Daily Fiber

SAHRR Quilt Round 3: Oh, My Stars!

Posted on February 21, 2022June 24, 2022 by Laura Kate

Chaos reigned in my studio yesterday as I attempted to make star blocks. Stars were chosen by Roseanne and Sue @ Home Sewn by Us for Round 3 of the round robin quilt-at-home challenge. This picture is me trying to play catch up.

I got behind during round 3. It was that week my mother, aged 91, had a stroke and was taken to hospital. Our father, who is 94, needs a little help at home. In response, my husband and I traveled home to stay with Dad and help out my siblings with Mom’s needs. We took turns visiting Mom daily while she recovered well enough to move to assisted living quarters. It was a busy and emotional time for all of us.

I’m back home now. The temporary crisis has passed, but my mother is no longer the energetic and capable person who raised me. She will need help daily.

Life can be cruel.

So I’m working through the chaos today. But first, here is how I started this block. I married together two weaving samples for the background of the Sky section of my quilt. This area will represent the element Air.

I like the horizontal bands of color. They look like clouds at sunset. To represent the setting sun, I used the foundation paper piecing method and created this:

This piece will be attached to the top of the fringed weaving.

Eventually my stars were finished up.

I sewed them together into a border and attached it to the right of the sunset.

A narrow piece of gray swirled fabric represents the wind.

To finish this block, I attached border strips to the left and bottom.

The fringe flies freely so that it can wave in the breeze. And my studio has been tidied and carpet vacuumed.

Now that the Elements are all present, I am ready for the final round of Stay At Home Round Robin. With a bit of diligence, I’ll have something to show by Sunday, when the linky party ends.

quilting

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/

painting

Sunday Sketching – Agate

Posted on January 23, 2022 by Laura Kate

I wanted to try the geometric glazing technique that I used for Belize Memory on another subject. This is an image of an agate in the collection of the Natural History Museum, London.