Arizona wall quilt

My sister retired from a job in Alaska and didn't want to spend one more winter freezing.  She and her husband actually both retired and headed to Arizona, where they found a nice home.  She sent me a few pictures of bare walls and asked for a quilt (or two) to help decorate her home.

Here are the bare walls and color preferences.

I used to make Native American themed quilts and thought that perhaps I could do that.  But I then started thinking about other desert motifs and how they are more prevalent in Arizona vacation homes now.  I showed my sister some of my ideas and she sent me more pictures.  We settled on a sunset scene.

The background was made using freehand cutting and sewing with some strips inserted.  My sister likes the Kokopelli motif, so I sketched this one onto steam a seam light and fused the black fabric to the background.  It was quilted and faced.

I hope you like it.

Bride dress quilt, part Two

This is a continuation of a previous post about making a quilt from a bride dress.

 I cut out circles from most of the woman-made fabrics and fused them onto the center piece (although they didn't stick that great to the bride dress polyester fabric).   I used Misty Fuse for the lightweight pieces and Lite Steam-A-Seam 2 for the heavier pieces.

Here are the three pieces pinned to the design board.

I'm going to show you how to piece with free form curved lines.    First, lay the two pieces on top of each other and free form cut a line.  I wanted this one to be a gentle curve so I followed the line of the stay stitching.

Nest,  separate the pieces and remove the excess fabric  from both the top and bottom layers.  (I removed some of the paper so that I could sew this seam.

Because there were pin-tucks in the fabric and I didn't want them to flip or to separate, I carefully placed pins to match up the seams.  You don't usually need to do this, but it a great way to keep a long seam from shifting too much.  Just place the pins opposite of each other on each piece, then match them up in the next step.

Then you will flip the concave piece over the top of the convex one so that they fabric that wants to bunch up is on the top.  In this case, I didn't want to disturb the pin-tucks, so they were more stable on the bottom.  Remember - concave is the inner curve, and convex is the outer curve.   Match up the pins and place extra ones if you need it to stabilize the seam before sewing.

After the seam is sewn, press it to one side.  The picture below shows one seam sewn and the next one ready to cut, pin and sew.

And here is the top all ready to quilt.

(to be continued)

I hope you enjoyed seeing this piecing technique and try it on your next project.

Orange - Heat Wave - Part One

My local art quilt group put out a call for entries for an exhibit called "Heat Wave".  I immediately thought of the bright orange of the forest fires that we have been experiencing all over the Western United States over the last couple of years.

I sketched up a few ideas, looked through my pictures, and scoured the internet for additional color inspiration.  What I landed on was a plan to make a piece 3' x 4' with flames licking up from the bottom part of the quilt and pieces of burning embers floating up and through the trees.

I collected a few fabrics that spoke to me.  This time I really wanted to free form piece the background and layer on the units in a more intuitive way.  I free form cut curvy lines and started piecing.  Here are some progress pictures.

Background fabric try outs

 After putting the strip pieced units against the remaining fabrics, I opted to piece in some of the dark brown and continued to piece intuitively and free form cut the strips.

Upper background piecing progress 1

 Here is the upper background fully pieced.  You can see that it mostly covers the top 2/3 of the area.  The lower 1/3 was purposely reserved for a different technique and a different foreground look.  I asked my husband to come in and tell me the first thing that came to mind when he looked at this background, and he said, " FIRE".  Yippee!  It has the feeling that I was going for.

Upper background piecing progress 2

I hope it feels like FIRE to you too.  Stay tuned for future progress.

Something's Fishy

My husband loves to fish.  It's as much of a passion for him as quilting is for me.  Last April I bought a couple of yards of fish themed fabric to make him a quilt.  I finally pulled it out of the stash and got working on it.  I'm glad to be working on something that will bring him some joy and comfort.  I don't want to tell all that is going on, but let me just say that we got some bad news about his health in June.

Something's Fishy by Joanne Adams Roth

Here's a picture of the fabric before I cut it apart and after it was cut into separate pictures:

I had a general idea that I would place the pictures in vertical rows, with a background that was earthy and watery.  I pulled out matching fabrics and did some free form curved piecing, inserting a piece of fabric here and there.  Then, I realized I didn't want to cut these all apart to piece in the pictures.  So fusing was the option I decided upon.

Here is a progress picture.  You can see that I pieced the center panel, fused down two rows, then kept adding rows to the right and left.  I tried to match up the rows, but didn't care that they didn't match perfectly, since the overall quilt was going to have a choppy feeling anyway.

Progress 

I'm showing you how I piece the curvy pieces together with a 1/8" seam.  This is my version of what I have been taught by other teachers.  I cut the gentle curve with both pieces right sides up, then toss out the trimmings.  Most teachers tell you to grab both pieces and gently line up the edges as you sew, and let the length just end up where it wants to.  I find that this method gives me a piece that doesn't lay flat when I'm done.  So my addition is to start by adding pins every 4-5" inches to keep the pieces somewhat in line.  This really helps if the curve is deep.

Then I put the pieces right sides together and match up the pins.  I don't try to match up the entire seam; this would take too much time.

I take it to the sewing machine and while holding the pin and the top flat, but not tight, I start to sew the 1/8" seam.  When I need to push the top piece over to meet the bottom piece and use my finger to gently push it over.  When I need to pull the top piece back, I gently pull it back.  All the time, I keep holding it flat and even to the next pin.  This way, I only have to contend with about 4" at a time.  Here are a couple of pictures showing the gently push and pull on the top piece.





















I finished the quilt and presented it to my husband in the picture below.  Looks happy, don't you think?