Tag: design process

Posted in quilting

Wednesday: Considering a new project

Posted on by Laura Kate

At present, I have various works in progress and finished objects that I could write about today. But January is the month that Quilting Gail and her co-horts begin work on the annual Stay at Home Round Robin quilt. So I am pivoting.

Stay at Home Round Robin Quilting

During the past three years I have participated with joy. I’d really like to continue round robin-ing this year. But I am in a quandary about my center block. Thinking about SAHHR in December, I had the idea to use paper pieced squares in this year’s center block. I but never got around to making them. Now, feeling pressed for time, I’m reluctant to work on a deadline in a technique in which I have little experience.

This morning, I decided the answer may lie in the objects I made during my first year of practicing fiber arts. It was a time when I was bursting with ideas but short on skills. As I rummaged through my portfolio from 2019 to early 2020, I found six fiber objects with potential to become a center block of a small quilt.

Shall we audition them together?

Candidate 1:

This was an early experiment with fabric paint. I took two different paintings, cut them into strips and wove them together, using satin stitch to close up the cut edges.

Candidate 2:

This is a rejected block from my oakleaf hydrangea wall-hanging. The background is covered in snippets of hand embroidery with irregular blanket stitch on the edges.

Candidate 3:

I was discovering what fabric markers can do. This painting is done on lightweight muslin and would need to be mounted on sturdier fabric.

Candidate 4:

A mini art quilt, this was inspired by what I saw in my head with eyes closed during a yoga class. I was practicing curved edge piecing.

Candidate 5:

Inspired by one of Bill’s photographs, this block was a practice piece for a larger work I never completed. The technique is confetti applique. While I would consider putting this one in an SAHHR quilt, I’ve yet to give up on my original concept.

Candidate 6:

A very early experiment in fabric painting, I “saw” a scene of a mountain area recovering from a forest fire. The initial paint application was enhanced with brown stamps of bare and broken trees. The middle ground is meant to represent fireweed which moves in quickly after a fire ends.

This last block is the one I am leaning toward the most. I have some ideas for expanding on the theme of environmental devastation and recovery.

What do you think about my options? Even if you are not a quilter, I am interested in learning the block that attracts your eye the most. Which one has the highest potential from the aspects of design, color and originality?

Posted in knitting

WIP – Mosaic Stitch Swatches

Posted on by Laura Kate

For today’s post on work in progress, I’d like to share my adventure in choosing a mosaic stitch design for my crescent shawl.

To get started, I picked up Barbara Walker’s excellent Treasury of Knitting Patterns, published in 1968. Chapter Four (Color Changing Patterns) contains advice and 76 different examples of mosaic stitch. The first one I tried is called Rippled Chevron.

For the 1st pattern repeat, I used stockinette stitch. The second repeat was knitted in garter stitch. I liked this pattern, and it was quite easy. The garter stitch version would work better with my shawl design.

Continuing my swatch, I went for something more complicated: Dotted Diamond.

I love the look of this pattern. After knitting it I began to see how an exciting piece of knitting could be made by working a sequence of different mosaic stitches with different background yarns and one foreground yarn.

All of this swatching around is very fun and instructive. But I concluded that Mrs. Walker’s patterns were all very geometric looking. I craved a pattern that appeared more curvilinear – almost flower-like. So my next step was to use the advanced search option on Ravelry to find some flower-like mosaic patterns. This took a good hour. Eventually I discovered a pattern for socks that incorporated mosaic designs inspired by Native American symbols.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/burntwater-socks

This is getting closer to what I had in mind. After making a few final adjustments and switching to a bigger needle, I started knitting the resulting pattern into my shawl. By yesterday evening I was half-way finished with the 50-row pattern.

I love what’s happening here. My original swatch was too narrow to give me any idea of the secondary pattern in the design. When several pattern repeats are worked, the wing-like lines between the circles clearly stand out. This makes me happy.

Barbara’s treasury is truly a treasure. If you can get your hands on this book, you will find it immensely useful in expanding your knowledge and skills. Kudos also to Mary the Hobbit, who designed the Burntwater socks. This pattern could easily become my next sock project.

Posted in quilting

2023 SAHRR Round 3 – Hourglass Block

Posted on by Laura Kate

This week Chris Knits and Sews is choosing the block and providing the linky party for quilting participants to post their work in the annual round robin challenge.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/32776/posts/4536905279

I approached this round with a plan to give some rest for the eye from the colorful center. Here is my quilt at the end of the last round.

I used two colors of background fabric to make the hourglass blocks. Here is one row attached to my quilt.

For the corner blocks, I cut the centers out of some pineapple blocks.

They are about 3 inches square. Next I sewed strips of light grey fabrics around all four sides to bring the corners up to the correct size.

I think they are pretty.

After attaching the corners to the last two strips of hourglass blocks I stitched them to the quilt.

What I learned from this round:

1 It pays to work slowly in sewing the blocks together to ensure a very accurate seam allowance. If one seams is too narrow or wide, it’s worth it to rip back and re-sew.

2. Sometimes it’s okay to press a seam open, particularly when sharp points are involved. It can help diminish lumps and bumps.

So far I’m having lots of fun making a stay-at-home round robin quilt. If you’d like to sew along, here is the list of the hosts and rounds.

Posted in quilting

SAHRR 2023: Start with a Found Object

Posted on by Laura Kate

Last May I was engaged in the task of clearing out my mother’s sewing room. It was a sad but wondrous one. Almost forty years of accumulated objects, tools, machines and materials were stashed in every closet and corner of a tiny room. These included dozens of unfinished objects which were hidden in other rooms. In one closet I found draped over a hanger, rows of scrappy blocks – about sixty of them. She must have worked on this quilt over a period of years. It seemed very close to completion, so I brought it home with the idea of finishing it.

As I spread out all of the rows and loose blocks, I noticed that many blocks were not squared up. Some blocks were bigger than others. Some rows looked fine, others much shorter. (??.) Stymied by this discovery, I put the quilt away.

Now it is January and time for another Stay at Home Round Robin project. Led by Quilting Gail, this game is played by starting with a block, and then adding rows to it as clues (suggestions) are revealed weekly. I decided to get the scrappy blocks out and do something with them.

I disassembled some rows and organized the blocks by size and value. After a bit of pondering, I concluded that supporting fabrics for this quilt needed to be neutral solids. Purchasing a range of grays, I added a bright yellow batik print from my stash.

My plan is to create a value gradation starting from the center and working outward. The bright yellow will serve as a unifying sparkle for the design. Getting started, I chose four blocks that contained mostly pale colors.

To unify these four, I removed one corner from each, sewed on a triangle of yellow and assembled the blocks into a square.

My finished block will measure 15 inches. It is positioned on point to emphasize the many triangles that seem to catch the eye.

Now let’s hope the SAHHR team doesn’t throw me any CURVES!

To learn more about Stay at Home Round Robin 2023 and to play along, here is your link.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/102293878/posts/4496810917

Posted in quilting

Final Test Creation Panels Project

Posted on by Laura Kate

Using my new watercolor pencils, yesterday I painted the final two panels copied from a 13th century illuminated manuscript.

Days One and Three

I’m testing the performance of this medium on cloth. If I find that the pigment doesn’t bleed or fade, I will add this tool to my fabric painting practice. Now that all four images are finished, the cloth gets dipped in soapy water……

….swished gently, rinsed and dried. I’ll admit that I left the cloth to soak for less than a minute. There was a tiny bit of yellow and red pigment dissolved into the bath water. But as I blotted the rinsed cloth, I saw no pigment transferred to the white terry towel. Happy days! The pigment is colorfast.

The absolute final test is permanence. This one can’t be rushed. I just have to use the object and see what happens over time.

Because the muslin is so lightweight, I decided to cut out the circles and applique them to quilting cotton. In keeping with the “let there be light” theme, I chose a gold ombre fabric.

For the quilt, I’ll stick with the colors of the original painting – gold, dark blue, red and teal green. I have a silvery-gray solid to use as the background.

More to come after a trip to the fabric store.