Gallery show

The Orange Lizard quilt will be hanging at the Redscout gallery in San Francisco starting next Thursday! The theme of the show is "An Unexpected Leap." I can't wait to check out the work of the other artists, but first I'd better get busy sewing a sleeve on that monster.

SFO -> JFK

SFO -> JFK
119 one-inch hexies basted
JFK -> SFO
70 one-inch hexies basted, plus some piecing. For some reason I'm never as efficient on the flight home.

The wrenches continue to be the most controversial fabric in this project. But I love them, so there.

A new stencil quilt -- and a new class!

I'm teaching a Stencil Quilts class at Berkeley's New Pieces in September. Enrollment opened today, and it's filling up surprisingly quickly. This is the sample I made for the class -- it's hanging in the store now!

The class is on two Sundays, September 18 and 25, 12-2pm. I'd love to see you there!

The fabric is an Indian wood-block cotton front with  a reverse-applique Joel Dewberry print. There's a splotch in the woodblock repeat -- you can see it twice about a foot in from the left. I considered positioning the stencil to hide the splotch for a moment. Then I completely changed my mind and decided to feature it.

I'll teach my technique using whole-cloth fabrics. I love the patchwork in my other stencil quilts, but I want to focus on the stencil technique in class.

I'll be teaching the technique I've developed for all my stencil quilts.

Green Stag

Orange Lizzard

Harvey Milk

Paper-pieced star

Paper-pieced star a photo by Dan @ Piece and Press on Flickr.

I just finished this star block. The central medallion is English-paper-pieced, and the circle is machine pieced. The unfinished size is 12 1/2".

For this project I used freezer paper templates and starched and pressed the seam allowances. Without basting thread, the freezer paper came loose if I didn't starch.

One other note: I used a ladder stitch instead of a whipstitch for the seams. I'm very happy with the result, but it was slow going and I think I'll be back to whipstitch on my next paper-piecing project.

Update:
Here'm my template if you want to give it a go:

Update 2:

For a paper-piecing primer, you can't do better than the tutorials and videos(!) Lynne is posting for the Lily's Quilts Hex-a-long.

Burning bobbins

I started quilting the Checkers quilt yesterday. I'm doing a square-ish loop pattern with a bit of a retro 50's feel. I've been meaning to do something like this since I saw Meagan's quilt last year. More recently, my friend Stacey at Peppermint Pinwheels rocked a right-angle meander on her split-log cabin.

This is probably the densest quilting I've done, and boy does it use up a lot of thread. I've lost count of how many bobbins I've emptied, and I'm only about one-third done with the twin-sized blanket.

And now, back to the machine for more quilting on this foggy Saturday morning.

Dialing up the FMQ

Finishing up a whole-cloth stencil quilt, I've decided to push myself on free-motion quilting.

The stencil is a ginkgo twig, very similar to the design on the back of my marquee quilt. The back fabric  is a Michael Miller green and yellow print.

If ginkgo leaves grew on vines (which they don't), they'd look exactly like this. I swear.

The top fabric is an Indian woodblock print. I'm binding the quilt now -- more photos when it comes out of the dryer. 

Concentric circles

I've made a good start quilting the Ripple quilt. Following the advice of Karen -- a woman who knows her way around a circle -- and Lucia, I'm quilting concentric circles centered on the drunkard's path formations.

Here's a view of the back. To get a sense of scale, the orange and white circle is 7" across, and the khaki strip is 11" wide. The front is such a mess of markings and loose thread ends that I'm not ready to show it yet! I'm using  four colors of thread -- dark gold, deep red, moss green and light blue -- with each set of circles using only one of the colors.

Checkers

This started out as a back for the ripples quilt (the drunkard's path/solids challenge), then I decided it needed to be it's own quilt. Now I have to come up with two backs.

Solids challenge quilt top

solids challenge quilt top a photo by Dan @ Piece and Press on Flickr.

Lo, these many months later, I have finished a quilt top for the Modern Quilt Guild solids challenge.

Kauffman gave us each a charm pack of solids (dusty palette for my East SF Bay group). I cut up a bunch of quarter circle units and arranged them in color groups.

Now I'm wondering how to quilt the thing. I've posted the photo in the flickr "How should I quilt this" group (great idea, Christina!).

The shapes remind me of drops hitting a pond, so my first thought is Katie's raindrop pattern.