Quilted Dreams Pillow

Another art quilt challenge is here! 

Gosh, the reaveal date for this quarter's challenge arrived quickly. 

Visit The Endeavourers members who are revealing the projects 
they've made for the "DREAMS" challenge. 

On August 1, when I read the announced theme of DREAMS for the challenge, 

my first idea was a dream catcher design to hang on the wall. 

The dream catcher is explained HERE. My simple explanation is: it is a Native American cultural object woven and used as a protective charm for infants.

I pictured feathers hanging from the bottom, so 

I started making feathers from old denim jeans

after seeing some on Pinterest. 

A search on YouTube found many tutorials.

and I wanted to use one of my vintage doilies in the center. 

I like the Dresden Plate block, so I thought I could work that into my dream catcher. 

I made a Dresden block from some colorful batiks. 

I began hand sewing a colorful doilie to my block, 

but decided the block was lost behind the doilie, or perhaps, the doilie was lost. 

Back to the drawing board (EQ8)!

I chose the Georgetown Circle block. 

I paper pieced the fabrics in each ring on the sewing machine. 

Above, sew one triangle to another, trim, sew, press, add, repeat!

The last two sections, I cut on the seam line of the paper, 

trimmed for the 1/4" seams on the last two triangles.

Pinned the corners of the triangles so they all matched and sewed the seams. 

Pressed and trimmed beyond the paper pattern a 1/4" seam.

I arranged the rings, stitched the 1/4" seams to connect each ring to the next. 

I added a fussy cut of the night moon by topstitching over the center hole.

 I quilted the top to a backing for the front of the pillow. 

I added some lace around the edge before I sewed the front to the back. 

I realized after I did this, that it made the pillow construction more tedious. 

I finished the pillow and am quite pleased with the outcome. 

Visit the other member of The Endeavourers HERE.

 to see how they interpreted the theme of DREAMS. 

I'm off to take a nap with my pillow and perhaps dream of new quilt projects. 

I wish you a creative quilting day. 

City Park Art Quilt Reveal

Today is the reveal for The Endeavourers 3rd quarter art quilt theme, A Walk in the Park. Each of the members of this international group have posted their work HERE.

My art quilt is titled "The City Park" and you can read about my process HERE.

Thank you for visiting my blog.

Can Raindrops Be Quilted?

Today is the quarterly reveal of The Endeavourers art quilts.

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

was the Challenge theme for this May 1, 2019 reveal.

How did I endeavour to sew this challenge theme? 

I'll give you the rundown here:
(Please know the beads were added after the quilt was completed.)

• I used a fat quarter of dotted, light grey fabric for the background (suggesting raindrops all around). 
• I sketched a lady wearing a dress and a hat. (This is a summer day.)
• I used Steam-A-Seam 2 on the back of the fabrics for the arms, hat parts, hair, and dress. 
• After pressing the pieces in place on the background fabric, I appliqued each with a small zig-zag stitch. 

• I placed the quilt top on a piece of batting and used the free motion foot to machine quilt grey thread lines in the forefront, making little raindrop swirls every inch or so as I moved down the piece.

• I placed the backing fabric (a darker grey dot) underneath what I just quilted. Then I quilted straight lines between the raindrop swirl lines. But these were mid-ground, so I did not quilt over the woman. I stopped and started so my needle and thread would not sew over any part of her.

• I added the binding, which matches the backing fabric. I bind my quilts completely by machine. You can read and see how I do it HERE.

• Finally, I used Aileen's Jewel-It (no afilliation) to glue a glass bead in each raindrop swirl shape to give the piece sparkle, as one might see from a raindrop in an unexpected summer shower. (Note: I think it would have been easier to have sewn the beads, so they would have been exactly where I wanted them.)

Thank you for visiting.

You can visit the other members of The Endeavourers listed HERE.

Latest Sewing Projects

My husband and I enjoyed the Easter weekend with our daughter and son-in-law. It was a welcome diversion from the normal routine around here. My daughter asked to sew some nature-themed bowl cozies and a potholder for friends they will be seeing soon. I did the sewing while she helped with cutting, turning right side out, and pressing.

Three more April blocks arrived just before Easter for my Queen Bee Gridster quilt.  I put them on the design wall after taking the photo.

I'm working on reveal projects for The Endeavourers Challenge on May 1

and my post for the Christmas RAPPers Blog Hop on May 6. The blog hop begins on April 29-just a few days away. You can click here to find out more.

 

I helped out for a few more days in the high school art room. Just a few students were finishing up. But the supplies were in need of major organization. While going through the monster lists, the teacher found one 2nd grader's projects that wasn't chosen by an art student to make. So I worked on this at home, so no one was missed. It was very fun to "create as I sewed." It's a pretty good likeness, don't you think?

Using my scraps, I began working on "Scrappy Flowers Coaster Set" to hopefully sell at the consignment shop. The pattern is in Quilters World magazine from Spring 2016. It's an easy, quilt-as-you-go pattern by Chris Malone.

I also made some journal covers for the consignment shop. I watched a few YouTube videos that showed how easy they were. It was extra practice in free motion quilting. 

Gosh, when I look at the week in summary, I see I have done a good amount of sewing. What have you been sewing this past week? 

Texture in Quilts

February Reveal for The Endeavourers.  

"We are a group of [12 international] quilters who take part in a quarterly challenge to make a smallish art quilt of any (reasonable) size according to a theme chosen at the beginning of the quarter.

We work in any style suggested by the theme, but once in a while, we will also throw a particular technique into the mix as an incentive to be adventurous."

You can read more about the group HERE. You can also see all the quilts from the members of the group HERE.

The theme for this quarter reveal is TEXTURE. 

This is what I found to use when the theme was first announced. 

As I progressed with this art quilt, I found other fabrics and materials to use. I changed the composition, too. 

My final piece, Treasuring Grandma's Memory, is completed (although I want to add a necklace hanging out of the jewelry box and add some type of leaves to the flowers). This is a photo of my mother-in-law. My husband is delighted with this tribute to her. 

Here are a few close-ups to let you see the types of texture I brought in to this art quilt. 

I tried to give the vase a smooth texture with the satin-like fabric. The idea of etching was done with stitches after I placed batting behind the satin. I trimmed the piece and appliqued it to the background fabric.

I made the jewelry box from a technique I watched Heather Thomas demonstrate on a preview video for National Quilter's Circle HERE. (No affliliation) Below are photos of how I did this.

Damp cloth poked through grate of cooling rack from kitchen to air dry, 

iron and attach stabilizer, 

ready to cut.

I found some synthetic suede-type fabric that had a backing on it. It looked great for a photo frame. 

I printed the photo on an EQ Cotton Lawn Inkjet printer sheet and I stabilized it with iron-on stabilizer. I cut an opening in the suede where the photo would show through from behind it. 

After appliqueing it to the background, I noticed that the stabilizer showed through on the edge just a bit. 

I used a brown Fabric marker to color the white. All fixed:

And finally, I used the batik background fabric to create a stucco appearance on the wall. The thought the colors created a patina and roughness of an old wall. 

Be sure to visit the other members of The Endeavourers group and see their use of texture in their art pieces. 

The Endeavourers Art Quilt Reveal

Today is the The Endeavourers' Art Quilt Reveal 
for the 3rd quarter 

of our first year as a group. 

The theme for this challenge was Spirals. 
Visit our blog to see all the designers' projects.

I find the internet so helpful in getting my mind started on a project. In my teenage and college years, I would have been visiting libraries and checking out books or magazines to research a topic. As the Yellow Pages phone book advertised: Let your fingers do the walking...." Well today, my fingers walk the internet!

As some of you know, I interpret topics in the literal sense. Spirals are mathematical. I took a strolled down memory lane.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZdu663Dag)

In high school, geometry meant learning theorems and formulas, writing proofs, and taking nerve-wracking tests! I didn't see where any of this knowledge would help me out in the world. (I was a teen in the 70s, before Title IX we gals were limited to 3 or 4 career choices which didn't include engineers, drafting, and such.)

I wish teachers had related geometry to quilting, I would have done SO WELL! Application would have been very beneficial. (I wonder how many quilters now see geometry as fun!?)

HERE is the website I found that helped me learn how to draw spirals beginning with a certain number of points. A straight line is 2 points, a triangle is 3 points, a square is 4 points, and so on.
I chose to begin with a 3/4" square. I knew I had a button that size to put in the middle of my art quilt.

Later I found THIS video showing how to draw a 2 point spiral. I was very interested in the virtual compass, pencil, and protractor/ruler that he used in the video!

Shown HERE, spirals can be drawn using the Golden Ratio! I have a curved design ruler for making clothing patterns that could be used to make this spiral.

But I digress.

I divided the spiral into 4ths, using the 4 sides of the square to delineate the areas of the color. I chose to use batiks in shades of 4 colors. I cut the sections of the drawing apart to use as templates for the batiks.

I wanted to define the drawn line of the spiral and knew a cord or ribbon would be easily manipulated. I had a silver cording with little loops off each side. I sewed a gold cording onto the silver cording to give more bling! Then I applied the cordings by machine to the raw edges which was the spiral line.

With the leftover cording, I sewed the small tight spiral separately from the background, then appliqued it onto the background. As you can see in the photo above, the background was a bit short on this particular side. I had to add some fabric as you will see later.  

I hand sewed what seemed like a gazillion beads for two reasons. First, the raw edges were not totally caught in the stitching of the cording. (You can see how the middle pink has some fabric covering the silver loops near the seam.) Second, I had to give more sparkle to my spiral line! You see in the middle, the square hole, which is where my initial 3/4" square in my drawing was located.

 And now. . . 

my completed art quilt titled:

SPIRAL BLING! 

Here is a list with links to all the members' own blogs:
Catherine

Janine

Nancy

Carol

Barbara

Ruth

Gwen

Martha

Julie

Maureen

Kay

Fiona

Endeavourers Transformation Reveal

Change/Transformation was the theme for this quarter's quilt challenge of The Endeavourers. You can read the purpose of our group HERE, as well as read a brief synopsis of each member's project.

I always begin thinking of ideas for the challenge by finding the definition of the theme.

Transformation was an interesting idea from a mathematical perspective. I actually began a project (see the end of the post for a photo) with the concepts of geometric rotation (turn), translation (slide), and reflection (flip), resizing, congruent, and similar. But I stopped, it seemed too medallion-like, and chose to make something I haven't made yet.

Instead, I chose to think of CHANGE and the change in color when paints are mixed...or when different colors of tissue paper overlapped.

I gathered some fabrics from my scraps and fat quarters that looked as if they would make the transparency effect when sewn.

This is the quilt top sewn:

I will say the quilting CHANGED the appearance of the top.

I have never done such intricate quilting. I used my walking foot and a disappearing fabric marker to mark lines. Two layers of polyester batting were used so the triangles puffed.

This is after being quilted (17" x 16"):

I am very pleased.

Visit the other members of the group to see what they made for their Challenge Quilts!

The Endeavourers 

Catherine

Janine

Nancy (me)

Carol

Barbara

Ruth

Gwen

Martha

Julie

Maureen

Tonia

Soma

Kay

Fiona

Here is the Transformation project I began. I will finish it.