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 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

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.