Lucky Trips Around the World

I've gotten caught up in the online quilting fad of the moment, making a Scrappy Trips Around the World quilt following Quiltville's clever tutorial.

Last month Alison Glass sent me nine fat quarters of Lucky Penny, her debut line of prints for Andover Fabrics. The colors are deep and vibrant, and the prints are bold without being fussy. And the 'Bike Path' dot stripes are perfect.

I added a tenth print from the collection, and paired the prints with about 20 solids from my stash in coordination colors.

To make the most of the fat quarters, I upped the strip size from 2 1/2" to 3 3/8" (couldn't quite squeeze out 3 1/2") by 21" long, yielding 17" blocks.

Sixteen blocks later I have a quilt top.

I'm so happy with it as a complete quilt, and I love how the larger squares show off the prints.

Traveling Quilts Bee for John

It waited patiently for several weeks, but I've finally added my bit to John's quilt-in-progress for the Traveling Quilts round robin.

John began the quilt with the field of equilateral triangles on the left side. Alissa made the large triangle. Elizabeth set the first two blocks in stripes and a few triangles. Amber contributed the diamonds at the bottom, Heather the star, and Monica the bottom setting and the jet at the top.

I couldn't resist the triangle theme, and added a column of flying geese on the right.

The geese are and assortment of 1"x2", 2"x4", and 3"x6" pieces. For the smaller to sizes I used the four-from-one method on this Connecting Threads tutorial page. I love that the method requires no trimming and leaves no waste. For the large geese I used the square-on-rectangle method on the same page, which does require trimming.

I followed Stephanie's suggestion and used the trimmings to create half-square triangle pieces. On my last post she commented:

I like the square-on-a-rectangle method, because a second seam 1/2" away from the first delivers a bonus HST unit from each side of the goose(which end up in a baggie in a bin, for "someday").

I used these bonus units at the top and bottom of the column. I like how they give the feeling of flying in and out of the column.

Now I'll send it off the Penny. I can't wait to see what she does with it.

In other sewing news, I made a bag as a last minute holiday gift for Munchkin's grade 5 teacher. I used the Two Zip Hipster pattern by Erin Erickson. The tutorial was easy to follow and the bag feels solid and elegant. Here's the photo I took the other night at 2am when I finished the bag:

My machine had a bit of trouble top-stitching the thickest parts of the top edge of the bag. Both the exterior and lining fabrics I used were heavier than quilting weight, and I think I had an extra layer of interfacing in there, too. Next time I'll be careful to reduce some of that bulk. I'll use this pattern again - maybe a slightly sized-up version for myself.

Some quilts want to be noisy

I've started a new project with Thomas Knauer's upcoming Asbury line of prints from Andover Fabrics. Thomas says the designs are inspired by New Jersey beach resort Asbury Park.

I started the project with flying geese blocks, using all the prints with anything more than a hint of purple or plum. The background dots are the Marquee print from Thomas's Frippery collection, currently in stores.

I tried to capture a kind of funhouse energy, movement, and noise with the bold prints and kinetic background dots.

The patchwork measures about 66"x76". I meant to use the Quilt in a Day flying geese method and 5"x10" ruler, which produces four geese units from two squares of fabric. I feel like I followed the directions closely, but obviously I wasn't careful enough when I aligned and marked the fabric squares. At least a quarter of the geese came out too small when I went to align the ruler and trim the units. The below photo shows one such block, with a scant seam allowance visible in the lower left corner.

My first thought was to buy the 4"x8" ruler, but I didn't feel good about reducing the size of the quilt a full 20%. So I decided to make my own ruler for 4-3/4"x9-1/2" blocks. The plastic store cut a 5-1/4"x10" rectangle of 1/8-inch acrylic for less than $2. This only works because all the blocks are the same size, but I'm happy with how it's turned out.

I have to say I'm disappointed in the Quilt in a Day ruler, simply because the instructions seemed to indicate "eye balling" the fabric placement would be sufficient, when success actually requires precision. I'd love to hear your tips for success with their technique.

Free and Precise

I finished piecing a new quilt top today.  The edges are a little raggedy. I plan to square it up after I quilt it, but for now it's about 80"x100".

I didn't have a plan at the start. I knew I wanted to do something with lavender diamonds. I started with the central star, piecing 2 1/2 inch strips.

Then I cut 2-1/2-inch diamond strips at a 60-degree angle. To address some waviness in the strip piecing, I aligned my ruler's 60-degree line with the center seam, and trued up the angle after every two diamond strips.

The colors are mostly pink and lavender. For punch I included some purple, magenta, blue and green.

I bordred the star with an improvised patchwork of dark blue solids highlighted with a pale green that picks up the green in the Tula Pink paisley and Kaffe Fassett water lily prints.

Next came a rotated hexagon in slightly lighter blues.

It's hard to see here, but there are at least a dozen blue solids in the first two borders. Some are very similar, but next to each other there is just enough contrast to create a sparkle effect, I hope. Then came two more rotated borders with another 10 solid shades, shown in the top photo.

The grain of the border solids was crucial in my vision of creating a sense of movement and rotation. For each facet in the second, third and fourth borders, the grain is perpendicular to the outer edge (the first border is a bit more complex).

As it happened my first try at the third border was a complete loss. I created a large piece of improvised patchwork fabric, then cut the facets, all of them, at the wrong angle. It cost me a full day of work, but worse two months passed before I could pick the project up again.

I did pick it up again last week and got the border right. I have to tell you it bugs me a little that there isn't greater contrast between the third and fourth border. Or maybe the contrast is too great between the second and third. I hope to be able to make some sense of it in the quilting.

Hello Houston

Updated with a photo from the Andover booth.

This time every year there's a big quilt industry tradeshow and quilt festival in Houston. I didn't go, but two of my quilts are there.

Thomas Knauer brought my Hurle Burle Marx quilt to show off his Frippery fabric collection for Andover Fabrics. Here's an action shot of Thomas showing the quilt in a Friday "schoolhouse" session, tweeted by the Fat Quarter Shop team.

Photo Credit: Fat Quarter Shop

And here it is hanging in the Andover Fabrics booth.

Photo credit: Heather Grant

On the festival side, my Ripple quilt is included in The Modern Quilt Guild Showcase 2012, a juried collection of quilts made by members of the modern quilt guild. Alissa took this photo of the quilt hanging in Houston.

Photo credit: Alissa Haight Carlton

The Modern Quilt Guild has some more photos of the collection on Facebook.

Looking at the quilts side by side (or top and bottom) I realize both are riffs on the traditional drunkards path block, taken in very different directions.

There's a good chance I'll make it to Spring Quilt Market in Portland next May. It will be great to meet in real life so many of the people I interact with in the online quilting community. But for now, it's fun to have my quilts in the mix.

Hurle Burle Marx Quilt

I've just finished a quilt using Thomas Knauer's new Frippery fabric collection for Andover fabrics. It's bright and a bit crazy.

The design of the quilt is inspired by the work of Brazilian landscape architect and artist Roberto Burle Marx. Burle Marx had a bold graphical style that is on display in private gardens and huge public spaces throughout Brazil and around the world, including the iconic paving design of the Copacabana Promenade in Rio de Janeiro.

Thomas had asked for an energetic modernism. Thomas's brief and the exuberant geometries of the fabric line made me think of modern tropical landscapes. (Confession: the list of things that make me think of modern tropical landscapes is long and varied.) And that led me back to Burle Marx. I love how his designs capture both a retro 50's space-age aesthetic and a 70's rainbow vibe.

The quilt is constructed in thirty 12" (finished) blocks, using squares and rectangles, and drunkard's path and point-to-point curve units in various sizes. The blue background uses an egg print in three Frippery color ways and three blue solids. The red background uses the Frippery tonal swirl in red and gold and two salmon/red solids. The circles feature Thomas's large-scale prints.

I quilted free motion on my domestic machine using three quilting patterns. The circles have a radiating asterisk pattern similar to the Frippery firework print. The two backgrounds use patterns from Angela Walters's Free Motion Quilting. I used "Flower Power" on the red background, and wavy lines & pebbles on the blue.

It was pretty easy to get the hang of the flower pattern, an the quilting went quickly. The lines and pebbles were trickier. It's hard to free-motion quilt continuous lines without getting jiggy and jaggy, and the pebbles just take a long time (and a lot of thread). The best thing about the pebbles is that they are great for hiding those jigs and jags. I quilted with Aurifil 50wt cotton thread in salmon and aqua. The thread was wonderful to work with, giving me even tension and only one or two thread breaks.

I used all the scraps from the front on the back, along with some larger pieces of the large-scale prints. I trimmed all the quarter-arc scraps from the drunkard's path units into triangles and made half-square triangle units.

The quilting shows beautifully on the back.

The binding is the red arc print from the collection (the blue arcs appear on both sides of the quilt). It's a double-fold bias binding, hand-finished on the back.

Frippey started showing up in online shops last week, including Fat Quarter Shop and Hawthorne Threads.

August Bee Blocks

Another month, another round of bee blocks. For the Free Bee, Leanne She Can Quilt asked for tiny improv blocks framed by neutrals. I did a bit of curved strip piecing, surrounded by off-white cottons and linens.

The block is 15.5x15.5, unfinished. I have a feeling Leanne's quilt is going to be gorgeous.

For the Traveling Quilts, I worked on Amber one Shabby Chick's quilt. There's so much energy in the quilt already, I decided to go low volume. I added the column to the left of Monica's spool and thread.

The bird in the middle of the quilt looked lonely so I gave him a friend to sit between my three log cabin blocks.

More precisely, there are two courthouse steps blocks and a chevron log cabin. Any now Penny gets to take a shot at this one, too!

And one extra photo, with drama provided by concrete and wind.