Category Archives: Project Finishes

Daughter’s Love {a finish}

I have finally finished the quilt, I have been working on for my Mum. Making something for someone you love has been very humbling experience. Even more so, since my mum (as mentioned previously) has a brain tumor and currently undergoing Chemotherapy. This quilt “Daughter’s Love”, I hope will bring her comfort as I can not be with her.

The original design was inspired by the crosses/pluses that are in the stained glass window of a Scottish Castle.

imm023_24-palette

I thought the plus blocks in the original design looked a little heavy, so I removed two of the corners. Alternating the direction, also gave this great secondary square design. QDAD_29JUL2015

While I love the color palette in the original design, I decided to change it to suit my Mum more. Her favorite colors are orange and purple, hence the final colors of orange, purple, yellow, coral/peach, and magenta. There are 98 different colored prints used, 20 white on neutral prints for the background with 4 neutral solids.

DaughtersLove_Finish

For the backing I used Tula Pink’s wide back print, Free Fall. It worked as such a great complementary print to the front of the quilt.

DaughtersLove_Back

I decided that, I didn’t want to continue the squares and lines with the quilting, so a spiral design it was. Little did I realize it would take a huge ~120 hours for the quilting but I love the end result. Thanks to everyone in the Instagram community that encouraged me through this 🙂 One of the other design decisions, was starting the spiral quilting in an off centered location, which just happened to be one of my favorite combinations of prints. The spiral quilting was 1/2″ lines using Aurifil #2021.

DaughtersLove_Quilting

In this close-up of the quilting center you can also see the use of some of the white on neutral prints. The binding was not as easy a decision as I thought it would be. I was trying a dark orange but it did not work. I landed up using a coral based print with orange stripes (Carolyn Friedlander).

DaughtersLove_Binding

I will be releasing the pattern (pdf) for this quilt, in various sizes, August 8th via my payhip shop. All sales, in the first month, will be donated to Cancer Society, New Zealand who help provide services to my Mum including accommodation while she was having treatment away from home.

Details

Name: Daughter’s Love
Design: Designed by me
Fabric: 98 different colored prints, 20 white on neutral prints, 4 Kona solid neutrals
Backing: Tula Pink Free Fall wideback
Binding: Carolyn Friedlander, Carkai, Grid Diamond in Creamsicle Metallic
Dimensions: 70″ x 70″
Quilted: Spiral design, 1/2″ spacing, Aurifil #2021

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Sunday Best {a finished top}

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A few weeks ago, I was stressing out about so many things – work, quilt projects, household tasks, kid things. I decided that I needed a creative reboot and find a project that involved little to no planning, no stress….just free playing around.

I have been inspired by Luci Summers’ “Quilt Improv: Incredible Quilts from Everyday Inspirations” and Sherri Lynn Wood’s “The Improv Handwork for Modern Quilters” for a while. I thought an improv project would meet my goal. I have to say, I loved every minute of this project.

Week10_SundayBest

I added some limits:

Only use colored solids from my scrap bin to help me reduce my scraps
A single addition is added each Sunday, spending no more than 2 hours to ensure I didn’t over think things or plan too much…go with the flow of that day
At some stage (around week 2) decided I would used strip pieces and black/white stripe fabric for fillers.

Week 1

This first week I just wanted to start really simple, so I did some strip piecing by cutting irregularly strips (no ruler used) and placing them in a bag. I pulled out a piece and stitched them to another and continued until the bag was empty. I continued with this method “brown bag method” until I landed up with this strip. I did trim with a ruler once all sewn together.

Week1_SundayBest

Week 2

My love for the strip piecing continued, but this piece was inspired by the rail fence block. I played with the vertical and horizontal placement. I was slightly short on a couple of blocks, so I used the black/white stripe fabric as a filler. The saved the off-cuts from the block sections, thinking I could use them as filler pieces later on.

Week2_SundayBest

Week 3

I have mentioned previously how much I love Tapa cloths, I actually have 4 in my room. One of the designs is this diamond/double triangle, which inspired this addition. Most of these triangles were cut out of a 5″ charm pack that was in my scrap bin. I then played with the border and realized that I had some colored pieces that were not big enough to do both sides….this lead to the mixed borders around the triangles.

This addition is one of my favorites, and may lead to a new quilt design.

Week 4

Black and White solids were called for this week. It was Mother’s Day weekend. I was feeling down. I was thinking about my Mum and whether this could be her last mother’s day, and then feeling the additional guilt for not having her quilt finished yet.

I started with just wonky flying geese but they didn’t seem to fit. I added some of the HST off-cuts of the flying geese and loved the chaos look they provided to the flying geese. This is what, I finished with.

Week 5

Inspired by Frank Stella’s art work, I decided to play with curves this week. I had so much fun creating the orange peel – like block. I wasn’t done with improv curves though, and added a second block, inspired from my tapa cloths. After adding these two blocks, I realized that the column layout didn’t work as well. I decided to change the layout some.

Week 6

From week 3, I had a lot of left over triangles. In order to not have additional scraps, I stitched them blindly together (brown bag method) to make HSR (Half Square Rectangles).

Week 7

There have been several quilts lately, that inspired me to make these stripe 45 degree angled blocks. This addition is my favorite part of the quilt. I love how they fit horizontally across the bottom, complementing the columnar piecing from the previous week.

Week7_SundayBest

Week 8

I struggled this week. I had a couple of ideas and neither were working in this gap. One idea was another circular block but I think the color palette I used for the block made it not fit with the rest of the quilt. Don’t get me wrong, I love the block but think it needs its own quilt.

The other idea was various small log cabin blocks. Again, they did not look right. I decided to call it a day. I took the day off for my birthday this week, and gave it another go. Something made me cut up the log cabins and sew them all back together. That was it….a perfect addition to my crazy quilt.

Week 9

At this stage, I was feeling that the project was winding up. I pieced all the left over strip scraps and added the left column strip. Off-cuts from this, and having the old TV end of program sign stuck in my head, lead me to adding the black/white circle block (based on my phased circle block). Lastly, it was just finalizing layout and adding the filler pieces (which I also added for balance).

Week 10

This final week, I conquered my fear of partial seams (not easy when stitching really large parts of a quilt) and stitched it all together. It’s now a finished quilt top, measuring ~ 50 x 52″.

I am totally in love with this quilt. I am thinking, right now, of matchstick quilting it, using yellow thread (or may be various colors). I have to mentally prepare myself though for matchstick quilting.

For now though, I loved this free process so much I have already started another improv project (using that circle block from week 8).

Linking up with Amanda Jean @ Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday.

Succulent meets Bauhaus designs

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What do you get when you are inspired by succulents and Bauhaus designs?? This is what came out of my quilt design a day exercise.

QDAD_09JUL2015_Succulent

I love this color palette as it is somewhat outside of my comfort zone as many of the colors are muted.

IMG_4933-palette

When discussing with the wonderful Alice from Love Patchwork and Quilting, on submissions, she asked if it would be possible to take this initial design and make a 3 part pillow set. I was so excited about the idea, and thought it would be great. The second design was pretty quick and the third took about 2 weeks, but it was so worth it as I love how all three came out.

This month two of the three designs, are now available in issue 34 of Love Patchwork and Quilting, which was released today (digital format).
Issue 34 cover

The process of making these into pillows was really a great new experience. These designs are super complex for such a small space. I did make the first design a Euro style pillow size 26″ as it really couldn’t easily translate any smaller. This original design did not make it into the magazine but I am working on making the pattern available soon.

Abstract Trio _1

The other two designs, inspired by this one, were somewhat simplified and worked great as a 20″ pillow. Love Patchwork and Quilting does such a great job of staging – look at this second design. The design picks up on the triangular negative space within the center of the above design and the triangle border.

Michelle Wilkie(1) [Photo Credit: Love Patchwork and Quilting]

The third design, focuses on the mix of the lines and the smaller triangles nested in the larger triangle and border. triangle cushion front [Photo Credit: Love Patchwork and Quilting]

I love the pillow backs, I used Heather Givens, grey succulents fabric which is still available online at my LQS – Cary Quilting Company.