Make a Wish - Project Quilting

 

Make a Wish, 12" x 16", made by Pam Geisel for Project Quilting Season 12, Challenge 6, Ab Intra

Recap for Ab Intra:

"Ab intra is a Latin phrase (therefore. also used in modern legal terms) that means “from within.” Its opposite, ab extra, is “from outside.” Show us what it’s like inside to live in your unique body. What boundaries do you stay within? Who are you inside your social bubble (family, career, society)? How about a wearable art piece – any clothes you’d like to make where you’ll end up literally inside the finished project? Or, show us the internal spark that fires your creativity! What’s in your sketchbook or rolling around in your head?"

I found this theme a bit intimidating. My husband and I often joke about if we had a t-shirt to warn the rest of the world about ourself, what would our t-shirt say? He's a writer, so words are his thing. I'm an artist, so images are my theme. Thinking about what my t-shirt would say made me think of the pile of t-shirts that I've collected to make something out of. I do make t-shirt quilts although I haven't made one for myself. This particular t-shirt image spoke to me about what it's like for me as an artist.

I feel like the art I make is a part of myself and I'm sending it off into the world and maybe some of my art will inspire someone else to grow into the artist they need to be. I did some free-motion quilting, not something I do a lot of, and the path that they took makes me think of how I move through life, not necessarily in a straight line but in a general direction, getting distracted by this thing over here, then back on the path only to get interested in something over there, but eventually in the right direction. 

I wrote the title of the piece at the bottom with free motion quilting.

The backing fabric is also appropriate because I am colorful and bold, although you have to get to know me a bit before I show you my back side, which might have some messy stitches in it.

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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 Ab Intra page.

Forget-Me-Nots - Project Quilting

 

"Forget-Me-Nots," 7" x 11", made by Pam Geisel for Project Quilting, Season 12, Challenge 5, You're Crazy

Recap for You're Crazy

Projects must be inspired by Crazy Quilts. Crazy Quilts are a style of patchwork quilts that usually incorporate small, irregularly shaped pieces of fabric. Often the fabrics used are not what is normally used for patchwork but instead are silks, velvets, and brocades. These were also places where quilters could feature their hand stitching and embroidery skills or places to use special embellishments.

As much as I love the Project Quilting challenges, I've been doing this quilting thing for awhile so I've usually had some encounter with most of the past challenges. This one is different as I've never made a crazy quilt. Not even a single crazy block. So I guess this week really was a challenge for me.

The backstory for this week: recently a quilting friend passed away. To say that Sue was a collector might be an understatement. And even though she'd been working on giving away her stash for several years now, there were still items in her studio when she passed. A few weeks later her children, who I'm also friends with, gave me several large boxes to find a good home for.

I only kept a small amount and passed the rest along to another mutual friend. Of the items I kept were three small pieces that she had started but not finished. I'm not sure what her specific plans were for any of these. She really liked to play around so she might not have had an end goal in mind.

One of the pieces that I kept was because I really liked the soft green fabrics that she was working with and it did remind me of a crazy quilt in style, even though it's more horizontal and less circular. All of the embellishments that I added came from her stash: the ribbons, hand-dyed variegated yarns, glass and pottery beads, and the seven flower shapes that I think might have come off a piece of jewelry.

I didn't really add any quilting other than the couching and I used a knife-edge binding (facing).

Besides being an amazing fabric artists, Sue did many other types of art including embroidery, pottery, mosaic, and painting to name a few. She was also a Master Gardener, which was why I made this into a little garden scene and called it "Forget-Me-Nots."

More about Forget-Me-Nots

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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 You're Crazy page.

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.

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.

Laurel Burch Cat Quilted Postcards - Project Quilting

Three Laurel Burch Cat Quilted Postcards, 6" x 4" each, made by Pam Geisel for Project Quilting Season :12, Challenge 2, Fussy Cut

Recap for "Fussy Cut":

Some part of your project must be fussy cut.

I don't do a lot of fussy cutting, which is when you cut the fabric in a way that singles out an image or motif instead of just cutting randomly, but I have done some including the Celestial Winter wall hanging and the way I cut and arranged the stripes for Rainbow Heart.

My stash mostly consists of batiks and fabric that is tone-on-tone (so it reads as a mostly solid color without being a solid color) but I do have one yard of Laurel Burch Cat fabric that I've been hesitant to cut into. There are only 3 repeats so I decided to make three postcards.

Originally I was going to make three mug rugs but the cats were a little on the small side so even when I added the striped fabric on the left and the colored ribbons, there would have been a lot of black space around the cats so I decided to make fabric postcards instead.

I've found when doing fussy cutting that will be fused it helps to iron the fusible to the back of the fabric first. You can see in the photo of the whole fabric that the cats are printed fairly close together. They are on a dark gray background so I fused them to a piece of fabric that had black and dark grays on it (the same black piece that I used for the background of one of my other fussy cut projects, Celestial Winter).

I added a striped fabric to the left and different colored ribbon either next to or behind part of the cats. I added a thin purple ribbon to all three postcards. I fused these fabrics to a stiff interfacing (which makes it a postcard) then I sewed down the ribbons with matching thread, sewed around the edge of the cat fabric with black thread, then went all the way around the cats with a variegated rainbow colored thread.

Then I fused a piece of white fabric to the back and did a satin stitch (a really tight zigzag stitch) around the edges.

(Note to my mother who reads my blog...I believe you gave me that striped fabric many, many years ago. Do you remember it?)

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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 Fussy Cut page.
 

A New Day Yesterday - Project Quilting

"A New Day Yesterday," 8.5" x 20.5", made by Pam Geisel for Project Quilting, Season 12, Challenge 1: Illuminating + Ultimate Gray

Recap for "Illuminating + Ultimate Gray":

Based on Pantone’s Color of the Year 2021 – which is actually two colors: PANTONE 17-5104 Ultimate Gray + PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating. Your project must be predominantly yellow and gray in it. You may add black and/or white, if you wish, but you do not have to. Fabrics may have other colors included in their print, but those colors may NOT be dominant.

I can't say that using just gray and yellow is something I've never done as I made "Whoo?" (left) in 2019. (And I probably would have used more of that Effervescent fabric this time if I had any left).

I also can't say that I didn't have a good amount of yellow and grays to chose from as I do.

What I can say about this project is that I kind of designed it backwards. Recently I've wrapped some of my art quilts around a canvas frame (like I did with "Whoo?") or put it in a frame. When I don't do that I usually use a facing sort of binding, which is all on the back and not visible from the front.

But in my stash of yellows and grays were two lovely striped fabrics, and striped fabrics are great for bindings, so I decided that I was going to make something with a visible binding (more about that later).

I did a rough sketch of my idea. I didn't want to try and figure out the angles and shapes for the background, which I wanted to piece, so I made a paper template to paper piece it together. I could have improvised but I wanted the two sides to mirror each other. I've done a few paper pieced projects in the past and I don't really like doing them because I feel they waste fabric. Also I have some trouble keeping the tops and bottoms and fronts and backs in the right order. Luckily this was a simple project and I managed to only cut one piece incorrectly but realized it before I sewed it.

The sun, moon, ground, trees, and leaves are all fused so I sewed down their edges during the quilting process.

I also added a piece of hand dyed yarn that has just a touch of red and blue in it.

When it came time to do the binding, I knew I wanted to use both the yellow and gray striped fabrics, but I wanted the yellow on the left and right sides and the gray on the top and bottom, so I sewed the yellow to the front then wrapped it around to the back. I cut the grays a little longer than I needed and folded the edges over so the raw edges wouldn't be exposed then I sewed them to the front and folded them to the back.

A few notes about some of my fabrics:

The black fabric with the stars on it was a piece that I bought while on vacation in 2014. I only bought 1/4 of a yard. I used it in "Sunrise Celebration" (also a Project Quilting piece).

The yellow striped fabric in the binding I used in "Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom" for a Project Quilting challenge back in 2011. (I believe that was the only Project Quilting challenge piece that I bought fabric for, other than the "Focus through the Prism" and the "Tradition Time Three" which both required using specific fabrics).

The second yellow stripe from the left (which has suns/stars printed on it) was one that I bought back in 2005 when I made a baby quilt for my niece.

More about A New Day Yesterday

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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 Illuminating + Ultimate Gray page.

Project Quilting Season 12

 

It's time for Project Quilting's twelfth season! It's a three month on-line event that challenges participants to create a quilt in one week, with a week off in between. You can participate in as few or as many as you like. Participants are entered into random prize drawings and at the end of the season there are grand prizes awarded. The more challenges you enter, the better your chances.

I've participated in every year in some form or another (and I was the overall grand prize winner of Season 2). Some of my favorite quilts that I've made were Project Quilting challenges.

The schedule for when the challenges start is:
- Challenge 1: January 3
- Challenge 2: January 17
- Challenge 3: January 31
- Challenge 4: February 14
- Challenge 5: February 28
- Challenge 6: March 14

Each challenge is posted at noon CDT and due exactly one week later at noon CDT.

Here's a post with some tips about how to participate.

The challenge will be posted on the "Persimon Dreams" Project Quilting blog and you can also find links about past seasons there.