Australian Spring

I participated in a block of the month quilt from Material Obsession http://www.materialobsession.typepad.com a shop in Australia.  I am obsessed/fascinated with their fabrics, color combinations and Kathy's blog is one of the best.  Anyway I got a package each month from Australia.  Usually there were plastic templates included and a different block instruction.  You could pick "pretty" fabrics or "contemporary".  Mine were pretty.  Well it was sometimes a challenge.  Lots of small pieces, curves, circles to applique but I love it.  It is very far from my usual in color and in pattern.  I took it off the quilting machine this week and here it is.  I did a lot of whimsical quilting on this one.  I didn't want traditional.  I added a border to mine because of the bias edges.  Love it!  Now to finish the binding. 

Mini quilt Valerie Goodwin - I WON

Remember that quilt give away I mentioned before - well I won!  I am excited and pleased.  The quilt has arrived and I will post a picture soon.  Wendy I & started worked on our own map quilts last week.  We simply made some sample pieces and played around with the process.  We made stencils with tape but will go back to cutting stencils from freezer paper or cardstock or even just stitching down our roads.  Here I show the beginning of my confluence piece.  I hope to do more with the rivers in our area.

Next is the beginning of my Chicago Loop piece.  I can see the lake front and plan to add stitching, fiber and maybe yarns for the loop to show the different lines.  

The time passed quickly and we need to have several more work days to get these where we want them. 

Backgrounds for Kaffe Dresdans

I made several Dresdan Plates from Kaffe fabrics. Love, love, love them but now I have to decide on backgrounds.  I thought yellow initially but it was blah.  Green was OK but "expected".

























Friends suggested a cranberry/garnet coloring and I really like it. 

 

I did try black and white with white backgrounds and it's OK but not what I thought it might be.  

So what do you think?

Mini-map quilt giveaway

I have long been a fan of Valerie Goodwin www.quiltsbyvalerie and recently saw this giveaway of one of her little map quilts.  http://feelincrafty.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/from-here-to-there-from-there-to-map-quilt-link-love/#comment-301.  Go see for yourself.

Dyeing with ties

A few weeks ago, Judy and I used all of our collection of men's silk ties to dye other pieces of silk and cotton. We had seen an article in Quilting Arts quiltingarts.com about the process and decided to try.

It's important to have 100% silk ties.  We took them apart by simply clipping and pulling out the silk thread.  We decided to iron open each tie because it gave us a lot more fabric. 
We laid different pieces of ties out on purchased white silk scarves from dharma trading www.dharmatrading.com.  We like placing them on the diagonal and overlapping or extending a tie along most of the length of the scarf.

The layering was then rolled from the short ends and tied with cotton string in a shibori way.  Just enough to keep everything together and tight.

These are then boiled in an aluminum pan with a couple of tablespoons of vinegar for 20 minutes.  I'm not sure why the aluminum but it worked so we didn't switch. 
After cooling the "logs" they were unwrapped, rinsed and dried to have these fabulous one of a kind scarves and pieces of silk.  I did some silk yardage that I'm saving for just the right project.

We found we could use silk scarves from thrift shops or drawers as well.  Each time we used them there would be less transfer but that was ok. 
A very fun project with some very unique results.