Oceans Blue

Title: Oceans Blue
Finished: 8/14/11
Techniques: Curved piecing, couching, ribbon, buttons, yarn, machine stitches, free motion stitches.
Size: 12 1/2" x 20"

I've started my spring cleaning process, and have come across other mini-quilts that I've done in the past. And since I haven't completed a mini-quilt in a while, I thought I would start to showcase some of my earlier works.

A few of you already know that my 2012 mini-quilt project was not my first attempt at creating a mini-quilt per week. Late in 2011, I had started such a project but before I could finish my 6th in the series, I became quite ill and had to abandon the project. I didn't have the Blog then either. This is #3 of that first series.

I started out by piecing curves, which came out quite well. Then for some reason I don't remember, I decided to cover up those seams with ribbon, yarn or stitches. Only a couple of the seams are truly visible.

The layers of the blue fabrics and the embellishments have significance too. The stars at the top to represent the sky, the flowered batik for things floating on the water, the free motion circles for bubbles, the eyelash yarn for plant life, the curves and ribbons for the ocean currents, and the buttons for stuff on the ocean floor.

Overall a peaceful, calming mini-quilt.

#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.