Well, first I will show some of the quilts from Show and Tell in our Monday meeting. As usual, people didn't hold them up long enough in many cases to get a picture. This was Miranda's
This was some of the others. Really liked the colors in this one and the two block pattern.
Liked the fish!
Great scrap quilt begun in one of our classes.
Placemats from a dresden plate pattern.
A Double Wedding Ring done by Anne She showed a bunch of pieces she had finished that night. I have found you only do one double wedding ring!!
Another class project from class taught by our own Michelle.
Another from Anne.
This was done by Michelle and is part of a two continent challenge.
I was bound and determined to start doing something with the huge number of dyed mandalas I have made the past couple of years. I decided to start with my least favorites -- the ones I did the day that I forgot most of my dyes and had to make due with what I had. This was the large center panel (about 21 x 21).
So I first decided that the outside blocks would be on point and there would be 12 of them. Triangles the same color as the middle would be added between the side blocks.
Then I decided to surround each of the side blocks with a rose color as I didn't want them to blend into the background. Note, I had finally chosen a blue/gray to surround the center block after trying out the black which was too dark.
I didn't have enough of the brown for the corners so decided to try the rose color. No, no, no....
Then I found some brown that ws just a shade lighter for the corners and went to bed not caring for all that brown which I new I would have to fill with some pretty impressive quilting!! Also a couple of the blocks just didn't fit from a color standpoint. I was getting pretty discouraged even though these were not my favorites of the blocks I have done -- in fact the quilt will be called "The Day I Forgot Most of My Dyes and Had to Make Do".
Sleeping on it helped a lot!! The idea to not have the blocks on point came to me in the middle of the night. This got rid of the "too much brown" problem and I like it finally. The smaller blocks fit exactly on the sides of the big block -- trust me there were a lot of "square of the hypotenuse" calculations going on for this quilt. I also found a couple of larger blocks that were from a different bunch that I cut down and got rid of the "blocks that don't seem to fit" problem. I put the ones with the more orange centers in the middle of each row. Now to figure out what to do with the corners -- I am thinking pieced blocks with browns, touch of orange and grey and maybe a smidge more of the rose. It now sits at 50 x 50. I am thinking I will add solid strips on the top and bottom of a dark brown to make it 50 x 70. It will be good for sleeping on the sofa and browns fit the color scheme of the living room. So back to Electric Quilt do decide on an appropriate block. I cut up an awful lot of fabric making setting triangles for the other layout that I discarded.
Over the past 20 years, I have been to many quilt guild meetings in two states, a lot of major quilt venues with tons of nationally known teachers. With that as a preface, I must say that Deb Karasik was one of the funniest and most fun speakers ever. There have been only been a couple of others in the past that should have been doing stand-up and Deb was right up there with them!! In addition, her quilts and her quilting were stunningly beautiful -- almost made me want to go do paper piecing which I am not a big fan of!! Her class was full with a waiting list!
After seeing her quilts with the magnificent machine quilting, I was hesitant to even show the three that I had for show and tell!
This was the ladies with their class projects!
I won't attempt to do anything but show the pictures of her quilts which I got to the best of my ability. Her website is Deb Karasik's website .
Many of the patterns for these quilts are available at her website as well as tools and paper. I highly recommend inviting her for a trunk show!!
She describes herself as a former hippie and is originally from San Francisco although now we are lucky to have her in North Carolina (Durham).
This is the back of one of the quilts showing her intense machine quilting which she does with a mid-arm machine at home -- no long arm.
This is the back again showing all the wonderful quilting as well as some additional ornamentation.
I will publish another post later with the show and tell from this meeting as well as the start of another quilt using my mandalas.
Can't help myself but start with another sunset picture. I figured I would take them on our last day of really nice weather for a few days. More at the end of the post.
I have been busy the last few days trying to finish the three quilts on which I had been working. This is the Holiday Lights quilt. You can't see it but I did overall loopy quilting in all but the big blocks. I did some outline quilting of the snowflakes in the bigger blocks, creating snowflakes in the blank large blocks. I am not particularly happy with the quilting. I used invisible thread as there was so much difference in color and value. Standing a few feet away you can't see the quilting which is the good part as I really wanted something that didn't distract from the pattern itself. It is not clear what would be the best approach to quilting this.
This is the other quilt which I called City Lights. I used a different approach to quilting this one (my first approach) and am not particularly happy with this one either. I basically stitched in the ditch first between all the 4 1/2 inch blocks, avoiding the big blocks of color. I went back and stitched in the ditch at the 2 1/4 seams, again avoiding the big blocks. The big blocks looked lumpy so I went back and did some overall stitching of squares. I didn't stitch in the black areas as they didn't show the puffiness. The first quilt was bound with dark green fabric and this quilt was bound in black. I couldn't decide whether to bind them or to face them but like the containment that the binding provides.
Here you can see the finished Birds of a Feather quilt and also the quilting which I liked, unlike the other two quilts. It kinds of looks like there are circles and doesn't detract from the birds.
Two more sunset pictures taken at the Ft. Fisher museum and also the basin (where I take my bird pictures). I really like the sunset pictures where there is blue sky above which gradually turns to orange. So far, haven't found a purple sunset but that is a goal!!
This is the basin area.
