch of cotton lawn fabric some time ago to make nightgowns.  I had intended to dye the fabric before I made the gowns but ended up using most of it just as white.  I had some random pieces left so I used them as "drop cloths" and the color was outstanding I thought.  I am definitely going to take those nightgowns and use them as drop cloths in  new dye efforts!!  I may just have to head back to the place I got this fabric and search for more as it was pretty cheap and dyes beautifully (must have been mercerized).

I also used some of the sateen I had left over as a "drop cloth" and it is more subtle but still very nice color.  I think there is a permanent press coating on this fabric as it doesn't take the color as intensely as sateen should.

Just another closeup for your viewing pleasure!!

GVQC 2015 Quilt Show -- Part III -- Art Quilts

This quilt is called Disparity by Debra Roach and was one of my very favorites of the art quilts.  It was featured in the special recognition section of the quilt show because of its acceptance into a nationally recognized show.  I just loved it!

I have included the quilts here that I considered art quilts even though some of them did not land in the art quilt category.  Many times it is difficult to decide what category to put a quilt in and because of that many unique quilts get assigned to pieced categories even though they clearly are artist designed and not a pattern or a clone of another quilt.

I have included many but certainly  not all of my favorites by a long shot!!  Just too many to choose from!

This one and the next two are by Marcia Decamp.  This one is called Storm Clouds at Sunrise.  I believe these were all in the special recognition part of the exhibit as Marcia has gotten a lot of national recognition for her beautiful art quilts.

 This one is called Blue Squares.

This one is called Roundabout.

 This quilt and the next two are by Pat Pauly.  Pat's quilt incorporate many of her surface design work as well as commercial fabrics.  It is amazing to watch these pieces develop from vague ideas to complex compositions.  This one is called Leap of Faith.

This one is called Pink Leaf 2.

This one is called Pink Leaf 3.

This and the next two quilts are by Beverly Kondolf.  She also uses complex surface design fabrics. This one is called Wild Fermentation.

This one is called Rainy Monday in May.

This one is called April Snow.

Randall Cook had a number of pieces in the show.  These were wholecloth designs from his created fabrics.  

This is Released by the Day by Mary Wieser.

Several members of the RAFA group have design challenges periodically.  The next two pieces were inspired by the works of Kandinsky.  This one is by Sue Donovan and is simply Inspired by Kandinsky.

This one is My Kandinsky by Joyce Lyke.

This piece is called Agate Redux and was part of an exhibit at the Rochester Mineral Show where pieces were developed inspired by a mineral nicely donated by the group managing this exhibit.

 This and the following piece were done by Marcia Birken and inspired by her many travels.  This one is called Kata Tjuta Monolith in Australia.

This one is called Antartica Landscape - Gentoo Penguins Nesting.

GVQC Quilt Show - A Universe of Quilts - Part II - Pieced Quilts

This is Misdirected Peapod by Mary Wieser.  This is a simple one but love the use of color in this scrappy quilt.

This is another one by Mary Wieser that I really liked.  It is called Green Pieces.

Another one by Mary Wieser called Half Moon Quilt.  Again, I loved the colors and scrappiness.

This was a stunning quilt by Mary Christopher called Sunset Compass.

Another one by Mary Christopher and this one is called New Friendship and is just beautiful!

This one is called Spinning Wheel and it is by Nick Williams.  Look at all that wonderful quilting!

There were several quilts that used this pattern which I think is a Judy Niemeyer pattern which has been taught locally.  This one is called Hidden Stars by Linda Allen.

This is a different one and is called Prairie Star by Merilee MacWilliams.

This is Sylvia's Bridal Sampler by Nick Williams.

This is OMIGOSH by Trudi Hancock and loved the scrappiness and small pieces!

This is Round Robin by Doreen Hares.

This is Sunset Sunrise by Judi Robertson.  This is very much  my color palette.

This is Times Square by Sandra Buckman.

This is Bamboo by Betty Bufano and really liked its simplicity and may just do one of these!  It will definitely be in my Pinterest folder for scrap quilts!

This is Starry Night by Barb Seils -- a good use of color in this one as well!  Another one to add to my scrap folder!

This is Amish with a Twist and made by Nick Williams from a kit (which my sister is also doing so added this for her!)  It is a beautiful quilt.

These next two quilts were part of the Special Exhibits of nationally recognized quilts.  This one is by Chris Wickert and is called Homage.

This round quilt is called Nagano and was done by Janet Root.  I blew these last two quilts up to maximum size so you could see all the detail.  Both of these ladies are master quilters for sure!!

 This quilt is called Feathers Galore by Vickie Coykendall.  It is an incredible quilt and won Viewer's Choice out of the 600+ quilts that were exhibited.  I was afraid I hadn't taken a picture of this quilt but finally found it!  It also won a special recognition award from NQA as well as other awards!  Vickie is an incredible artist and the machine quilting in this quilt is exquisite although you can't see it very well in this photo.

 These next four are four more of the Prairie Star quilts.  This one is by Cynthia Barton.

This one is by Doreen Hoy.

This one is by Jewell Morgan.

This one is by Elsie Cond.

I know I missed many of the gorgeous quilts in this category and there were soooo many!  I tried to give recognition to some of my favorites.