More Quilts

When we decided to rent our house in France way back in 2004, I made a few quilts to decorate the house and added one I made the previous year.  I honestly thought they wouldn't survive, what with children touching them etc.  However, apart from needing a good shake to get the fluff off, they are fine.

Sparks Fly 
I made this quilt in April 2003.  I had purchased some variegated, fusible bias tape and wanted to play with it.  I wasn't into the celtic design quits that it was generally used for, but adaption is everything, right?

I laid strips of the tape haphazardly across the fabric and fused them into place with an iron.  It didn't occur to me at this stage to sew them down, well hindsight is everything.

I took my trusty rotary cutter and cut the fabric into 20 blocks.  I turned them over so that I couldn't see them, turned some of them upside down or sideways and generally mixed them up.  Then I took each block as it came and stitched it to the next block, which gave me no control over the design.  I don't lay claim to this technique, I had read about doing this with a completely different type of quilt.

It was at this point that I realised that the adhesive wasn't going to hold the tape, so I then had to hand applique the strips in place.

I used random contouring quilting for the blocks and a loopy pattern for the black boarder.

The label was made using my sewing machine's lettering stitch.


In the Pink!
This is the first quilt I made especially for the house, in February 2004.  Unusually for me, it is from a pattern, and is followed to the letter.  Well apart from the way I quilted it!  The pattern comes from 'Successful Scrap Quilts' by Judy Turner and Margaret Rolfe.

The quilt is made up of 25 blocks, each of which has 8 rectangles.

The dark fabrics of the quilt are free motioned stitched with a large stipple design, whilst the lighter blocks are simply quilted, using a free motion zigzag stitch, which has for the most part been angled to change it's shape.

I had also just discovered the luminous pink thread at a show.  it really catches the light, as you can see close up.




Lava Flow
In May of the same year, I completed Lava flow.  It is based on the work of Libby Lehman, of whom I am a huge fan.  I love her quilts, I love her sense of humour and do you know what?  She is as lovely in person when you take a class from her, as I was privileged to do in Houston.  She made things fun and I think she inspired me to just have fun with my quilts instead of adhering to the ideas of the quilt police.  If you want to have some fun, buy her book 'Threadplay with Libby Lehman'.

This quilt uses reverse applique, my first encounter with this technique.  On a large sheet of freezer paper, I drew a design, based on some television footage (probably Nat. Geo!) of an erupting volcano.  I layered a yellow hand-dyed fabric behind a similar purple fabric (is it purple, I can never tell that colour from mauve?).  I layered the design over the top of the two fabrics and slowly free motion quilted the outline of the design, using transparent thread.

I gently tore away the freezer paper and with a very sharp pair of scissors, cut away the top fabric layer cutting inside and close to the stitching, revealing the yellow underneath.  I prepared the quilt sandwich and free motion contoured the purple area.

Then the fun really began.  Using both zigzag and straight stitches, I free motion stitched the lava in a variety of colours.   Let me tell you, it was fun, just as Libby had promised.

The back of the quilt was an orange and yellow fabric, which I felt was a good match for all the fire on the front.

Incidentally, as I was looking up the previous quilt pattern just now, to make sure I referenced the correct book, I was amused to see that the quilt design I used was also called Lava Flow.  Clearly that must have left a germ of an idea.  The quilts couldn't be more different.  Funny how the name is interpreted so differently.


Autumn in Tokyo
Whilst living in Tokyo, I acquired some lovely hand-dyed fabrics.  I cut slightly graduated colours and simply pieced the quilt.

I drew a tree onto freezer paper, lightly adhered it to the quilt and then free motioned stitched through the paper.  I carefully tore the paper away from the stitching to reveal the tree.

I copied some of the leaves from the backing fabric onto freezer paper and did the same thing.  This time I use metallic threads and stitched the leaf two or three times.

I then free motion quilted the rest of the quilt using a loopy pattern.  The quilting may be clearer in black and white.

From afar you really only see the quilt colour, it is only as you draw nearer that you see the tree and leaves.

Bleak View
Although this was the first quilt I made that year, I have left it until last to talk about.  It wasn't made especially for the house, but that is where it ended up.

This was my first attempt at a landscape quilt.  I fell in love with landscape quilts the first time I saw one.  Unfortunately, I find them very difficult to complete.  This one was actually quite quick, though I think it was because it is very much like a quilt in the book I used to start me on this technique 'Landscape Quilts by Nancy Zieman and Natalie Sewell'.  In my usual go at it full force, I went out and bought loads of fabric, but then ended up making this very somber quilt.  My quilt differs from Natalie's 'Winter in the Park' in that I think mine is much bleaker.  I find winter a depressing time, I am most definitely a summer person.

The first challenge for me was to use white.  As a quilter I loathe this colour, and really have to push myself to use it.  I also prefer warm colours, so find it hard to tune in to cold colours such as white and grey.  Luckily for me I had some lovely brown fabrics, which added some much needed warmth to the quilt.

The snow and the trees were randomly cut using a rotary cutter, and glued into place using a glue stick.   At that time I was unable to find either fabric or movable gluesticks, and as advised, I glued liberally.  Hum, that made for difficult sewing!

The tree branches are made from fabric and tapered off using thread in the quilting process.  The leaves were actually from a leaf fabric which I fussy cut and stitched into place.

As always I went about things in my own way, and instead of sewing down all the elements first, doing all the stitch work and THEN quilting lightly, I choose to quilt everything.  I think this really was my first 'quilt it to death' quilt.  You can see that I tried to emulate the nature of the element I was quilting, be it the snow, the grass or the tree.

I remember that I was hurrying to finish this quilt as I wanted to display it for our annual Cherry Blossom party.  I finished it and hung it up on display, only to realise it really needed more.  Back down it came and I drew in the trees in the far background.  I put the quilt back up but it still didn't look right, so back down it came and I machined the trees instead, which felt a lot better.

I had some wonderfully apt fabric for the back of the quilt.  I was also quite pleased that the binding finally worked after a lot of struggle lining up the colours.  I really loved that element.

Given that this quilt used colours I didn't like, you would think it would not sit well with me - believe me this happens, but I really love this quilt.  I have such fun memories tied up with making it.  I had a tiny quilt room - you would have struggled to get a single (twin) bed in there, and it was full of my quilting stuff.  As I couldn't get a perspective on the quilt, I had to pin it to my work board, take it to the end of the hallway (our apartment was long and narrow), run back to my room and look at it from there.  Then I'd go back down the hall, move something a fraction and then go back up and look at it again.  This went on for hours, and I loved every moment of it.  I was listening to Zadie Smith's 'White Teeth' on an audiobook, a fantastic Christmas present from Alan, it was just so funny.

This is what quilting is all about.  The enjoyment of creating.  I was so proud when I finished this quilt.  It wouldn't win any prizes, but when you looked at it, you could see exactly what it was.  For someone who thought she could never draw or paint a picture, I realised that maybe it was just the medium that had been wrong all along, and that for me, fabric was my entree into the art world and that from there, for me, all things would flow.