Rainbow Rose QAL Week 1

To give myself a bit of rest from all the hand work and the long-drawn art projects I'm working on, I decided to join the QAL at Modern Quilters Ireland for a beautiful rainbow version of a traditional block. It's been a while since I did some good old rotary cutting and piecing!

And people here in Ireland know a thing or two about rainbows ;))

The idea is to arrange your fabrics following the color wheel, and I have loved color wheels ever since my art school days - painting a color wheel was the first task I was given when I started art school, aged 14 )) I think my mum still has that piece of art somewhere)) Since that time I know I am drawn to "pure" rainbow colors and color transitions. And it spilled over into my quilting, in fact two of the quilts I am currently working at have something of that (this is one of them, the other I'll probably show you a sneak peak of later this week).

With this project I am determined to take the idea of a color wheel literally and create not just the transitions of colors, but also include tints and shades - a dark-to-light gradient. Luckily, my stash mostly consists of blenders and tone-on-tone patterns and I usually strive to keep as wide a range of colors and shades as possible (albeit in tiny pieces) for my appliqué projects.

The only thing that was lacking was a background, because I don't usually keep any solids and certainly not yard cuts)). So, yesterday I went to get some and returned with a piece of white and another of light grey. I'm not sure which one will work better, what do you think?

I could be arranging and rearranging them for hours ;))

So, I think I'm all set, some variation may occur later in the process. I'm now looking forward to seeing what other participants have in their stash)) If you're interested too, visit Modern Quilters Ireland and there's still time to join the QAL - the cutting and piecing starts next week!

Monday Morning Inspiration - Photos for Appliqué Quilts

Here are some photos from our Howth roaming, that scream "quilt" to me:

Isn't that a ready appliqué pattern? Notice how the paint remains on the fence echo the leaf color.

These could be made as a pieced background with appliqué or using confetti technique.

Another variation. Love the color combo here.

This one has a nice background effect that calls for hand-dyed fabrics. And if you remove the bushes and just leave the simple and dedicated flower shapes... (by the way, anybody knows what these flowers are called?)

This is a kind of iconic picture-postcard image  for a picture-postcard quilt))

Let's be inspired and  get down to the week's  work!

No-rules hand quilting

In the beginning of May I set myself a goal for this month - to try hand quilting for the first time and cope with at least 1/8 of this quilt. Although I still have a lot of doubts about what I am doing, I think the goal is achieved more than enough - in fact, I quilted about half of it:

My fingers hurt, but I'm proud of myself - I thought it would take me ages!

As I only wanted to try hand quilting and wasn't sure I would ever want to repeat the experience, I didn't want to buy a quilting hoop and used the technique I heard about before - when the needle slides along the table or another hard surface under the quilt. It results in longer stitches than classical hand-quilting. As far as I understand, something like this is called "big stitch quilting", but big stitches usually mean using thicker thread. I was only able to find a suitable variegated thread in machine quilting cottons, so my stitches are both long and thin:

For comparison: the hexagon side is 1 1/4' (And the big blue stitches are basting - yes, I baste my quilts the old-fashioned way)))

On the other hand, they have some of the ethereal quality that is characteristic for soap bubbles )))

I also broke the rules by not following a pattern or the pieced shapes in my quilting design, in fact I used several freezer paper circles that I ironed to the quilt here and there and just stitched around. The effect of this is that instead of enhancing the patchwork shapes, the quilting kind of dissolves them, makes them softer:

I'm sorry the light in the photos is different (and neither of them quite true, I'm afraid), but I hope you can see what I mean. I'm still not sure whether this is good or bad, but the quilt is about bubbles and bubbles are supposed to move at random, so any organized quilting seemed at odds with the main idea.

I'm also not sure if I have done enough quilting - in places it' quite dense, but there are also empty areas about two inches long and almost as wide. I desperately need advice from experienced hand quilters, I'm going to take it to the IPS meeting, but would also welcome any comments with quilting advice!

Another question open for discussion is what kind of binding to choose for it. I don't have anything suitable in my stash, so will have to look for something.

So, whith mixed feelings of pride and doubt I'm linking this to the blogs that motivated me to set and achieve this goal:

BraveQuilter at Pink Doxies

One Monthly Goal at Red letter Quilts

New to me in 2016 at Celtic Thistle Stitches

Fabric, Thread and Yarn at France Nadeau

Two more curve piecing patterns - ready, set...

... and here we go:

This is a simple curve pieced landscape, called something like "A road without a beginning and an end". I wanted some realistic floral fabric for it and vaguely remembered seeing these poppies tat TWI, so I went there, but it was only left in a charm pack. So I had to take the charm pack and put several squares together (bet you can see the seams, but that was the only way) I hope they will get more discreet after quilting. Now I'm left with an almost full charm pack and I'm not sure what to do with it, although some ideas are creeping in. To begin with, I decided to use some of the squares in the freehand curve pieced border:

I actually like this collection, A Quiet Place by Fabric Freedom, it kind of strikes a chord with my current mood (or maybe it's just because the poppies are blooming now))).

The last of the workshop patterns is the goldfish:

Not as much contrast as I like, but I love how the floral fabric looks a bit like scales)) I think I will decorate it after quilting with sequins or something to add a little bit of sparkle and visual interest, so far it's about as languid as a fish )). The quilting lines in the tail and fins will hopefully help, too.

It also has its personal freehand curve pieced panel with more seaweed.

So, here they are all together:

Which is your favorite? Would you like to try out any of them? I'm thinking of making some pdf patterns available for download here, but I need time for that.

Linking to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times and  Free motion by the river linky Party

Spring is in the Air - Curve Piecing Pattern

Another one of my curve piecing patterns tried out:

As it has a lot of background, I pulled out my florals, of which I don't have many, but these seem to work well together and with the accent fabrics. All those flowers are also the reason I called this piece "Spring is the Air".

I made a free-hand panel for it, too. Only when I finished it, did I notice that the two brightest red fabrics are too close together (( Maybe I'll change it later, but I don't feel like it now - it's improvisation, after all ;)).

Linking to:

Chasing the Waves - Curve Piecing Pattern

I am trying out the curve piecing patterns I designed for the workshop at the IPS Eastern branch. The first (because I think it's my personal favorite so far) is the dolphin. I called it "Chasing the Waves" - a  somewhat loose translation of a song title.

After all the efforts of converting my sketches into vector graphics and printing them out in appropriate size, the piecing itself was a breeze, although there are a couple of tight curves in smaller details, the fins in particular. I decided to make the patterns about A2 in size, this one is 43 by 56 cm and I rather like how it turned out.

As I would like to cover free-hand curve piecing during the workshop as well, I made a couple of sampler free-hand panels, which are supposed to go right and left of the dolphin:

I can kind of see it hung on the wall above a kid's bed)))

After I finished the side panels and put it all together I had an idea - I should have included other dolphins' back fins in the side panels, as if it's swimming with a pack (is it a pack of dolphins or a herd? a flock maybe? or just a group?)

I won't be finishing this until the workshop, so that the seams at the back can be examined. But it's really satisfying to finish a quilt top in a day, after all the long-term projects I've been (and still am) making. 

Linking to:

Monday Morning Inspiration - Lacy Textures for Confetti Quilts

This Saturday we went to Howth rhododendron jungle gardens, which is quite near where we live, and everything there was absolutely stunning - the weather, the huge rhododendron trees and bushes covered with beautiful blossoms in all shades of pink, the views from the hill, ferns and mosses, spring flowers under the trees and the young spring leaves.

I took lots of photos which I intend to turn into quilts one day, but considering the number of such photos I have, this day will come in about 150 years ))). So I thought I would share them with you and maybe they will inspire you to create something beautiful (just in case, you don't 't have to ask for permission, it will be an honor!).

Here I chose some images with delicate, lacy details that would be (next to) impossible to piece or appliqué, but  could be used for "confetti" or "pizza" style quilts, where small pieces of fabric are laid on a background and then covered with tulle and quilted to hold everything in place. (One quilt I made using this technique is in my gallery)

Have you already tried confetti quilting?  If you haven't do give it a try. It's really fun and gives you the freedom to play with shapes and colors without thinking too much about how you are going to sew it all together. 

The Evolution quilt finished finally

I'm so glad I finished it!
But I still haven't got a proper name for it ((

I can't say it was too long or tedious, it really was a lot of fun and I am glad it turned out more or less as I dreamed it up (I'm not telling you about all the mistakes ;) ).

The topic of evolution first seemed a hard one, because I take everything literally and can't just come up with an abstraction to represent the idea of development - I need to delve into the paleontological record)). As I mentioned before, I fell for the idea of trying to quilt a fossil, and the "Archaeopteryx Berlin" is probably the most famous of them all as well as the most expressive and dramatic))). Another thought I had was about the birds of paradise which are "evolution gone crazy" (it's a scientific term ;) ). And so it dawned on me to put the two ideas together and to depict an array of modern birds contemplating the fossilized remains of their ancient relative and thinking about the mysterious ways of evolution.

While working I learned the spelling of the word archaeopteryx and some fun things about it. Apparently it is not considered by most scientists nowadays to be the direct ancestor of modern birds, rather a different branch of the extended dinosaur family. Its main differences from birds are his bony tail, from which the feathers grow right and left (birds' tail feathers grow straight from the butt), the teeth in its mouth (or beak?) and the claws on the wings. It probably couldn't fly properly (that must be reason this one had such a dramatic fall).

I also came to love all the company sitting around the frame and learned their names in Russian and English. Here are some of them close up.

The first one I made and also my husband's favorite, the kingfisher:

Colibri is the favorite of my younger daughter (I guess because it's the only one with some pink):

The goldfinch:

The blue tit:

The magpie and the golden oriole:

The green-headed tanager:

So, the question remains: what should I call it? The working title was "Fallen by the wayside of evolution" or just "Fallen by the wayside" for short. Now I think it might sound disrespectful to poor old archaeopteryx, I'm not sure what kind of connotations that has for native English speakers. If anyone has any ideas, please share in the comments. 

I have to enter it for the IPS National Exhibition by the end of May, and if it's accepted it will be my first show quilt.

I'm so excited to have finished, I'll be linking it up everywhere))