Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

Warkton Lane Fabric Palette Projects

It's the last week for the Warkton Lane fabric palette. While I am looking forward to rolling out a new palette in a few days, I will not leave Warkton Lane anytime soon because I have a big project underway using it. If you want some of this palette be sure to order before Friday because the sale price ends on the 5th!

Today I am working with a block called Flutterbye. I decided that for this one I will stick with a simple setting and just show you different ways to orient the block and color it to get different effects. 

Starting with a plain horizontal setting and a black background.

Same setting, different colorway.

Same setting, alternating the coloring of the butterfly shapes.

Same coloring with alternating blocks rotated.

Remove the first border to create a scalloped border. If doing this for real I'd use an even number of blocks across and an even number of rows.

Play with the coloring of the green diamonds.

Add the darkest purple and more orange.

 Again, I would do any of these with an even number of blocks and rows but I think you get the idea of how much you can change the look of a quilt with a few color changes and simply rotating some blocks.

Grandmother's Choice - Block 4

 

Grandmother's Choice - Block 4 - Kansas Sunflower

Well, I've hit another quilting milestone. I've hand pieced a block now! Actually I've hand pieced 2 blocks and it took the entire weekend. At first it was torture but eventually I got the hang of it and it wasn't so bad but you can bet that I will not be hand piecing on a regular basis. I wouldn't call it "fun".

Both medallions are appliqued to backgrounds instead of being set in as the pattern indicated. I'm not happy with the background on the symmetry block and I may switch it out later. I didn't want a solid black because I'm afraid it will make a dark hole on the finished quilt. I'll see how this looks in the setting later and adjust it if needed.

I did try to make the block with machine piecing and I wound up with something would would best be used as a Barbie doll skirt. It had enough poof to the center that it would han beautifully as a skirt! I also wasn't happy with the design flow so I was OK with starting all over.

Here are the templates.

Here are the 4 fabrics I used.

You can get directions for making this block on Barbara Brackman's blog and you can see the other blocks in the Flickr group.

Color Theory 17 - Red

In discussing color and meaning I can only present generalities. A color may have one generally understood meaning but that doesn’t mean that it has the same meaning for the recipient of your quilt.  Maybe you are going to design a quilt for a friend and using a color that generally means strength, or love or hope or whatever. You get it made and proudly present your gift only to discover that for your friend that color is associated with some horrible memory from childhood.  It’s more important to make quilts that you love in colors that you love. But that doesn’t need to stop us from having some fun with the colors for a few weeks!

Red

“I want to be different. If everyone is wearing black, I want to be wearing red.” Maria Sharapova 

"Red is the ultimate cure for sadness." Bill Blass

I have to start the investigation of colors with my favorite color to wear (aside from black): red. I have red glasses and I will always select a red sweater over a blue, green or purple one. Red makes me very happy.

Red, as with most colors, has positive and negative connotations.

Positive meanings:

heat

energy

passion

love

confidence

action

vitality

power

courage

willpower

 

Negative meanings:

anger

violence

wrath

hell

 

 

In Asian cultures it means good luck

In Indian cultures it means purity

In South Africa it is the color of mourning

 

Red phrases:

In the red – losing money

Paint the Town Red – celebrate

Seeing red – anger

Red eye – overnight flight

Red carpet treatment – being treated like a VIP

Red flag – warning sign

Red herring – deceit

Red light district – illicit sex

 

In almost all cultures red is used on stop signs and to signify prostitution.It is the predominate color used in national flags therefore, we often use it most heavily in patriotic quilts with the other colors of our national flag. With green, we use it for Christmas quilts. Vintage quilts in red and white were very popular and in recent decades black, white and red quilts have been popular. Currently, you do not often see quilts that are predominately red, unless it is a more muted shade of red like pink or burgundy. 

How do you use red? Let's have some fun with a little poll. Which phrase best describes how you use red?

 

How often do you use red in your quilts?
	Almost every quilt has some red in it
	Red is my favorite color for my quilts and I use it a lot
	I like red as an accent only
	I use red strictly in patriotic and Christmas quilts
	I use it only when the recipient wants it
	Red annoys me, I avoid it at all costs
	No bright red for me, but I like other shades of red
pollcode.com free polls

Another place to stay in Houston

I posted about a condo in Houston a couple of weeks ago. The condo owner has another one available that has 2 bedrooms. The condo is off I-10, west of downtown and north of the Galleria area. IT will be a drive to get to the quilt show but you can't beat the price.

This one has 2 bedrooms and 1 1/5 baths and is newly remodeled.

Each bedroom has a queen bed and the living room has a queen pull out sofa bed.

It has a full kitchen and fully refurbished bathrooms.

There's even a pool and a park nearby. The best part is the price of $150/night. The best part is that the owner is offering you a 10% discount if you mention that you heard about it here or use the code "Vicki Welsh". 

So if you are still looking for a place to stay in Houston you might check out this place.

Taming slippery threads

I love using all different kinds of threads and, when making postcards or quilting I especially love shiny specialty threads.

I have lots of cones of these acrylic threads. They are great in my serger to edge postcards but the thread is so slippery that it is always pooling under the cone. Inevitably the thread gets caught there and breaks or totally messes up the tension.

A lot of people like to use thread nets on thread like this but I have never had good luck with thread nets. In my experience they really mess with the tension. A long time ago someone shared a better method of dealing with these cones and I wanted to share it with you.

A bowl of rice! I keep this little plastic container of rice near my serger and simply set the come into the rice. The thread still falls but it can't get caught under the cone and it feeds to the machine perfectly. How simple (and cheap) is that?

Here's my serger set up with 2 bowls of rice and 2 cones of thread. When not in use I put the lids on the containers. The rice doesn't go bad. I've had one of those containers in here at least 10 years.