Will I Get It Done?

August 1 is the reveal of the Four-in-Art group challenge quilts. I am down to the wire with finishing it. I am ready to begin to quilt the layers. I plan on using metallic thread and just cross my fingers for luck that it cooperates. I am going to sew straight lines and it might work without me trying to free-motion stitch with it.

I will give you a peek at what what I've been doing.

I have been working on three different projects, which hasn't helped with my organization. So I have a mess.

The Four-in-Art reveal involves some paper piecing.

And pieces cut with this 60 degree ruler:

So I end this post to go off to begin quilting.
If you have any good quilting vibes to send out to me, I would appreciate them.
I hope on August 1, you'll come see if I succeeded.
Happy quilting!

4th Four-in-Art Reveal for 2016

Today is the reveal of quilts for the Four-in-Art Quilt challenge. This is the last of 4 quilts for 2016. Our theme this year was COLOR. The sub-theme for this last quarter challenge was "I've got the blues." 

Each of us interprets the theme/sub-themes in our own way. Be sure to visit the other members of the group as they show their quilts. 

Four-in-Art Quilts, where you can find us all.

You can search Instagram #fourinart

Betty         https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2

Camilla     http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/

Catherine    http://www.knottedcotton.com

Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com

Elizabeth    https://occasionalpiece.wordpress.com/

Rachel        http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com

Simon         http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Susan         http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

I thought to play on the word "I've", thinking I could substitute the word "EYE've." I have blue eyes and was going to use only 2 pieces of blue in the quilt. I thought of about the many blue fabrics I have in my stash. I like blue. I would use many of those scraps.

That quilt would have been extremely large. I decided on a smaller quilt. I cut  triangles with the Accuquilt that would finish as 2" squares. "I've got the blues" is true for me. Since I didn't know which direction to go with this challenge, I made some pathways. Some of them turn off and go nowhere others go off the edge.  Here is a dark, short path that ends by a blue flowered triangle.

I used matchstick quilting along the light blue paths with variegated thread. The dark fabric paths use dark blue thread in a wiggly stitch. The quilt measures 14" square. I put triangle corner tabs on the back in order to hang the quilt with a dowel.

Here is my reveal. The sun is even shining in one area! Maybe shedding some light on this challenge.

Also, just wanted to post the paper pieced letter blocks I made this last month and sent off to the Queen Bee of the Mid-Century Modern Bee. November I am Queen Bee and I have trees in mind.

Purple Passion Construction Story

August 1 was the reveal for the Four-in-Art Quilt Challenge for the 3rd quarter. 

I had a post written for that day. I guess I never saved or updated the revisions, so the post was lost. I wrote a quick post in the morning before I went on a quilt shop road trip with friends. 

In the lost post I told how I came to design my piece, which I will tell now. 

Our theme this year is COLOR. The challenge presented was PURPLE PASSION. 

PASSION -- I knew immediately that quilting is my passion 

and has been for many years. 

PURPLE fabrics was next. I don't have too many purple fabrics.

As I traveled to various quilt shops in the past few months I purchased 

a few fat quarters of interesting purples. 

But I did not use them all in the quilt (so my stash grows). 

Since this group usually makes small quilts, I made 3-inch quilt blocks. 

The 9-patch blocks were easy enough. 

I used EQ to design paper pieced patterns for the log cabin and arrow-style block. 

(I wanted to get the pieces accurate.)

I made a simple Stack 'n Whack pinwheel. 

The improv blocks were fun and easy. 

I thought about how I began quilting; the first blocks I made and where I am today. 

That is when the idea of journey came to me. 

This would represent my quilting journey. 

How to show it?

A road, a path, a stairway? 

The idea of children's building blocks came to me. 

This evaluation is a point in my journey, too. I could create 3D illusional blocks. 

I would use gray and white fabrics for the shadowed sides of the blocks. 

I would stack them. 

My journey begins at the base, the easier blocks. 

It builds with skills of paper piecing, Stack 'n Whack (Bethany Reynolds' method), 

improv, hand piecing (that is how some of the blocks were sewn onto the quilt).

A black background would allow everything to pop. 

Space at the top allows me to grow even further.

I used a large piece of newsprint paper on my hubby's pool table. 

(He is tolerant, I made a quilted cover for it and put a large cutting mat over that.)

I placed the blocks on the paper, traced around the blocks, 

drew the gray and white sides. The light shone on the sides from different angles. 

That is how I approach designing and piecing quilts--from many angles, 

and I arrive at a finished project.

I began cutting and sewing from the rough outline sketch. 

When I got to the middle of the project, 

I realized I could have designed a foundation pieced pattern in EQ7 

and made things a bit easier. 

As I mentioned, I had to hand stitch some blocks and pieces.

Some blocks are not stacked in an orderly manner 

 to show that not all of my projects follow the rules. 

I approach things differently. 

It brings me to new ideas and new journeys. 

The final step was quilting the piece. 

I had not tried the matchstick quilting, so that was my goal. 

My lines are not as thinly spaced as matchsticks, but it worked in my opinion. 

I chose purple thread so it would accent the entire purple concept. 

The block designs are quilted with purple as well. 

I believe I will revisit this quilt and add matchstick quilting lines in the 

gray and white sides of the blocks. 

I appreciate being a member of Four-in-Art for the challenges that are presented. 

It has given me the impetus to move beyond my old quilt boundaries.

I have learned from their projects. 

While some quilters are passionate with one technique, 

I live to "try it all." 

If you haven't seen the other quilts in this series, here are the links. 

Four-in-Art Quilts, where you can find us all.

Betty         https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2

Camilla     http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/

Catherine    http://www.knottedcotton.com

Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com

Elizabeth    https://occasionalpiece.wordpress.com/

Rachel        http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com

Simon         http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Susan         http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

Purple Passion Four-in-Art Challenge Reveal

It is time for the 3rd quarter reveal of the Four-in-Art Quilt Challenge.

This year's theme is COLOR. Each quarter a new sub-theme is given. 

This challenge was PURPLE PASSION. 

My passion is quilting. I thought about my quilting journey and chose to recreate some of the blocks I learned to make over the years. 

They were the building blocks that have brought me to what I quilt today.

So I stacked my journey (not all of it) from the bottom up, 

like a child's wooden block set. 

I attempted to make them 3D in an optical illusional way. 

I used various techniques to sew the block so they stacked

with 3 sides showing, in various sizes and include the black background. 

(Machine stitching, hand stitching, a bit of wash-away fusible seam tape.)

Above: the top before quilting

I realized halfway into the construction that if I had considered paper piecing 

the quilt blocks into the building blocks and background, 

it would have been easier. 

But that is how I have wound my way through this quilting journey over the years. 

This is the first time I have used the matchstick technique of quilting. 

I used my walking foot.

The purple stitching lines are more the width of a coffee stirring stick. 

I may add some matchstick quilting to the white and gray sides of the cubes. 

It wasn't planned, but the 17.5" wide quilt fits on my small garden flag post!

Visit the other members of the Four-in-Art Quilt group 

to see their interpretations of Purple Passion. 

Betty         https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2
Camilla     http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/
Catherine  http://www.knottedcotton.com
Janine       http://www.rainbowhare.com
Elizabeth   https://occasionalpiece.wordpress.com/
Rachel       http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com
Simon        http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com
Susan        http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

We also have a blog, Four-in-Art Quilts, where you can find us all.

Four-in-Art Quilt Challenge Reveal

Four-in-Art is a small group of quilters who hail from many different places. One member announces a yearly quilt theme. This year it's COLOR. A sub-theme was added to each quarter's challenge this year to spice it up. This quarter we had to work MUSIC into our projects. 

Visit the posts of all Four-in-Art members to see how each interpreted Color and Music for this May 1 reveal. Their links are at the bottom of my post. 

I will admit I know just a little about music (to perhaps be dangerous). As a college student studying elementary education I was required to take Music 101, where, in fact, we had to learn to play the piano in 16 one-hour sessions on our own! I was able to play songs written with only quarter notes in the chord of C. Period. 

I know enough about the treble cleff (I like drawing it), "Every Good Boy Does Fine," Do, Re, Me, "F-A-C-E," the counts given to various notes; but, I can't keep time, or rythm and my foot and my fingers don't work together. 

I enjoy listening to a variety of music. As an elementary teacher, I included lots of singing during classes. We had record players and then cassette players. I knew the songs by heart and children are pretty forgiving when the tune maybe not be spot on. I can sing some popular songs and am pretty sure I am flat or sharp where I shouldn't be. 

So where to begin with Color and Music?

Many ideas spun around in my head. I have told group members that I tend to be literal in interpretation on these projects (as I am with most of the quilts I make). 

I thought about a guitar applique after a quilting friend posted about the Gibson Guitar Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I even went so far as to draw a guitar in EQ7. 

Another idea was constructing the staff with black and white fabric and uappliqueing the notes in various colors. 

Then!  Out of the blue the idea came to me!

RAIN 

It was a rainy spring day. 
I thought of the song, "It's Raining, It's Pouring," then the Carpenters', "Rainy Days and Mondays," "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," and Gene Kelly "Singin' in the Rain." 

Well, you get the idea. An internet search indicated there are over 775 songs about rain!

The songs were popping up like mushrooms after a rain. (And that really does happen.)
RAIN would make the music. "Rain Songs" was conceived.

Blue, the color every kid uses to show water (well, there are exceptions). I had a fat quarter pack of fabrics by Anthology ranging from lights to dark (or maybe the other way around). I needed one other fabric because I thought the lightest two would be lost in the layout. I am still learning about tint and shade. I would say that these blues are tints as they get lighter, which would indicate white being added. If black were added I don't think the darkest blue would have the brightness it does. Therefore, shades are not involved in the raindrops.

I applied fusible to the back of 6" x 4" pieces of only 8 of the fabrics. Each color would represent one of the notes on the C scale, or as I remember: Do, Re, Me, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do.

Rain comes during darker weather with grey skies. Five shades of grey would be used to represent the five lines of the staff. I made wavy cuts to indicate the movement of the rain clouds. The different colors show different types of rain, light rain with soft sounds and heavy rain with thunderous downpours. Each raindrop would represent a whole note. The darker the color the lower the note. The lighter the color, the higher the note.

I divided the quilt top into sections. Twelve vertical lines would allow four whole notes to be placed in 3 measures across. 

I drew horizontal lines indicating the lines and spaces of the staff. Each raindrop note would be appliqued to its corresponding place on the staff.

There are actually three Rain Songs on this piece. The rain song on the top is a softer song, higher notes indicated by the lighter blues. The rain is softer, the storm not so strong.

The middle rain song is soft and light to begin then it becomes lower, deeper with the darker or lower notes. High notes to low notes as the grey skies deepen in shade.

The last rain song is a heavy storm, deep grey shades and dark, low notes. The storm lets up a bit, then begins to lower in sound. 

I quilted verticle lines showing the falling rain. The rings indicate the raindrops are hitting the ground, or something, making sound, vibrating outward to our ears. 

 And the back of the quilt with label attached.

The other Four-in-Art Reveals:

We also have a blog, Four-in-Art Quilts, where you can find us all.

Betty         https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2

Camilla     http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/

Catherine    http://www.knottedcotton.com

Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com

Elizabeth    https://occasionalpiece.wordpress.com/

Rachel        http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com

Simon         http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Susan         http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

Mini Quilt, Pincushions and Christmas Blog Hop

Yesterday I revealed my last Four-In-Art Mini quilt for this year. You can link HERE.

Two of the three pincushions I made for the swap hosted by Beaquilter.com arrived to my partners. I can post those photos now.

And one I got from a swap partner. I like snowflakes and "snowpeople".

And the Christmas Is In My Heart Blog Hop, hosted by Marian of Seams To Be Sew, begins November 12. You can see the details HERE.



I continue working on my wall hanging for the guild challenge. I found the background fabric that I ran short of at a fabric store not far from home. Yeah! I squeezed the final brown tiles from what I had painted...glad I didn't have to paint any more. 

Here are a few more pics of progress.

More hand stitching.

Some real shine!

Today is the day!

My Four-in-Art Challenge Reveal

I have belonged to this an online quilting group of 8 quilters for nearly 2 years. 

I am very happy to have been chosen to join the group when they expanded in 2014. 

It has pushed me to try new concepts and techniques, some successfully and others never made it into a blog post. I have communicated with some wonderful and creative people.

Each "new year" (which begins in February) we are given a theme. We are to create a small quilt (12" x 12" is what I have made) every 3 months to interpret that theme. 

This year's theme has been literature. 

I have chosen Children's literature and will be donating my mini quilts to the local library to display in the Children's Area. 

My third quarter reveal is based on the1963 Newberry winning book by Madeleine L'Engle:

A Wrinkle In Time 

This is a science fantasy book for young adult readers. It was written between 1959 and 1960. After a long struggle to get it published, a happy turn of events at a tea party led to Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishing it in 1963.

In my quilt piece, I wanted to reference three of the elements in the story. 

The first is the tesseract, which was able to transport the characters on their quest to save Mr. Murphy. 

In my search of the term, I found this from dictionary.com:

• "A line has one dimension, a square has two, a cube has three, and a tesseract has four."
  (Wait for Weight Jack McKenty)
• There is a very good animation of this quotation HERE (at Wikipedia) under the section on Geometry.
• I designed my tesseract with tulle in order that the viewer could see something of this 4-dimensional object on a 2-dimensional plane. The black background suggests space as well as reference to the first line in the book, "It was a dark and stormy night,"
• In my investigations, a tesseract has 8 sides and 16 corners, so to me it is like two open boxes, with each of its corners connected. After designing this, I found reference that all of the edges of the tesseract are the same length; thus, mine is not true to definition. 

Below is a close up of the zig-zag stitching on the tulle. In some sections, there are overlapping pieces of tulle. It was actually quite easy to sew and trim.  

But I must say at times I was seeing an optical illusion!

The next thing I wanted to represent was the three Mrs. (Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which) who happen to be supernatural beings who transport the three children through time and space in the tesseract, the action of which is similar to folding time and space like fabric. I used metallic gold thread to stitch their names as it was revealed that Mrs. Whatsit was a former star that exploded in order to fight the darkness. Their names are around the image of a clock face with a wrinkle in it to reference the title of the book. 

And, lastly, the heroine of the story, Meg, discovers in their attempt to save her father (who is trapped on the dark planet) and later her need to save her brother, that it is LOVE that conquers and wins the day. 

I wanted to represent love a little differently than simply placing four letters on my quilt. 

I drew a heart on paper and drew each letter into a section to be made in a different color fabric. The letters were drawn in reverse on fusible. 

I used a zig-zag stitch to hold them all down.

The backing I found while participating in the Row by Row and could not pass it up. 

I knew it would be the right backing for this little quilt. 

I quilted the layers with straight lines radiating from the corner to suggest movement in space.

Thank you for visiting. Comments are always welcome.

Visit the others in the Four-in-Art group to see what they have done for the third reveal of their Literature themes. 

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Catherine  at Knotted Cotton

Elizabeth at OPQuilt.com 

Jennifer at Secondhand Dinosaur 

Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze

Rachel at The Life of Riley

Simone at Quiltalicious

Susan at PatchworknPlay

____________________________

And to let you know a bit of what is in store in September, I have designed a row for the 

There are 20 talented EQ7 designers

and a boatload of sponsors.

To name a few

 EQ7 - giving the software away to a lucky winner,

Fat Quarter Shop - a $25 gift certificate from each blog.

Aurifil - some beautiful thread packs

There will be batting, patterns, classes....

To see the whole list of sponsors and EQ7 designers,

you can stop by here. 

I hope you plan on joining us.

Four-in-Art Reveal of Literature Mini Quilt

I have been working on a number of things lately, most are not quilting projects. However, I do have my Four-in-Art project done and ready for this reveal today. The on-line group I belong to has an overall theme each year. This year it is Literature. Each of us chose how we wanted to represent the theme in a 12" square quilt. Every 3 months we reveal a new piece.

I am continuing with the theme of children's literature incorporating fonts in each piece. Dr. Seuss came to mind for this challenge. I remember reading his books to my own daughters and the students in my kindergarten classes. I chose the book One fish two fish red fish blue fish for my quilt piece. (Dr. Seuss did not use commas in this book title.) This series of quilts is going to be donated to the local library for the Children's Room.

I purchased my Scan N Cut machine in July, 2014, but had not used it many times. In January, 2015, a demo class was held at the store where I purchased it. I learned many things that the machine could cut....but most importantly, tips and tricks to confidently use it. So, armed with my fused fabric and a brayer (which helps get all the fabric adhered to the tacky mat), I easily cut the letters and numerals for my Four-in-Art Challenge quilt. 

Here it is: Learning with Dr. Seuss.

I backed the fabric for the numbers and letters with fusible before I cut them. I remember watching Doreen Speckmann years ago make what she called Peaky and Spike blocks into fish. I wanted fish like hers and used the EZ Quilting templates from Wright Co. to cut the size fabric pieces I needed. Many manufacturers call these templates Tri-Recs.

I set the fish blocks into a skewed frame of fabric (something like paper piecing) for the background and trimmed it to 12-1/2" square. Then I played with the position of the numbers and letters finally fusing them when I had an arrangement I liked. 

I sewed the letters with a blanket stitch to make sure they stayed attached to the background over the years. 

It was time to decide on quilting. I printed a smaller photo of my quilt on 8-1/2" x 11" paper and slipped it into a plastic sheet protector. With an erasable marker I drew some designs to see what would work. (Thanks go to my fellow Four-in-Arter, Elizabeth, who passed this tip along in a post a while back.)

I did not like my first design--too much detail in my opinion. 

The second design looked better. I wanted bubbles from the fish.

 I wanted some movement of water so the design changed a bit as I quilted it.

I trimmed the quilt to size. The fish got button eyes and gills and mouths. I wanted to accentuate the bubbles and found some white plastic beads in my embellishment box. I think those added a good finishing touch. 

I sew double folded bindings on my quilts from the back, press them to the front and topstitch with my walking foot since carpel tunnel makes hand sewing difficult. I had the binding leftover from another project and thought it would brighten the quilt even more for the Children's Library Room. 

Do you think the backing is as fun as I do? I found it while traveling this winter and can't remember where.

Visit the others in the Four-in-Art group to see what they have done for the second reveal of their Literature themes. 

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Catherine  at Knotted Cotton

Elizabeth at OPQuilt.com 

Jennifer at Secondhand Dinosaur 

Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze

Rachel at The Life of Riley

Simone at Quiltalicious

Susan at PatchworknPlay