Integration quilt finished

Uta visiting me has been a stimulus to get some work done!  She's on the road right now in North Carolina visiting other friends, but she's going to be back here for two days before catching her plane back to Munich.  So I have had two weeks in which to make the "integration" quilt that I've been putting off for months, in time for Uta to take it back to Europe with her.

I was going through old boxes of stuff and found a bag of fabric that I had bought years ago during a workshop at the Crow Barn.  I liked the four batik patterns in green and brown, especially the one with stripes, because I was just starting to work extensively with stripes.  (Since then I've made at least a dozen quilts from stripes and bought four drawers worth of striped fabrics!)

I did a day's worth of piecing at the Barn before I decided that I didn't really like what was happening, and packed everything up.  Years passed.

When I came upon the bag last week I decided it wasn't so bad after all, and if I were to sew up the parts I had already begun it would fit the IT theme of "integration," because the green and brown fabrics started separate at top and bottom of the quilt and together in the center.

I feel good about this quilt.  It isn't beautiful, but that has never been a problem with me.  I like the graphic quality of the color contrast, and the pale green reminds me of the very first leaves of springtime.  That made me feel cool and refreshed in the midst of a hot and humid August week.

Kathleen Loomis, Spring Growth

Hand stitching quilt finished

I finished the hand-stitching quilt some time ago but never got around to putting a sleeve on the back or posting a photo to the blog.

It started as an exercise in hand stitching from the wrong side of the fabric -- I find that when you can't tell exactly what you're doing, it gives a great air of spontaneity and surprise.  When I realized that I could use this piece as the center of my International Threads quilt, I decided this would be an experiment to see how I liked putting machine stitching (the quilting) on top of hand stitching, which I had never done before.

I added black fabric around the edges of the stitched piece to make it the right size for IT, quilted it, and then added a lot more hand stitching over the top.  Some of the additional stitching was to partially cover the machine quilting, so those lines didn't stand out quite so strongly.  Some was just because I find it hard to stop stitching once I get started!

Now that Uta is here in the U.S. I quickly finished the sleeve so she can take the quilt back to Europe with  her next week.

Kathleen Loomis, Night Garden (detail below)

International Threads get-together!

Uta has been visiting the United States this month, and spent a week with us in Louisville before heading off for several other stops, including watching the eclipse.  We had a great reunion and she got to meet several members of my family that she hadn't met before, including Vivian, who will be four months old next week.

Here's Vivian hypnotized by Uta's knitting!

Autumn colors -- Kathy

I am embarrassed at how far behind I got on IT assignments -- this spring I did very little but sew Quilt National entries.  But I finally finished the autumn colors quilt.

After I finished the Quilt National things, I decided I needed to do some cleaning of the studio and was sorting and consolidating a bunch of samples that I had made in Nancy Crow workshops a long time ago.  I came upon this piece,

noticed the colors, and decided it might be recycled into an "autumn" quilt.

My first thought was just to take the left-hand part of the composition, trim it to IT size and quilt it, but then decided it needed something more.

















There were no leftover bits of the autumn colors fabric in the bag with this piece, but fortunately in my cleanup I had also come upon some yellow, orange and red fabrics that were sitting there waiting to be put away, and I used them for fine lines.  Here's what I came up with:

Green -- Kathy

I've had this quilt pretty much finished on the design wall for weeks, trying to decide if it needs some hand stitching in addition to the machine quilting.  I think it does, but lest everybody think I'm a slacker, thought I would post it anyway.

Several months ago I wrote in my blog about a quilt I really liked in a show, and about the pieced "ladders" that were an important design element.  Somebody left a comment that she wished she could figure out how to make pieced ladders, so I did a how-to blog post.  I used some blue and green fabrics that were sitting on my worktable waiting to be put away (I had given them to a quilting pal who needed more greens for a project, and she brought back what she hadn't used).

So having pieced enough ladders for the tutorial, I decided to make more and use them for my Green quilt.

thank you, International Threads!

You will remember the gray scale challenge that was the second quilt in International Threads' existence.  Our dear late Ita Ziv was the one who gave this challenge, and the rules were that you had to use a wide variety of shades of gray, plus only a tiny bit of another color.  I loved the quilt I made for that challenge, which was a new technique for me.

I wrote about it here.  Some time after this post, I decided on a name:  Linear A, after the ancient Greek writing that was eventually deciphered by archaeologists.

Linear A, 2013, 16 x 32"

I loved the technique, and the quilt, so much that I decided to make it again, virtually identical in design and fabrics, except almost three times the size.

Linear B, 2014, 42 x 73"

I'm so happy to report that the big one is now in Art Quilt Elements, a juried show at the Wayne Art Center outside Philadelphia, and it won the juror's award, which is the second prize, right after best in show.  And it never would have happened without International Threads.

Signs and symbols -- Kathy

For some reason I've been having a hard time deciding what to make for the "signs and symbols" prompt.  When the answer finally came to me I felt really stupid -- it is so obvious!!  why didn't I think of this sooner??

For many years I have been making quilts in a format I call "postage stamps" because I make a bunch of tiny "quilts" and then sew them together in a grid, and each little quilt is not much bigger than a postage stamp.  I love this technique and return to it every now and then, and what could be better than to use the alphabet for the theme?



You can read about my other postage stamp quilts HERE, on my other blog.

New size, new challenge...

I came home from the show in Prague (and almost a month away from home) with great enthusiasm for getting back into my studio and doing some sewing.  The embroidered piece from Nasrin, the Afghan woman artist, called out for repetition of the geometric motifs she had used, and I fastened upon the chevron and the half-square triangles as the best features to work with.

I must say that our new size is a lot bigger, compared to the old size, than I was anticipating.  You look at the dimensions and see that they're half again as large -- that doesn't seem too huge -- but when you do the math (or when you do the piecing) you realize that it's more than twice the area of the old format.








I had been so happy with the small size of our first-round pieces, because I could whip them out so quickly and quilt them so easily, and now having to make something more than twice as big seemed like a lot more of a commitment.

Not saying that I'm unhappy with the new size, but it is taking more time and effort -- and thought. Which is probably a good thing.
Can't wait for the next challenge!

Finished with all seven!!!

Here's my blue quilt:

Blue Mountains  (details below)

Made like my sketch quilt, with some fabric stitched directly to a canvas backing, and some areas just thread on the canvas.  I just love the effect, and the process.

When we set up the ground rules for Intl Threads I said I wanted the themes or prompts to be broad enough that I could use these quilts as etudes or experiments for things I wanted to check out.  I have been pretty consistent in sticking to this approach, and have already come up with some ideas that have been springboards to larger pieces.  I think these last two pieces have opened up a huge new area that I plan to work in this year.  So thank you to everybody!!!!

Sketch -- Kathy

I had a hard time with "sketch" because I never make sketches.  But I doodled around with this idea, a design I have toyed with in the past with my daily collages.  I used the second and third sketches on the top row for my piece.

For a long time I have been intrigued with the idea of stitching directly onto canvas, because the stitching line would become so important.  This was an opportunity to do something very different from what I had ever done in the past, yet it reflected some elements of my previous work.

The solid black was composed of selvages, which I have used a lot in the past.  And the very dense stitching reminds me of my sew-off squares, which I have used in many previous projects.
I like the fact that the canvas bulges and ripples in the unstitched areas, and that the stitched areas aren't totally flat (you can't really see that from the photos).  The detail shot below shows the scribble pattern of stitching, and if you were to look at the back of the quilt, this is exactly what the solid black shape looks like on the back.

I have been using the International Threads quilts as experiments, ways to try out in small scale what I might have already been thinking of.  This one was so exciting that I suspect I will be doing it again soon on a larger quilt.

"Lines" is finished -- or maybe it's "blue"

We have snow and very cold weather this week and all my meetings and social obligations were cancelled, so I have gotten in lots of sewing time.  Here's my latest quilt:

Sargasso





















The background is one of Uta's hand-dyed fabrics that she gave me a couple of years ago and I have been saving for the perfect opportunity.

My objective was to practice making very skinny pieced curvy lines.  I have made many quilts with very skinny straight lines, but only one with curves, and I wasn't thrilled with that one.  I liked this one better.  I will probably give the fish machine-quilted eyes.

One of the things I've learned about the curved lines is that it's very difficult to predict how wide a finished pieces is going to be.  I gave myself extra width at the start to make sure I would end up with the right dimensions, but ended up with too much.  If I hadn't been working to size the fish would have had better tails.

I first thought this would be the "lines" quilt.  But I realize that this could very well be the "blue" quilt.  I reserve the right to re-categorize it!

Today I'm about halfway through my "sketch" quilt, and then I will do either "lines" or "blue" to finish out the series.

------

Update: this one turned out to be "lines."

A dilemma --

Don't you hate it when you get on a roll and keep sewing long past the point where you should have quit?  I haven't worked on one of our quilts in several months but when I finally cleared the deck to finish the pattern and repetition quilt, I hauled out my work board (a piece of foam core that can stand next to my sewing machine so I don't have to get up and walk to the design wall) and found that it had a shape marked on it with yarn.  Sure enough, it was 40 cm wide, so I figured it was left from the last time I worked on one of our series.

Then I started sewing, and figured I had to make enough to fill the space on the board.  Got everything sewed together and decided I really liked the composition!  Great!  I can start quilting Monday morning!

At which point I went to the design wall, which also had a marked off space the right size for our project, but it had been hidden by a larger quilt pinned up.   When I took down the big quilt to reveal the space, and went to pin the new top up, I realized that oops, I had made the quilt way too long.  Notice the quilt pinned up at the left, which was our large/small challenge.  Notice the space on the wall marked off with selvages.

So what to do now?

I could leave the quilt 20 cm too long and it wouldn't match anybody else's quilts in the display.

I could crop off the top of the quilt and it would be approximately 5 cm too long.

I could crop off at the bottom of the quilt and it would be approximately 4 cm too long.

I really like the bottom of the quilt, the way the small squarish pieces at the top elongated into much bigger rectangles, making it a lot airier.  I hate to lose this part because that was my experiment -- the rest was the same design I have been making for several years.

So I guess my question is, how much variation in size can we get away with?  How close have the rest of you been keeping to the 40 x 80 size?

What should I do?

Third assignment -- almost done!

I thought I would be able to get my third quilt finished by the end of June but I need a couple more days. And I won't be back in the studio for three weeks, because I'm off to Europe -- where I will be visiting with Uta on the way to a family reunion.  But there's enough of it finished to show a picture.

The back story on this quilt is that a couple of years ago I made a quilt inspired by a photograph by somebody in my art book club.  You can read about it on my blog here and see a picture of the quilt.

I didn't think the quilt was worth finishing, but I loved the way the stripes worked together, especially the places where the regular pattern was interrupted and distorted.  Ever since I have been meaning to make another quilt to explore what can happen with stripes.

So this is what I have come up with, and best of all, I'm fulfilling the requirements of the challenge at the same time that I'm making something I have wanted to do for a long time.

When I get home and finish the quilt I'll post another photo.

Quilt #2 finished!!

So I was the last one to finish my quilt assignment #1, and now I am proud to be the first to finish #2.

I have been using commercial striped fabrics for some time as the fine lines in my piecing, and have several boxes worth.  For this quilt I used the stripes in very skinny lines, as usual, but instead of using them as spacers between larger pieces of fabric, I decided to just have the skinny lines by themselves.

Here's a view in progress showing how thin the lines are -- the grid lines on the design wall are one inch apart.

Here's the finished quilt.  No name yet.

Better than nothing

I've been swamped for the last couple of months and am shamefully behind in my project, but here it is the last day of the month (the deadline) and I have finished piecing the top -- so at least you can see that I'm alive.

I have used this style of piecing before, such as in my quilt "Big Ice" that is traveling in the SAQA Seasonal Palette exhibit.  I'm also partway through a large project using this style of piecing with commercial stripe fabrics.  But here I'm experimenting with commercial prints other than stripes, the first time I've tried that approach.  I was happy to have this assignment to push me into the experiment.

Big Ice






















So here's the new one, still without a name:

Not sure I have handled the transitions between fabrics as well as I would like, but that's something to work on in subsequent projects. Right now I'm enjoying the reds and am pleased with the way this one is turning out.  I particularly like the way the large polka dot print in the center has gotten distorted through the fracturing and re-piecing, an effect you don't get with smaller-scale prints.

I'll post again when I finish the quilting, which may not get done until after the holidays.