Genesee Valley Quilt Club 2019 Quilt Show -- Quiltfest = Smaller Quilts

This was one of my favorites and I am pretty sure won a prize in the modern quilt category.  Wonderful use of color and neutrals.

I won't comment on the rest except to try to get names on all the quilts!  They were the ones I liked the best (and there were more as well but just didn't get the names with them).

Audrey Pantas

Betty Gordon

Janet Atkins

Jean Lemmon

Terri McDonald

Verna Baumgarten

Antonia Herring

Barbara Grimsley

Beth Kelly

Tina Somerset

John Kubinec

Kathleen McIntosh

Lana Wright

Linda Coats

Mary Ching

Sue Beevers

Terri Cherni

Nick Williams

Pat Delaney

There was a whole exhibit of all the different colorways of this piece of fabric.  I picked one to show here.  The quilting was different on each one.  If you look at Nick's quilt above,  you will notice that this panel is the background for his piece.  This one was done by Kimberley Werth.

I Couldn't Help Myself....

I haven't been doing all that much quilting as I am going through  a major purge of my stash of fabrics trying to get it down to a reasonable level.  Just making more quilts just wasn't reducing it enough!!  I came upon this piece of fabric which I really liked and knew I had to use.  It seems a natural for a stack and whack.  I cut 3 1/2 inch strips as the repeat was only 11 inches but there were 8 repeats so I am doing the kaleidoscope block.  There are 80 blocks altogether but they are fairly small.  I have fiddled around in EQ8 with several sets and think I am almost there.

 These are the first 13 blocks and think there is a lot of variety here despite the rather restrained (for me) palette!

This was a particularly ugly dyed mandala!  I decided to do what I do with these failures -- cut it up and see if I can improve upon it!!  (It is almost a version of stack and whack.)

This was one version.  No better!

This is a little better but I think I need to start with a better base mandala.

Genesee Valley Quilt Club 2019 Quilt Show -- Quiltfest -- Large Quilts

This magnificent quilt won the Viewer's Choice Award for the show.  If you look closely, you can see the unbelievable quilting of the fox faces all around the triangles on the outside.  It was a wonderful use of color and the neutral gray as well.  It was done by Patti Cline.

There
 were
 quite a few beautiful applique quilts -- both machine and  hand.  This one was by Audrey Pantas. 

This one was by Sue Beevers.

This one was by Nancy Levant.

 This one was by Kimberley Werth.

Nick
 Williams.  There were many others but I managed to have a bit of a camera meltdown (it was the first time using a new camera) and so some were missed as Picasa decided to separate the quilts from the maker's names and I didn't want to show a quilt without the quilter!!

This quilt was entered by Mary Wieser but the blocks were done by various members of the Perinton Quilt Guild and finished off by Mary!  She had another some other beautiful quilts including one done by her sister in law that I managed to lose the picture (and I really wanted a pic of that one!).

 This is another one done by Nick Williams.  He had several others and all equally gorgeous (and colorful)!

 This was done by Ruth Ohol and was just magnificent as all her quilts are!

 This quilt was done by Chris Wickert.  She is a phenomenon and has won awards in almost all the major national shows for her quilts!!  I didn't check but she must have hand pieced this one.  She is most famous for her magnificent applique pieces, many of which are in silk.  

 This was done by Barbara Grimsley.

 This was done by Jill Escriva.  She had several gorgeous quilts in the show.

 This was done by Beth Kelly and her quilts in the show were magnificent.  I know this won one of the judges' prizes.  

A wonderful little sampler quilt by Betsey Speer.

I loved this scrap quilt by Joy Shewan.  Wonderful placement of the blocks. 

This beautiful medallion quilt was done by Elaine Lemley.

How to Do Radially Symmetric Pattern Blocks aka Stack and Whack or One Block Wonder

I have been asked to do a presentation to a local quilt guild on my "stack and whack" quilts.  What I have discovered about myself is that I love radial symmetry which is why I was so attracted to this kind of block originally.  Also playing into this was that I don't ever (except in ONE case) do two blocks the same and of course with this type of quilting, you use only one fabric but every block is different.  I have heard differentiation of "stack and whack" and "one block wonders" but they are essentially the same thing but the second having a well defined set.  Even in my dyeing, I am most intrigued by making radially symmetric blocks with ice dyeing.  Below are my steps to making this type of quilt.  This quilt uses six repeats of the fabric and makes hexagons.

  

Picking the Fabric

The key to making interesting radially symmetric patterns is picking the appropriate fabric which has a reasonably lengthy repeat. You can measure the repeat by looking at the selvedge and look at the cut end of the fabric and search for a definable object and move your eyes up along the selvedge until you see that same object. You can then measure that length and that will give you the repeat length. This can range from 2 inches to 36 inches depending upon the fabric.

The best fabrics are ones with multiple colors and not a lot of background space. The images should be reasonably large but not overwhelmingly so. There are of course exceptions to this. A good tool for this is a folding mirror that you can swing along the edge of the fabric to see whether there is enough variety to make it interesting.

Determining How Much You Need

Any pattern which has some sort of repeating element around a middle point will work for a stack and whack. Good examples are hexagons, octagons (kaleidoscope block), almost any star design and even the lowly four patch. Once you decide which you will do, you need to multiply the number of occurrences of the repeating pattern by the repeat length you determined above. So if your repeat is 12 inches and you are doing a hexagon based design (6 sides), you would multiply the 12 x 6 and decide you need 72 inches or 2 yards. Now you may want to make a much bigger quilt so you might multiply that by 2 or 3. I generally buy just a ¼ yard extra just in case!  The repeat on the above quilt was about 12 inches.

Cutting the Fabric

The first step is to divide the fabric into two lengthwise so that each piece is 22 inches (or so) by the length of the fabric. Then I determine where the repeat is and made a small slit on the selvedge side and after I get them all marked, I tear the fabric (I don't use a rotary cutter as I have found that you get a more even start with tearing). You would do this with each half of the fabric if you want lots of blocks.

Arranging the Stack

This step is the very important one and the reason you divide the fabric to make it manageable. Stack up the fabrics in the pile each fabric going in the same direction. Now start pinning the four (or six or eight) layers carefully together. I do this by starting at one corner and pushing the pin through the exact same spot on each of the fabrics below it. I leave the pin just pushing down and move about 1 ½ to 2 inches down and do the same. I do this down the whole length of the fabric. Then I make sure every thing is parallel and start pinning by taking a separate pin and replacing the first pin. I do this down the length. I repeat this on all four sides. You would be surprised at how wonky the fabric is even after you have pinned three sides. It gets easier each side. It is a perfect thing to do while watching tv. I usually trim away a little bit on either side where it was torn at this point and also get rid of the selvedge.

Cutting the Strips

Well, by now you have decided which pattern you are using. You can either use a predetermined width of fabric or decide now how wide you want to make your strips. I don't like to waste fabric so I tend to go with the second alternative and do some division of the repeat. So if I have a 24 inch repeat, I might do 5 ¾ inch strips (instead of the 6 inch strip as I like to make sure all is even) or a even a 7 ¾ inch strip (this would make an awfully big square or hexi so don't usually go that big). I also look at the pattern of the fabric itself to see how large the elements are and use that as a guideline. I have found if I have a 12 inch repeat that the pattern itself has much smaller elements so tend to go with 2 ¾ inch strips or 3 ¾ (or 7/8) inch strips.

Cutting the Triangles, Diamonds or Squares

I use 45 degree and 60 degree triangles to cut the triangles for an octagonal or hexagonal block. I have also used just a ruler and used the 60 degree and 45 degree angles, made diamonds (and either leave that way) or cut the diamonds in half to make the appropriate triangles.

These hexagons were cut from a very large Hawaiian print that wasn't particularly attractive but certainly made nice blocks!

This was another not very attractive print of vegetables.  I cut two different size triangles for this one and set the whole thing on point.  It uses the familiar kaleidoscope block which is eight sides..

The fabric for the centers of these stars is in the border.  This was an unusual star pattern which we had a class on in QBTS .

This is a One Block Wonder quilt which was unfinished at the time of this pic.  I  have no idea where this quilt is now!!  I must have given it away!

 This was a purchased pattern which used four patches for the repeating pattern, so only needed four repeats of the fabric but again, it was two different sizes of squares.

This was again a pattern from a book called Serendipity Quilts by Sara Nephews.  It uses six pointed stars in the middle of the more complex blocks with simple hexagons surrounding them.  I had to use the size strips that were called for in the book.  I made several of  this type of quilt a number of years ago.  It is not quite done in the pic!  It is about three shades lighter now from all the washings as the cats love to sleep on it!  You'll note that I cannot help myself a so used variations of the block so I didn't have to do the same block 10 times!!

A Special Exhibition by Janet Root

Janet is the person I have known the longest in the Genesee Valley Quilt Club.  She initially told me about the club more than 20 years ago while we attended a class in Albany and found we both lived in the Rochester area.  I then ran into her at Quilting by the Lake right before I retired.  I attended my first club meeting the next month!

She is a wonderful artist/quilter who works in a variety of styles and is always helping others.  She is one of the founding members of the Rochester Area Fiber Artists as well as a frequent contributor to programs at GVQC.

These are just a few of the pieces she has on display at GoArt in Batavia, New York.  The exhibit will be up for the next month or so and well worth a visit!

These were all taken the night of her opening reception which had a huge crowd!!

I love to go out to her house and take pictures of all the wonderful birds that come to her feeders!

Best Laid Plans Quilt

There is a reason for the name of this quilt.  It has turned into one very weird experience!  I am supposed to speak on stack and whacks at a local quilt club this month.  I have made about every variation of this quilt except or a new one I have seen on the internet. To me, it is one of the nicest of the genre.  It is made from a scenic panel and then the stack and whacks that were made from obviously six additional copies of the panel surrounded this central image.  I wasn't going to buy any more fabric but found this vase in my stash and I had 16 repeats of it so thought - what the heck!!  It was difficult to stack as I usually pin along the edge and the edge had no definable objects to pin through the layers.  I did do the pinning and got a very even stack.  I then cut it up into 4 inch wide triangles -- 6 of each (or so I thought).  As I was auditioning which sides of the 60 degree triangles I would use, I noticed that every other one in the stack was different -- I had three of one triangle and three of the other.  I thought I must have put in some of the panels upside down. When I looked a little more closely I noticed -- uh oh.  On each width of the fabric, there were two vases and one was the mirror image of the other!!  So inadvertently I managed to a unique new stack and whack!!  This picture shows the two versions of the vase and the beginnings of sewing the blocks together.

So here all the blocks are done and there is the perfect amount to do this arrangement.  At this point I thought it was going to take some math to figure out how to get everything to line up and how much additional fabric I would need surrounding the hexies to have them match up with the center panels.

First I had to decide which fabrics to use for the finishing triangles though.  I assumed I would use the green that was surrounding the panels in the yardage -- there were four to five inch strips on either side of the panels.

No, that is just awful!!  So won't use the green but may see if I have enough for an outside border or binding -- far away from the hexies!

Next I thought black as that is the background color in the panels.  No, definitely not!!  The gold in the frame is what the problem is with whatever I decide to do as it doesn't match with any of the flowers in the panel and yet is very outstanding.

I finally decided that this off-white subtle print would work the best.  I randomly decided that I wanted about 1 1/2 inches between the hexies and the top and bottom of the panels.  It just looked right somehow.

Imagine my shock when I also discovered that I needed 1 1/2 inches between the vertical hexies so that they fit right next to the panel.  Furthermore, when I placed the line of hexies next to the panel with its edge pieces, they also fit exactly!!  So I ended up not having to doing any subtle fixing to make everything turn out even.  I have no idea why this worked but I am not complaining!  Now just need to add some stuff to the sides and a border all around and consider the top done.  It will probably end up about 44 x 60 when completed.  It will definitely be a giveaway one!!  It will be a good show and tell for my talk though.

The hexie blocks are three-peats and are certainly different from any other stack and whack I have done!