The DMC Crazy Quilt Commission: Part 4, Finished!

All done it is, and ready to be mailed to DMC USA in New Jersey....
What a lovely project it has been!

Where we last left off, I was going to add the outer vine and flowers to the wall-hanging...

I've repeated the Memory Thread couched vine element, but this time using three strands instead of just one in the first vine, two strands in a second one.  I pinned them into place and then couched them down using clear monofilament thread.
The flowers and velvet leaves pretty much arranged themselves, along with some vintage glass flower beads.

Here they are twining around Jean-Luc and Michael...

...and my beloved Notre Dame....(thanks again to Jerry Everard for this wonderful photo).....

...they surround my sister Mary....

....and me.

To finish the quilt I made and executive decision: No batting!
Wanting it to hang very, very straight, I gave the quilt the body it needed by interfacing the back of the embroidered and embellished top not once, but twice.

This is how the back looked before the first layer of overall interfacing.  You might notice that the center section was already interfaced once, for the crazy quilt stitching work.

Here is the backing after the first layer of overall interfacing was fused on; I gave it a second layer, too.
The results were very successful, in my opinion!  Because this quilt is small, about 30" X 30", and because the top is so incredibly stable, I also decided that the assembly of front to back could be accomplished solely by stitching the layers together around the perimeter, and then adding the binding.

The binding is actually the same vintage red velvet ribon used to frame some of the photographs.  Everyone knows, I love ribbon binding.

That outer border trim is so quintessentially French.  And it is from the 1920's!

Finally, the quilt back...

I attached the sleeve to the backing before sewing the back to the front, and this saved me a lot of time.  The binding covered the top edge of it.  That glittery trim along the bottom edge of the sleeve is from shopping in Montmartre.....

Always, every quilt must have a label.  This one has the graphic DMC used to promote the contest that led to my glorious adventure with my sister in France...

And now 2014 is soon upon us.  What awaits us in the new year?  Happy Stitching for all, I hope!

Broderie Perse Meets Crazy...Background Pieced

Well, it is mostly pieced!
But you can see what I am aiming for here...

Those white background fabrics will go all the way to the hexie frame, so it will look like it is on a whole cloth background.

I'll be hand embroidering the seams over the next many weeks...it's such a luxury to be able to spend so much time with one quilt again!

Broderie Perse Meets Crazy Quilt...Progress

The rainiest May in years has yielded me extra time to work on this project.  And I am falling in love with it....I think I have always wanted to make this quilt!

A rainy day, the ballgame on my fancy new flatscreen TV, Facebook on my computer, crazy piecing on my table...I'm a happy girl.  (I see so many great quilts on Facebook.  I love it.)

As I've looked at this quilt on the wall I realized that the Broderie Perse floral arrangement needed a little tweaking.

Can you spot where I've pinned on a few more elements?  They are mostly to fill out the overall shape of the bouquet, make it a bit more balanced.

Once those hexies were appliqued on, it was time to start piecing the background area.  I don't want to distract or compete with the center focal point of the quilt, so decided to use basically all white fabrics.
Or maybe I've been influenced by all the Modern quilts I've been seeing lately: lots of white!

One of the biggest joys of crazy quilting, to me, is the way we can juxtapose so many different fabrics.  This little section has hankies, vintage and reproduction shirting, metallic silk brocade, a scrap from a '40's farmer's dress, cross stitch fragments, quilters' cotton, '70's lace edging, burlap; I get such a kick out of it.  There are pattern and a few glints of color, but in the end, this will read as white.

That piecing will extend right to the hexie border, so the background will (hopefully) be seen as whole cloth.  Going to start in on the long sides today...

Easiest CQ Finish Ever...Herringbone Hearts

I finally got to finish this quilt!
I was most eager to see how that 38mm silk ribbon done in the herringbone around the perimeter of the quilt was going to look, acting as a visual "binding".  I mean, it is there where the binding should be, isn't really binding at all, but suggests it.

Because this quilt:
a) is not for competition
b) has no weighty embellishments on it
c) used a woven "batting"
d) is for the wall, so is therefore not functional
I chose to use a very simple finishing technique on it that went super fast.

Here are the steps I took to do it.....

This is the back of the quilt top.  You will notice the blocks have been interfaced before I embroidered them.  The silk edge fabric I used for those big honking ribbon stitches was interfaced too.

My "batting", which is actually cotton drapery lining, much like flannel only spongier with a looser weave, is draped over the quilt top.
I love this stuff for crazy quilts and use it all the time.  It is flat not puffy, and the weave gives a nice internal structural support to the quilt.  It is cheap and easy to work with too.  I get it at Fabric Depot in Portland.

For the backing I used some positively lovely shirting fabric that I got for $8/yard at a men's ties outlet store.  This is very, very smooth and finely woven cotton.  I pinned it all together with just a few safety pins.

You can see where I am going with this!  After the drapery lining was cut to size (to reach just to the edge of the brown ribbon herringbone stitching), I ironed the shirting fabric over the edge of the batting.
I folded the extra silk fabric beyond the stitching to the inside of the top.

Then I whipstitched the folded edges together.

On the back, I just sewed four buttons to keep the layers together, located at the four corners of the center block.  Here you can see that my button stitching is "in the ditch", through to the front at the intersection of the corners, and hence won't show.

Poking the needle back through to the back here.
Just four buttons, I told you this was fast!
I put a sleeve on it too...

Now the front edge looks like this:

It definitely has an unusual look to it!

I like it.  ;-)
And I am glad to cross this project off my "to do" list.

I'll be teaching this block at Road to California next January.  Registration begins July 8th!

Cowgirl CQ....Top Finished

This quilt grew to be 65" X 73", much to my surprise.
I had enjoyed making that central section, I liked the piecing process and the colors, wanted to do more...so I kept adding on to it.
And on!
But that is because I realized that I wanted this to be a functional, cozy quilt.  I want to use it.

Next time I will be more deliberate about the proportions of everything...this time the denim strips were limited in width (too narrow, IMO) by the fact that my husband would let me cut up only two pairs of his old jeans.  But I wanted only HIS jeans in there, so that's why I didn't go to the thrift store to get more.
There is a red and black faded flannel in the piecing from his favorite old shirt from our dairy days, too.

Not this one, but something similar, from those good old days. (Note that I am the one covered with manure.  It was always that way. We are sitting here on the steps of the sauna he built, the year we got married, 1981. Crazy kids!)

Anyways, this quilt is about ranch days, our old one and also my cousin Tracy's.  The aesthetic is hers, and some of the fabrics too (and one of her shirts.)  As I was making this, I thought a lot about her.

Setting up my temporary styrofoam "sewing table" was such a help.  I could lay these large pieces out flat, and pin into it as I measured, then going back and securing the pins.  Here is a YouTube about how I made it.

How did I ever live without those flower pins?

When it came time to add the rayon plaid woven ribbon, I knew it wasn't "hefty" enough in weight.

I just happened to have on hand a roll of C & T's "Make it Simpler" fusible interfacing on a 1 1/2" roll.  You can find it here. I gave the ribbon a double layer.

Once everything was assembled, the quilt top did not exactly lie flat.  Frankly, my whole approach had been a bit too slapdash for the intense kind of quality control that goes into a competition quilt. I was just having fun and experimenting!

But I did want it as flat as possible, so I did some judicious nipping and tucking.

One of my favorite elements in this quilt is how the old blocks got pieced in, sometimes in entirety, sometimes in part.  Their vibe and look are really important to me these days.  There is a lot of genuinely old fabric in there, too.  Not repro--old.

I had hoped the straight strips would provide structure and repetition to the otherwise complete chaos of the piecing.  But next time they need to be wider.
Still, this will be a great couch quilt!

I plan on simply machine quilting in the ditch between all the horizontal and vertical bars, with no handwork at all going on.
And--oh dear--I've been rather active on Ebay lately buying more old blocks....

Easy Finishing.... on the Renaissance 9 Patch

Using the properties of trims--especially their finished edges--helps to make finishing a small quilt a breeze.  I guess you could call this the Faux Binding approach.

May has been very helpful of late...

Silly cat.

Seriously, once the nine blocks were sewn together, it was a short morning's work to finish up this quilt.  Here is how it went...

This quilt did not need batting so I decided to forgo it.  I cut out a cotton backing that was 3/4" bigger all the way around than the quilt.  Then I ironed on a line of Lite Steam a Seam 2 along the perimeter of the quilt top.  It was a simple matter to iron the edge of the backing to the front.

Along the way I retrimmed the edge of the backing before the final folding where necessary...to make sure it was 3/4".

Once those edges were ironed over, I did a quick quilt in the ditch between the blocks with clear thread.

But what about those raw edges?
Here is where the trim comes in.  I just sewed it on, again with the clear thread in a zig zag, lining up the edge of the quilt and the edge of the trim on either side of my presser foot.  No pinning.  I don't like pinning.

Then another trim went on alongside the first one, which covered any bits of the backing that still showed, and gave me additional detail in the "binding".

As I got to the corners, I folded them into miters and just kept on sewing!

I love how that embossed, cut-out velvet trim plus the narrow fine lined ribbon gives such interest to the outside edge, for hardly any work.  This crazy quilt has a clean fresh look that I like...and I have to say, is in keeping with the "modern" look in quilting these days.
After all, this is for display in Renaissance Ribbon's trade show booth, so it has to be au curant.  ;-)  It measures 24" X 24".

Rainy Spring....Top Assembled!

I've put a lot of work into this quilt over the past week, culminating in sewing the sections together this morning.
Here is what's been happening.....

I wanted some flower motifs to go inside some of the patches in the outer blocks.  These white flowers are from M & S Schmalberg in New York.  Did you know you can order flower "components" from them now, not just already-made flowers?  Have a look!

May the cat helped me out the morning I painted.

She was good company during a pleasant hour of painting with Dye-Na-Flow.

I realized that in the middle of a wet spring there just aren't those nice warm reds and oranges in the flowers outside yet.  So those colors didn't belong on the quilt either.

Oops!  A false start.  I had thought that some viney embroidery would look nice between the blocks, but itjust looked chaotic.  There is plenty going on in this quilt without adding another element to it, so instead I made very simple floral motifs in some of the patches.  These tie in with the white flowers in the center section too.

Simple, but fun...and they add some overall unity to the quilt as well.

When those were all completed (and some more raingdrops added), I put the finishing touch on the center.

There was just too much blank space in the center....but it turns out it was just waiting for these luminous blue flowers.

I do still want to add some more raindrops, but the quilt had to be assembled for me to do that, as the beading will go between sections.  So, time to sew the quilt together!

I came up with a neat strategy for making sure my blocks met up precisely at each corner.
Rather than sewing the whole long seam and hoping for the best, I pinned each "intersection", sewed about 12 machine stitches (set at 3.0) over it, then opened up the quilt to see how I did.

Looks good!

Oops.  Looks not so good.  It was an easy matter to pull out that short bit of stitching, repin, and try again.

Much better.  Can you see the difference?

This shows two big chunks ready to have their intersections sewn.  When all of them lined up just right, I sewed the whole seam, just sewing over the areas already stitched in the intersections.

I was feeling quite smug and pleased with myself....

...until I realized that the raindrops were going in opposite directions.  Bummer!  So I had to take it all apart and start over.
I will say here that having the blocks interfaced, trimmed, and their edges zigzagged really simplified this task.  There was no shredding or distorting of the blocks as I manhandled them with seam ripper, iron, more pinning and sewing.
Good grief!

Humbled, I tried again, and here we are.  Click on it!
I'm going to live with it up on the designwall for a few days to see what else comes to mind...I know I need some more raindrops but don't want to add too much more.  It is feeling pretty complete.
I probably won't do the finishing until later in the fall, as I will be taking this with me to a couple of teaching engagements, and it will pack much easier as just a top than as a finished quilt.

It has been so much fun and did truly get me through my rainy spring!

Now......some brief thoughts about judging CQ's in competition....

I went into detail above about lining up my intersections for a reason: when you enter a quilt in a show, the craftsmanship has to be as perfect as you can possibly make it.  It doesn't matter how gorgeous your stitching is, if your blocks don't line up you will not win.  Or if your binding isn't "filled" and those miters in the corner at a perfect 45 degrees, you are out. When the quilt is folded into quarters, all four corners must meet perfectly.  Competition is fierce, and judges sometimes have no other way to choose between two fabulous quilts than by scoring these technical details. You absolutely cannot ignore them.

As an aside, speaking of binding, I hate it.  I use the French Facing technique to get around it, and I think binding often doesn't look right on a CQ anyways.  Go here to read it an article I wrote about it.


Judges are actually quite helpful in their comments, if you can learn to take them as the constructive criticism they are meant to be.  I know, it stings.  Believe me, I know!  But I will never forget a simple "Design lacks focus" comment on a small quilt that truly helped me change my orientation to my work.  I have put much more structure into my quilts since then, to good effect I think.

We care about how much heart, soul, and passion we put into our quilts.....and that can shine through, of course.  But judges are looking for what kind of a visual impact the quilt has, how well the embellishments serve the overall design, if it hangs straight, use of color and so forth.  They don't have the emotional attachment to our quilts that we do.

Personally, I think the quilt competitions have raised the bar astronomically in the quilt world and they are a true force for good.  Sometimes judges make wacky decisions but overall, I think they push quiltmakers to constantly improve and innovate.  This applies to us crazy quilters too! 

Well, the sun's out....

Time to get out into the flowers....
Isn't the summer grand?