Painting paper fabric

I bought a whole bunch of muslin when I saw a sale at Mood on line.  It was purchased for making dress fitting muslins.  But it was so much, like 10 yards or something!  And I don't sew that much clothing.  I remembered a technique that I did one time where I glued tissue paper to the muslin to make a "paper fabric" base.  This time, while everything was still wet, I went crazy with water colors and fabric paints and made up some interesting painted paper fabric.  It is so fun to have a play date and do things like this.

I want to make some art quilts with it; perhaps a nest.  Who knows?

Anyway, here it is:

Sewing with the cat

If you are a quilter and you have a cat, or cats, you already know my dilemma.  The cat likes to be near me, on me, on top of what I'm working on, underneath what I'm working on, underneath my feet......  You get the picture.   I end up with cat hair on everything.  But I love my cats!  OK, I might go so far as to say that I have made my cats co-dependent on me.  I've turned into a cat enabler.

Here is my current cat, Jack, sharing my chair while I'm waiting for paint to dry and goofing around on my computer.  Do you see how much chair I get to use?

Here is a picture of my previous cat, Fly, who loved to sit on top of my sewing machine while I was sewing.  Sometimes, she would hang her feet over the edges and get so close to the needle, I thought that I might accidentally sew over her paw.

Here she is sitting on top of a quilt while I was sewing on the binding.

And here is a really old picture, showing me holding a kitten when I was about 6 yrs old.  So you know I've liked cats for a long time!

I hope you have room for pets in your life too!

Labels for quilts

I helped several people working on documenting quilts from their states as part of a historical record.  Many of the quilts we discovered did not have the maker's identity on them,  Sadly, this is the case for most antique quilts.  Because of that, I think that every quilt you make should have a label on the back with your name and the date.  Other things you can add are the name of the quilt, the person you gave the quilt to, a picture of the quilt or yourself or the recipient, a short story about the making of the quilt, or your city or contact information.

When I first started making quilts, I hand embroidered my name on the lower right back corner.  I started out using chain embroidery stitch and embroidery floss.  I changed to back-stitching with embroidery floss and still do that sometimes.  Here is my very first quilt signature:

(Did you notice that it took me 17 years to complete this quilt?  Yes, it was a long time.)

Lately, I've enjoyed doing the label in the Word program and printing it on inkjet ready fabric.  I try to match the color of the label to the color of the quilt.  But not always.  It's super easy to do that in Word.  Here are a couple of examples.

Sometimes, it's fun to include a picture of the recipient or the honoree on the label.  Here are some examples of that:

After I print the label, let it dry and iron it,  I stitch it to the back of the quilt by hand.

Some of my friends have labels made on embroidery machines and these are quite beautiful.  And other friends hand write out their labels with pigma pens.  Some of these labels are quite large.  But they tell the full story that stays with the quilt.  It's so fun to read those story labels.

I hope you remember to label all of your quilts too.

President's block

Each year our guild is asked to make quilt blocks to give to our outgoing president, as a way to thank her for her year of service to our organization.  This year, 2018, the request to the members was to make a block, up to 10", of something orange, and perhaps a chicken or cat somewhere on the block.

I know that this particular president has quite a sense of humor, so I designed a humorous cat for the block that I wanted to make for her.

And here it is:

I hope it gives you a smile too!

Special Exhibit - Avian Studies with Wilma Scott

We had another fabulous quilt show at the Clark County Event Center in April 2018.  I entered 16 quilts, which seems like a lot!  Some of them were entered into a special exhibit called "Avian Studies".  Wilma Scott entered 7 of her bird quilts, and I entered 7 of my nest quilts.

Here are the pictures of that special exhibit:

It was fun to have a collaborative exhibit.  Thanks Wilma!

Special Exhibit - Vagabonds Bride Dress Challenge

A special exhibit that I was involved with at the Clark County Quilters annual quilt show was the Vagabonds Bride Dress Challenge.  I wrote a couple of previous posts about the making of the bride dress quilt that I entered.

Our group got together and made a wedding cake and table skirt to go along with our exhibit.  We also put one of the dresses we didn't cut up on a mannequin.  It was quite the display!

Here are the photos from the special exhibit, which was part of the Clark County Quilters annual quilt show in April 2018.

Bride Dress and quilt by Sharry Olmstead

Quilt by Audrey Prothero

quilt by Ada Levins

quilt by Beverly Woodard

quilt by Audrey Prothero

Quilt by Lynn Czaban

quilt by Sharry Olmstead

Quilt by Beverly Woodard

quilt by Val Pellens

Quilt by Val Pellens

quilt by Karan Brooks

quilt by Joanne Adams Roth

Modern Inchie Quilt

I made an Magic Inch quilt in 2017 for the charity arm of our local quilt guild.  It was based on a design by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr.  I wrote a blog about making that quilt earlier.

At that time, I also cut out some red squares and black and white strips for a second quilt.  Since then, however, I decided that I would modernize this design and make it totally improvisational.

So, I cut through some of the red squares and inserted the 1" strips. Then I added some borders and inserted strips in some of the rest of the pieces.  I used 3 different grays for the background and just made up all the blocks.

I placed them on the design wall willy nilly and moved them around until they looked very random.
Sewing this together wasn't that easy, as I had really odd spaces to fill and partial seams to sew.  But I liked the improv nature of making this top.

Here is a picture showing the progress of the piecing:

And here is the completed top.

48" x 58" by Joanne Adams Roth

I hope you can take a step into the unknown and put together a top intuitively.