#34 Cathedral Window

#34: Cathedral Window
Finished: 8/26/12
Techniques: Cathedral Window, origami
Size: 9" x 9"

I've wanted to try a Cathedral Window quilt for some time, but shied away thinking it was too difficult. On a recent trip to Nebraska, however, I was reacquainted with a Cathedral Window quilt that a friend's mother had made. Leone Gustafson's quilt is quite lovely, and it inspired me to give it a try.  I found instructions on the web that required folding of fabric, rather like origami. At a certain point, colorful printed fabric is folded separately and inserted to create a stained glass cathedral window effect. Because of the folding of the fabric, no batting is needed to complete the quilt.

Four petal quilting on reverse

I had a little difficulty with the hand stitching; I don't do
very well with keeping my stitching invisible, and I didn't
like the effect. So I switched to machine stitching and was
much happier. I still had a little trouble with puckering near
the center of the piece but it's not terribly noticeable. And the machine stitching creates a nice four petal quilting design on
the reverse of the piece. It's not easy to see, but you can just
make it out.





I like the way this mini-quilt goes together. It's a "quilt-as-you-go" design. I could have added on as many rows and columns as I wished, working out from the center. I chose to stay with just the four windows, making this the smallest mini-quilt to date.

#33 Milky Way

#33: Milky Way
Finished: 8/19/12
Techniques: Paper piecing, Appliqué
Size: 16" x 12"

Description: Years ago, I made a quilt for my niece utilizing a dozen or more of paper-pieced stars similar to these. I had also used a polka dot batik to simulate the galaxy. I still had some of that fabric left over and decided to re-create that quilt on a smaller scale. Using Carol Doak's designs from her book, 365 Foundation Quilt Blocks, I paper-pieced 5 different stars in different colors and used the polka dot batik for part of the background.

But I didn't use enough of the polka dot in the construction of the red/pink star. When I sewed the pieces together the red/pink star stood out too much. It looked disjointed. At that point, I could have taken out the odd star, made a new one and inserted it, but that seemed like too much work. So what I did instead was to apply Steam-A-Seam to the back of the fabric, cut out some dots and appliqué them to strategic places to minimize the contrast. It actually adds a bit of interest to the mini-quilt.

#32 Double Helix

#32: Double Helix
Finished: 8/10/12
Techniques: Convergence
Size: 12 1/2" x 19"

"Sine Me Up" by Kent Williams,
reprinted with permission from the artist.

Description: I was reading 500 Art Quilts edited by Ray Hemachandra and Karey Bresenhan and fell in love with a  quilt by Kent Williams entitled "Sine Me Up". As this was more of an art book and not a quilting technique book, there were no instructions for how to create this quilt - just a photo and a small close up. So working from the photo, I had to figure out how it was done.  I could see it involved alternating rows of fabric strips, but at first I thought I would have to work with curves. I tried that but failed miserably. I could see that there were curves going to the left and curves going to the right, but it drove me crazy for a while trying to figure out how to put it together.

Then I realized I was making it too complicated and knew I had to look for a simpler solution. It turns out that this is a very easy construction technique. Very easy, yet quite ingenious! I created rows of alternating strips: 1) light purple, red, pink, olive, and light blue and 2) dark blue, yellow, green, orange, and dark purple. I then alternated the rows, moving one row 1/4" to the right while moving the other row 1/4" to the left when adding each subsequent row. That gives the appearance of curves in two directions.

Now if I had been smart, I would have done some strip piecing of the five row fabrics and then cut them out, but no, I cut out individual rectangles and then pieced them together. Strip piecing may also have helped in making cleaner, straighter rows. Ah well - I'll know better for next time.

My mini-quilt is not as elegant as Mr. Williams'. I didn't achieve the nice curved effect, but I attribute that to facts that my rectangles are not as long as his, nor do I have as many shifts to the right and left. It may also be because he shifted the rows less than 1/4" but I am not positive of that as it is difficult to determine the scale. So my mini-quilt came out more angular than curved, but the overall effect reminded me of the double helix of DNA, hence the title.

Another interesting note: There is an optical illusion that occurs here, and it is most evident with the orange (although you can see it somewhat with the other colors as well, to varying degrees). Look on the right side of the mini-quilt. Does it appear that there is a dark orange diagonal to a lighter orange? It's all the same orange fabric! The illusion occurs because the orange looks lighter when it is next to the light blue, and darker when it is next to the olive color.

Thank you, Kent Williams, for allowing me post a photo of your quilt! I encourage others to check out his website gallery of quilts. They are phenomenal! http://www.rkentwilliams.com/galleries.html

#31 Olympic Rings

#31: Olympic Rings
Finished: 8/5/12
Techniques: Appliqué, Paper-piecing, Double Wedding Ring inspired
Size: 30 1/2" x 18"

Description:   My quilting group suggested the Olympics as a design for a mini-quilt and I loved the idea! A design based on the rings seemed the reasonable choice, but how to liven it up? I thought I would combine the Olympic rings with elements of a double wedding ring design. Double wedding rings are comprised of multiple fabrics, so that's how I created these rings. I created the circles on paper using different sized dinner plates and paper-pieced them together. I sewed a solid backing to each ring in the appropriate color for it, clipped the curves, and turned them right-side out, then appliquéd them to the white background.

The colors of the rings and the interweaving of them are consistent with the actual Olympic flag. The colors blue, black, red, yellow, green, as well as white, represent at least one color on every country's flag.

#30 Pole Bending

#30: Pole Bending
Finished: 7/29/12
Techniques: Needle-turn appliqué, decorative machine stitches
Size: 34 1/2" x 11"

Description: This week I learned about Pole Bending. My cousin* Robbin was competing in the National Little Britches Rodeo this past week in Pueblo, and I got to meet up with her and her family on Wednesday. Robbin's event is Pole Bending, which I knew very little about.  Six poles, evenly spaced, are set up in the arena. From the starting gate you run your horse to the end and then weave in and out of the poles down and then back again, and then finish by racing back to the starting gate as fast as you can. All without touching or knocking over the poles.

I had this horse fabric in my stash and added a black border on top and bottom. In Pole Bending, only one horse rides at a time, of course, but that would have been boring for a mini-quilt. I like how the geometric diamond design of the print lends to the idea that this is happening in an arena. For the poles I used a decorative machine stitch on solid green fabric which coordinated with the print, then cut out the pole shapes and hand appliquéd them on using the needle-turn appliqué technique. This was the first time I'd ever use needle-turn appliqué and I think I did it badly. I wanted the poles to be straight, but as you can see, they are very crooked. I had basted them on to the background, and I had applied interfacing, but apparently it wasn't enough to hold them perfectly in place. So my poles bend, which wasn't what I intended, but perhaps is appropriate for a mini-quilt called "Pole Bending".

I didn't have enough of the horse fabric for the backing of the mini-quilt, but I did have some cowgirl boot fabric. Here's a sample.

This was a simple quilt to put together; the most time-consuming part was the hand appliqué.


* Just a side note here about cousins, if anyone is interested. Robbin is actually my first cousin, once removed. Her mother Kathy is my first cousin because Kathy's dad and my mom are brother and sister. If I had any children, they and Robbin would be second cousins. I know this because I have many, many cousins on that side of the family. But we all just refer to each other as "cousin," wouldn't you?

Congratulations, Robbin, on making the nationals! I dedicate this mini-quilt to you.

#29 Tumbling Blocks

#29: Tumbling Blocks
Finished: 7/22/12
Techniques: Y-seams, Metallic thread, Invisible thread, Stitch in the ditch
Size: 26" x 25 1/2"

Description: I like the tumbling block design because of its three dimensional illusion, but I've never tried to create them before now. Traditionally they are pieced using what's known as a Y-seam. Where the three colors meet, you see a "Y". I found the Y-seams to be a little tricky but not too bad. Some of them came out really well - perfectly pointed! - but others were off a bit.  There is a way to create the design using straight seams, but this creates a line through some of the diamond shapes which I find distracting. However, if I had used a busier pattern for the fabrics, it may have gone unnoticed.

The outer border was actually my inspiration for this mini-quilt. It was fabric I picked up, I believe, at an ARC thrift store some time ago. I used fabric from my stash to correspond to the blue, yellow, and reddish orange in the border print to create the large tumbling blocks. The solid blue inner border was added because I felt the eye needed a resting place before adding the outer border. When sewing on the outer border, I oriented the fabric to correspond to the larger tumbling blocks. This meant that I had to cut some of the fabric cross-wise and some lengthwise, but I'm glad I did it that way.

I haven't used metallic thread much in the past, because I found it difficult to work with. But here was a perfect opportunity to try it again. In the border fabric, the little tumbling blocks are surrounded by metallic gold lines. When I tried simulating those gold lines with metallic thread, I was using old metallic thread that jammed up right away. Then I switched to an unused spool of gold metallic thread that I had bought years ago but never used. It worked very well, so the lesson I learned is to use good new metallic thread in the future.

It doesn't look too bad in the picture, but some of my stitching in the ditch was not evenly applied.

Using a multi-colored print fabric as your focus fabric and then choosing other fabrics that match and blend with it is a good way of designing and choosing fabrics for a quilt. I've used this technique in the past for full-sized quilts.

I put the picture in extra large, because this is the largest mini-quilt I've done to date.

#28 Celtic Knot

#28: Celtic Knot
Finished: 7/15/12
Techniques: Celtic Knot design, Bias Tape, Echo Quilting.
Size: 13 x13"

I was intrigued by the celtic knots I was reading about in the "Great Book of Celtic Patterns" by Lora Irish. The intricate weaving of lines in and out of other lines forming continuous loops holds great appeal for me, and I wondered if I could convert something like that into a quilt design.

I started out by finding a pattern that wasn't too easy, but wasn't too difficult either. It is a design I got from the book, but I modified it slightly when sketching it out to allow more space to work with. Once it was sketched, I stitched the design out onto the fabric as a guide. I could have made bias tape for the design, but just decided to use store bought bias tape that I had around. I have other colors but only had a sufficient amount of black and white for this particular design. I could have used a more colorful background, but doing so only seemed to detract from the celtic knot design, so I went with a mottled gray fabric. I ironed the bias tape in half so it was more like a cording. It really stands out! I used a simple zigzag stitch to attach it to the background.

Transferring the pattern to the fabric proved a little difficult. As a result, the design is not perfectly symmetrical. In the future, I think I will sketch out the entire design on paper, overlay it on the fabric and stitch through the paper for guidelines. Stitching the bias tape onto the fabric presented some problems as well. Pinning didn't work well because pulling out the pins as I was stitching caused the tape to shift. Working without pins meant that I had to keep lifting the tape to make sure I was centered on the guidelines. Using a glue stick was messy and didn't hold well. I could have tried cutting strips of Steam-A-Seam and attaching the bias tape before stitching, but that seemed like too much work. And no matter which method I used, I still had to deal with making sure that the bias tape went over or under the correct way, which is more difficult than you might think.

You might think with all this complaining that I didn't enjoy making this mini-quilt. But actually I did enjoy it. I had to use my problem-solving skills a lot, and it was a challenge, but I generally like the way it turned out.