IPS National Exhibition 2016 "Evolution"

Another trip to Limerick in one month, another quilt show at the beautiful gallery space of the Limerick School of Art and Design (read about the first one here). This time my husband went with me on a romantic bus ride as the kids were looked after by their aunt and uncle)).

My quilt "Fallen by the Wayside" was there, so an obligatory "artist with quilt" picture was duly taken:

I have written about it and included some close-ups in this post. My birdies were well received and even made it onto the catalogue cover:

I struggled with my camera settings, so not all the photos of the quilts I liked were good quality, but here are at least some of them:

"In the Beginning" by Mary Maguire and "Woods" by Tomomi McElvee

"Fish Evolution" by Irene MacWilliam

"Same but Different" by Ruth Bourke

"Celebrating the Big Bang" by Rita Whelan

"Kerry Dance" by Marie Hooper

"Starburst" by Louise Mullane

The gallery also housed an exhibition of mini quilts on the theme "Distance" by artists from Ireland, Austria and Latvia, which we also enjoyed. Unfortunately, there was no catalogue and I didn't include the quilt and artist's names with some of the photos.

We then went to Limerick Quilt Center to do some fabric shopping (did I mention it was my birthday? no present like fabric shopping)))

You can tell I'm getting ready for Halloween.

We strolled a bit around the city center, saw a sewing and knitting supplies shop with my name on it, had some coffee with very nice cakes and went back home.

Linking up to Fabric Frenzy Friday at Fort Worth Fabric Studio and Can I Get a Whip Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

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Rainbow Rose QAL - Finish

This week is the final link-up for the finished Rainbow Rose quilts at Modern Quilters Ireland.  I finished mine yesterday and took it out for a quick little shoot today, as it's been drizzling off and on.

I know it's supposed to be a Rainbow Rose, but for me it's more of a Colorwheel Star))

After a lot of deliberation I decided to quilt it in echo shapes in the variegated thread I have left from my Bubbles quilt. The thread is not a full rainbow, it doesn't have blue and yellow in it, but it's still very fun and bright (incidentally, the binding fabric has no blue either)))

I rather like how it fills the (still dreaded) negative space.

I marked the quilting lines this time, so they are more or less straight and I think I can consider my July monthly goal of walking foot quilting achieved with this and the rehearsal on the Candy quilt. I still have a couple of quilt tops which can also be walking-foot quilted till the end of the month.

I was deliberating the binding for a long time as well and finally decided on that not quite rainbow but definitely multicolored stripe I've had for several years (brought it from a trip to Moscow). I think it plays rather well with the quilting thread. To add some interest I cut the bias stripes in different directions to echo the star rays.

I couldn't find any appropriately rainbow fabric for the back, so I used the light grey piece which I was considering as an alternative to the white background in this quilt. So from the back it looks like a super minimalist whole cloth quilt ))).

Note how the binding has a different look from the back, with the stripes converging, not diverging as in front. Anyway, I suppose it will be more of a wall quilt, so the back won't get seen a lot, instead it will get a hanging sleeve.

If I ever have a sewing room, I think this would be a good thing to have on the wall there, for reference as a color wheel))

Linking up to Rainbow Rose QAL at Modern Quilters Ireland

Fabric, Thread and Yarn at France Nadeau

Off the Wall Friday at Creations by Nina-Marie 

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Who Took the Candy?

If you remember I wrote some time ago about the lovely fat quarter bundle from Love Fabric shop that I won in the Rainbow Rose QAL link-up. It was very nice but different in style from most fabric in my stash, so I challenged myself to make something using just that bundle. Well, between this and that, I did it:

The fabrics are by Dashwood Studio and the collection is called "Cotton Candy", which prompted the direction of my thinking))) The geometric patterns in the fabrics called for simple shapes. I quickly sketched two basic candy shapes, but then had to spend a lot of time doing and redoing the maths to make sure I had enough fabric. Initially, the candies were spaced out more, but that called for more background fabrics. In the bundle I had three "accent color" FQs, three "background" FQs and one "binding" FQ, so that's what I had to play with. Finally, the maths worked out and I had enough fabric and very few scraps left.

It's called "Who Took the Candy?" and it looks suspiciously like a baby quilt. As I can't see any babies coming on the horizon it's been folded up and put away for the time being)))

I think the pattern and the idea would be clearer on a solid background, but this busy one has some kind of charm to me. kids + candies = mess)))

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was tired of FMQ and decided to try out walking foot quilting (which is my July OMG). So, after long deliberation I decided to quilt it in a spiral centered on the "missing" candy. I only marked the beginning, so it gets wonky as it unwinds, but I really didn't care much - I just wanted to relax and stitch on)) The thread is light turquoise, the softest of my accent colors.

The quilting lines are 1'' apart, so it's very soft and cuddly with 80/20 cotton/poly batting. I did all the quilting in one sitting, which is something unheard of for me)) And generally, this came together so fast, compared to my recent art projects! Can I be officially called a modern quilter now? ...please?)))

Oh, and note the funny flamingo fabric that I found for the back! Didn't take a separate picture of it, but you can get the idea))

Linking up to Show off Saturday at Sew Can She, Main Crush Monday at Cooking up Quilts and Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River

Flashback Friday - Violets

I missed the Throwback Thursday at Quarter Inch from the Edge yesterday, so let's make it Flashback Friday and still join the link up to share another pre-blogging time quilt ;))

This is my third quilt, I think and the first art one (my first quilt design, too if you think of it). I certainly wasn't planning on making an art quilt at that stage, I was still taking my patchwork course and finishing my first sampler (the one I wrote about last month). The craft school where I was taking the course occupies a small room with a large window facing south - which is nice in winter, but not so much in summer)) And of course our teacher couldn't bear the thought of store-bought curtains or blinds)) so she called on students past and present to make 15 cm blocks out of a bag of polyester fabric scraps. The response was great and the curtain was soon finished:

See the pink flower in the middle? That's mine)) (Actually, I made nine blocks for it all in all). The flower was the "African violet" block that i saw on the Internet somewhere without any instructions  or description. I just "reverse engineered" it and tried it out with some green and purple scraps I had.

Originally, I intended to make those two blocks into potholders to be given as an 8th of March present  to somebody, but then I decided to make more of them. As I didn't have any of the same fabrics left, I used other shades of green and purple - everything I could find at the moment. The violets formed a nice frame, but I still had no idea what to put inside the frame.

The idea of a vintage flower girl appeared slowly, at first I thought it too ambitious for my skill level - but it just wouldn't go away! So I looked through tons of vintage cards on Pinterest to find a simple enough picture, and all of them were "not quite what I want", so I made the drawing myself. The hand appliqué wasn't as hard as I feared, painting the face was more scary, but I had made fabric dolls with painted faces before, so it was more or less familiar.

I also decided to make the violets in the basket with ribbon embroidery, because it seemed the easiest way for this scale. I have never used ribbon embroidery in quilts since, I think I should try it again)).

Finally, I decided to try my newly acquired skill of FMQ on this quilt - you can see how wobbly the quilting is, but I was still proud!

I finished it in time for the mini exhibition that was held in our craft school to celebrate the Easter 2014

Linking up to:

Throwback Thursday at Quarter Inch from the Edge
Fabric Frenzy Friday at Fort Worth Fabric Studio

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The Beach Party's On!

Well, it's finally finished - the quilting, the binding, the sleeve - the label to go and then it's ready to be packed and sent to Birmingham. I called it "Beach Extravaganza". We have some sun for a change today, so I took the quilt out for a photo shoot. Actually, perhaps there was a bit too much sun)))

I rather like how it turned out, although, as usual, I have some doubts. At least the trapunto effect has worked as I intended it to, the appliqué shapes really seem to be on top of the background pebbles (not sure it is visible in the photos, though).

And the quilting made the background somewhat darker as well.

A discerning critic (guess what she has tied around her head)

I had never quilted so much of pebbles before and it was really demanding, so I think I'll take a break from FMQ for a bit. As I have a few other quilt tops to finish, I decided to try some walking foot quilting on them.

Two of them look appropriately modern for some straight line quilting. One is the Rainbow Rose QAL and the other is a little quilt I made out of my prize fat quarter bundle - very different from what I usually do, but I love it for that)) Will tell the whole story soon.

 I have never done walking foot quilting (apart from quilting in the ditch), so it's a challenge and I want to set it as my One Monthly Goal for July.

I'm also linking up to Fabric, Thread and Yarn, Off the Wall Friday and Free Motion Mavericks.

This poor creature with damaged shell was brought to my attention as I was taking pictures.

Rainbow Rose QAL Week 5 and Bringing Back the Spring

This week's assignment in Modern Quilters Ireland QAL was to put together the top. So, that's what I did:

Now, Ruth suggested using a couple of appliqué ideas for the border or leaving it just as it is. This much negative space is something I'm not accustomed to, though I know it's one of the prominent features of modern quilt design. Besides, in my version, the star seems to melt away towards the edges, and that somehow adds to all the white. 

The borders question is connected to the quilting and binding question, for example quilting the white in a bright variegated thread (I have left from the bubbles quilt) could fill in the void. White binding would contribute to the glow effect, while bright one would keep it controlled. Lots of possibilities. All suggestions welcome)))

Although I'm turning ideas about finishing this quilt in my mind, I couldn't bear to let it occupy my makeshift design wall, so i covered it with a new project which I have conceived back in early spring when magnolias were in bloom all around Dublin.

This photo was taken near Howth Castle, but I have taken many others as well as looked for more professional ones on Pinterest. Finally, I made a full scale pattern from my sketch and auditioned the fabrics. After 3 (three!) bright rainbow projects, finally something more subdued, just greys and pinks:

I've been collecting those greys and pinks since spring)) Looks like I have enough pinks now (I had quite a few before that idea hit me, so many are just leftovers, but that's ok, because the flowers are made of smaller parts). The greys are mostly new fat quarters, as I don't often use them, and I think a couple more would be welcome.

This piece is going to be all curve-piecing and it's quite large - a meter by a meter and a half - probably the largest of my "art" pieces so far.

Linking up to Rainbow Rose QAL at Modern Quilters Ireland, Fabric, Thread and Yarn at France Nadeau

P.S. I'm still working on quilting my beach extravaganza, the finish is looming, but I ran out of thread today((

Rainbow Rose QAL Week 4

In fact, I finished the central star, this week's assignment, on Friday, but then I decided to replace some fabrics in the previously completed parts, so it had to wait. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take good photos today, but wanted to be in time for the link-up, so here is the result:

In fact, this exercise helped me analyze my stash and I discovered that, although I have a nice range of colors, they are mostly in medium value, and I have few of the very light and very dark ones. So, I started to address this problem in my recent couple of visits to fabric shops)). Having bought some pastels, I decided to amend those pieces of the outermost circle that seemed most offensive. I replaced two and moved one triangle in the red part.

Another thing I learned in the process is that working with very light tints is more difficult - adding a lot of white to colors makes them really similar. I guess the same is true for dark shades, but in this example the darks were in the center so I needed fewer of them.

As I mentioned before, getting a dark shade of yellow is difficult - when you look at the yellow wedge you can see the value gradation, but the yellow in the central circles is obviously lighter than other colors. As far as I remember from reading about color theory, it's ok, it's just the characteristic of this color, but for the sake of consistency, I should have probably make it more brown.

Linking up to the Rainbow Rose QAL at Modern Quilters Ireland.