I wanted to see how it would look if I used the layout from two days ago, but instead of just two fabrics I used charms. I don’t have photos of my charms, so I just used the color fill tool in Paint to get an idea of how it would look. I would use my lighter charms in the center and the darkest ones on the outside.
I’m still on a blue & chartreuse streak.
This one is composed of two of the blocks from yesterday’s “quilt,” alternated with each other (no sashing this time). Then I added a sawtooth border using the same fabrics.
More blues. This is just a sampler of blocks, each made out of 16 pieces. The individual pieces are all either squares or half-square triangles.
I’ve actually got 25 of these blocks designed (well, some are designed - many are classics, like Anna’s Choice and the Old Maid’s Puzzle) but I’m only using 16 of them here. I eventually want to make a Dear-Jane-like quilt out of these blocks (complete with border triangles). I was thinking that blues on chartreuse would look good, but actually the patterns don’t always show up as well as I was hoping. I’ll have to try this again with some different fabrics.
I like this layout, but it’s kind of lame in these fabrics. I will have to try this one again with different ones. However, today is a nightmare & I have no time.
Another one I’m really happy with. It has a 3-D thing going on, which I wasn’t expecting. I also like that you can get a cool interlocking-rings look using three different diamond-in-a-square/rectangle blocks.
Click to enlarge:
Another quick layout with some of those Civil War prints, plus an indigo background:
Click to enlarge:
I’m calling this Civil War Triangles. I really like it, and I would totally make this for real, except that I have *no* idea how to piece this.
My “A Morris Garden” fat quarters arrived last Friday. I finally got around to photographing them, and couldn’t wait to design a layout with them. This layout was inspired by a photo of quilt I saw in someone’s Flikr stream. My office’s firewall doesn’t allow us to access Flikr photos, so I can’t get the exact detail on exactly where I saw it. I remember only that it belonged to either Moonstitches or Movinghands, and that the quilt was part of the Tokyo International Quilt Festival (2006, 2007 or 2008 - again I can’t remember).
If you like quilting and you haven’t seen those two photo streams, do yourself a favor and take a look. Lots of inspiration there!
Click to enlarge:
I am insanely happy with this one, more than I have any right to be. I am definitely going to have to make this one for real. Plus, I’ve gotten out of my Kaffe Fassett rut.
This one is big, so I’m showing a thumbnail instead of the full size. Click the image to enlarge.
Today I worked on the cabinet layout for the kitchen for our new house in preparation for next week’s visit with a cabinet supplier. We’ve designed this house from scratch so, it’s amazing to have preliminary plans in hand. Now we’re working on every detail so our prospective builder can give us a price. Yikes!
While I’ve designed the house in 3D software complete with an substantial amount of detail and the ability to walk through the house, quilts are my design medium: I work out my thinking in fabric. To me it’s all about how this house will feel and the best way for me to visualize and express this is to make things. Therefore, I sketched up a rough for my House Inspiration Quilt a few days ago.
The idea for the backgroud is to arrange horizontal strips of fabric depicting the forest in which our house will live, starting with the browns and beiges of the leaf litter floor, up through the canopy and the mountain behind to the sky. I will applique branches and birds over the pieced background. Our house will sit on a high ridge between two mountains, so the strips will give that sense of loft. (At least that’s the plan!)
There was no discussion in my head as to what fabrics to use. BATIKS of course! Here’s the pile I pulled out of my batik stash to use in the quilt.
Today’s task was to make a pieced strip. I glued three pieces of newsprint together along their 8 1/2″ edges. I then cut strips of fabric about 9-11″-wide and started paper piecing them. Here’s how the first strip came out all trimmed up.
My 20-minutes were up (I fudged a little since it took time to take pictures and I chronicled the process in more detail for a later how-to on my blog) but I kept going and made another strip with darker browns and golds and some green, to be the bottom row of the quilt. I am extremely pleased with how it’s coming along!
But I realized my stash is lean on blue batiks so I placed an order with Hancock’s of Paducah to replenish my stock.
I love to make things!
