TRADITIONAL JOINS MODERN

Here we are in January 2013.  A New Year and a continuation of many good years.  This year promises to be an exciting time for my quiltmaking.  I am delving into doing more Modern Quilts. 

Thought I would give you a little history lesson to help explain the name of the first finished quilt of 2013.

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January is often considered the month for deep reflection. We look back at the year behind us, bemoaning our regrets and celebrating our successes. And then, we look forward to the future year. We make well-meaning resolutions and hope for the best. So, in this way, we’re all a little bit like Janus, the Roman god for which January is named. Janus is usually depicted with having two heads. that face in opposite directions. One looks back to the year departed, and one looks forward to the new and uncertain year ahead.


Janus also represented transition and was called the "god of doors".  This is where I am - making a transition in my quilting style and opening some new doors for creative expression.


The back of this quilt came from "the drawer".  You know, that drawer that is full of parts and pieces of projects that never made completion?

I reached in the drawer and drew out the largest piece I could find and used it as my starting point for piecing the back.  I continued to pull pieces from the drawer.  If the piece was too long, I cut it off.  If it was too small, I added strips to it.  Eventually I had it completed.

All of these blocks are very traditional with lots of calicoes and prints.


Now let's take a look at the front of this quilt!! This is from Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's pattern called Deep Breath.

"Janus:  From Traditional to Modern"

I enjoy piecing my backs as well as my fronts and this seemed to tell the viewer what kind of quilter I am. . . a little bit traditional leaning toward the modern.

This quilt was completed entirely on my domestic sewing machine, a Bernina Artista 640E.

The straight line quilting in the neutral squares stands out from the pebble quilting in the pieced units.


                                       -sandi

FRIENDSHIP STAR QUILT

What a gorgeous fall morning it is!!  The sun is shining and the air is crisp.  The leaves are starting to turn here in southeast Tennessee and, occasionally, you can smell the aroma associated with leaves burning.  That always reminds me of my childhood.

It has been a week since I last posted because I was having difficulty with my camera settings.  I think I have solved it now with some help from my friend, Ava.  The pictures that follow may not be as crisp as some from earlier posts but, at least, I can now post them.

My sister asked me to make a quilt for her to give her son for a Christmas gift.  I wanted something that was masculine, but not just sports, motorcycles, and race cars.  I went into my stash and started pulling out fabrics to use.  I narrowed it down to a predominance of blues and browns.  Again this quilt will qualify for the category of "Making Do" that I pledged to try this year.  Using fabrics from my stash without making a significant fabric purchase is a real reward in itself.  After completing this quilt, I had hardly made a dent in my blues and browns.  The neutrals are showing some "denting"  so I may have to replenish those as I go along if I want to keep using neutrals for backgrounds.

The pattern I chose is the Friendship Star made from split 9-patch blocks. This layout is similar to the way you would lay out a Log Cabin quilt top.

The neutrals vary from very light to dark light and even some with an orange floral.  There are a couple of  other "ringers" thrown in for interest.  I think putting a few patches of red in the darks and a few patches with pale pink or yellow in the neutrals gives some spark and energy to the overall pattern.

Working scrappy is a challenge for some quilters.  I have tried to encourage my buddies to give it a try.  I firmly commit to the mantra "Value makes the statement in a quilt, but Color gets all the credit".  Scrappy quilts allow you to be free with a color palette and use anything/everything in a color family regardless of its theme or style.  My one hesitation is not to use Batiks and plaids with most other fabrics.  My reason for that is not that they would not work.  They certainly would.  I just like to keep my Batiks as a separate category because en masse they give such a unique look to a quilt.  The same is true for plaids in general.  My personal preference with plaids is to make them a focal fabric and have the background/neutrals play a supporting role.  Just my opinion, you see.

This particular layout has a little modern twist to it.  It is a variation from one of Karen Combs' layouts in her book, "Combing Through Scraps".

The center detail:

The quilt measures 63" x 81".  My sister asked me to make it for him to use on his sofa for TV watching with his girl friend.  I think it will be perfect for that.

I chose to leave it without a border --  this again lends itself to a little more modern approach.  It allows the design to drift off the edges of the quilt.

I am making three more of these quilts for gifts.  I will post more pictures as I finish each quilt.  Choice of fabric certainly changes the look.

Enjoy!!

                                                 -sandi

MAKING DO

One of my blogger friends used this button recently to talk about not buying more fabric until she had used up some of her stash.  She challenged all of us to join in the Making Do! project.  I took the button and decided to use it whenever I wanted to pull from my stash, or to use some leftover blocks, or to make a project completely without going shopping. 

Since I started quilting I have saved lots of pieces of fabric and thread and, of course, batting.  I keep these things stacked up in my closet in the studio with the intention of using them for future projects.  Sometimes it happens, but mostly they just stay in the stack.

Recently I decided to sort out the batting.  Occasionally I take some of my larger quilts to a Longarm Quilter who asks her customers to purchase packaged batting to bring with the quilt.  This usually means that it is a batting that is quite a bit larger than the finished size of the quilt. There is always batting to be trimmed off later.
When I use this particular LAQ I try to always choose the same brand and type of batting with the idea that I would be piecing batting together for smaller projects.

The first thing I did was measure all the stray pieces of batting and I labeled them with the size written on a piece of paper.  A friend of mine who uses this same LAQ also gave me some of her leftovers.

When I completed the top of my last project called "Believe the Dream" I measured it and decided to make a pieced batting.

All of the batting was the same 100% cotton but some of it was white and some of it was cream.  That did not matter in my case since the quilt was scrappy. 

I simply butted them together and used a zigzag stitch to join them.  I have seen many ways to do this including layering the two pieces and cutting a serpentine line.  Since I knew I was going to use a dense quilting pattern on this project, I opted to simply stitch with a zigzag.  It holds it together well enough that there is no separation during quilting.

When the project was completed you could not tell the difference in the pieced batting and a similar project that would have been a solid piece of batting.

This particular project was a Making Do! project from start to finish.  I used up leftover blocks from another project; I used up a bolt of fabric that had been in my stash for a long time to make the backing; and, of course, I used the pieced batting.

WOW! what a great feeling.

And the quilt ain't bad either!!
                                     -sandi