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: Lady of Guadalupe 2 In Progress

I've been spending most Tuesdays with some quilty friends at ThreadBear, my local quilt store in Las Vegas, NM, each of us working on projects and just having a good old time hanging out. There are usually burritos from the tiendita down the street involved and my favorite is the ground beef, potato and green chile variety.

Another Lady of Guadalupe quilt has been on the list for quite a while and my friend Betty gave me the push to get started. We are using ideas from Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran's books about collaborative quilting along with our own ideas, the ones that spring forth when the room is spinning with creativity.

Here's what we have so far:

I started with Robert Kaufman's Our Lady of Guadalupe panel from the Enchanted Desert line of fabric. It's pretty old, but you may still be able to find some if you do a little internetting.

The panel's border is a black and white polka dot to make it stand out and not just blend into the other fabrics. Next is a pieced border involving 1.5 inch red squares with 1 inch strips around and in between. It looks like I wove a red ribbon through the purplish-blue fabric.

After I attached that red square border,  it looked a little wavy, so decided to square it up with a turquoise stripe from some fabric I found in my stash. It still looks wavy, but this is liberated quilting, so let's not beat ourselves up about it.

I wanted a sky with angels in houses and liberated stars, so this is the layout today. It's not sewn together, yet, and there will probably be a lot of staring and arranging and staring some more before it becomes permanent.

Next: trees in a forest and a flower garden. This is going to take a while, but my mind is cooking with ideas and I suspect I will dream about this tonight.

Stay tuned.

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.

Quilty Pleasures Wednesday-Fabric Giveaway: Let's Celebrate!

I love this box. It's the one that holds most of my bright, crazy improvisational quilting fabrics.

Inside this box are treasures galore. I have so much fabric in here I forget what I have.  I bet there are plenty of you out there with the same (ahem) problem. When I start pawing through it, I make amazing discoveries. Making a quilt with these fabrics is an exciting journey because I don't know what fabric I will choose next.

Remember this quilt?
I was totally happy and thoroughly involved when making it. There's another one in the works after a couple obligations are met. They're addicting!

So let's get down to the giveaway: I am pleased to say that our new, three month old blog hit over 4000 visitors the other day! I don't know if that's good or not, but to me it's totally cool! (Sounding a little SoCal surfer chick, aren't I?)

It's time to share some of this awesome fabric with you, the people who have been visiting our blog.

I am putting together fabric packs that will include one Lady of Guadalupe panel, a fussy-cut Freda Kahlo, along with 20 fat quarters of assorted fabric you can use to make a small quilt of your own, or at least give you a start on a larger one! There will be two winners.


Here's how to enter: Leave a comment answering this question: Who is your favorite quilt designer?  I will randomly choose two winners from the comments. The contest will officially close Friday, July 1 at 7:00 pm, Mountain Time. Unfortunately we will only be able to send our fabric prizes to the United States. If you comment anonymously, I may have trouble contacting you if you win, so include your email address along with your comment if you anonymous folks want to enter.

Freda will be waiting for your comments!

Quilty Pleasures: Virgen de Guadalupe Quilts

I don't know if it's my Catholic upbringing or because for 30 years I taught students whose families originated in Mexico, but the Virgin of Guadalupe story has always been a favorite.  I'm not trying to be sacreligious, but in a way, Mary sightings are akin to UFO sightings. Simple peasant people are out in the boonies and see something revelatory. Others don't believe them and consider them crackpotloonies, like in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then, at least in the case of Church documented Mary sightings, a miracle occurs to prove that indeed, she was there.

Juan Diego, the peasant who reported seeing Mary while traveling from his village to Mexico City, was not believed and a doubtful priest sent him back to get some proof. His Mary vision told him to go gather some flowers as proof that she was real, so up on a hillside Juan Diego found bunches of flowers, in the dead of winter, and carried them in his cloak to the pinche priest who didn't believe him. When he opened his cloak, the flowers weren't there, but an image of the Blessed Virgin was imprinted on the cloak's fabric. It was one of those, "So, there!" moments.

There's lots more to the story, but suffice it to say that many believers and pilgrims travel to the church built on the spot where Juan Diego had his vision and The Virgen de Guadalupe's image can be found throughout Mexico.

Because I'm an Our Lady fan and made a quilt using some Our Lady of Guadalupe fabric,  I am always on the lookout for other quilty interpretations of this story. It's fun to see what people come up with.  Wide World of Quilting  is a new blog I found featuring a variety of quilts.  I especially liked the ones Melissa made using Ricky Tims' Convergence Quilt style and Our Lady fabrics. Here's a link to her quilt here .  Another quilt I liked was called "Juan Diego's Vision," a medallion quilt using applique among other techniques. Love it!

A new project is percolating after all that inspiration, but I promise, MBB, I won't start it until your quilt is at the quilter.

Today I shot photos on the covered porch where I've been  spending afternoons, reading and drinking having a glass of wine while dinner is cooking. (Yes, that sounds much better.)

The solids are Kona cottons. I'll add print fabric as I go, and no, I don't have any particular ones in mind right now. That's why making these quilts is so fun- I never know where I will end up.

Quilty Pleasures Wednesday-Our Lady of Guadalupe Quilt

 We got back from our road trip on Monday and the unpacking continues. Many of you who are my Facebook friends will recognize this quilt and say, "Geez! Bridget's getting lazy! I've seen this quilt a million times." So I apologize to you and promise to have some new stuff next time we talk quilts.

A couple years ago my sis-in-law, Pattie, and I attended an Empty Spools seminar taught by quiltmakers Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston.  A five day seminar held at the Asilomar Conference Grounds near Pacific Grove, California, it was an intensely creative combination of summer camp and sweatshop and a watershed moment for my journey as a quilt maker.

Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran in Freddy's studio

Gwen Marston introduced her liberated quiltmaking techniques twenty years ago. She is the design half of the Collaborative Quilting team. I love her Liberated Quiltmaking book.

Freddy Moran uses color fearlessly, considers red a neutral, and her book Freddy's House introduced her color sensibility to the quilting world.

Together they challenged my classmates and me to look at old quilts, learn from them, and make our own using no patterns and no set plans.

Here's my Lady of Guadalupe quilt, made using collaborative quilting techniques I learned from Gwen and Freddy.

Gwen taught me how to make liberated stars.

 

Freddy taught me how to make houses for my angels and skeleton buddies.

And they taught me to be bold with both design and color.

In September Pattie and I will be taking a trip to Gwen's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat where we will learn about using solids and making little quilts.