Custom Quilts made in 2014

It's my annual look back on the custom quilts I made during the year that were made as gifts, so I didn't want to show them too soon and accidentally ruin the surprise.

Click on the photos to see larger views.

"True Lover's Knot" queen-sized bed quilt, 82" x 92" with matching pillow cases, made for a wedding gift.

Detail

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Front of two-sided t-shirt quilt with 41 shirts, 1 leotard, 2 patches, 2 canvas bags, and two pieces of special fabric.

Back of t-shirt quilt, 57" x 77"

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 "December Cardinal" fabric mosaic, 11" x 14" framed

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Mr. Sports T-shirt quilt, 48" x 80"

World Travelers: Revisiting My First On-line Custom Order

"World Travelers," 50" x 30", Made by Pam Geisel, 2007

I recently had the opportunity to revisit a quilt that I made back in 2007, before I started blogging. I was contacted by a man who wanted me to make a quilt of the world for his parents with the countries they visited in red and also include the flags of those countries.

This quilt is special to me because it was the first custom quilt that I made for a stranger (although I don't think they knew this until now).

The background is made up of eight 10" light blue squares (of three different fabrics) that are pieced with the land masses and countries in red were appliqued raw edge with a satin stitch (a tight zigzag).

The flags are mostly pieced and the intricate parts were drawn with Sharpie markers. The flags were hand appliqued to the navy blue border.

The original quilt had the countries of Mexico, France, Morocco, Greece, and three Caribbean Islands and I heard that the quilt was a big hit with my customer's parents. At that time he asked if countries and flags could be added in the future, after his parents visited more places. Of course I said yes.

Flash forward seven years. The owner contacted me and wanted me to add Egypt, Italy, the Netherlands, and the state of Alaska. She shipped the quilt to me and I realized I had a small dilemma. Adding the flags wouldn't be a problem because they were hand appliqued to the quilt after it was quilted. But the countries were originally attached with a zigzag stitch BEFORE the quilt was sandwiched and quilted. When I added the countries, the sewing lines would be visible on the back side.

Plan A was to fuse two layers of fabric together so it would be thicker, zigzag the satin stitch around the edges and then attach it to the quilt with a straight stitch, kind of like sewing on a patch. The sewing lines would show on the back but wouldn't be very obvious. This worked great for Egypt and pretty well for Alaska although the two peninsulas gave me a little trouble. But the other countries were too small for the feed dogs to grab. Italy, which is only 1/2" wide and 1-1/4" long, disappeared down the hole where the needle goes.

So Plan B was used for Italy, the Italian islands, and the Netherlands. For those I fused the fabric to the quilt and zigzagged all the way through the quilt. I've tried doing zigzag quilting on finished quilts and have often run into thread breakage and tension issues, which is another reason why this wasn't my first choice, but this time the sewing machine cooperated.

Plan C would have been to do raw edge applique and a straight stitch, but I wanted the new countries to match the old ones.

It was fun to revisit a quilt from my past and to travel vicariously with it's owners.

Life is Like a Box of Chocolates: A Sampler Quilt

"Life is Like a Box of Chocolates," 53" x 53", Made by Pam Geisel, 2014

A modern interpretation of a sampler quilt, this art quilt, "Life is Like a Box of Chocolates," began life as a sampler quilt. It was quilted with a tight, angular free-motion quilting and then it was cut apart into 81 5”x5” squares.

I then pieced the large Nine-Patch background using two alternating navy blue pieces of fabric that I over-dyed to make them even darker. The strips that make the # shape used to be the original pieced border that I cut in half length-wise. I basted and quilted this part.

Next I arranged the 81 squares into nine Nine-Patch blocks forming a Nine-Patch made up of nine Nine-Patch blocks (kind of like a Suduko puzzle). The edges were left raw with some of the batting exposed and they were machine applique/quilted to the background.

I find the more I look at this quilt, the more my brain tries to reassemble the sampler blocks. Some of the original quilt blocks were Bear’s Paw, Jacob’s Ladder, Log Cabin, and Path Through the Woods. Can you see them?

I named this quilt because it's a play on a chocolate "Sampler" box and it kind of looks like little quilted candies arranged inside a box.

More about Life is Like a Box of Chocolates

Two pastel batik quilts: Pinwheel Elephants and Pastel Pinwheels

"Pinwheel Elephants," 20" x 20", made by Pam Geisel, Oct. 2014

I'm not really a big fan of pastel fabric, but when I found this lovely pastel batiks, I fell in love, especially with the batik elephants and giraffes.

"Pinwheel Elephants" detail

It's quilted stitch-in-the-ditch and also has some curved quilting on the pinwheels, with warm-colored buttons on the pink and orange pinwheels and cool-colored buttons on the green and blue colored pinwheels. Yes, I really like pinwheel blocks.

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I actually made two wall hangings using this fabric, although the second quilt doesn't have the elephant and giraffe fabric in it.

"Pastel Pinwheels," 22" x 29", made by Pam Geisel, Oct. 2014

"Pastel Pinwheels" is also quilted stitch-in-the-ditch and has very small blue buttons at the center of the pinwheels.

"Pastel Pinwheels" detail

I believe a Pinwheel block turned on point is technically called "Windmill" block but it just doesn't have the alliteration with the word "Pastel" that I wanted for the title.

Art & Soul art show this Sat, Nov. 15 in Yellow Springs

Art & Soul, features 30 exceptional artists who “put their souls into making art.” The show is this Sat., Nov. 15 from 10 am-5 pm. It will be in the Mills Lawn School Gym, 200 S. Walnut St. in Yellow Springs, just one block from the Xenia Ave. There's plenty of free parking in town and also in the lot behind the school.

There is a $3 admission fee, a portion of which will go to the Yellow Springs Schools and the Yellow Springs Police Coat Fund.

You can find photos and bios of all the artists participating on the Art & Soul Facebook page (and you don't have to have a Facebook account to view the page).

Daybreak is Your Midnight

"Daybreak is Your Midnight," 35.5" x 36", made by Pam Geisel, 2014

This art quilt began it's life as a completely different idea that I'd already purchased the hand-dyed fabric for. My test samples for the original idea just weren't working so I decided to create something using the 8-steps of gray and 6-steps of brown fabric that were purchased as fat eighths (9" x 22").

I decided to do something similar to my "Early Morning Nine Patch" and "Four Patch Bridge at Sunset" but without a representational object. I like the five-column format on these two art quilts, so I started by calculating how many 1" (finished size) strips of each fabric I would have to figure out how high the quilt would be.

Since I would be able to cut more than 5 strips from each fabric (to have 1 per column), I decided to change the pattern to this:

1 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 5 - 6

By doing this it would also make the quilt 2.5 times taller than if I just went 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6. I did have to print out a sheet with the steps on it to reference while I was pieceing, so I would get the right strip in the right place.

Next I did some sample layouts on the computer:

 With the darker strips at the top and the bottom.

 

With the darker strips at the bottom. 

With the 2nd and 4th columns inverted. 

With the middle column inverted and the meeting points staggered.

Now it was time to piece!

I added two inset pieces to each of the 180 horizontal strips, with one of insets being one step darker and one being one step lighter. I did this to add visual texture.

To add just a pop of color, I added a thin strip of maroon fabric with a small inset piece of turquoise fabric where the brown and gray fabrics met. To keep everything lined up, the darker piece next to the maroon pieces is thinner than the other horizontal pieces. I also added a variegated yarn couched between the five columns.

I machine quilted sticth-in-the-ditch to hold it all together and used a knife-edge binding. The final step was to add the three large hand-quilted circles comprised of five ripples each. I really wanted this to stand out so I used a thick embroidery thread. There were some places where I was sewing through as many as six layers of fabric, so I kept my needlenose pliers nearby to help pull the needle through.

In order to keep the shape of the circle, I created circles made of dotted lines on my computer at the sizes I wanted them. I tile printed them onto letter-size card stock then taped the card stock together. I hand quilted the largest circles first, cut away the template to the next sized circle then quilted it. I tried to keep the stitches the same width as the dotted lines to keep everything consistent.

More about Daybreak is Your Midnight

Lavender Diamonds

 

"Lavender Diamonds," 68" x 68", made by Pam Geisel in 2014

“Lavender Diamonds” is a traditional “Broken Star” (a version of a “Lone Star”) but created in a non-traditional way, and cropped differently.

Instead of being pieced, it is fused with hand-dyed fabric. Each of the 560 diamonds is made up of 6 to 8 pieces of similarly colored fabric. By the end, every time I closed my eyes I saw diamond shapes.

There’s a “swoosh” that goes across the middle where the same color family is used but the pieces are darker and is outlined by couched black thread. Where the swoosh goes through the negative space there are fused pieces of gray, black, dark green, and dark blue fabrics.

The black negative spaces have thin strips of black fabric fused in them and they are framed by the same maroon fabric that I used as the inner border.

My original idea for the quilting was to quilt in a spiral, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sew down enough of the pieces, since even though they were fused, they weren’t very good about staying put, especially when I had to fold and roll the quilt in order to quilt it. My second idea was some sort of fractured pattern, but I had the same concern. The night before I was going to start, just as I was falling asleep, I thought I could do quilting lines that were 1/4" apart and echo the design element in the center of the quilt (where the colors are darker). By the end of this time, every time I closed my eyes I saw quilting lines 1/4" apart.

Edited to add this quilt won "Honorable Mention" in the Large Quilts - Home Machine Quilted category at the American Quilter's Society show at the Lancaster QuiltWeek in March 2015. The list of winners can be seen here.

More about Lavender Diamonds

Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour: meet my guest artists

That's me in the center when the video crew stopped by during last year's event.

The Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour is this coming weekend, Sat., Oct. 18 and Sun. Oct. 19, from 10 am-6 pm both days. This is my seventh year participating as a host, and this year I have three guest artists. We have 25 artists at seven locations with one new host artists and 11 new guest artists.

Courtney DeYoung incorporates drawing, painting and sculpture in her jewelry design. She enjoys using clay to create a surface and design that works well for delicate detail. The images are often inspired by flowers and creatures. After firing, a color pallet is selected and she paints a design using a a thin layering technique to create a vibrant finish. Courtney lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. 

Kimberly Rorick creates figurative sculptural art depicting stylized features and expression of the human form, predominately female. She works in porcelain clay, underglaze, and glazes. Each piece is fired multiple times in an electric kiln. Her figures are likely to be adorned with fish, birds, cats, head-
dresses, hats or ‘hair’ made in either a stylized or a realistic manner. Kimberly lives and works in Ossian, Indiana.

Deborah Dixon uses stenciled shapes, printing inks, drawing techniques, and silk screens to create her textured and layered abstract prints. Deborah was on the tour many years ago and has recently moved back to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she lives and creates. 

The tour is a driving tour. Visit the Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour website for more information about the other hosts and guest artists and to download a tour map. Maps can also be picked up at the Winds Cafe, Young's Dairy, the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce, and at the artists studios the days of the tour. All studios will have red balloons and signs. 

Heirloom Bouquet

"Heirloom Bouquet," 30" x 13.5", made by Pam Geisel, Oct. 2014

"Heirloom Bouquet" was machine pieced and quilted and then hand embellished. The quilt has a knife-edge finish.

It was the hand-painted vintage crochet piece that was the inspiration for this piece. All of the other fabrics, yarn, and beads were selected based on how well they complemented it. It is hand-sewn to the pieced background and then was hand beaded with gold beads in the center of the flowers.

A piece of red-orange variegated yarn was then hand attached around the piece to help set it off from the background.

The fabric with the white spots on it is covered with tulle which was added when the background was pieced. The red-orange variegated yarn was couched down by machine.

This piece of rainbow-colored upholstery fabric is darker on the left side. I hand-beaded corresponding beads where the darker part meets the lighter part.

More about Heirloom Bouquet

Waterliles Fabric Mosaic

"Waterliles," 10" x 10", made by Pam Geisel, Oct. 2014

The colors in this fabric mosaic were inspired by the color's in Monet's Waterliles paintings, only instead of painting, I used small pieces of fabric arranged on a backing fabric and then covered with netting and stitched down. Because it is three or more layers held together with stitches, it is technically a quilt.

This mosaic is 5" x 7" and is matted and framed in a black wood frame that is 10" x 10".

More about Waterlilies

Another Fragment of the Frontier of Beauty

"Another Fragment of the Frontier of Beauty," 13.25 x 41, made by Pam Geisel, Oct. 2014

Has it really been seven months since I posted about a new quilt? The good news is that I has several new ones to share over the next few weeks. First up is "Another Fragment of the Frontier of Beauty."

The title is a quote by Albert Einstein from a wonderful story titled "The Night I Met Einstein" by Jerome Weidman, which I first read in Reader's Digest but you can read by following the link.

I actually started this piece back in June, doing the machine piecing and design work but saving the hand beading for when I needed a project to work on away from the studio. There was a lot of auditioning fabrics until I found the solid green pieces that I used to complement the focal fabrics. The long vertical piece that runs through the middle is one piece of hand dyed fabric that starts with a gold tone that blends into a blue color and hangs below the bottom of the quilt.

One of the focal fabrics has the pinkish abstract football shapes had pink beads hand sewn on them, making some look like fish. Here you can see some of the minimal vertical quilting that appears on the upper green pieces but doesn't go all the way to the edge of the fabric and instead stops at different points and has green seed beads where they stop.

The other focal fabric features a batik sun on the left and a maze of sorts on the right. There are small, clear seed beads in the maze and at the end of the sun's rays, with a beaded face in the middle of the sun.

There is a lime green sheer on the lower right with some coins that came off of a hip scarf used as part of a belly dance costume.

More about Another Fragment of the Frontier of Beauty

Art on the Commons in Kettering, Sunday, Aug. 10

Left, clockwise: Pam Geisel (fibers), Lincoln Park Civic Commons, Paula Britton (jewelry), JBird Cremeans (graphic design), raku firing

Recognize the photo on the left? It's my art quilt "Sunflowers at Whitehall Farm" and it must have caught the eye of someone on the Rosewood Arts Centre's staff because they've used it several times to promote their event Art on the Commons. The image above, along with the other artists, was used in the e-mail blast about the event, it appeared in the Dayton Daily New's article about the event in the Aug. 3, 2014 issue, and it was used when I was one of the featured artists on the Rosewood Arts Centre's Facebook page. 

Too bad that particular quilt is in the "Wild Lands, Wild Life" art quilt exhibit at Aullwood Audubon Center through Aug. 24. Luckily I have plenty of note cards of "Sunflowers at Whitehall Farm."

Art on the Commons is this Sun, Aug. 10 from 11 am-5 pm at the Kettering Civic Commons, 675 Lincoln Park Blvd. in booth #59.

Forest Friends Baby Quilt

 "Forest Friends" baby quilt, 35" x 35"

This extra-soft baby quilt is made with cotton flannel featuring adorable baby forest animals on a green background so it can be used for a boy or a girl.

There are bunnies, hedgehogs, raccoons, owls, deer, foxes, squirrels, and lady bugs.