Getting caught up

I’ve been making pretty good progress on my quilts. Well, at least the two I’ve made for this project. The quilting part of any quilt is always the part that scares me. I guess it’s like staring at a blank canvas if you’re a painter or a blank computer screen if you’re a writer. So this time I actually sat down and sketched out (using PhotoShop) how I was going to quilt each quilt. It really did help me get over my anxiety. I even planned the quilting for a little flower one I had made quite a while ago. I am going to try this planning thing on all my quilts now! I’m just so brilliant – who ever thought of planning something out before you do it.

I have the second quilt quilted and I am calling it “Trapped in My Head” as it looks like the blocks are trapped. Well, that’s what came to me when I saw it quilted (and I guess the status of my head must figure into this also.) I even got the binding attached, although I truly suck at putting binding on by machine. I had to use a decorative stitch in order to catch the back of the binding and I still missed in spots. I might hand-sew the spots I missed and, then again, I might not.

Q2 Blocks Done

I finally! finished the Q2 blocks. By the end I was actually getting fairly good at putting these together. I managed to sew the final block without ripping out once — well, OK I lied, I did rip out one seam. I kind of like the way it looks. The blocks aren’t perfect but I think that’s idea of this type of quilt.

We went away this weekend so I haven’t gotten any further than this. This week I plan to sew the blocks together and quilt the dang thing. I also need to quilt Q1 — no more procrastination!

Frogging

I spent some time last night sewing. My goal was to complete the last two blocks for Q2. I even planned out the blocks to some extent, although obviously not enough. I did manage to sew a portion of both blocks but then on the second block I kept sewing the strips on to either the wrong side or in the wrong order, so I spent quite a bit of time ripping out.

This morning I took a picture of the block with the latest strip that I had ripped out in its correct position on the block. Afterwards I sewed the strip on and make an attempt to square up the block and realized that the strip was not wide enough. It is frustrating to keep ripping out but I am learning how to put these “free-form” squares together more efficiently. And that does mean I need to keep aware of where I am in the block and how it’s coming together in relation to the other blocks, the final size and how it will be squared up.

I might do a Q2 – v2 of this quilt both because I really like the look of free-form quilts and because I want to reinforce what I’ve learned.

I’m already planning Q3 and I’ve decided to take a detour away from the quilts in Art Quilts. I will do either a landscape ala Dream Landscapes by Rose Hughes or make a quilt using a method or two (or three) from Art Quilts at Play by Jane Davila and Elin Davison.

Sidetracked by a Yudu

No progress on either quilt number 1 or number 2 – I got sidetracked by my Yudu. I -finally- picked the first screen print design. Well, I actually picked three designs. I have more flexibility that way. I printed the designs on the transparency, although one design didn’t print all the way — could be the transparency didn’t have enough support in the printer. I used the screen where I messed up the emulsion, I figured why not use it as a practice screen and burnt the image in. Easy, peasy.

I’m going to practice on some muslin, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night.

Started the blocks

I started making the blocks for quilt #2 (I think I need to come up names for these quilts instead of numbers.) It is actually harder to put together a free-form quilt than it looks. It’s like making a crazy quilt square, you really do have to plan what you are doing. On the first block (the one on the right) I made one side too small and had to add more fabric in order to get the block to square up. You can see where I had to add fabric on the bottom of the block.

The second block just got kind of wonky looking. I think the orange with purple swirls strip is a bit too wide, but I’m not ripping it out now.

I’m going to do two more blocks for this quilt and then call it finished. But, I really am enjoying this type of quilting so I may make some different versions.

Quilt Number Two

While I’m waiting for me to make up my mind about Quilt 1′s border I picked the inspiration quilt for my second art quilt. I am going to make a quilt based on Liz Axford’s Emotions & Abstractions 2.

The quilt in Liz Axford’s words:

From 1917 to 1923 Frank Lloyd Wright designed a group of “Textile Block” houses built from concrete blocks cast with low-relief patterns. This inspiration came from watching Chinese weavers make rug. Wright designed for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. My Emotions & Abstractions series began with the block Wright designed and had custom-fabricated for the Millard House in Pasadena, CA (1923). After slightly modifying the block and altering the “set” of blocks, I had a pattern I could work with. I then immersed myself in the subtle patterning an colors of my hand-dyed fabrics.

Here’s a slide show of the house: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-home24-2008aug24-pg,0,6398273.photogallery

This one will be much more free than the first quilt. I’m not doing any pre-designing but I am using Axford’s design, so I guess in theory it is pre-designed. I’ve been wanting to make an improvisational quilt ala Denyse Schmidt for a while now so this inspiration quilt is good incentive.

I don’t have many hand-dyed fabrics so I’m using batiks:

Quilt One – Lessons Learned

Well, the first quilt is not done – I’m still deciding on the borders but I have discovered some things about quilting and about myself.

1. This quilt was pretty much completely in my comfort zone. I didn’t have to stretch much and I didn’t feel much fear — except my usual general fear of messing up whatever I’m making.
2. While I did design the quilt in EQ6, I felt comfortable enough with my design ability to just use the EQ6 design as inspiration. It was fun making changes on the fly.
3. I don’t really like large quilts. While not exactly huge, this quilt will end up measuring almost 40″ square which probably was a bit large for my first art quilt.
4. I find I like the design and implementation steps the most. The finishing part is not so much fun for me. Finishing for me includes adding borders, quilting and binding. I procrastinate doing that on all my quilts and consequently have quite a motley assortment of almost finished quilts. See Word of the Year: part 1 and part 2.
5. I have no idea how I’m going to quilt this. I’ll probably wimp out and just do some straight line quilting.

the Borders

Once I was done with the quilt portion I was unsure if I still wanted to add a border.

So my -sometimes- clever brain came up with the idea of putting the borders “on” in photoshop.

It actually worked pretty well and didn’t take that long to do. I think I need to comtemplate the borders more before actually sewing them on (i.e. I’m a big chicken.)

Cooking the quilt

I started to put the circles on and, while doing that, made changes to the design. Apparently I do art quilts the same as I cook, the directions and ingredients are just suggestions. Everything is just pinned in place at this point — the dots of color are the pin heads. I wish now I had one of those little Clover irons so I could iron all the pieces on right where they are. Maybe I can find a 50% off coupon and run to Michaels or A.C. Moore.

Since the inspiration quilt was based on vintage fabric I thought that some retro print fabric might work as the border fabric — plus that’s what I have in my stash.

Today’s chore will be to iron the black fabric to the background and then figure out the borders.

Fabric time

In the spirit of the rescued fabric that Sue Brenner used on her quilt I’ve decided to only use fabric I currently have in my collection. Luckily for me (if not my husband) my collection is quite large. The only problem I anticipate at this point are the borders.

The quilt, as designed, uses yellow batiks. I don’t seem to have any yellow batiks, so I’ll have to improvise somehow. With the help of Hennessey I’ve picked out my background and circle fabrics (I do have quite a bit of black & white fabric!)

I decided that I wasn’t going to do Drunkard’s Path blocks because I am going for a more “arty” look and I want the circles, half-circles, quarter-circles to have a more raw-edge look, plus I don’t want to make Drunkard’s Path blocks. So, for the background I will just sew some white 6″ squares together. Here are the squares on the “design board.”

When I laid out the pieces I forgot that one square was a nine-patch so I corrected that in the finished version.

Next step is to add the black circles and pick the border fabric.