Shot cottons

I've been working with shot cottons today.

Michael at Oakshott Fabrics sent me a bit more than 2 yards of the stuff to try out (the California Poppy fat quarter bundle, plus yardage of Spirit Atlas and Sprit Mimosa). I mixed it with another quater yard of Oakshott Sargasso (purchased locally at A Verb For Keeping Warm), 4 shot cottons from my stash, and another 3 shot cottons that Hamish brought back from India last year to make 64 - 8.5" blocks.

After adding the other fabrics I decided not to use the light green, although there is still quite a range of colors. I love how the different thread colors in the shot cottons lend themselves to unlikely color combinations.

It was interesting to work with shot cottons from so many sources. I have to say the Oakshott fabrics were wonderful to work with, fine and silky but still substantial. The three Indian fabrics are light and gauzy and a bit tricky to work with in combination with quilting cottons. I'm a big fan of Kaufman Carolina Chambrays because they wash up thick and soft. But they aren't in the same league (or price point) as the rich colors and fine hand of the Oakshotts. Of the shot cottons in my stash, the two Kaffe Fassett fabrics (from another wonderful local shop, New Pieces) were most similar to the Oakshotts, but seemed to have a slightly looser weave.

All are fabrics that I will be happy to work with again, but the Oakshotts are certainly a special pleasure.

The Traveling Quilts

I've jumped into a round-robin style quilting bee with 10 crazy-talented modern quilters from all over the country.

We all started a section of a quilt this month and sent it off to another quilter in the group who gets to add to the quilt any way they choose. This will go on for a year, with only the sneakiest sneak peeks to show the development of the individual quilts. In the final round, we'll each finish, quilt and bind a project, then send it on the the person who crafted the original blocks. Each month I'll be receiving a project from Monica, and sending a project to Penny.

Travelling Quilts Bee a photo by Dan @ Piece and Press on Flickr.

These are my four seed blocks. My first idea was to do similar shapes, but with a light blue patchwork instead of the white and gray solids. But I quickly decided that would be a) too busy; and b) a lot like a color blindness test. 

I made the green patchwork by sew/cut/sew/cut/sewing width-of-fabric strips. There was a fair amount left over, and I packed it up with the first four blocks, in case anyone finds it useful as they add to the composition. I can't wait to see where this ends up.

New York Beauty Pillow + Templates

The New York Beauty pillow is finished and stuffed with a 24" pillow form. It's going to be a gift, and I hope she loves it as much as I do.

The prints are from the Flock collection by Thomas Knauer for Andover Fabrics -- available in stores any minute now -- except the border pinwheels which are from his Pear Tree collection. The two collections work so well together.

I made a rookie foundation-piecing mistake and over-trimmed one of the seams. Thanks for all your advice on stabilizing the scant seam. I ended up fusing a narrow interfacing strip over the area. I'm confident that the interfacing, reinforced with quilting, will hold the seam together.

I backed the pillow with two of the larger scale prints -- I love the funky trees and the circus stripes.  The fabrics feel wonderful in the hand, and the colors are bright and cheerful without being overwhelming

I quilted with a double echo stitch around the inner and outer points, and a tight stipple in the central star.

 The back has a few straight lines and an envelope closure.

If you would like to give this pattern a try, I've posted foundation piecing templates for a 12" finished block, with an option for a wider outside border. I used the larger border to give me enough margin to finish the pillow edges.
You can download the templates here.
If you make something with the templates, I'd love for you to post photos to the Piece and Press Flickr group.

Free Bee February 2012

Free Bee February 2012 a photo by Dan @ Piece and Press on Flickr.

I finished my February quilt block for the Free Bee just under the wire. Lynne organized the bee on Flickr last year and this is our second round. Each month one of us sets a theme based on an improvisational process or technique.

For her month, Marianne asked us to interpret urban industrial landscapes in fabric form, and suggested Elizabeth Barton as inspiration.

I started with a photo of a Tokyo train station by Kirk Pedersen, from his book Urban Asia. I was attracted to the gritty colors in contrast the the saturated brights. The strong lines of the ductwork on the left side gave the composition a sense of movement.

As is usually the case when I get home from my Modern Quilt Guild meetings, I was wound up and ready to sew. After sketching a quick overlay to loosely plan my color blocking, I started cutting, piecing and trimming strips of fabric.

I stopped for the night when I realized I had painted myself into a y-seam corner (two corners, actually). Improvised y-seams were going to require a little less feeling and a little more thinking than I could muster in the middle of the night. I tackled it this morning, and the block miraculously lies flat.

New York Beauty

A few weeks ago Thomas Knauer sent me fat quarters of his upcoming Flock collection with Andover. The cloth has the same wonderful feel and similar "faded brights" color palette featured in last year's Pear Tree collection. I decided to take it for a spin on my first foundation paper piecing project.

I drew up templates for a 12" New York Beauty block. I think NYBs usually have more points, but I wanted to give the prints room to shine. The finished radius is 11".

I was surprised how tricky the foundation piecing turned out to be.  For my first block, I had a lot of trouble placing the fabric so that it covered the space it was supposed to cover, and also aligning the directional prints for consistent orientation (especially the wedges of soaring birds). Every new piece was a new puzzle. I unpicked and restitched a lot of seams, several times for many of them. The template paper was in tatters by the time I finished.

The next three blocks I made at the same time, which was actually much easier. I only had to solve the placement puzzle for each piece on block one (for example, the leftmost blue wedge), then I could copy for blocks two and three. Then I moved on to the the next piece for each block. I spent my morning train commute on Friday tearing off the foundation paper.

I trimmed one of my seams at a wonky angle, so it's awfully scant at one end (near 11 on the ruler). I didn't realize it until after I attached the center 1/4 circle. It would be a big headache to unpick and replace the two over-trimmed pieces. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping a combination of Fray Check, fusible fleece, and quilting will keep that seam together.

I finished the four 12" blocks (plus a little extra to finish the edges) with the pink pinwheel print from Thomas's Pear Tree line. I love how well they work together. I hope to finish this 24" pillow sometime this week.

Bare Bones

I cut squares for this queen-sized quilt over Christmas vacation. Once I started sewing the top came together very quickly. Those 5" squares are so much easier to sew than the improve curves for Savannah Kiss.

Last November, Jan DiCintio at Daisy Janie sent the East Bay Modern Quilt Guild bolts of prints from the organic Shades of Grey line and challenged us to come up with cool stuff. I love the print designs. They're so mod and organic (in every sense). I supplemented with roughly equal grey yardage from my stash, plus a bunch of red prints and solids.

The design has a red pop in the middle that dissolves into light greys, then darker greys. But don't get to attached to all that red -- I'll be slicing it to ribbons as soon as I finish a lone star patchwork for reverse applique. This is my next stencil quilt, and it's not going to be quite as cuddly as the giraffes.

I won't have the stencil done for presentation at our Tuesday meeting, but I'm looking forward to showing this work in progress.

100 Days of Quilts

Check out the Modern Quilt Guild blog for a chat about the Ripple quilt.