digitalis quilt

Today I started working on the digitalis triptych which is the 4th assessment for my C&G course. The picture shows the separate blocks which are pinned on my design wall. This quilt will be a combination of inserts and applique. At the moment the pieces are ready to be stitched together after which I can start working on the applique. Some of the applique leaves will be made in 3d technique. And as usually all the fabrics are handdyed.

nyb is finished

My nyb is finished! I followed Karen Stone's Cinco de Mayo pattern, but used only black and white commercial fabrics. Each block is 6"x6" and the number of fabric pieces per block is between 80 and 130. I did not calculate the total number of snippets, but it must be more than 4000. For quilting pattern I used a red thread and quilted spiderwebs and grasses on the blocks. The blocks are all handpieced, only for the quilting I used my machine. September 2006 I started working on this quilt and I estimated that it would take me a year to finish. Well I managed that :-)

flower power challenge

I hope this message does not show up twice as I got an error message when I uploaded it.

This is the quilt I made for the Flower Power Challenge of QA. The test showed that I was a violet. For the background I used handdyed fabric in different violet colors of which I made lopsided log cabin blocks. On this background I appliqued a group of violets using commercial fabrics. The size of the quilt is 29"x23". For quilting pattern I used a combination of pansies and vineleafs. I am way ahead of time as the challenge deadline is September 15.

nyb and needle

All the separate nyb blocks are stitched together. This was the last stitching by hand on this quilt. For the blocks I have drawn spiderwebs and grasses on transparant paper and I started free motion quilting them this afternoon. The first 10 blocks went without any problems. Then I stitched through my finger and boy, did that HURT!! I could pull out the needle, but it broke and part of the needle remained in my finger. I could not see where it was so there was no way to pull it out by myself.
I went to the ER of the hospital. They took x-rays of my indexfinger and decided that the part can remain there without any problems. Have to get back in 2 weeks to have them check my finger.
I am typing now with only 9 fingers and that is difficult. There were a lot of typo's to correct :-)
No more stitching today. Instead I will be reading the new Harry Potter which the mail brought me today.
Wil

nyb and other things

Last September I started working on Karen's stone nyb pattern. I prepared all 36 blocks, a couple of thousand snippets of fabric, all in black and white fabrics. This week I finished block 36 and thought that was the last one. When I put them all together on my design block it appeared that one block has disappeared into a black hole. I am now working on block 37 :-). This week I will stitch them all together and than I can start quilting them. This will be done by machine because otherwise it would take me another year to finish.

The flower power challenge quilt is nearing its completion. Half of the border has to be done and than this one is finished as well. The test which was the starting point of this challenge - and all the results which were possible can be seen here: http://www.thisgardenisillegal.com/2007/07/flower-quiz-revisited.html

Further I worked this weekend on one of the complex cloth round robin fabrics which are at my place at the moment. On this fabric I was the 4th to work on. Because I did not want to disturb the lovely pattern in the centre of the fabric I decided to use a flour paste resist on the corners. When it was dried and cracked I applied black textile paint on it which gave a lovely craquelé (sp?) effect on it. There is a picture of it at the beginning of this message.

Wil

challenge quilt

This morning I finished my challenge quilt for Dyehard Surfacing, based on the challenge announced on http://www.thr3foldjournal.com/. The inspiration source for it was the pond in front of my house. There are 5 islands in it and this spring a couple of swans made their nest on one of them. They have 5 cygnets now.

I made the quilt with hand dyed fabrics and lots of quilting on it. In the detail pictures you can see some of it. For the quilt I have to make for module 9 of my C&G 7922 course I want to use the same technique for building the background and probably also for the stitching. This quilt wil be a triptych with foxgloves on it. The foxgloves will be composed of inserts and some of them will be appliqued.

journal quilt

Two months ago I joined a Dutch journal quilt group. I have to get used to making a quilt each month, but for July I made this one. It is called "Hidden Sun". The weather here has been very wet lately with too litte sun.

I used a handdyed parfait (turkey red and golden yellow) with a

shell and golden lutrador. And a lot of machinequilting. Before I applied the lutrador to the fabric I used my heatgun on it to create a lacy effect.

challenge quilt

The last couple of days I have been working on the quilting of the challenge quilt. The water was done with a continuous line design. That one did not take much time. But for the islands I have chosen a much more complicated design. As you can see from the detail picture it involves a lot of independently stitched lines with a huge number of thread ends. I know that this can be avoided by stitching in the same spot beginning and ending a line, but I don't like that method.

When I have time I read the mails I get from QuiltArt. Or when I see a mail with an interesting title. Some time ago I read an online test you can do which says what type of flower you are. This test is the starting point for a challenge QuiltArt is doing at the moment. For more information see this link: http://flowerpowerchallenge.blogspot.com/2007/06/flower-power-challenge-guidelines.html.

According to this test I am a Violet. With this I have been playing around in my mind and I have found a layout I want to do for this challenge. It will not be a traditional violet flower. I am thinking of making a background in a violet color with an outline of a violet flower on top of that. After all there is one more meaning of the word violet :-). It is a good thing that I have a lot of time to be creative at the moment, cause the ideas to create quilts are numerous.