Tweet Dreams Baby Quilt - Project Quilting

"Tweet Dreams Baby Quilt" 30" x 30", made for Project Quilting Season 4, Challenge 6: Hurray for Spring, Mar. 2013

Quick recap of the challenge: "Hurray for Spring"
1. Hurray for Spring.

Awhile ago I set aside six hand-dyed pastel fat quarters because I knew I wanted to make a baby quilt with them, only I didn't know what I wanted to do with them. Every time a Project Quilting challenge was announced, I'd look at the fat quarters to see if I thought I could use them for that challenge. Sure, I probably could have done something for "A Square in a Square…in a square," "Annie’s Vision," "Wish Upon a Star." or even "Print Publication" but all those times I had other ideas that I liked more.

For this quilt I cut the fat quarters so I had six 5" squares (finished size) and pieced them together. Then I made five flowers with stems and a sweet little bird that I machine appliqued with a variegated pastel rainbow thread.

I quilted 'x'es through the top four rows of squares then echo quilted around the flowers and birds using the same variegated pastel rainbow thread.

The backing fabric is yellow with orange, green, blue and purple butterflies on it. The binding is pieced with the hand-dyed pastel fabric.

= = =

As always, you can click on any photo to see it larger.

To see other entries for this challenge, visit the Hurray For Spring page.

Three Wishes - Project Quilting

"Three Wishes," 9.75" x 34", made for Project Quilting Season 4, Challenge 5: Print Publications, Mar. 2013

Quick recap of the challenge: "Print Publications"
1. Chose a print publication and open to page 28. Your inspiration must come from this page.

I must admit that this wasn’t the first magazine page I looked at. The first one was an ad for the National Geographic Channel’s special “Killing Lincoln” which was 90% black with very little images and text. The second one was only text, it was the legalese that went with a prescription drug ad. Last week I gave away over a hundred “American Craft” and “Fiber Arts” magazines going back to 1998…if only I’d known what this week’s challenge was going to be!

Then I remembered there were about two dozen or so pages that I’d removed from the magazines before I gave them away. I pulled out those pages and sure enough there was a page 28 on the back of an article that I was interested in. Page 28 had an article about wallpaper that isn’t what it seems. The example has flowers with tiny white bombs falling in front of them. This article was from the Nov./Dec. 2005 issue of Fiber Arts.

My first thought was to make a fabric mosaic with three parts: a blue square, an orange square, and a red square. I usually put my fabric mosaics in a frame but I didn’t have any that were the right size so I thought I’d piece them on a light colored background. I started looking through my massive fabric stash only to find I’d recently used up all my light neutral fabrics and I didn’t really want to use a white background.



I pulled out a box that had non-quilting cottons and found a home décor fabric that was the right shade and decided that I liked the back of the fabric even better because it had great texture. Also from that box I chose three bright, shiny purple and pink woven fabrics which look different depending on the angle that you look at them. At this point I abandoned my original plan to use the colors from page 28. I also took out some deep velvet that has blues, greens and purples in it, and a dark brownish purple wrinkly taffeta.

I sandwiched the home décor fabric and the back fabric with some wool batting and quilted some wavy horizontal lines with two different colors of purple thread then I quilted around the outside of the quilt a few times to finish the edges. The top and bottom edges are frayed and fringy.

I sewed the dark brownish purple across the middle leaving the extra width hanging over each side. I put some extra batting behind the shiny purple squares, appliquéd them to the background, and quilted them with a square spiral. Then I appliquéd the three velvet squares on top of the shiny ones. The two photos above show the different colors in the velvet.

More about Three Wishes

= = =

As always, you can click on any photo to see it larger.

To see other entries for this challenge, visit the Print Publications page.

Make a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul - Project Quilting

 

"Make a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul," 8.5" x 10.5", made for Project Quilting Season 4, Challenge 4: Wish Upon a Star, Feb. 2013

Quick recap of the challenge: "Wish Upon a Star"
1. Your project must include at least one star. It can be a traditional star block, an appliquéd star, a star in the embellishments or quilting…use your imagination. More stars are fine, but there must be at least one.

My project this week is a little quilted birdhouse. It is machine raw edge appliqued using many different types of white, cream, and brown fabric including commercial cottons, sheers, linen, burlap, and silk ribbons. There is a light brown star near the center of the birdhouse. The roof was made by wrapping some brown fabric around a thin piece of craft felt that was machine appliqued to the quilt.

The pieces were stitched down during the quilting process with the edges left raw similar to what grass and twigs might look like in a bird's nest. The edges that aren't under the roof were bound with a zigzag stitch.

Several white buttons were hand sewn on top of a white ribbon and other color buttons were added to the star, roof, and center of the birdhouse.

I also added some bone-style beads to the bottom of the quilt. As always, you can click on any of the photos to see a larger image.

= = =

As always, you can click on any photo to see it larger.
To see other entries for this challenge, visit the Wish Upon a Star page.

Coneflower Confection - Project Quilting

"Coneflower Confection," 16.5" x 17.5", made for Project Quilting
Season 4, Challenge 3: Annie's Vision, Feb. 2013

Quick recap of the challenge: "Annie's Vision"

1. Your inspiration is the art of Annie Young. Explore the colors, the textures, the style, the subject matter, the feeling. Choose what speaks most to you and use it to make your quilt.

The first thing I noticed when I looked at Annie's art was that her painted backgrounds looked similar to some of the hand dyed and hand painted fabric that I had. So I started this challenge by looking through my fabrics to find one that made me think of her backgrounds.

Something else I recognized was that she frequently uses flowers as her subject matter. I decided to make a cone flower because it tied in with the pinkish purple spot in the upper left corner of my background fabric. I fused the flower pieces to the background then made the quilt sandwich with wool batting so the stitches that hold down the fused fabric are also the quilting stitches.

One of my favorite aspects about Annie's work is how much energy and movement it has. She often goes around her subject matter with many strokes. I immediately thought of mimicking that look but using couched thread instead of paint.

For the petals of the cone flower, I cut the hand-painted pink fabric a little larger than I wanted then trimmed it down saving the "outline" which I fused on top of the petals. I stitched them down then couched some thread over the petals echoing the petal shapes. I also couched this yarn in the pinkish purple area in the upper left corner.

Annie's painting "Confetti Susan" has painted confetti on it, which reminded me of seed stitching, so I did some blue seed stitching in the background of the quilt, which also added some texture to this area. Another piece titled "Rug Eyes" looks like it has buttons for the center of the flowers so I added one for the center of my cone flower.

The quilt is finished with a strip-facing binding.

More about Coneflower Confection

= = =

Click on any of the photos to see larger images.

To see other entries for this challenge, visit the Annie's Vision page.

Mountain Mist - Project Quilting

"Mountain Mist," 20" x 10" (frame size), made for Project Quilting
Season 4, Challenge 2: My Favorite Color, Jan. 2013

Quick recap of the challenge: "My Favorite Color"
1. Your color scheme will be white and one other color. Use as many shades of that color as you wish, but do not add any other colors to the front of your project, including embellishments.

My favorite color is green. Specifically, sage green.

This project is a fabric mosaic. I arranged several layers of green fabric on a background layer. The top third of the piece has two alternating light green batik fabrics. The middle third has an olive green batik fabric that has a tree line cut across the top of it. And the lower third has a piece of green-blue batik fabric with spots on it.

I separated some off-white wool roving and spread it across the lower part of the middle third to represent fog behind the pine trees in the foreground. These pine trees were cut from two different dark green batik fabrics and have fusible web on the back, which stuck to the roving a little too well, which made them difficult to move afterwards. I couched a piece of yarn across the bottom of the line of pine trees to even them up and give some different texture to that area.

I also used some green wool roving across the lower third and both white and green roving in the upper third, again to give it a whispy effect.

I covered it all with some sparkly green netting then quilting it all together with two different green threads. I cut the mat a little larger so the edges of the piece and the pale green background fabric show, then I framed it in a wood frame.

More about Mountain Mist

= = =

Click on any of the photos to see larger images.

To see other entries for this challenge, visit the My Favorite Color page.

Lime Squares - Project Quilting

 "Lime Squares"  12" x 12", made for Project Quilting, 

Season 4, Challenge 1: A Square in a square...in a square..., Jan. 2013

Quick recap of the challenge: "A Square in a square...in a square..."
1. Your inspiration for this challenge is Square in a Square. Interpret it however you’d like. It is an inspiration, not a pattern, so be creative.

25 small 1/2" lime squares are placed slightly angled in (on top of) 25 1-1/4" colored batik squares that are arranged so the colors blended from an orange brown to red to purple to blue to green. Every other colored square is inside a square quilted with white thread.

The squares are quilted through the center in both directions with lime green thread, which attaches them to the background, allowing the corners of the colored squares to float up.

The quilt is 12" square and is wrapped around stretcher bars making it 3/4" deep. Tiny lime green seed beads are sewn where the quilting lines cross on the lime green squares.

More about Lime Squares

= = =

Click on any of the photos to see larger images.

To see other entries for this challenge, visit the A Square in a Square in a Square page.