Lavender Diamonds - Quilt of the Week

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

This art quilt is a traditional "Broken Star" but made in a non-traditional way. Instead of being pieced, the 560 diamonds are made with 6-8 pieces of the same color hand-dyed fabric that have been fused to a background and then quilted down with black thread 1/4" apart.

The dark swoosh that goes across the middle was made by using darker fabrics in that area, and not covered with a sheer fabric.

During the weeks that it took to cut, place, and fuse the diamond pieces, every time I closed my eyes I would still see the diamond shapes. While I was quilting it, every time I closed my eyes I'd see lines that were 1/4" apart.

It was awarded Honorable Mention at AQS QuiltWeek, Lancaster, PA, in 2015.

Because this is the Quilt of the Week, it is 10% off the original price of $3200 through 2/28/21 if you purchase directly from me. Details can be found here.

Elephant Hugs - Project Quilting

Elephant Hugs baby quilt, 37" x 37", original design, made by Pam Geisel for Project Quilting Season 12, Challenge 4, Snail's Trail

Recap for "Snail's Trail":

Projects must be inspired by the Snail's Trail block.

According to Maggie Malone's book "5,500 Quilt Block Designs," the Snail's Trail block can also be called Virginia Reel, Monkey Wrench, or Indiana Puzzle. I made the Virginia Reel bed quilt (left) in 2006. It was the second bed-sized quilt that I made. 

One of the things that I love about this quilt design is that it's a Tessellation, a design that has interlocking patterns that are the same shape, where the negative space around one shape is exactly the same as the shape itself. Like the art of M.C. Escher. If you're interested in making tessellation quilts, there's a great book by Jinny Beyer called "Designing Tessellations." I have the book although I haven't designed a tessellation yet.

Knowing that one week wasn't really enough time for me to do this block justice, I started looking for ways to use just one block but make it interesting. That's when I noticed that the beginning of the spiral looked like an elephant's trunk.

Once I had that idea, I decided to make a baby quilt. In order to make the optical illusion of the trunks becoming the block, I had to applique the elephant shapes down (edges folded under but sewn by machine) and then applique the piece block on top (again with edges folded under but sewn by machine). I've done several quilts with applique on top of piecing but never this way, but everything went smoothly.

I quilted an outline of the Snail's Trail block in the body of the elephants, did stitch-in-the-ditch around the pieced block, and did a line of echo quilting 1/4" around the elephants bodies. I also added four round black eyes that I think really make the design pop.

The backing and binding fabric are from Robert Kaufman's Stargazers series and it almost looks like snails.

I call this piece "Elephant Hugs" because researchers say that elephants comfort each other by touching their trunks to the others' mouths. And being wrapped up in a quilt is similar to getting a hug.

Interesting PQ note, the gray that I used in the pieced block I also used in "A New Day Yesterday" made for the first challenge this season (and I considered using the darker gray). So that makes 2 challenges this year that I've used gray. In the 58 Project Quilting challenges I've done in the last decade, only 2 of those had gray in them at all.

More about Elephant Hugs Baby Quilt

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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 Snail's Trail page.

My Soul in a Blackberry Pie - Quilt of the Week

 

My Soul in a Blackberry Pie, 19" x 29", made by Pam Geisel

My Soul in a Blackberry Pie was another one of the quilts I made for the Americana series. 

For this piece I actually wove the fabric for the lattice pie top before I quilted it down and "made" the berries by quilting roundish shapes between the lattice. My husband makes wonderful pies and I used one of his as a reference for this pie.

Like last week's quilt "Picnic at Ellis Pond," this quilt was featured in the Autumn 2019 issue of Art Quilting Studio magazine in a story about using perspective with foreground objects.

Because this is the Quilt of the Week, it is 10% off the original price of $400 through 2/21/21 if you purchase directly from me. Details can be found here.

Picnic at Ellis Pond - Quilt of the Week

 

Picnic at Ellis Pond, 19" x 29", made by Pam Geisel

Picnic at Ellis Pond was one of a series of six quilts that I call my Americana quilts because they have Americana themes but are based on photos that I took around my hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio. This one is set at Ellis Pond which is just outside of the village but is recognizable because of the weeping willow trees located around the pond.

This pond feeds the Yellow Springs Creek which goes through Glen Helen (another art quilt series that I made) and goes into the Little Miami River.

Most of the fabrics that I used for the series were hand dyed although I did use a few batiks, for the quilt under the picnic basket, centers of the flowers, and the pond itself which used a piece that I'd been saving to use as a body of water. I used just a few commercial prints, here I used a basket weave for the picnic basket. I already had the fabric and it was the right scale.

This quilt was included in the "Best of 2014" Ohio Designer Craftsmen's traveling exhibit and was featured in the Autumn 2019 issue of Art Quilting Studio magazine in a story about using perspective with foreground objects.

Because this is the Quilt of the Week, it is 10% off the original price of $400 through 2/14/21 if you purchase directly from me. Details can be found here.

National Parks Pillows - Project Quilting

Three National Parks pillows, 15" x 15" each, made by Pam Geisel for Project Quilting Season 12, Challenge 3, Virtual Vacation

Recap for "Virtual Vacation":

Projects must be inspired by themes of vacation.

Last Fall I discovered the Riley Blake Designs "National Park" fabrics featuring illustrations of the National Parks by the Anderson Design Group. I've been a fan of this type of travel illustration for many years now so when I saw there was fabric with the images on it, I knew I had to buy it. We're also renovating an old attic bedroom into a yoga/dance studio so I also bought some prints from the Anderson Design Group to put up there once it's finished.

When I bought the fabric, I thought I'd use it to make a throw. At that time the plan was to put a small couch up there and where there's a couch or a comfy chair, there needs to be a throw. In fact, if this challenge had been in January, I probably would have made the throw. 

But in the last two weeks we decided instead of a couch we're probably going to have a bench. Throws aren't as useful on a bench. So I considered making a bench cushion but since we don't actually have the bench yet, I didn't know what size I would need. Then I thought about pillows. Even if we went back to the idea of a couch (or even a comfy chair) pillows would still work.

I let the fabric determine the size of the pillows. Four images across and three down was a good size. There are images on the back of the pillows although some of them are repeats. 

 I did some quilting between the images and added a small border fabric so I'd have room to sew them right sides together and turn inside out then stuff with batting scraps.

We've been to several of the National Parks (and it turns out we've been close to others but didn't know at the time). We have been to Ohio's only National Park, Cuyahoga Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It is near Cleveland and was declared a National Park in 2000.

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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 Virtual Vacation page.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame - Quilt of the Week - 2/1/21

 

Take Me Out to the Ballgame, 12" x 9", made by Pam Geisel

Back in 2011, the art quilt group the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network decided to make some slice quilts using photos that one of our members took of Dayton area landmarks, then the quilts were displayed in several locations around town.

One of the exhibits was at the Dayton Metro Library's downtown branch but they were upstairs so someone suggested we could make some smaller landmark quilts to have in the display case downstairs to get people's attention for the larger exhibit upstairs. 

So I made two small quilts of the baseball stadium where the minor league baseball team the Dayton Dragons play. (Here's a photo of the second quilt which has already sold.)

What a difference a decade makes! The baseball stadium, which was originally called Fifth Third Field is now Day Air Ballpark (I'm not going to change the quilt). And the Dayton Metro Library building has been torn down with a new library in it's spot.

We've been to a game every year since the Dragons started playing here in 2000. Unfortunately they were unable to play last year because of the pandemic but we're hoping will be able to see a few games this year.

This piece was made from a photo from outside the stadium where they have large baseballs and baseball bats. Lots of people take selfies with the baseballs and bats. The photo has a car in it to show the scale of the actual balls.

Of course the quilt is not actual size and might even be considered a miniature quilt as it's slightly larger than a piece of letter-sized copier paper. The smallest baseball is the size of a dime.

And like actual baseball, these have red stitching on them, which I did by hand.

Because this is the Quilt of the Week, it is 10% off the original price of $180 through 2/7/21 if you purchase directly from me. Details can be found here.