"Inspired By..." A Modern Take on an Amish Crazy Quilt

The Quilt Alliance has a great theme for this year's annual fundraising contest: "Inspired By...". (The contest guidelines are here.) You all know that I have lately been deeply inspired by vintage crazy quilts....my current project is a case in point.

But in the midst of that very long term project, I had occasion to try the Inspired By approach for a wedding throw quilt for my nephew Andy and his lovely bride Caylie.  You remember them, don't you?  ;-)  And the wallhanging I made for him to give to her (at his request) while he was wooing her, "Love by the Moon"?

They love bright colors, live by the beach down near Oceanside, and needed something cozy because Caylie gets cold!  So silks quilted onto silk fleece seemed perfect.

The quilt that so inspired me is from the Susie Tompkins Buell Quilt Collection.

I love the large blocks and solid shapes with the intricate geometric grid overall.  I had to try out my own quilt with these basic parameters.

Here is the beginning.  As always, my "blanks"--foundation muslins--are up on the design wall.  I like to see how the blocks are going together as I make them.  (Here I am using Method 4, Intuitive Applique, from my Craftsy Class.  Sign up for it here if you are interested, with a $20 discount!)

It came together very fast, and here it is under the needle of my beloved Sweet 16 from Handiquilter.
I didn't mark the quilting lines, but I did first quilt in the ditch in the seams between the blocks, using clear thread.  That helped stabilize everything (along with my basting pins) for the quilting to come.

Here's a better look at that quilting on the silk.  So yummy!

I loved diving deeply into my prodigious silk stash to make this quilt.  I didn't have to buy a thing.  ;-)

You know me and binding: we are not pals. I will do anything to avoid making a traditional binding.
So I love to use trim or lace; it is so quick, easy, and looks and functions great.

I had trimmed the edge of the quilt and am just covering the raw edge with the lace.  There won't be any fraying, and the quilt police were nowhere in sight....

To sew it on, I used a 9mm wide zigzag stitch in clear thread, with a strong yet fine matching thread in the bobbin.  I only needed to make one pass.  My kind of binding, for sure!

You can see it from the back, along with how cool that gridded quilting looks on the silk fleece.  And the label, of course.  Always label your work, please!

Let's look again at how my quilt was definitely was inspired by the Amish quilt.  Here it is again, so you can view them right next to each other:

(And just a reminder, when you are thinking about your Quilt Alliance quilt for "Inspired by", you must choose a quilt from the Quilt Index and site it in your entry.  We are hoping to encourage more people to explore the Indesx this way!)

Of course, I had to try my Inspired-by version out before sending it off to Andy and Caylie....

It works great!!!

The Vintage CQ: Borders Constructed, 5 Years Later....

This quilt was begun in the summer of 2009.  I have made 45 blog posts about it!  If anyone is really curious and wants to see the individual flower blocks being made, and then the outer blocks, you can poke around
here, where the posts are all in one link.

This is the vintage crazy quilt that started it all.

How I wish I knew who made it or who owns it!  All I know is that when I first saw it, I instantly realized that I had to attempt a quilt based on it. Who knows why?  Love is not reasonable!

It was the border that made me put this quilt into hibernation from 2010 until 2014.

Not being a piecer, you can see why.  My friend Maureen Greeson even drafted the border pattern for me, but still I waited.

I think collaborating on our new book with my co-author, Valerie Bothell, whose work is so precise and logical, (and gorgeous) must have helped me tune up for this challenge.  Thanks, Val!

There are lots of technical issues, as you can imagine.  Working with wiggly, easily fraying fabric in small pieces was the main one; being accurate to the diagram, of course, was the other.  I'll share how I approached my task.

Because I am so used to working with a foundation, I decided to combine some "pre-piecing" of the units with machine applique.  Others would do this very differently, I am sure, but this is the only way that I could get a handle on this.  After tracing Maureen's diagram onto the muslin, and then interfacing it, this is the first "quadrant" being laid out.  I had traced freezer paper templates off the pattern for cutting out my shapes, and this worked very well.
I had sewn the units together...along their vertical lines.  That made the sewing easy.  The rest of the seams were ironed under, with the whole thing pinned to the foundation for sewing with clear thread.

Lots of pins....

For those chevron shapes along the outer edge, I sewed the fabrics together first, then ironed on the template and cut the shape out as one piece.  Then I joined the two halves of the chevron together by machine, matching where the seams came together in the center. This was doable!  The yellow triangles are appliqued on last.

One of the things I loved most about making these borders was that I got to revisit my fancy fabric stash, digging into the bins for just the right color and texture.

No scrap was too small, either!  I was right to save them all!

I used interfacing ALOT as I went along, sometimes before cutting the shapes out, sometimes after.

I will not even attempt to cut silk charmeuse without interfacing it first.

But more stable fabrics, like the silk tie fabric on the left, are ok to sew but they will fray like mad.  So I interfaced that chevron wedge after sewing but before cutting.

The other fabric that demanded strict and non-negotiable handling was that notorious diva, velvet.

Interfacing and then pinning it about every 1/2" did the trick.

Take that, you velvet, you!

By the time I finished the second quadrant, things were going very smoothly.

Here I've started playing around with using vintage velvet ribbon to cover the raw edges between the rows of units.

By the fourth quadrant, I really didn't want this phase of my Vintage CQ to end...

You can see I've got ironing, cutting and sewing all within reach.  What you can't see are the piles of fabric all over the rest of my sewing room!

There were many sweet memories as I used fabrics from so many friends and from family, too. This is a distinct advantage of working slowly.  It gives plenty of time for reflection....

I call this the "Seidman Corner".  My Uncle Bill Seidman was in government under Ford and Bush 1...his FDIC and Treasury Department ties are in there, an American flag eagle, a medal from his time as an economic adviser to the President in the White House.  I am very proud of his public service.
The ribbon is from my Aunt Sally's sewing box, a beautifully woven commemoration of the Bi-Centennial in 1976.

So this is where I am now:

The quadrants and ribbons are all pinned into place on the design wall, just so I can see that everything will eventually fit together alright. (Again, thanks Maureen!!!!)
When it comes time to sew it all together, I will have those rulers handy so I can get everything exactly the same size, not just eyeball it like here.  (Again, thanks Val!)

But first I need to embrodier those quadrants....

I'll be using the same fly stitch that is featured in all the center flower blocks, in DMC's Satin Floss, which is rayon and therefore nice and glimmery.

With that, and all the tremendous amount of finish work ahead of me, this quilt has a long ways to go.  But it will be done this year, for sure!

I'm a Bluebird!

Do you all remember that great song, by Paul McCartney?

It inspired my little project, along with this lovely velvet bird from Maureen's Vintage Acquisitions.

Maureen commissioned the birds to sell from my friends at M & S Schmalberg Custom Fabric Flowers.

For my segment on Quilt Out Loud last week, I demo-ed how to make a curved applique crazy quilt block.  After I got home, I decided I would finish the embellishment so viewers could see "the rest of the story".

Here is is!

That's one of my floral collage photos in the center.  The show will be airing in early spring, hence the theme.
I do hope you will click on the link to the song, above.  It is so pretty...I played it many times as I was stitching.

But now it is back to Christmas carols....   ;-) 

CQ Strips....continued

We came back last night from a lovely Thanksgiving down in Warner Springs, California.  Today I just had to sew the CQ Strips project together. This measures 22" X 24" and really will make a great pillow.

I could spend months doing variations on this theme and technique!  It is like my Bars and Stripes from last fall (which I sleep under and love every single day.)

I did want to mention that the Mark Quilts are all finished and were given over to Lee, her daughters Ashley and Madison, and her father Don over Thanksgiving.  (Lee will bring Manny's to him...Manny is Mark's dad.)  It was a private affair so I didn't take any pictures...but I will say they were very, very happy with their quilts, and I was so glad to be able to make them.

I have one more trip before the holidays get underway: Thursday I'm off to Newark to shoot an episode of Quilt Out Loud with Jodie Davis and Mark Lipinski of QNN-TV.  It is going to be very wild and fun, full of surprises I have no doubt.  I hope they'll let me blog about my experience!  Wish me luck that I am not too dorky.....    ;-)

Nine Patch with Renaissance Ribbons

I've bought their ribbon and trim for years, so you can imagine how much I have enjoyed working with a whole array of treasures from Renaissance Ribbons this past week. Using my pattern, "Pretty Crazy", I've been making a 9 block quilt showcasing their ribbon and trim for them to use in their booth at trade shows.

Here's the pattern, to refresh your memory if you've seen it before:

This pattern totally lends itself to showcasing anyone's trim, ribbon, and lace collections too, but I didn't use lace this time around.

The head of the company, a lovely woman named Edith, and I decided on a pink/orange palette for the ribbon; I chose purple and blue fabrics to set them off.

After tracing my block's design onto muslin foundation, I cut out all the patch shapes and laid them out.

Because I wanted to give the illusion of curved piecing, I ironed the trims into gentle arcs before laying them in place.  A spray bottle helped, as the jacqard woven trims are kind of dense.

It was a blast picking out the trims and pinning them into place, tucking under the ends so that there were no raw edges anywhere. 
Then it was a quick matter to sew these down with a clear thread in a zig zag stitch (such a forgiving way to sew, isn't it?)

Truly, each block might take 10 to 15 minutes to sew down, after you've laid it out.

Then I just trimmed them up, zig zagged the edges....

and voila!  The blocks are ready to assemble.
I think I will add ribbon sashing and some simple hand embroidery here and there.  But seriously, this sewed up fast.
I'll bring this to Fabric Depot this coming Saturday, and will be teaching it at Northwest Quilters Expo in Portland on September 22.  My class will be hosted by Greenbaum's Quilted Forest of Salem, Oregon.

My next project is very personal and meaningful...honoring a recently deceased family member, a Superman named Mark Vasquez....you can read about this heroic and inspiring man here.  I'll be making five memorial quilts for Mark's wife, daughters, father, and father-in-law.  What an honor and privilege this will be.





 

Go Crazy: A New Quilt for a New Year

Happy 2011!!!

I love making crazy quilts as you all know...but right now I am pretty intrigued by combining crazy quilting and "sane" quilting to make functional bed quilts. I am wanting to revisit my quilting roots...but a decade plus of CQ means I'll never be totally without embellishment and a wide array of fabric types.

This is a detail of a vintage quilt I saw in Houston that is fanning my current flame and has inspired my new project.

It just did me in. I had to make it. (I think it appealed to me for the same reason that the Vintage CQ did...)
So I went fabric shopping....

I had plaids on the brain.
All the blue thread and ribbon in the foreground will set off those warm colors nicely, is the hope.

I also knew this would be a great way to use my new Go! cutter from AccuQuilt.
I am loving this new tool!!! Have a look at the Go! in action....

The die is on the bottom, fabric to be cut in the middle, and the cutting mat is on the top. To operate you just crank the die through the rollers, it compresses the foam so that the die that is within the foam presses the fabric against the mat, and voila...

A perfect 6 1/2" square.
This pic was just for demo purposes. I've cut up to 6 layers at once.

Like this.
I have a die that cuts 3" strips that was perfect for the black diagonal shape on the block.

I cut a bunch of these out of different "black" fabrics.
Then I use a template to cut out the shapes from the strips.
Here is how that goes....

I made this template out of freezer paper ironed to cardboard stock. I draw around it with a white chalk pencil and then cut the shape out. I have to do them one at a time for accuracy, but I find I actually enjoy the work.

Then I use a second template, the actual size of the finished shape, this time out of just freezer paper. I use it as a guide for ironing under my edges. In this picture I am clipping those curves before ironing.

Ironing in progress...

Ironing complete and the freezer paper being pulled off...

And here is how it looks from the back.

When my freezer paper template gets too fuzzy to stick anymore, I just make a new one.

The black shape gets pinned onto the background square....

...and sewn on with a narrow zig zag in a clear monofilament thread.

In keeping with the original quilt, I am just using the herringbone stitch...
and instead of those fluffy white ties (which form a very important part of the design, I think), I'll be using buttons like this...

But this will be the very last step. I have a long way to go before then!

But it will be fun....
What a great way to start the new year. Hope yours is off to a happy beginning too! ;-)