New and Old Things

Let’s start with the old. Do you even remember when I started this project? I don’t. But the other day I was cleaning out my closet and I remembered this very large project. I was going to make panels with front and back, and then do that “quilt as you go thing” to put them all together into a very big quilt. The front has 7 inch squares with a one inch border, and my idea was to embroider in all the borders. So I got one out and started embroidering on it again. It takes a long time to embroider each border. So I went back into the closet to see how many panels I had left to do. When I finish this panel, there will be four panels done. AND EIGHT PANELS LEFT TO GO! I was kind of complaining about this to my BF, and she said, why not just put the four panels together into a smaller quilt? Brilliant!! There are other things I’d rather be embroidering.

I finished this next quilt in time for the Intersection of Faith and Arts Conference. It was actually a lot of work to piece together the background, and to embroider all that writing on it. I had thought about doing a series of these, with Biblical blocks in the background, and important (to me) verses on the front. But I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do that again. Well, I had three people comment that they would like to buy this quilt, and so that encouraged me to make the next one. Its always nice to hear that people appreciate your work. (This verse is Matt. 11:28-29 from Eugene Peterson’s The Message.)

I really like making these improv cris-cross blocks. No ruler or rotary cutter necessary! So I made a bunch of samples in case anyone wanted me to teach this. Very fun to make. (And yes, I did square them up at the end so I could easily put borders on them.)

And lastly, I am always so very happy when I get a picture from a workshop participant telling me that she finished her class project! Because, to be honest, I seldom finish workshop projects. I especially love the colorful border that she put on this project. Thank you so much for sharing!

I’m back in the studio finally. I spent half a day cleaning up (yes, still more needs to be done but there’s at least room to move around in there!)

Early Morning Inspiration

Before I did Quilting in the Garden, I had started constructing these criss cross blocks. My plan this time was to make a large quilt. I read somewhere that one of the significant things about quilt art was that it could be made on a large scale.

So I made criss cross blocks in my spare time. I made a LOT of criss cross blocks, and kept adding them to the design wall.

Then one day I thought I might have enough to put together into a quilt. But I was flummoxed. They were too crowded and just a mess on the wall. You can see in this picture that I was auditioning some black prints to use as spacers in this quilt.

And then one morning I woke up too early. I didn’t really want to get out of bed, so I got my Kindle Fire and decided to look at quilting blogs. Now, I really don’t have that many quilting blogs bookmarked on my kindle. So its kind of amazing that I got so much inspiration from just looking at two blogs. First I looked at Judy Martin’s blog. I was impressed by the large scale of her quilts, all the wide open white space, AND that she had completely covered the quilt in  hand stitching.

Next I looked at The Silly Boodilly blog, and she happened to have an entry explaining her design process. Mostly I was impressed by the simplicity of the “nine patch” quilt at the end of this piece. (P.S. I LOVE the barn in this post.)

And that’s when I got the idea of how I would construct these criss cross blocks. I would put them  in 20 inch blocks (later changed to 24 inch blocks) to give them more open space and provide a little structure. I used yarn to make a 24″ block on the design wall so I could figure out how to place the criss cross blocks.

Its still a puzzle trying to figure out how to put the blocks together without using any y-seams. But the more you do it, the easier it gets.

I also decided that I would “kantha stitch” all of the background. So when I looked for the background fabric I would use, I had Kona Snow, which is my favorite “white,” and I also had some white backing fabric (108″ wide) from Joann’s, which was a looser weave, and therefore would be easier to stitch through, so that’s the one I chose.

With my new construction decision, I decided against adding the black spacers. The block construction would be enough. I did make a few circle criss cross blocks. Because, you can never have enough circles 🙂 So, here’s how its going:

I am going to make it a 4X3 construction, so the size will be 72 wide by 96 high. That should probably keep me kantha stitching through the winter!