March–National Quilting Month

Today is the tail-end of National Quilting Month, and here’s what quilting and I have done together.

My cousin Michelle asked me to create two wall hangings from state bird blocks embroidered by her mother. This is my Aunt Lee who turns 86 on April 13th, two days after my birthday. She stitched the blocks when she was 12. Four had not been completed, so Michelle embroidered those. She gave me complete control over fabric and design choices. I separated the blocks into those with red thread and those which were pastel, finding fabrics which better complemented each set of blocks. That meant that one wall hanging has 16 blocks and the other 12, but they were much more successful this way. I had on-hand the perfect fabric for each one.

This one is finished save for the hanging sleeve and label. I have to ask Michelle what she would like on them. I also need to press the blocks again. They seem to really wrinkle.

The second wall hanging is in progress, still needing quilting and more pressing, as well! The wooden heart garland came from my trip to the UK in 2014. You will notice there aren’t 48 blocks, the number of states at the time Aunt Lee was 12. Who knows why? She doesn’t recall.

Next I quilted a vintage top, which I’m donating to the Comforting Quilts effort of Northwest Quilters Guild. I used a variegated King Tut thread to pull the colors of the patches together. King Tut is a heavier cotton thread–so good texture.

My ninth Hollis Chatelain Master Art Series is fast approaching–the last week of May. I’ve finally had the opportunity to get to our assignment from last year. First I quilted the pieces as instructed. I selected these for having a similar style–swirls and strong movement.  Others in the class chose their pieces based on color.

Then I started at looking at ways to combine the two into an integrated whole, bearing in mind that each piece had to be cut into a minimum of three pieces and I had three fabrics that had to be used to tie the quilted pieces together. I looked for ways to cut the fabrics into “chunks.” Nothing struck me. The more I looked at the quiltlets, the more they reminded me of topographical maps. I starting cutting shapes, and believe me, I have cut each into way more than three pieces. So I’ve certainly met that part of the challenge.

After coming up with a reasonable layout, my next problem was how to actually construct the quilt. Rather than using strips of the three fabrics, which are charcoal, a dusty blue and a dusty purple, I decided to lay all of the quilted pieces on top of a single fabric, then “fill in” the negative spaces with the other two fabrics, a technique I’ve used in the past successfully. I tried the blue first, knowing the purple was too bright.

I didn’t love it so I went with the charcoal. I thought this color made the topo pieces pop.

Here are detail shots.

And last but not least–to cap off National Quilting Month, I learned on Wednesday I received third place in the Landscape category at AQS Quiltweek–Lancaster for my quilt “Z is For Zinnia, C is For Cosmos.” A big whoo-hoo to carry me into April, where this same quilt has been juried into Paducah.