Exhibit at Ruth Holley branch

I am please to announce that, during March, I have another exhibit in the public library. This time it's at the Ruth Holley branch, located at 685 North Murray Blvd. just south of Galley. I have 15 mini-quilts on display in their big meeting room.

Here's a list of the ones on display this time:

#2 Bargello Brights
#5 Hatari!
#6 Extreme Sudoku
#8 Doodling with Thread
#11 Butterflies in the Garden
#14 Nebula
#15 Spring Has Sprung
#19 Translucence
#23 Origami
#24 Transit of Venus
#32 Double Helix
#33 Milky Way
#36 Prism of 100 Squares
#38 Prairie Point Landscape
#44 Stained Glass Iris

Starting on feathers

Just a short update. I've started piecing the feathers on the left side of the quilt. The consistency of the eyes pulls it all together. Since I've chosen the upper right corner as the light source, these feathers on the left side have darker green prints. As I move around to the other side, the greens will become lighter. I'm hoping that once they're all done, it will make a nice effect.

Starting on Feathers

Now that the body of the peacock is done, I needed to decide how I wanted to do the feathers. This has not been an easy decision. I did some mock-ups of some different styles to see what I liked.

I have decided on the coloring and fabric to use on the "eyes" of the feathers. I'm using a "peacock" blue, a deep purple, and an orange. The fabrics are mottled and they read as solid. These colors are very close to the actual colors in real peacock feathers. Also in real feathers, the eye is surrounded by a denser green, which I'm representing with striped lime green fabric. The remainder of the feathers are a variety of other green fabrics.

The tan fabric represents the stalks of the feathers, which are prominent in the original picture. The stalks break up the cacophony of greens and adds visual interest.

The first mock-up was the feather with the pointed "eyes" and although I liked it, I wasn't sure it would look right with the straight line construction juxtaposed with the curved lines of the peacock body.










 







The second mock-up had rounded eyes and less of the striped lime green. The rounded eyes look a bit more natural and I thought I liked it better.

I then got a little worried that all the different greens would look too busy and crazy. So I made a third mock-up using one color of green per feather. Each feather would have a different color of green because if all the feathers were made from the same green, it would be boring. Yet, I don't want the feathers to look like stripes, which I fear they might unless I chose colors that really blended well from one to the other.













So, I was really leaning toward rounded eyes with one color per feather. I had put all the mock-ups on the design wall and left the room to do some chores. When I returned, I looked at it again and totally changed my mind. I now prefer the pointed eyes and multi-greens. The pointed eyes show much more of the peacock blue color, and the stylized eyes do not detract from the body of the peacock. In fact when all is said and done, it may actually enhance it. We're going to find out!

Peacock body

***See the previous post for beginning of this new project.***

I actually finished this peacock body this past weekend, but because I posted last week's entry late, I waited a day before posting this today.

This is the peacock body for my new wall hanging. I drew out the design and used Ruth McDowell's freezer paper method for piecing. I bought the blue and purple fabric (the first fabric I've bought in a while!) and fussy cut the head and body pieces. The lime green fabric is something I had in my stash.

I made a few changes from the picture I took at the zoo. In looking at the enlarged picture, I felt the body needed to be bigger. When I reviewed pictures of peacocks on the web, it seemed that they normally have longer necks than the little fellow in my picture, so I went ahead and made him a little larger so he would stand out. Also, I took some creative license with the lime green portion. It's not usually as large as I made it, but I wanted the head to show off well. I figured if the head sat in the middle of feathers, it might get a little lost, but set against the lime green it does well.

One nice thing about Ruth McDowell's method is that you can press the seams any way you want. I chose to press them toward the body so it is slightly raised from the background. I like that effect. However, in order to keep them turned in the right direction, I (for now) basted them into place. Once the quilt is done, I'll remove the basting stitches. So don't worry - the peacock won't always look like he's sipping something through a straw.

Also, in the quilting phase, I'll connect the crest to the head using stitches.

One big mistake I made while sewing the head. When I clipped the curves, I slipped and cut too far into the beak. I couldn't fix it, so I had to redo the entire head. I'll have to be more careful!

New Project

No, this isn't a new quilt, but I hope it soon will be. This is a picture of a peacock I took at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo last summer. I was resting on a bench when this peacock came and put on a show for me! He strutted around for several minutes and I was even able to capture a short video of him.

I love the vibrant purple blues and lime greens, and I think this would make a wonderful quilt. If I can figure out how to construct it and if I finish it in time, I may try to submit it to the Denver National Quilt Show in May. Perhaps my practice with creating a mini-quilt in a week will help me here.

In the coming weeks, I'll be posting updates on my progress and explaining my process along the way.

My first step was to crop the picture to the size I wanted. It's shown above. The body of the peacock is at one of the focal points. (In a photography class, we learned to compose a picture by dividing it into thirds vertically and horizontally. The four resulting intersections are focal points, where the main subject should reside.)

My next step was to blow up the photo to the actual size of the quilt, which in my case is roughly 36x60". Microsoft Publisher allows one to create a poster and will print off an image onto as many 8-1/2x11" pages as needed. Here's my black and white version, now taped together on my wall. I've already started to mark it up a bit with cutting lines and notes for what I want to pay attention to.

I'll be starting with the peacock body for two reasons:
1) I think the head will be the most intricate and difficult part to piece because of some tiny pieces, and
2) all the feathers, and therefore the design, radiate out from the body.

I hope you will follow my progress. Wish me luck!

Rebecca

Mini-quilts on display

No new mini-quilt yet, but I wanted to let those of you who follow the blog that there's a display of 15 of the mini-quilts at the Ute Pass branch of the Pikes Peak Library District during the month of January. That's in Cascade, CO.

For this display, I chose mostly mini-quilts that were based on traditional quilt designs more or less, but I included a couple of my other favorites as well. Here's a list of what's on display at Ute Pass:

#2    Bargello Brights
#6    Extreme Soduko
#15  Spring Has Sprung
#16  Fish in the Attic 
#19  Translucence
#21  Dresden Plate
#23  Origami
#27  Pinwheel Fireworks
#29  Tumbling Blocks
#35  Purple Pinwheels
#37  Autumn Kaleidoscope
#38  Prairie Point Landscape
#40  Trapunto Sunflower
#44  Stained Glass Iris
#51  Poinsettia

Mini-Quilt Project 2012 in Review

Happy New Year

Happy 2013!

I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the mini-quilt project of 2012 - making one mini-quilt per week using no new materials. It felt good to give myself a goal and see it through, and I had a wonderful time coming up with new ideas and seeing them come to fruition week to week. At times it was a challenge, but except for a couple of weeks during the big Waldo Canyon Fire, I managed to make my deadline.

My purpose was to get a chance to try out quilting techniques I’d never tried before, to see if I enjoyed doing them enough to later try them in a larger bed-sized quilt. In addition, I wanted to practice techniques I had tried before in order to improve upon my skills as a quilter. Overall, I’d have to say the project was a success.

On the downside, I wasn’t able to devote too much time to other sewing and quilting projects through the year. Sometimes I deliberately chose to do mini-quilts I knew wouldn’t take a lot of time in order to have time to make a purse or go on vacation, etc. Also, as I was getting close to the deadline, I was forced to cut some corners or not take  the care I normally would. Sometimes I made mistakes that I chose not to correct. But I learned from those mistakes too. 

Acknowledgements:

I’d like to acknowledge my friends, family, co-workers, and the CC Quilters group for all their encouragement and praise through the year. Many were a great source of inspiration for several of the designs.

What’s next?

Spring Has Sprung

I find that I like doing mini-quilts. I like the small projects that I can easily quilt on my machine. I will definitely do more in the future, although not one a week. I have ideas for wall-hangings and functional pieces still and I’ll post my progress on these too.  It’ll be nice to work on projects using what I learned in 2012.

Someone from my quilting group (I’m sorry I don’t remember who) suggested that I write a book about the project. I think I will pursue this idea.

Analysis:

Here are some interesting things (to me, anyway) that I learned from this project.

I utilized the LABELS feature of the blog to provide keywords. At the bottom of the page, a word cloud appears showing the frequency of those keyword. The bigger the word, the more times I used the technique. Interestingly, the top tier included “appliqué”, “free-motion quilting”, and “machine stitches”. I like appliqué OK, but admittedly I used it sometimes in place of piecing to save time.  I much prefer piecing. 

As for free-motion quilting, I’m glad I got a chance to practice this technique. I hadn’t been comfortable with free-motion before the project, but I am now. Of course, quilting small projects on a small machine is a lot easier than quilting big projects on a small machine. I may have to look into getting my larger quilts quilted professionally. (Or else buy a large machine, which isn’t doable right now.) 

doodling with Thread

The third label, Machine Stitches, doesn’t surprise me. I like using as many of the specialty stitches as I can. They’re there, so why not take advantage of them. I think using machine stitches definitely adds to the character of the quilts.

The second tier of labels included “3-D” and “paper-piecing”. I tried out many of what I’m calling 3-D techniques: origami, trapunto, tucks, cathedral window and added objects like ribbon, buttons, and zippers. And although I enjoyed doing them, I don’t think these are representative of my style of quilting. 

Paper-piecing, on the other hand, is very representative of my style. I like everything about it, and I knew this before ever starting on the mini-quilt project. I enjoy creating the design, making lines that will work for paper-piecing. It’s a very methodical, almost mathematical, design technique and that’s what appeals to me. Often creating the design takes a great deal of time, but seeing it all come together in fabric is so rewarding for me. “Spring Has Sprung”, “Purple Pinwheels”, “Milky Way”, “Star of Bethlehem” and “Poinsettia” all incorporated paper-piecing, among others.

My Style:

I’m not sure I learned a great deal about my own personal style of quilting during the mini-quilt project. Rather, the project affirmed what I thought before: 

• I prefer piecing to appliqué.  There’s something about sewing two pieces of fabric together that makes me very happy. 
• And I really enjoy paper-piecing for its precision in creating unique designs. 
• I also like using machine stitches, particularly as thread painting to further enhance designs. In many ways, I prefer machine stitching to free-motion quilting, but I concede that there are times free-motion is desirable. 
• I don’t have a dark side. My quilts are happy, or at least pleasant to look at (I hope). During the fire, I thought about doing a mini-quilt about it, but never could come up with a design to represent it. Likewise, I thought about a commemorative quilt for 9/11 but never found the inspiration.
• I do have a whimsical side. “Fish in the Attic”, “Snowmen Tucked In” and the golden fries as backing for “Golden Mean” speak to that.

Fish in the Attic

Favorites:

Stained Glass Iris

People have asked me which mini-quilt is my favorite. And although I have many that I really like, I’d have to say that “Stained Glass Iris” is my favorite. I marvel at how much it does look like a stained glass creation. I love the purple iris made from batiks, and the satin stitching for the lead lines, and the sky fabric which looks like glass. And the oval shape completes the picture.

Autumn Kaleidoscope

But I do have others which are at the top of my list of favorites: “Doodling with Thread”, “Butterflies in the Garden”, “Spring Has Sprung”, “Purple Pinwheels”, “Autumn Kaleidoscope”, “Milky Way”, “Extreme Soduko”, and “Poinsettia” are ones that make me smile.

Non-favorites:

Overall I like nearly all of the mini-quilts. There are only a few that I don’t really care for. I’m glad I tried the techniques, but I am fairly certain I won’t be doing things like crazy quilting or ribbon weaving again. Although I was disappointed in the way the tiling “Bountiful Basket” came out, I think the technique is worth exploring further.

Surprises:

Extreme Sudoku

I mentioned that “Extreme Sudoku” is a favorite of mine, and it is. What surprised me was how much this one resonated with others. I received more compliments on this mini-quilt than any other. This simple design and the fact that it comes from an actual, workable puzzle really speaks to people. I was honored that a friend at work, Patti,  made a larger quilt based on this design. She brought it in to work for me (and others) to see before she gave it as a Christmas gift to a family member.

Purple Pinwheels

After the end of the year, I went through the list of mini-quilts and categorized them into one of three areas: 

1. Traditional quilt designs, or those designs based on        

traditional quilt patterns.

Purple Pinwheels is based on the traditional pinwheel design, but enhanced by tessellating the design with six spokes instead of four.

Milky Way

2. Thematic designs, or those meant to commemorate an event, person, or memory.

Milky Way was based on a bed-sized quilt I made for my niece, Wesley.

Butterflies in the Garden

3. Art Quilts, those with no particular theme or design, but are artsy in some way. 

Butterflies in the Garden was an appliqué creation using many different prints.

Of course, some of the mini-quilts spanned more than one category (some might even be considered in all three) but I was surprised by how balanced the numbers were.

Traditional - 14

Thematic - 19

Art Quilts - 19

I don’t have an explanation, I just thought it was interesting and surprising.    

And so ends the year of mini-quilts. If anyone is interested in pursuing such a project, I encourage it. Set your goal, write it down, and find some way to make yourself accountable. My way was to start this blog. Knowing that others were encouraging me and awaiting my next post kept me going.

Poinsettia

Thanks all!

Rebecca