Quilty Pleasures: Our Lady of Guadalupita

I taught a class at ThreadBear a while back on improvisational medallion quilts. The three session class was designed to give everyone a start on the process, so I haven't seen their finished products.  Nonetheless, it was fun sewing along with the students so they could watch the process and get some ideas, with a few instructional stops along the way.

You may have seen the Lady of Guadalupe quilt I made after taking an epic class on Liberated Quilting hosted by quilting buddies Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran. (Click on the link above to get that story.)

Anyway, I still had some Our Lady panels in my stash (and have started another quilt that I hope to finish this winter), so that's where I started. Since this quilt was improvised, there was no clue what the finished product would look like, just starting in the center, working border by border.

Here's a look at the quilt. I built around the center, got bored with that and decided to add details at the top and the bottom.

Here's a close up of the different layers I added around the center panel. Because I wanted this quilt to be finished quickly, I made strategic use of interesting fabric rather than piecing each border. Freddy Moran, whose quilts have a plethora of fabric and color, likes black and white borders in a busy quilt so our eyes can stop and rest. For reference, the half square triangles are 1.5 inches finished. I'm not sure about the orange and rose fabric touching each other, but it's done and a small matter. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Look at the quilting Michael at ThreadBear did, the rose and leaf quilting pattern echoing both the roses in the red border and and the general flower motif I repeated throughout the quilt. Oops! Don't look at that stray white thread. Oh, you looked, didn't you?

Towards the top of the quilt is an arch of Gwen Marston's Liberated Stars. I made the stars first and worried they would get lost in the bold colors, but by placing them at the top,  they become a focus motif. Liberated stars are free pieced, no measuring the stars' points, so each one is different.

At the quilt's bottom, I used Gwen's Liberated Basket technique to make flower pots, the flowers from an old Kaffe Fasset fabric. Gwen has used these same pots in one of the Lady of Guadalupe quilts Freddy and Gwen made for their book Collaborative Quilting.

An aside: If you haven't seen Quiltfolk magazine, please do. This issue is about the Michigan quilt community and features an article about Gwen, my quilting hero and a national treasure.

The backing fabric is Alma y Corazon by Alexander Henry. Love his fabrics and am grateful for Ann at ThreadBear, who made a bee line to this exact fabric, knowing it would be perfect.

 As I was making the quilt, I thought about a student I taught in Corona whose mother had gifted me years ago with a beautiful white crocheted sweater and later, after I had retired to the mountains, sent me a cozy hat and scarf to ward off the cold. I've always been so grateful for these gifts because, well, it was a parent who wanted to show me I was valued, and her son Juan went on to become a teacher, too, which is even better. So I sent her the quilt, now named Our Lady of Guadalupita. The name? Guadalupita, NM is the closest village to our place so it makes perfect sense since that's where I made it.

It looks like Mrs. Rosa Salgado likes Our Lady of Guadalupita, so I am glad to have been able to make her just as happy as I was receiving her gifts of love.

Quilty Pleasures-Modern Grunge

I was looking through some postings and realized I didn't let you see this finish, but just the layout.

A few years ago I drove to Albuquerque, three hours away, to attend a Jacquie Gering workshop on improvisational quilts. It seemed like a logical next step since I had taken a several classes with Gwen Marston, one of the original improvisationalists with her Liberated Quilting techniques. This is my Jacquie Gering inspired quilt.

I love this stuff. Just saying.

So anyway, I dorked around and procrastinated for quite some time, but finally finished it last year.

Here's a full shot. It's definitely a wall hanging and I've added a hanging sleeve to the back. Don't you love that background fabric? Keep reading and I'll tell you about it.

As you can see, it's been folded away. Look at those dang creases!

Here's a detail photo so you can see the quilting and one improvisational block. I started this block by fussy cutting a flower for the center and built from there, adding the white fabric square, some turquoise around the center and a reddish brown to complete it.

I used my Bernina's Number 4 stitch which creates this serpentine quilting pattern. To keep the quilting on the straight and narrow, I used a walking foot and its width to keep the rows (semi) regular, along with some painters' tape. Every twelve inches or so, I laid some tape down to ensure that I was not listing to one side or the other with my quilting rows.

Here's the back, but I am sorry I don't know the fabric's name. The background fabric's name is Grunge Basics by Moda. The color is Pool.

When I make an improvisational or Liberated quilt, it consumes me. I think about it; I have dreams about it. This is when I realize what an artist feels when making a painting, a sculpture, a book movie or play.

I guess I'm a sometimes artist.

Quilty Pleasures-This String Quilt is Hot

It was cold when I started making this string quilt, so I must have been over compensating when I chose its colors. Those are definitely colors to make someone feel nice and warm! If you want to know more about how I picked the colors for this quilt, click this link.

Anyway, it's done and ready to be used as a model for the string quilt block workshop I'll be hosting at ThreadBear in Las Vegas on April 26.

String/strip quilt blocks are fun to make. They are a totally mindless endeavor, perfect when you want to make a quick quilt with little fuss.

I was going to use the sunflower fabric for borders, but when I auditioned it, the quilt looked way too busy, so it's part of the back along with a neato red batik I bought at ThreadBear.

This is the sunniest, warmest quilt I've made in a long time and it makes me happy just looking at it.

If you're interested in learning how to make quilt blocks like these, sign up for the class, because we're going to have some fun!

Quilty Pleasures-Mi Familia

Friend Ann, owner of my local quilt shop Threadbear, asked me if I'd like to work with her on a quilt, so we have been collaborating for a couple months on something very different.

The center panels are from a collection by Jesus Cruz called Mi Familia (My Family) by Andover fabrics.  I apologize for the photo quality. I think I messed up my phone camera lens so everything looks a little fuzzy.

We thought it would be fun to work on this quilt collaboratively, not really knowing what the end result will be,  making parts like the four patches and flying geese and trying them out as we go. Some parts we made worked, and others were, "What the heck was I thinking?"

Working by the seats of our pants can be scary and absorbing at the same time. "Stop Staring and Start Sewing!" is our refrain.

Mi Familia is still a work in progress, but the way Ann decided on the orange border is neato: Ann had a quilt top in her "whoops" collection. You know those projects you start and almost finish, but have enough misgivings you don't want to complete them? I have a few of those and I'll bet you do, too.

Anyway, the discarded quilt top looked like this, but multiply it by a zillion circles because this is just a piece.

Ann cut each row of circles in half. We thought a scalloped border would be interesting and tried that, but then she started playing around and staggered the rows of half circles until they made a type of serpentine pattern.

She's been fussing around, sewing the two half circle rows together, offset, and making sure they are all the same size. As you can see in the first pic, Ann needs to fill in some spots which requires cutting and matching half circles, not always matching the fabric.  Recycling in action! And it looks really cool!

I made some flying geese using hand dyed fabric supplied by quilting friend Linda S. and the "sky" for the geese is a cosmic, spacy looking black fabric.

There are still more borders to go, so we will keep you posted on how it's going.

Have you ever made a quilt with someone else? Have you ever "winged it," not really knowing what you were going to do with your quilt before you started?

If you haven't, take some time to play a little.  Whether you call it liberated, intuitive, or improvisational quilting, you will have a real mind stretcheroo and may find yourself standing and staring at your in-progress quilt for much longer than you realize.

You may even start dreaming about your quilt. And that's a good thing!

International Quilting Day: My Favorite Quilt

In the 12 or so years since I began quilting in our daughter's bedroom after she went off to college, I've made and given away more quilts than I can remember. Note to new quilters: take a photo of each quilt you make and put it in a safe place so when you are old and senile, you have it right there.

My favorite quilt, though, is one I kept and hangs on the living room wall. Why do I love it?

1. It's the first quilt I made where I didn't have a clue how it would look at the end.
2. My brain was so engaged in making this quilt that I even dreamed about it.
3. Looking at it is always a new experience. And not because I am old and senile, but because there are surprises, like that fabric in the bottom right,  different from the rest of the border.

 Thanks, Pattie Prothero, for inspiring me to start this most rewarding occupation.

Jacquie Gering Workshop Quilt

A couple months ago two of my quilty buddies and I drove to Hip Stitch in Albuquerque for a workshop by Jacquie Gering of Tallgrass Prairie Studio fame. I had followed her blog for several years and recently bought her book, Quilting Modern. Her designs were intriguing and new, something I would like to try someday.

That someday came and the workshop was a gigantic learning experience, especially watching quilters try something that took them out of their comfort zones. Let's face it: many of us started making quilts from patterns or from diagrams and to all of a sudden be told, "Just cut a rectangle. No, don't measure it," can be downright scary.

I had been lucky to have done some free piecing-Liberated-Collaborative quilting at several Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran workshops and the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat, so for me it was fun fun and a chance to dive into modern quilting once again.

I started this quilt at Jacquie's workshop and have been working on it little by little. I think I am close to final assembly

The other day at Thread Bear in Las Vegas, New Mexico, we pinned the background fabric, Moda Grunge, to the design wall and I started arranging the blocks. They are a type of log cabin, but not your grandma's log cabin, that's for sure.

This is what I have so far. I think it looks pretty balanced, but if any of you spacial relationships people want to weigh in by leaving a comment, I would appreciate any feedback you might have.