Wall art mounted on a canvas

I purchased a small canvas a while ago with the intent of making a small art piece to mount onto it.  I got the idea from Cindy Grisdela who paints her canvas black before mounting the small quilt. Here is her full tutorial: mounting-art-quilts-on-canvas-tutorial/  Well, I painted that little canvas and then it sat and actually collected dust on my table.  It was time to get that project done!

I pulled out some fabric scraps and sewed 4 improv arc pieces.  These were sewn together with coping strips in the same fabrics.  It was quilted with metallic pink thread and faced with black fabric.  I  used gel medium to adhere the quilt to the canvas and let it sit overnight underneath heavy books.

And here is the finished wall art.  It's 10" x 10" and I love it!

I hope you like it too!

Cindy Grisdela improv piecing quilt - Final - Swirls

This is a continuation of a previous post about the quilt started in a Cindy Grisdela class on improv curved piecing.  

I quilted the piece with straight lines using black thread and a walking foot.  I placed the lines by using the edge of the walking foot.  I don't why it is that the lines eventually drift one way or the other.  I know that this is not only my problem.  Jacquie Gering posted a YouTube video a few years ago about solving the drifting problem.  And she has written THE BOOK about walking foot quilting.  So, what I did was to quilt 5-6 lines on the left side of the block, then 5-6 lines on the right side.  When those were done, and were clearly drifting, I sewed right down the middle of the block.  Each remaining section of unstitched space was then divided and quilted, until all of the unquilted sections were done.  I like the look of some lines thin and some wider.  It makes my quilt a little more human-made.  And I am a maker.

Its faced with solid black fabric and measures 41"x 41".  I named it "Swirls".

I hope you like it.

Cindy Grisdela class on improv curved piecing - Part One

Our quilt guild recently hosted a 2-day zoom class with Cindy Grisdela on improv curved piecing.  Even though I've done a lot of this before, I always jump at the chance to take classes and see what I can learn from either the teacher or from the other students.  This was no exception.

I made 9 blocks that were about 15" square.  I used a combination of several different hand dyed fabrics and a few commercial prints.  One of the zingers that I added was a black and white stripe cut very thin.  Here are the 9 blocks that were completed during the class.

I didn't like the way it looked for several reasons:

   - The orange backgrounds were too bright

   - I thought that it needed more movement, and continuity

   - It could be bigger

I cut out a few small circles from Ricky Tims poly stable stuff and pinned them up.  That looked really good to me.

Then I took out all of the orange backgrounds and made a few more potential starts to blocks.  Some of the circles were covered with fabric.

It started to look better.  Then I made a decision about the backgrounds on the two bottom blocks and  thought about making 3 more blocks to get a little more movement on the bottom left.  What I ended up with were just the nine blocks that were 15-3/4" to 14-1/2" square.  I decided to square them all up to 14-1/2" and started covering the circles with fabric.  Here is what that all ended up looking like.

I decided that this piece was done and that I didn't need to keep making it bigger.   (Mostly because I have two other garden ladies all ready to start and I'd rather work on those for now.)  So, I stitched down all the little circles and called it complete.

I hope you like the way the top turned out.  

Inserting skinny lines - square in a square

I was asked to do a little workshop on how to insert skinny lines into quilts.  I've done a bit of it before, and wanted to include both straight line inserts and curved inserts and both of varying widths.  I took inspiration from Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr, Irene Roderick, Cindy Grisdela, and Jean Wells, among others.  It seems like the super skinny lines are showing up more often in quilt shows and  that intrigued me.

I showed skinny lines inserted into curved pieces that finished about 1/8" on a previous blog.  These will be  about 1/4" inserted into a square in a square block.  I cut a wonky rectangle to start with.  To this, I sewed the 3/4" strips of gold with a 1/8" seam, pressed, and trimmed them to 1/2" from the sewn line.  I used strips about 3" wide from the lime green fabric and sewed those in the next row with 1/4" seam allowance.  

I trimmed them wonky after they were pressed, and to be 1" to 2" wide.  

The process continued with more 3/4" strips of gold, and one more row of lime green.  On one side, I inserted a strip of gold.  The piece ended up about 7-1/2" x 7-1/2", with one side wonky.  I may or may not trim this when it gets sewn into the quilt.  

I hope this helps sew skinny lines into some of your blocks.