Quilty Pleasures Wednesday-Scrap Republic

Hi! We've emerged from Christmas with some awesome gifts, so for a couple of posts I have some stuff to share with you.

As a member of the Bright Colors Club (not a club, really, but you know you're a member if you gravitate toward those brilliant hues), I am excited about Scrap Republic by Emily Cier.

It's 8 Quilt Projects for Those Who Love Color and it doesn't disappoint. I love free piecing my quilts and any book that says, "Find colored scraps that are about 1" X 2" wide  and about 5" long" is a winner. Other quilt instructions are more specific, so if you are in the measure accurately club (all these clubs!),  you, too will like this book.

My color sense is a work in progress. I learned a lot at Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat this past summer, but an intense learning experience like that makes one realizes how little they know!

This book will help add to the learning and I can't wait to get started on some of the projects.

I hope this year to make a quilt a month. It's not a resolution, but just a way to keep meself on the straight and narrow, finish up some in-progress projects and finally make some wall hangings and quilts for the house.



What quilty plans do you have for the upcoming year?

Little Quilt "Sketches"

Gwen Marston refers to her small quilts as "sketches" in the new book 37 Sketches. She says she likes to make small quilts because it allows her to experiment without spending excessive time and money, to explore different construction techniques, try new and different fabrics, and most important, to look at new design possibilities.

At Gwen's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat she showed us some full sized quilts she made based on her little fabric "sketches" and they were all beauties. The small quilts gave her new ideas for the larger ones.

I found while making my own small sketches that they can become deeply involving, choices coming out of my ears! Do I want to make some little log cabins here? Maybe a curve along this edge. What colors should I choose? It really made my brain cells proliferate,

Here are the three little sketches I made at the retreat. I like one really a lot, another is okay, and the third is one I didn't like at first, but I like it now.

Someone said this quilt reminded them of the beach, and it does, the sandy colors contrasting with the brighter blues, oceanic greens and multicolored stripes.
It's fun to study the many "parts" (Gwen's term) to this piece. My favorites were the strata on the left with the curves and the liberated log cabins.

 

This quilt doesn't have backing and binding yet,  but it looks like it should be on the wall in a child's room. The strips around the border remind me of party streamers. I cheated a little making the pieced center, strip piecing some .75 inch strips, cutting them into .75 inch rows of squares and then turning them and repiecing the rows to mix the colors up a bit.

This liberated log cabin piece has confounded me. As I sewed the center, keeping to a controlled color palette, I got bored and started adding unrelated fabric colors. I am still not sure if that was a good idea or not, but I am beginning to enjoy this quilt and its little details.

For traditional quilters this stuff is hard to understand.  To wrap your head around modern quilting after many years of looking at traditional block piecing is a giant leap. Nonetheless, it's a fun exercise, one that really makes the quiltmaker think, plan, and play around with design and color in ways they might not have ever imagined.

Quilty Pleasures Wednesday-Beaver Island Quilt Retreat, More Quilty Goodness

People made the most amazing pieces at Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat and I had fun taking photos of the work we completed.

Here are a few little quilts to enjoy, to contemplate, to derive inspiration.

The first one is a view from a window at White Birch Lodge, where most of the quilters stayed and where the retreat was held.

The next two are what I call samplers, the quilters trying some of Gwen's techniques.

Here's a color study. It reminds me of the beach or the cliff behind my house.

 

This quilt's shape and use of different elements makes it look Asian. The large stitch quilting adds to its Asian-ness, don't you think?

 These quilts make me look and look again at all that is going on. I want to make a collection of little guys to ring the upper walls of my sewing room!

Quilty Pleasures Wednesday-Beaver Island Quilt Retreat Photo Goodness

Here are a few pics of the projects we worked on at the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat. It was hard to choose because so many were interesting and inspiring, but we are camping and the internet is slow here so I need to limit what I upload or I'd be sitting at this dinette table in the Airstream until Iron River, Michigan freezes over. Or something could happen if you forced a hyperactive person to sit and wait for a zillion photos to upload. It's better and safer to have just a few gems.

This is the wall displaying Gwen Marston's 37 Sketches. They were lovely to look at but their importance as a teaching tool was key to the success of the retreat. Gwen was usually up there with a retreater, pointing out elements, discussing her thinking while she was making a piece, all in her "It's here if you want to use it" way. No pressure to do it her way, but there it was if someone wanted to get inspired. They look like jewels on this black background, don't they?

Throughout the retreat, as participants finished a project they pinned it to the wall. On the last day Gwen had us point out which ones we had made and offer some comments. Gwen gets dressed up for this portion of the retreat; she uses only the finest Michigan clothing designers.

Here's the board displaying the student projects:

And just a few projects that caught my eye:

I like how the birch fabric is used sparingly at the top with a "reveal" at the bottom.

Making long curves was a group favorite. There's something satisfying about sewing those strips together. The birch fabric Pattie and I found at a local quilt shop became a group favorite.

This piece used the birch fabric in a more obvious way, also with good results.

 This one above reminds me of a small city in the shadow of tall mountains. Note the liberated log cabins.

I call this one the liberated Amish quilt and it had some interesting techniques which made it unique: check out the prairie points at the bottom and the teensy floating squares on the bottom right. I am inspired times ten! Turn my volume up to 11! (Do you think I like it?)

Gwen's book 37 Sketches is definitely a gem. No patterns, just a great and inspiring jumping off point for your own little sketches. Go ahead, try one. It's addictive!

Quilty Pleasures Wednesday-Beaver Island Quilt Retreat 1

I'm a newbie to the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat, Gwen Marston's yearly series of classes, each year fashioned around a particular theme. This time the theme is small studies in solids, which Gwen calls, Small Sketches. We aren't sketching with pens or pencils, but with leetle bits of fabric, piecing improvisationally, muddling through, learning as we go.

Gwen's new book, 37 Sketches, is our text for the retreat, a classy, gorgeous full color hardback, lovingly crafted by a small press, 37 small quilts beautifully photographed along with Gwen's commentary about her ideas and inspiration for making small quilts about 12 inches square. Check out her website for more info about the book.

Gwen is friends with Jean Wells whose newest book is called Intuitive Color and Design. This all started when Gwen had a few days free to stay with Jean in Sisters, Oregon, where she began experimenting with some of Jean's techniques, thus beginning a new quilting adventure and the new book.

Here's Gwen explaining a motif in one of her 37 sketches.

Today we worked on curves, among other techniques, at our own pace on our own first "sketch." I'm just going to give you a taste of what people are working on, so the rest of the photos can speak for themselves. Later I will show some of the finished products.

The first two photos are pieces from Gwen's 37 Sketches collection.

Each "sketch" is just 12 inches square

The variations are intriguing

These other photos are works in progress by some of the students. I am amazed at how quickly the time goes when a quiltmaker is "in the zone."

Beachy

Trees

Forest

Party

Passionista