quilting – Page 14 – Daily Fiber

SAHRR Challenge 5: Earth

Posted on February 17, 2022 by Laura Kate

We are nearing the end of weekly challenges for Stay At Home Round Robin quilt 2022. This week Quilting Gail of gave us options: We could add some appliques to our borders or make our border of rail fence blocks.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/102293878/posts/3830168731

I am also running out of options on my Four Elements quilt utilizing vintage weaving samples. This week I had planned to work on the element Earth. My choice of green background fabrics included these two:

I went for the wide one with concentric circles and intersecting arcs. It will represent a forest very well, once I make some appliqued tree trunks. And a bottom border of rail fence border in warm colors will ground the forest into the earth.

Here are the supporting fabrics for this block and the tool I will use to make long, skinny tree trunks.

This part went quickly. I ran some strips through the bias tape maker and ironed them flat. I think three will be enough to suggest a forest.

Quickly sewing together some strip pieces and cutting out five rail fence blocks………

…………I sewed them into a strip and laid it in place.

This is beginning to take shape. I love the print with the brown leaves. It is scaled well for my design. They look almost like real leaves scattered across the forest floor.

After attaching all of the parts completed so far, I realized that I had not considered the right border at all.

Clearly something was needed here. So, I went back to making more rail fence blocks. Adding another 3-inch border will change the proportions of my block, making it a wide rectangle instead of a square. But I felt it was still my best design choice, given the limited number of options I had before me.

I’m delighted with the progress so far. There is still space to add some surface treatments to this block in the form of sashiko stitching, or even a few more appliques should I desire.

To see more quilts made in the Stay at Home Round Robin method, check out the link party here:

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/4daeef6d0bee4f99a4550c4b274ba90b

quilting, recycling

SAHRR Quilt Challenge 4: Water

Posted on February 11, 2022 by Laura Kate

Pieceful Wendy chose the pattern for round four, and it’s one I had never heard of before now: Signature blocks. This type of block is often used to provide spaces for people to write stuff on your quilt. They are very popular for special occasion quilts like weddings, baby showers, graduations and so on.

SAHRR Round Four

Wendy created her Signature blocks by cutting into a square on the diagonal.

That design will not work with in Water section of my quilt, where I plan to add the signature squares. Water, especially lakes, are filled with waves. So I came up with a wavy style block by free-form slicing into a square piece of fabric, where I inserted a pale peach curve.

**Prototype signature block with a curve.**

Here is the centerpiece of my water block where I will attach the signature squares. It is made of Margaret Howard’s weaving swatches. I hand-stitched a small blue one on top of a pastel peach brocade.

This says “lake” to me.

Next I made a bunch of curved signature squares. Here’s the first group.

I started at the top of my block with a strip of three of these little darlings.

I’m thinking that the curve will provide a good place for a line of sashiko stitches to echoes its shape.

Next I made two strips to add on either side of the center block. Before I attached them, I added a plain blue strip at the bottom to anchor the design.

I’m happy with the resulting block. It’s about 18 inches square right now. After I square up the edges it will probably become a little smaller.

To see the other Stay At Home Round Robin participants’ quilts, follow the link.

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/26f3167a028d45689c82a40df41c3a40

quilting

SAHRR Round 2: Fire

Posted on January 25, 2022 by Laura Kate

Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA on Pexels.com

No, I’m not burning my quilt. Instead, I have applied this round’s prompt of Diamonds to my Fire block. My logic for this choice is that tongues of flames, such as you see in the image above, can be stylized as acute triangles, with the narrowest point at the top. If one has a more romantic leaning, one might say that diamonds are created by the forces of pressure and HEAT in the bowels of the earth.

The piece of fabric I chose to represent Fire is a beautiful brocade woven on white with a clear orangey-pink thread. The shape can be described as a series of diamonds inside overlapping circles.

I chose these fabrics for the diamond-inspired border:

**The yellow and orange print is one of my hand-painted fabrics. I created the circles by stamping red paint using the back end of a Nerf bullet.**

Fortunately, I learned how to make triangle shapes out of strip sets from a Craftsy class presented by Joanna Figueroa.

https://www.craftsy.com/class/smarter-strip-quilting/

After sewing a light and a dark strip together, I cut the sets on a 45 degree angle to get diamonds. Then I sewed them into strips and attached the strips to the right and left sides of my brocade fabric.

For the bottom border, I used a strip of the soft coral ombre fabric.

Here is my block so far.

It’s not perfectly square, and I have yet to decide on what fabric to use at the top of the block. I’ll have to let the options stew about in my brain for a while. Once completed, I intend the block to measure about 17″ square.

If you’re interested in seeing more Round Robin projects made by some awesome quilters, check out Emily’s blog and the Linky party invitation embedded in her post.

http://thedarlingdogwood.blogspot.com/

quilting

SAHRR Quilt Round 1 Challenge

Posted on January 20, 2022January 19, 2022 by Laura Kate

I was so glad that Anja chose the prompt of Curves for the first round of this year’s Round Robin quilt along. In working with the vintage weavings chosen for my center block, I had observed that the maker had used lots of curved lines in her color patterns. Some were vine-like, some looked like hairpins and some are just little wriggles. I was keen to echo these curves in the quilt as I built it.

To start my round, I chose four fabrics with colors and patterns that reinforce the theme of the four elements. I am using the linen-colored background fabric to make the other side of the curve. Next I made a little template for the corner blocks. These will have a quarter circle in the inside corners using the background fabric. Here are my pieces, cut and ready to be sewn.

First I joined strips of two different colors for each side of the block. Then I cut strips in the background fabric to match the length of the block sides

After sewing together the corner blocks, it was time to make my curves. With the front of fabric facing me, I overlapped the two strips and just sliced a curve through the center of the strips with my rotary cutter.

Here is the first side sewn together and ready to attach to the center block

And here it is, sewn and pressed.

Side two and one corner block are added.

Working carefully, matching up edges as well as I could, I finished this round in about three hours. Here is my block, pressed and squared up.

**I like the way the dark colors draw the eye to the three woven pieces,**
**which are outlined in the background color.**

It now measures 18- and 1/2-inches square and is ready for the next round. I had no trouble with the woven samples shifting or bunching. I think my tactic of backing the pieces with muslin did the trick.

If you would like to see how other participants are making their curves, check out the linky-party, below.

https://anjaquilts.blogspot.com/2022/01/stay-at-home-round-robin-round-1-curves.html

To learn more about the Stay At Home Round Robin event, visit Quilting Gail’s blog.

https://quiltinggail.com/2022/01/10/sahrr-2022-getting-started-center-block/

quilting

Giving it Form

Posted on January 18, 2022January 18, 2022 by Laura Kate

The process of making up a quilt from scratch has many challenges. One I face today is building my Stay At Home Round Robin quilt around another maker’s pieces. None of the swatches are the same size or shape. How can I fit them together?

Here’s how I went about finding an answer.

The first step I took was to get them as flat as possible. Each swatch was hemmed by hand on the warp edges to keep it from fraying. As I began carefully picking out the stitches, I marveled at the how small each was. That got me to thinking about the maker, Margaret Howard. And I began to imagine her at her cottage on the lake, where she lived three months of the year. (Since this cottage is still in the family, and I had been there several times, my imagination has lots to work with.)

I imagine that, despite the passage of years, the grounds surrounding the cottage are very little changed. There are towering trees, both deciduous and coniferous, providing lots of shade. The path through the trees to the cottage are lined with wood ferns, all the way up to the door itself.

Margaret is sitting in the main area of the cottage, sewing this hem. She has a view of the lake through a large picture window. While the trees now are quite tall and obscure this view, back then she likely could see the lake easily.

There were other families, her relatives, staying in cabins nearby. Each evening as the sun sank low, they gathered on the shore to toast the passing of the day. I feel certain that Margaret would join them. That bit of the beach is on the east side of the lake. The sun sets directly across the lake from this beach.

Having been there during one of these sunsets, it’s hard to describe exactly how beautiful it is. When the waves on the lake are gentle, one feels that the lake is bringing the colors of the sunset directly to one’s feet, like a precious gift.

**A contemporary view of Shell Lake, with a new metal dock.**

Back then, the silence must have been profound.

Of course, on special occasions, or when the air is too cold, a campfire is a must.

At this point in my musings, I brought these ideas together, and came up with a plan for the quilt. If you have been following this project in my earlier post, you saw that I sewed together three swatches to form the center block.

Another Round Robin Quilt Challenge

What if I divided the rest of the quilt into four sections, making a large block to anchor each section. And each section would show one of the elements enjoyed by the maker at her cottage on the lake – woods, fire, water, sky. Thinking more deeply about these elements, I realized that they corresponded to the basic elements described by ancient civilizations of the world: Earth, Fire, Water, Air.

To tie everything together, I did some research on the colors that the ancients associated with these elements:

Earth: Green and brown. Fire: Red and orange.

Water: Blue and pastels. Air: White and yellow.

And here is my (somewhat crude) plan for the quilt, sketched in watercolor.

This is my first go at the layout. I’m not sure about the dark sashing. But there will be plenty of time to audition some other fabrics as I work along.