Sunday, November 27, 2011

Girlfriends Quilt update

I finished the Girlfriends quilt and it's now ready for the silent auction at our upcoming band concert.
 I used the same red for the binding that was used in three of the picture mats.
 And I found some great plaid flannel for the back.  Perfect for these outdoorsy girls.  The birdwatching girl is actually wearing a plaid bikini!
 The stippling is a big curvy stipple and the frames are just quilted with straight lines 1/4 in in from the edges.
I took it into rehearsal on Thursday and the band members love it, so I think it'll be a hit and will hopefully get some high bids.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Girlfriends Quilt

I'm putting a quilt together for a silent auction for my upcoming band Christmas concert. It's on December 11, so there's not too many practices left and not too many days to get the quilt done.
DSC_0605 by sonjaartisania
DSC_0605, a photo by sonjaartisania on Flickr.
Last year I made a beef-cake pin-up Christmas tree skirt for the auction, so this year it's pin-up girls.
I bought some pin-up girls camping material a while ago that I thought was very funny. Unfortunately there are only 4 girls and they repeat quite often. I fussy cut out four of them and framed them in a beige fabric that matched the base colour of the girl fabric.
Then I put a red or green frame around that to set it off. Next I put a wide strip around the entire block to get it up to about 16 x 16 inch block.
Ice skating with no pants
Birdwatching in a bikini
Next I put a "boy scout" style frame around each girl like I did on the back of my Wonky Nine Patch Lattice quilt.
This was going to be another tree skirt, but after making 4 blocks, I saw that it needed to become an entire quilt.  I made two more blocks using combinations of the girls so they didn't look identical to the others.
I laid out the blocks and moved them around so that they didn't line up and were scattered around.  Then I filled in the empty spaces strip by strip and got the quilt all together.  I pretty much ran out of fabric so had to "Frankenpiece" the last empty space.
I made a run to the fabric store and got some more background fabric to give the quilt a little more length on the top and bottom.  I found the perfect back for the quilt - a great flannel plaid that matches the bird-watching girl's bikini.  It's perfect for the goofy out-doorsy feel of this quilt.

Now it's time to sandwich it, quilt it and bind it and it'll be ready to show off at the November VMQG meeting.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Fabric Challenge

The VMQG sent away for free fabric for a quilt challenge and you wouldn't believe the fabric that arrived.  I think most people thought it was the ugliest fabric they had seen.  I'm hoping it's just the colour way that we received, but I've seen some other guild's material and even the lighter colour way isn't much better.  I think this collection doesn't hang together as a group.
I've been trying to do something nice with the fabric, but having no luck.  So then I decided to embrace the ugliness and pick and some solids that don't try to match the fabric.  I actually picked 4 fabrics going from yellow to olive.  I wanted to try a lattice style quilt so I made 80 blocks with a diagonal of the Habitat fabric.
The lattice layout just wasn't working at all.  I then tried a mix of lines and intersections then tried them all going in one direction.  That ended up looking a little like rain, so I put a blue puddle at the bottom and decided that the quilt layout looks a little like rain through the leaves onto a lake.
However, I'm just no that into this quilt, so I think this is where it's going to stay.  Just a top.
I wasn't happy with the last challenge quilt I did either.  It was the Kona solids one.  I love Kona colours and these ones were great, but I just somehow missed the boat with the grey background I selected.  I think white might have set off the dark colours better.  I also think I need to quilt it more heavily, so I may pull it out again and try some more quilting on it.
Paul's Kona Challenge quilt by myredbike

Paul's Kona Challenge quilt, a photo by myredbike on Flickr.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Pot Holder Exchange

Some members of the VMQG are involved in a pot-holder exchange with the FVMQG (Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild (our sister group), so I've been working on mine over the weekend.  Of the whole list of likes and dislikes of my partner, I chose to work with "Modern", and her favourite colours, "Lime" and "Orange".
If you are the one who said her favourite colours are Lime and Orange, stop reading now and wait till your mail arrives in December.
 You'd think that I have lots of lime left over from my Crazy Nine Patch Lattice quilt and the big HST one, but nope, pretty much all used up.  Here's what I finally found.
What is lime green anyways?  I ended up with some scraps and pieces of green - lime, olive, chartreuse - all greens that are more on the yellow end of the colour wheel.  I found several scraps with a dull orange so made some "mod mosaic" blocks at 10x10 inch square.  The sashing is a very bright chartreuse that looks great.
I wanted something more traditional for the backs. I had bought a really cheap template for drunkard's path last month in Hamilton, so I tried it out and made the largest one available and it turned out fine, so I make a bunch more and put together a big orange circle for the backs.
With the left over green quarter circles from the backgrounds, I made smaller blocks and quickly made several coasters to loosen me up for the final go at the pot-holders.  For the coasters, I didn't want to bother with a binding, so I did the turn inside out technique and then top stitched around the edge and did a quick double arc of stitching around the pieces.
Back to the pot-holders, I put the pot-holder quilt sandwich together - back, batting, insul-bright, top - then did some straight line quilting on each quarter of the blocks.  It really shrunk with the quilting, so I squared it down to 9.5 inches, then sewed on the chartreuse binding.  For these thick potholders, I used 2.5 inch binding, and found that sewing it exactly 1/4 inch from the edge worked out perfect for wrapping it around to the back.  The other trick I tried is not to iron the binding in half first.  I just folded it over and kept all the raw edges together as I sewed it on.  That way when I folded it around to the back, the inside edge wrap-around could be slightly less than the outside edge.
I put a loop up on a corner and then hand sewed the binding down.  One last ironing and it's all ready to show off at the guild meeting, then into the mail.