Author Archives: mlwilkie

Unknown's avatar

About mlwilkie

Software Developer, Mother, Wife with keen interest in art, design and crafts of all kinds.

Community {Part I}

8 Replies

Sorry for the leave of absence. No excuses here, just life getting busy. I come back with a conversation dear to my heart, that I want to explore more with you all. Community.

IMG_6856

Quilting has provided me with an amazing community which I did not have before. I am extremely lucky to have a great group of women around me who I call friends. They are there to listen, offer support and laugh or cry. These women are not just local to me but are also people I met virtually online.

fullsizeoutput_e00

Isn’t it funny how some things have changed but others have not. Quilting not only has bought me my community but think of the quilting bees/circles of women who have come before us who also found community. You can easily find photos of women, in the past, sitting on front porches hand stitching and making quilts. It has been such an iconic past-time that a movie was made about it “How to make an American Quilt” (based on a book by Whitney Otto), then more recently, finding community via quilting has been the center of Frances O’Roark Dowell’s audio book (Quilt Fiction podcast) “Friendship Album 1933”.

IMG_2574

Looking back has made me ask questions about my experiences such as;

How did I become part of community and how did it start?
What have I contributed to the community? What can I do to give back?
What makes community strong and keep them going?

IMG_7086

I don’t have all the answers yet (and likely never will) but over the next few posts I would love to explore and share my own community experiences with you all. Also, I would love to hear from you all about your own experiences. Let’s explore similarities, how did you find your community, share things that worked for your group, things that didn’t work out (without it being at someone’s expense – always be nice) or are you still looking for your people?

Book Project: Group {a finish}

4 Replies

As part of my book, I want to show people how to work together as a group designing a quilt. So, I have a couple of projects that highlight a couple of ways of doing that. The first group project is all finished and counts as my last finish of 2018.

img_5369

I had some amazing people contributed. A big thank you to all those that volunteered.

Lynne @monkeyneedle
Paige @quiltedblooms
Tania @iamgingerq
Nicole @mamalovequilts
Sophie @lunalovequilts
Jenn @jennrodriguez1
Melissa @meliherboth
Louise @imfeelincrafty
Valerie @valbetweenquilts
Rebecca @creativeblockquilts
Abigail @cutandalter
Sharon @sharonhollanddesigns

Check out who made what on my instagram feed (@ml_wilkie).

Once I received the blocks I decided that I did not want them all straight and very grid like, and wanted to add some wonkiness. This was accomplished with the sashing between blocks. The other thing I decided I wanted to do was add a color key of the palette used in the quilt. This was accomplished with the flying geese addition on the bottom right.

I had decided early on that most of my quilts for my book, I will be paying for someone else to quilt. It is not my favorite part and if I waited for me to quilt them all, we would never be finished. Luckily, in the quilting community there are lots of people who love this part of quilting. Krishma (from @krishmaquilts) is one such person and does amazing work. I have watched Krishma on social media grow over the last few years and her quilting skills are impressive. I asked her to quilt this one for me. She did an amazing job.

img_5368

Lastly, the binding I added was to ground and frame the quilt. Navy blue was an obvious choice, however, this particular C+S print was perfect. I loved the grid look but the small  surprises were in the colors that matched the quilt…white and pink/coral. A perfect finish.

Details

Name : ??? still needs a name – open to suggestions. 
Design: Design as a group
Fabric: Defined color palette use of solids and prints; whatever was in stash
Binding: C+S
Dimensions: 
Quilted: By Krishma from Krishma Quilts

The quilt is done but I don’t have a name for it. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment?

 

 

 

Mt. SohCahToa {a finish}

3 Replies

When designing a new quilt design, I am usually inspired by things around me and what I have seen. This time was no different. This past year (April 2018), we had the most amazing road trip in Utah and a smidge in Arizona. We visited 7 national parks and a couple of other parks in 7 days (Arches, Canyonlands, Natural Bridges, Monument Valley, Glen Canyon Dam, Horse Shoe Bend, Antelope Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon @ml.wilkie_adventures).

mosaicee143ba37843aaf84393a4b4e9bcdde41040cda7

More images of our trip you can check out my other Instagram account (@ml.wilkie_adventures)

It was such an inspiring trip. One of the images that made me think of a quilt design was one of the La Sal Mountain range seen from Arches National Park. The continuous looking peaks lead me to a design using lines of angled triangles. The color’s represent the snow-capped peaks and rock base. These colors are also inspired by the color of the mountains from a distance.

30515994_10156490407837625_5960721326111981568_o

I submitted the design to the MQG for a Quilt of the Month and it was released in December (lucky last of the year).  Knowing that I had to make a pattern from this, meant I actually needed to consider repeatability and provide measurements that when making  I wouldn’t normally worry about.

fullsizeoutput_a50

After some trail and error, I paper pieced the triangles as accuracy of those triangles were important to the overall design. In a hilarious conversation with friends on working out the length of those rows, I broke out my math skills. As these are isosceles triangles, I divided a single triangle down the middle and worked out 1/2 Base using the right-angled triangles using some geometry (Soh-Cah-Toa). This gave me enough to calculate the length of those rows for you all but more importantly a few laughs with friends. When it came to naming the quilt, this conversation lead to the name.

fullsizeoutput_a85

For quilting, I used a light blue grey Aurifil thread for some 1/2″ straight line quilting. I used the horizontal lines of the triangles as a guide. As a surprise, adding more interest, some echoed triangles were stitched randomly into the quilting lines. You’ll find these not only within the triangles but also echoed in some of the negative space.

fullsizeoutput_abe

Lastly, I wanted to highlight that last horizontal lines (the base of the snow line). I did this using two different colors in the binding and color blocked it to match the fabric color palette in the design.

fullsizeoutput_abf

Details

Name : Mt. Soh-Cah-Toa
Design: Design by myself
Fabric: Paintbrush Studio’s Painters Palette Solids.
Binding: Paintbrush Studio’s Painters Palette Solids
Dimensions:  60″ x 60″
Quilted: Straight Line 1/2″ with inset echoed triangles

If you are an MQG member, you can get this free pattern from the resources web page here.