Falling in Love - Project Quilting

"Falling in Love," 10" x 20", made for Project Quilting, Season 6, Challenge 4: Have a Heart, Feb. 2015 in Yellow Springs, Ohio

Challenge recap for  "Have a Heart":

Your project must include at least 12 hearts of any size or technique.

I found the perfect piece of blue and purple hand-dyed fabric and a picture frame with a mat that had three cut outs. I marked the areas that would show (plus 1/4" buffer).

I laid the fabric on batting (no need for a backing fabric since it would be framed) and did some quick straight line stitching to keep it all together.

I found 12 small hearts cut from felt in the colors of light blue, lavender, dark purple and even one in gray and pinned them so they'd show when matted. I also added some small pieces of netting that had sparkles in it.

I don't usually take photos in progress (I don't want to stop the creative flow) but I knew the hearts would start to get hidden and I wanted to prove that I had all 12 hearts.

I sewed these down then started couching some yarn that was mostly dark purple but had some other colors in it. Then I added some loose threads and other ephemera and covered it with a purple netting and sewed that down, quilting at the same time.

I cut the pieces apart so they were 5" x 7" and taped them to the back of the mat. I didn't have to cut them but I wanted to make sure they laid as flat as possible. I like to use acid-free white artists tape.

Here's a close-up of the top part. The dark purple heart is on the left side, just below the lavender-colored heart, under where two pieces of yarn cross.

Here's the middle section. Again the dark purple heart is hiding under where the yarn crosses at the bottom edge near the middle (left to right).

This is the bottom part and it has the only gray heart.

More about Falling in Love

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 Click on any of the photos to see larger images.

To read more about Project Quilting, go here.

To see other entries for this challenge, visit the Have a Heart link up.

Paint the Town in Village Artisans' RED exhibit (and 10% OFF!)

"Paint the Town," 8 x 10, made by Pam Geisel, Jan. 2015

I made this little framed quilted piece for the "Radically Exceptional Design (RED)" exhibit at Village Artisans.

This miniature quilt features red and white pieced fabric and red and white hand seed stitches going from the upper left to the lower right.

The exhibit runs through Feb. 28 at Village Artisans, 100 Corry St. in Yellow Springs. We are open M-Th from 11a-5p, F-Sa from 11a-6p, and Su from noon-5p.

More about Paint the Town

Persian Shield - Project Quilting

"Persian Shield," 19.5" x 33", made for Project Quilting, Season 6, Challenge 3: UFOs and Orphan Blocks,
Feb. 2015 in Yellow Springs, Ohio

Challenge recap for  "UFOs and Orphan Blocks":

A UFO is an UnFinished Object and an Orphan Block is any block or piece of block that has not yet been put into a project (including cutoff half square triangles). You are encouraged to make something different than you had originally intended.

I thought this was an interesting challenge, but because last year my goal was to finish my UFOs and my Orphans either get absorbed into other quilts or they get filed in the scrap bin by color, I don't have any UFOs and very few Orphans.

When I looked in my "Possible Projects" pile, I did find these:

Sixteen half-ovals, half primarily green and half primarily purple, made up of strip piecing. I got these from another quilter, so they aren't even my Orphans. I'm not even sure what they were left over from, I just liked the color combinations.

I started by piecing one green half-oval with a purple half-oval, although I tried to not have the seam exactly in the center. I spent awhile fussing with the placement of them on the back ground fabric then pin basted everything.

The oval shapes were attached during the quilting process with a squiggle in the middle of each one with varigated purple yarn and also appliqued around the raw edges.

Then I couched a dark multi-color yarn across the middle of the ovals but also extending out to the edges of quilt and I couched a green yarn around the oval shapes themselves. And take it from me, you don't want to just couch the yarn around the outside and hope that also catches the edges of the appliqued shape, you want to applique the shape down first and then couch the yarn on top.

I actually sewed down the pieces and couched them one at a time so I could hide the yarn edges under the piece that overlapped it. For the last piece there wasn't anywhere to hide the tails so I used a needle with a large eye to hide the tail in with the batting.

I used a knife-edge binding/facing technique and the backing fabric even that had leaves on it.

A "Persian Shield" is a plant that has purple-toned leaves. This quilt can also hang horizontally, makes the leaves look even more like shields. If you think the leaves look kind of like footballs, all I can say is that the challenge was posted on Super Bowl Sunday. Come to think of it, they kind of look like UFOs, also.

I also used this backing fabric in the Project Quilting Tree's challenge quilt "Birches" and the dark, multi-colored yarn was used in the Project Quilting Sunrise/Sunset challenge quilt "Sunrise Celebration." 

This is not the first time I've made a quilt from another quilter's Orphan Blocks. In "All the Colors" I used batik half-square triangles that someone gave me.

More about Persian Shield

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 Click on any of the photos to see larger images.

To read more about Project Quilting, go here.

To see other entries for this challenge, visit the UFOs and Orphan Blocks link up.