2nd quilt from marbled fabric - Marbled Circles

After making an art quilt from the marbled fabric (and using only 3 small pieces), I decided to make one that included nearly all of the marbled fabric together in one quilt.  I remembered that I had made a quilt out of Hawaiian fabrics that showcased the material, but where the pieces didn't touch each other.  Since there was an overall theme to the fabric, I thought this might work with the marbled fabric too.

But, I recently bought a set of  Bloc loc  half rectangle rulers to make rectangular pieces and I wanted to give them a try.  

I cut my pieces 4" x 8" and followed the instructions that came with the rulers.  My final 3-1/2" x 6-1/2" pieces were perfect and the rulers were very easy to use.   The great thing was that most of the marbled fabric was in small pieces - less than a fat quarter - so this size made the most use of the fabrics.  Note:  there are great videos posted by the company on how to use the ruler.

I added blue, orange-red, and a 1930's green that matched the color of the inks used for the marbled fabric.  I sketched up this design:

And here is the quilt.  It's quilted with 2 sizes of circle rulers, all in green thread.  The final size is 43" W x 54" H. and I named it "Marbled Circles".

I hope you like it!

Postcards made with marbled fabric scraps

I had a little bit of leftover marbled fabric from the previous quilt and couldn't bring myself to toss it out.  So, I made a few little postcards.  I just collaged the fabric onto batting and  stiff interfacing (like Timtex), added a few pieces of metallic recycled trim and antique rick-rack, topped that with white tulle and quilted them.  Here they are:

I hope you like them1

First quilt from the marbled fabric - Northwest Marbled

This is the continuation of the post about making an art quilt from marbled fabric.

I used skinny black strips of fabric to lay out the design on my design wall.   Then I pieced the rows to fit within the black strips.  Initially, I wanted a skinny 1" black strip to separate the rows, but I found that it was impossible to make them fit and keep the colored stripes running vertical.  So, instead, I cut 2" strips, then fit the pieces together, narrowing the 2" piece where necessary to make them look right to me.  I added 4" borders on all sides, then quilted the piece in white and black thread.  After it was quilted, I trimmed it to size.  

It measures 46" W x 49" H.   The title of the quilt is "Northwest Marbled".  

I hope you like it!

Marbling Fabric

I took a class this summer on marbling fabric.  We made quite a bit of fabric, and I'm going to show you what I did with some of the pieces that matched.

There were 3 fabrics made with turquoise, black, white and red.  The piece that had circles on it reminded me so much of Northwest Native Art that I decided to use those pieces first.  

I didn't want to just willy-nilly cut into the fabric, so I made copies of it on our home copy machine.  I cut the paper apart and started playing on my design board.  Here are some of the ideas and  progress photo for the art piece.

When I decided that it was what I wanted to make, I pulled out fabrics to give me a color progression and started cutting strips and piecing them together.  

Here is another progress photo, with some strips in place.

So far so good.