Text

As every month I worked on a quilt for Sky is the Limit. The theme for November was Text (me). My first idea was to use something with auto-correct, but that looked too static. For who does not know what auto-correct is, when you type in a text message in your phone, your phone suggests words while you are typing. Quite often those words are not the ones you want and can give a whole different meaning to what you are typing. Can you imagine how those messages turn out if you use both Dutch as well as English on your phone ????
Anyway, I was not happy with how this looked, so I had to take a different route. While I was at Kelly I had used her Egyption hieroglyph stamp to stamp on some fabric. I decided to use that, but had to find other text as well. In my studio I found a background which I made a couple of years ago which still needed some applique on it. On google I found inspiration in the mean of a dancing couple and with some word bubbles I came to this quilt. Text - or in general communication - is so important that it can be very akward if you do not understand the other party. Speaking the same language is essential. This is the idea behind my quilt for this month.
All the fabrics used are my own hand dyed ones. And as always the size is 12"x12". Now I only have to find a title for this quilt.

ALQS7

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I participated in the ALQS7 quiltswap organised by Kate. The quilt I made for this swap:

 

is on it's way to Australia to Andrea. And this is the beauty I received from Sabine in Germany:

 

 

Kate, I want to thank you for organising this swap and no doubt there will be a next one in the future. If you want to participate, check out Kate's blog on a regular base.

And one more tree

Here is the latest tree I made. The picture is not the best, in reality it is square and not like the picture shows. As with my other trees I used hand dyed / painted fabric for it and a facing. This one is called Weeping Willow.
More trees will follow in the future, although I have to admit at the moment I am not working on one. Some other commitments and ideas for shows will have to be done first :-).

Update

It has been some time since I last wrote on this blog, but that does not mean that I have been idle :-). I completed several of the tree quilts I started last month, as you can see on the following pictures:  

Besides the 3 finished ones, I am still working on 2 other ones as well. After those 5  I am certain that more will follow as I have more ideas for these funky trees.

Usually I do a 4-part binding on my quilts, but recently I have been playing with different types of 'edge finishing' . After all, a strip around the quilt can reduce the impact of the quilt. Here is a close up of the spiral tree quilt:

As you see there is nothing at the front which shows of the binding. When the top was complete, I measured the back of the quilt and marked the 12"x12" size with a black marker. Next step was to cut away the backing and the batting. This is a tricky step as it is very easy to cut into the top fabric as well. Now there are 2 ways of continuing. If there is enough fabric from the top, it is a matter of measuring this and folding it back. In my case there was only a few millimeters of fabric so I had to add 4 strips, one to each side. These strips I stitched to the top,  folded them to the back so that the stitch line was exactly at the edge of the quilt. I pinned this down and hand stitched it to the back, as you can see on this detail picture:

 This new technique made me realize that in future I have to cut the top fabric a bit bigger. It is much easier to just fold back the 4 sides than adding strips to it :-).