Rhododendron
December 4, 2011 at 8:28 pm | Posted in Patchwork | 1 CommentI just realized I hadn’t even photographed this year’s challenge quilt for my quilt group, much less blogged about it. So now is a good time to catch up, lest you think I didn’t get anything crafty done all year! The challenge fabric I received in December last year was a bright yellow-orange batik with small stripes on it. My thoughts almost immediately turned to flowers, and since I just had a few photographs around I had used for my watercolour course, an idea wasn’t far off. I was going to try to turn this photograph into a 40×40 cm quilt:
So I went ahead and turned this into a piecing pattern à la Ruth B. McDowell. This is a copy of the paper pattern traced from the photograph, coloured in for easier reference when assembling the quilt.
You can see that I extended the piecing lines of the flowers into the background in order to prevent too many awkward seams. One thing I didn’t do is to make sure I have one line go through the entire pattern, making it possible to sew two halves of the quilt and then close one central seam last. If I was making this pattern again, that’s definitely something I would adjust, since it would be quite easy to line up the seam that goes straight through the big flower with the seam that attaches the right part of the bud. I’ve added a blue line to the drawing to show the minimal change that would be needed to make life that much easier for piecing:
But well, since I am stubborn and realized my mistake too late, I went ahead and made up my quilt using the original drawing enlarged to the right size and transferred to freezer paper.
The challenge fabric is the one I used for the big flower. I didn’t have enough of it to use it for all the flowers, so I was forced to use a different fabric for the buds. Turns out that was a good thing, so I have some contrast in the colour of the flowers! I also challenged myself to make this quilt using only fabrics from my stash that currently threatens to spill out of its hiding place, and ended up with a very busy background. Seems I have a love for busy and colourful fabric, since I didn’t have anything a bit more subdued in my collection. I have since then made a conscious effort to add a few lighter and neutral fabrics suitable for backgrounds and the like to my stash, since I’m sure that won’t be the last nature-inspired quilt I have made.
A Postcard from Holland
September 18, 2011 at 2:19 pm | Posted in Patchwork | Leave a commentTaking part in an international postcard exchange I received this pretty card from Holland:
The colours drew me in immediately, and one of the small pictures was begging me to make a quilt out of it. So how could I resist? Since those images are tiny, the first thing I did is get out my paints (water-soluble wax pastels actually) and made a bigger version to work out the colours and their placement:
The paper I used is A3 size, and I figured I could just double all the dimensions to get a nice wallhanging about A1 size. Sewing this up was quite a novelty for me. I didn’t do any detailed planning and tried to not use any rulers when cutting the fabric. I just sewed the big striped panels depicting the tulip fields with a tentative plan to join them later. Which I did, in a completely different way than I first imagined. Because I didn’t measure anything exactly, things didn’t fit perfectly on the first try, but after a bit of resewing things worked out. I inserted the dark fabric for the roads by first cutting the striped panel into the right form, then copying that form onto the dark fabric together with some marks for correct fitting. Of course I forgot to take pictures of the process, but here is one where the last corner is still missing:
I didn’t even sew a panel for that last corner, I just continued to add stripes until it was no longer missing. Here’s the finished top, already layered for quilting, viewed from the right direction:
I’m currently in the process of quilting it very simply: Linear lines in the striped panels to reinforce the look of fields seen from above. I’ll report back when it’s all done!
As a preliminary resumè, I did like the free cutting and sewing approach without a detailed plan. I think there will be a repeat performance of that kind of quiltmaking when the right idea comes along. One major source of inspiration for attempting this kind of thing comes from Melody over at Fibermania. I’ve had this blog in my sidebar for quite a while now and love seeing her make her quilts.
Spring Time, Part 2
May 18, 2011 at 8:45 am | Posted in Patchwork | 1 CommentTags: appliqué
As is my usual mode of operating, I finished the fourth and last pillow cover just in time for the birthday, and didn’t have the time to post about it before the big day. But now that I’m back, here’s pillow number three, crocuses:
Followed by number four, tulips:
The center blocks for both of these were appliquéd just like the daffodils. Things went reasonably fast after I had worked out all the kinks with the first two pillows, but then hand appliqué is never fast and always takes longer than I expect it to take.
And here they are, after the big day, sitting all together in their intended place on my mom’s terrace:
It’s Spring Time!
April 17, 2011 at 2:09 pm | Posted in Patchwork | Leave a commentTags: flowers
Spring’s finally breaking out all over the place, and the fresh flowers peeking out everywhere have inspired me. My mom’s going to celebrate her 70th birthday in May, and I decided to make a new set of textiles for the benches and chairs on the garden terrace. A simple tablecloth and cushions for utility, topped with a set of pillow covers depicting various spring flowers. The basic idea is to inscribe a diagonal square inside of a 40*40 cm pillow cover and use this center block to create the various flowers. The corner triangles are made from a simple checkered fabric in spring colours and will be the same for all the pillows.
The first pillow cover shows snowdrops, and I designed it for machine sewing using the techniques from Ruth B. McDowell’s Piecing. The blocks being only about 30*30 cm big, this proved to be a not so good idea. While I was able to sew the pattern, some of the pieces are way too small and some of the curves too narrow to comfortably sew them by machine. You can see this in the pattern and the resulting mess of tiny freezer paper templates:
After quite a bit of swearing, I still managed to sew the pattern up, and I’m happy with the results:
After that experience, I decided to change techiques and use applique for the center block. Next up were daffodils. I used the same three fabrics as before to machine-sew the background, and then appliquéd the flowers. While hand-appliqué is even more time-consuming than trying to machine sew those blocks, I think it’s worth the effort:
Still to come: crocusses and tulips. Watch this space!
Holiday Cards
January 31, 2011 at 7:48 pm | Posted in Patchwork | Leave a commentTags: card-making
Now that all the recipients have savely received their cards, I can share them with all of you. I took part in an international holiday card exchange and received five adresses from 5 different countries to send cards to. Being myself, I had to make the cards myself, and I set myself the additional challenge to make all of the cards from materials I already had in my appartment. No shopping allowed, except for the stamps!
So here are the results:
So here’s what I did: I got out my box of fabric scraps and went looking for suitable fabrics: reds and greens, blues and whites, and some holiday themed scraps. I then cut some simple forms from cardboard, like a circle for the bauble, triangles for the trees, a hexagon for the snowflake, and a simple candle. Using those forms as a template, I made a fabric covering for them. Some of them are pieced, others a single piece of fabric, and all are embellished with embroidery and beads. I then covered the cardboard forms with the fabric, using double-sided tape to stick the fabric edges to the back of the cardboard. Using more tape, I then glued the finished form to the card, adding details with small pieces of cardboard. For the leaves on the bauble, I used Vliesofix to glue 2 pieces of fabric together and stitched around the form I wanted before cutting it out. I then sewed the leaves to the bauble, adding sequins and beads for the berries.
I found this kind of card fun and simple to make. They don’t need much fabric, though, so my scrap box is as overflowing as ever.
Naturally this doesn’t only work with a holiday theme, so here’s a card I made for a friend’s birthday which was a few days after Christmas:
A Quilt about Weaving
November 14, 2010 at 6:48 pm | Posted in Museums and Exhibitions, Patchwork, quilt, Weaving | 2 CommentsAlmost a year after starting to think about this project, I can finally post about it. On the way home to my parents’ place just before Christmas last year, I came across an announcement for a challenge that immediately captivated me. It was about showcasing old samples of jacquard-woven fabrics in form of a textile object. As it happens, the museum is located quite near to my parents’ place, so I had a chance to go there during the holidays and have a look around. It’s an interesting place, combining two quite different subjects: Car and motorcycle racing on the ground floor with the history of textile production in Hohenstein-Ernstthal on the upper floors. So there’s something interesting there for everybody!
I had a good look around, admiring the working jacquard looms on display and taking quite a few pictures for inspiration. At the end, I asked about the challenge and was guided to the director of the museum, who took me to the backoffice where I was allowed to select my own selection of samples to work from. Better than getting them randomly in the mail, but given the pile of fabric and the few minutes I had to look, I think the result was still fairly random.
Back home, I started brewing ideas. What was clear from the beginning was that the technology of jacquard weaving should play a role in my quilt. After quite a bit of thought, I settled on the ring of punch cards that creates the pattern as the central topic of my work. Next was the challenge of finding a way to sew what was in my head, especially since the samples are as far from normal cotton patchwork fabric as you could imagine. Think heavy upholstery fabric instead. So anything small and exact was right out. Luckily I found a grey-brown fabric on sale that went well with the other fabrics, so things started to roll. A few false starts later, my ring of cards started to take shape:
In this state, what’s missing are the holes that create the pattern when weaving. Instead of finding a way to poke thousands of holes into my quilts, I used sequins and beads. Coming up with a pattern also took some time, since I wanted it to be something that could be woven, instead of just a random arrangement with no meaning. In the end, I drew up a very simplified picture of a weaving shuttle:
Putting all the sequins in the right places on the quilt was quite a bit of work, but I like the result. But even so, the quilt was still very abstract. The pattern that could be woven from those cards wasn’t visible anywhere, so crazy as I am, I got out my simple rigid heddle loom and proceded to weave the pattern by hand—twice.
I used those in a separate panel to be displayed above the ring of cards. A few details later, voilà, a finished wallhanging:
After the usual frantic quest for a good picture, and the waiting for the jury decision, I finally found out that my quilt was accepted for the exhibition. There was no way I would miss the opening, I was really curious what others had come up with! And I definitely wasn’t disappointed when I got there. Lots of creativity around, using those fabrics in all ways imaginable and then some. There’s now a website showing the quilts that got a special recognition from the jury, go check them out, they’re amazing! Yep, the last one on that list is mine. I guess nobody was more surprised about that than me, since it’s certainly not a pretty quilt in any sense of the word. The grand price: A copy of the catalog and a real wooden weaving shuttle. I’m currently trying to figure out how to include that one into a textile piece, otherwise it will get lost somewhere in the mountains of stuff around here.
1001 Nights
July 16, 2010 at 6:31 pm | Posted in Patchwork, quilt | 4 CommentsTags: Couching, Islamic Pattern
I finished the quilt for the challenge from my quilt group! It’s due in November, so I have no idea how that could have happened. Usually I barely make the deadline! So, here it is in all its glory:
The topic was “Blue”, and the required size somewhere around 40*40 cm. Since that’s my standard pillow size and I’m not very likely to use it as a wallhanging, I used my usual pillow closure at the back, so I can actually use it as a pillow cover after the exhibition. I’m calling it “1001 Nights” after the Arabian Fairytale collection, because the dark blue (actually much darker than in this image) reminds me of the night sky and the gold thread weaves a traditional islamic pattern on that sky.
Maybe it’s interesting to have a look at how I achieved that effect. The gold thread is couched onto the fabric using a sewing machine stitch, as you can see in this detail:
Since marking that dark fabric would have been difficult, I used a little trick: The background fabric is a light blue, and I drew the pattern on the background fabric using the tried-and-tested “tape it to the window” method. I then made the quilt sandwich and sewed over the drawing lines with a straight stitch on the backside. Here you can see the marked background with the sewing partly done:
After that part was finished, I turned the thing around and couched the gold thread over all the straight lines. You can see the sewing better at the back:
I’m happy with the result and saved myself a lot of trouble because I didn’t have to try and mark that dark blue fabric. A bit more sewing, since I had to sew over every line twice, but well worth it in my book.
The Lure of Islamic Patterns
April 8, 2010 at 12:46 pm | Posted in Patchwork, quilt | 3 CommentsSorry it’s been so quiet around here, I was kind of busy with a project I can’t post about, and my knitting seems to accomplish not very much, either. But the secret project is almost finished (and yes, I will post it as soon as I can), and I was looking for inspiration for something new.
I’ve always been fascinated with the geometric, line-based patterns used in Islamic art. A few deceptively simple lines, when woven into each other, build up complex geometric forms. I spent quite a while last year at the V&A looking at this panel, even trying a small sketch of it, picking out the elements of the pattern. I knew back then that I wanted to do a quilt inpired by this, one day.
So back home, I started a first try to reconstruct the pattern using ruler and pencil on a piece of paper, but soon realized that even if I got things right, I could never reach the precision needed to construct the whole pattern this way. Another way was needed, so I remembered GeoGebra, a nifty little piece of software intended for maths teaching and learning. I was originally made aware of it via Jon’s blog, which is all about interesting things you can do with relatively basic maths. A perfect tool for somebody who was always too clumsy in school to have her geometry constructions come out quite right.
Using GeoGebra, I started to draw the pattern from scratch. After a couple of false starts, things started to come together, and I ended up with an apparent mess like this:
A bit of cleanup later, you can pretty much see the pattern:
Nice, and because I can’t get enough of it, I’m going to make two quite different quilts starting from the same pattern: the first one will emphasize the linearity of the pattern, using gold thread on a dark blue background to show how the pattern is built up from lines. Here’s the sample I made for this:
The second one will emphasize the different geometric forms that are created by those intersecting lines. This is going to be my first attempt at English paper piecing, and I also made a sample for this to make sure it would be actually possible to sew this:
The colours for both quilts will be a bit different, since I tried the pattern out on scrap fabric, but I think you get the idea. After a bit of looking I’ve found all the supplies I need for both quilts, and am looking forward to actually starting to sew. I hope I’ll be able to show you something for real soon!
The Tale of the Little Red Box—Continued
November 28, 2009 at 5:42 pm | Posted in Patchwork, quilt | 1 CommentAfter a long, long sleep, the little box finally got woken up. Her new dress was finished at last! She just couldn’t wait any longer to try it on. So within a single evening, the dress got fitted, and there was a very happy little box admiring herself in every mirror she could find. Not only that, but of course she needed to show off for the camera!
First from one side:
Then from the other side:
With the lid off to show the inside:
And even upside down to show off her pretty feet:
When she had finished admiring herself and dancing in front of the camera, she suddenly got very quiet. “What’s going to happen now? I don’t want to go back to sleeping all the time!” Her maker comforted her: “Don’t worry, you’ll be a Christmas present for a little girl that I’m sure will like you, and be proud to keep her little treasures inside you!” The little box was very glad to hear that she was going to have company soon, and maybe some secrets to guard. So she happily went back to sleep with the promise to be woken up on Christmas Eve and being able to show off her sparkling dress under the tree.
The End.
Whole-cloth Pillow Cover
September 13, 2009 at 8:30 am | Posted in Patchwork, quilt | Leave a commentHaving taken a course in hand-quilting a while ago, I finished the course project, but let the craft slide afterwards, although I liked both the process and the result. But when I needed a portable project to take to quilt group this year, I remembered I have a couple of unused pillows in need of a cover lying around, and decided to make one up as a practice project for hand quilting. And I found out that hand quilting is definitely something that needs continuous practice:
The stitches in the middle are way bigger and more unregular than they should be, but I got back into the swing of things pretty quickly and am quite happy with the result. The motif is taken from this book, which is full of inspiration suitable for any craft you could be looking for a design for. Here’s a detail of the cover to show the quilting better:
It was a fun little project, and I already started the next hand quilting project, which will be another pillow cover, using fabric and a pattern I bought in Birmingham. But pictures of that will have to wait until I actually have something to show!
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