Yesterday I attended a show hosted by our local quilt group. To say it was inspirational is an understatement. Who knew that in our little county of 50,000 residents there were so many superb fiber artists? Because the organizers permitted photography, I took a number of images. It was hard to narrow it down to favorites, but I am pleased to share the following:
This is called a Bargello pattern.
Hexagon shapes
Created in technique called “Stack and Whack”
Technically superb. How did the maker create all those perfectly round circles?
Created using a jellyroll group of fabrics. Name of quilt is “Ocean Deep.”
My favorite wall hanging quilt. The giraffe is created with dozens of flower shapes sewn atop one another. The birds and vines are fussy cut applique.
My favorite large quilt. It is a log cabin style, using batik fabrics.
I chose this one because the maker used hand-dyed fabrics for her squares.
I admired the quilt below for its irregular and artfully placed strips, as well as for the cute applique ladybugs. The maker created it while recovering from a lung transplant. She finished the squares before passing away in 2008. Her grandmother sewed the top together.
I hope you enjoyed these quilts, and found them as inspiring as I did.
Ah, Freedom! Something we long for when pressed with daily obligations. Something we were promised by our founding fathers, along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But when is freedom not really that great? I’ve discovered in life that a complete lack of restrictions often leads to mental paralysis. If I have unlimited choices, how do I decide what to do? Which way to go?
Okay, enough philosophy. We’re talking free motion quilting today. In this technique, the machine is set up so that all motion is created by the operator. Forward, backward, sidewise, whatever. Even though I have done almost no quilting before, given an opportunity to quilt, I choose the free motion type.
So my experiment today starts with a piece of fabric which was a previous experiment in color:
This was colored by layers of stamping. The dots were created with bubble wrap. The shell motif was printed with a stamp I made. Lines were added with fabric pens. Today I want to quilt on it. My plan is to sew curvy lines around the groups of motifs, then add a center dot in each group of shells. Finally, I will stitch down the ivy stem.
The first step is to make a sandwich, which includes a muslin base, fiber batting middle and the pattern fabric on top. The sandwich is basted with safety pins.
Next is to set up the machine. Sorry, no photo of this. The steps are to attach a little circular embroidery foot and lower the feed dogs. For those who don’t sew, feed dogs are the two serrated plates underneath that move the fabric through the machine. Now I’m getting a little nervous. Better do some practicing:
A little wobbly. This is much trickier than I expected it to be.
Taking a deep breath, here I go.
This isn’t a totally bad result. I liked making the little spirals, and they turned out good. The lessons I learned are
I should have chosen a fabric with no pattern on it for my first attempt.
A thread color with higher contrast to the background would have been a better choice.
It’s important to let up on the foot control when you slow or stop moving the fabric with your hands.
With greater freedom comes greater responsibility.
Daily Fiber 