Earlier in the week, Quilting Gail had let me know that my name was randomly selected to receive a door prize for participating in this year’s Stay At Home Round Robin quilt challenge. I was thrilled to learn that the prize was Aurifil thread! Of all the gifts that were sponsored this year, the thread was the one I had my eyes on. I’ve been wanting to try this superior brand of thread for several months now, ever since a certain big box store discontinued offering its line of quilting thread – I’m pointing at you, Hobby Lobby!
The Necessities House Collection includes four neutral shades ranging from white to black. For piecing one’s quilt, this covers all the colors that one would need to get the job done. I can’t wait to try it out in my Bernina machine.
So here is my shout out to Gail and her cohorts for organizing the challenge.
And here’s my shout out to Aurifil for its generosity in sponsoring SAHRR 2024.
To see the quilt I made for the SAHRR 2024 challenge, click here.
This is the week that Quilting Gail has designated for challenge participants to post pictures of their finished quilts. The Stay At Home Round Robin challenge is in its fourth year. It’s been a fun ride for me, and pure pleasure to see the work of other quilters as they add a border week by week.
It started for me when I chose a center block from a group of experiments that I did almost five years ago. Back then I was teaching fiber arts to a group of home-schooled children. One week I had the students experiment with fabric paint on pieces of a cut-up sheet. The panel I used in my SAHRR came from the example I made, to show the students some of the possibilities of fabric paint.
Four colors of paint were applied in bands horizontally across the fabric and allowed to bleed together. When the panel dried, it looked like a mountain scene to me. I enhanced the image with opaque white paint, paint pens and stencils of pine trees.
The painted panel set the color palette for my SAHRR.
That choice led me on a path which resulted in a quilt about migration. For some time, I had been toying with designing and sewing paper pieced butterfly blocks. Could I make a quilt about the monarch annual migration to Mexico? The time I spent researching this migration led me to think about the wider issues of habitat loss and climate change. Now I had a broader story to tell with my quilt.
The weekly challenges offered by SAHRR quilters helped me to build some structure around my ideas. For that I am grateful.
Here are some close-ups of a few details I added with applique and micron pens.
And here is my finished quilt:
Just a word about the materials used: I was determined to buy nothing for this project, making it entirely with stuff that I already owned. I mentioned the cut-up sheet. In addition, I recycled pieces of clothing such as dresses and men’s shirts. The main fabric, which was used as sashing, was also divided up and painted various colors to carry it into most of the borders. Ultimately, I did have to buy a few quarter yards of black patterned fabric and the quilt’s batting.
Thank you to organizer Quilting Gail and her fellow designers who put together this year’s SAHRR challenge. You can find their work here:
It is the final week of the 2024 Stay at Home Round Robin challenge. In my last post, I had part-way finished the round 5 challenge (the number 4) but was flummoxed by the Round 4 challenge (square in a square). Working many hours on my quilt this week, I managed to sort out and assemble round four, as well as the second side of round 5. If you are following this, I recommend that you get comfortable, because this is a long post.
Let me start by sharing two inspiration photos.
A kaleidoscope of butterflies.
A boatful of refugees.
It’s possible that the connection between these two images isn’t obvious. When I tell you that the theme of my quilt is migration, my choices will make more sense to you.
For at least a year I have wanted to paper piece some butterflies and use them in a quilt about migration. I even went so far as to design three different patterns in multiple sizes. After fooling around with them, I ended up putting them away for a later date. It’s now 2024 and, it’s clear to me that now is the time for the butterflies.
Most of my paper pieced butterflies were in plain blocks. But because Round 4 is square in a square challenge, I used two small butterflies as centers
This border took me almost three days to design and construct, but I don’t regret any of the time, or the mess left behind. The result exceeds my expectations.
Moving on to the top border, which also is included in my Round 4. Here is the shirt I cut up to get the fish fabric.
I wanted to sew the blocks in a manner that gave the illusion of fish swimming upstream. Here is my first attempt, which was a total fail.
To move forward, I did what everyone else does. I looked at other quilters’ work. I noticed one quilter put together a square in square that totally changed the appearance of the block, simply by mixing up the corner triangles’ colors. The lesson: you can use more than one color. Ahhhhh! Out came the seam ripper to completely disassemble my entire border. I threw away all the corners and made new ones. Now I have six square in square blocks that work together the way I envisioned.
Deep, breath – on to my refugees. Using my inspiration photo, I made a sketch that caught the essential elements. Then I turned the sketch into a pattern. Because the shapes of the people are not straight lines, this part of the design was not made by paper piecing. It was appliqued to a background of sky and water.
The finished block is 12 x 6 inches.
And if you look closely, you can see how I met this week’s challenge by adding the lettering that appeared in the inspiration photo.
I wrote the words with a purple fabric pen.
This morning, I threw together several four-patch blocks to fill in the right side of the quilt. And while it’s not completely sewn up, and two corners need transition blocks, this quilt top is close enough to a finish that I can post it on the linky party site.
MIGRATION WORLD
If you are still with me, thanks for reading all of this. It felt important to me to share my process. Maybe it’s a way to clear my mind for what may come next.
This week’s Linky party is hosted by Kathleen McMusing. Visit her to see the quilts of other participants.
Our quilting guru for this round is Quilting Gail. She has suggested that we make this border inspired by the number 4. That can cover a lot of turf. One could use blocks made of 4 patches, or 4 different colors in the block, or build the border to be 4 inches wide, or all of the above. Here are the fabrics I have selected for the bottom row of my SAHRR quilt.
The warm and earthy palette of this round is informed by the colors of the American Southwest desert. My goal is to depict a (deadly) drought.
Here are the aspects of my border that accomodate the number four. I started with a piece of fabric about 5 inches square. I then transected it vertically, inserted a strip of black, cut across the block and inserted another strip. Four sections are divided by the sign of a cross. I proceeded to make four blocks containing crosses.
I also made a few four patch blocks, a few blocks sewn from 2 1/2 inch strips and a few one-piece blocks.
Here is my collection of blocks for the four-inch bottom border.
After this week, my quilt looks like this:
There is much left to do before I can proceed with round 6. I need to make the left and right borders of this round. I also need to finalize the top border, which now contains the fishy square in squares. While I will be seeking additional inspiration, I can reveal one thing: There will be more butterflies landing on these borders.
If you are curious to see how other Stay at Home Round Robin challenge participants have interpreted this week’s prompt, you can find the link to their posts here.
Daily Fiber 