#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.

#23 Origami

#23: Origami
Finished: 6/10/12
Techniques: Folded fabric, machine stitches, pieced binding
Size: 13 x 14"

Description: I was inspired to create this mini-quilt by my friend Sarah Withee and her origami projects. I had seen folded fabric and origami quilting books before and so now was the time to try it. I used Fantastic Fabric Folding by Rebecca Wat for instructions, but I found it rather difficult to do the origami itself. It took time to figure out the instructions, reading it several times and trying to gain insight from the photographs. Once I did though, it went much easier and faster.

I used batiks and mottled fabrics that read as solids for the origami portions, as well as the pieced binding. I used various machine stitches to add a bit more color to the black background. A few buttons were added for flair.

Here are some close-ups of the individual origami features, except for the orange one. For some reason, neither my phone nor camera did well in capturing the orange. It was too bright or something. I tried different settings to no avail. Oh well.