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

It's not a color post

I should have a color post for you today but that will have to wait until Sunday. Today I was quilting with the Country School Quilters peeps. We have Sewing Saturday once a month and once every 3 months we have a little one day retreat on the Friday before Sewing Saturday. I look forward to both of these events and am using them to work on my community service projects.

Today I spent a few hours doing some hand sewing repairs on another quilt and then spent the rest of the day putting the center section of this quilt together. It will be a quilt for the local veteran's hospital. Tonight I will cut the 2 borders and have then ready to sew on tomorrow.

Next up are these blocks; yet another UFO. This is the last set of the crumb blocks that I made YEARS ago. I had a plan for these but it would create another giant quilt that I don't need. I even bought all of the fabrics for the quilt and they been sitting together for a very long time.

Instead of one big quilt I am going to make them into 2 quilts, a veteran's quilt and a QOV. These are very simple designs because I want them to go together quickly. As soon as this posts I'm off to my sewing room to do some cutting and prepare for tomorrow's adventure.

Snail's Trail QOV

Snail's Trail QOV

63 x 76

Another UFO bites the dust! I started this quilt a few years ago. It's one of 3 Snail's Trail quilts I made to figure out the largest block that I could make from a fat quarter. I eventually created a baby quilt version that produced 2 smaller blocks from each fat quarter. The top has been languishing for a while just waiting for a border. I had planned a hideously complex border but apparently that wasn't going to happen.

When I decided to dedicate an hour a day to quilting I went through all of my tops a considered what to do with them. This one is so manly that I thought it would be good for a QOV quilt and now it's finally going to a good home and will no longer languish unloved in my sewing room.

Now this quilt is nothing to write home about (except for the fact that it's DONE and we all know how rare that is) but I do want to talk about the quilting a bit. This is for any of you who are new to longarm quilting or to using rulers in your quilting.

I wanted to do something quilk on this quilt like I did on the veteran's quilt but I also wanted to play off the dots in the fabrics of this quilt. So I did some contour quilting with circles. I will admit that after the first hour I looked at what I did and I almost ripped it out. Thank goodness for laziness. But the next day I was able to convince myself that it was OK and would look fine after the quilt was washed.

After it was done I realized that this would be a great technique for beginner quilters to practice ruler work. I quilted it in free motion lines and periodically added a circle like in this diagram.

Like this. I know, it's a hideous mess from a design perspective bit it looks OK done. I used 4 different sizes of circles (because that's what I had). THe best part about this for a newbie is that you don't have to fix your mistakes. Just keep going and try to do control your template better on the next one.

Anyway, for what it's worth, it's an idea.

A Veteran Quilt

My guild, the Country School Quilter and other Chapters of the Richmond Quilter's Guild, started a project last year to make quilts for a nearby veteran's home. I was a bad girl last year and didn't get any quilts made and I promised myself that I would recify that this year. 

Verteran Quilt #1

48" x 60"

Here's my first contribution. At the end of January I cut up all of the fabrics left from my Coming Home palette. I had some 2 1/2" strips and I cut the rest into as many tumbler blocks as I could (thanks to my GO! Tumbler die that I love).  I sewed all of the tumblers together and had enough for the right length but the quilt wasn't wide enough. I used the 2 1/2" strips to create a piano key border and had just enough of them left for the binding.

I love the effect of the pieced tumblers mixed in with the plain ones and, of course, I love the colors.

I am thrilled to have this project completed in less than 2 months! I did all of the piecing at the Country School saturday sewing sessions.

I had the quilting done in 2 evenings (which means only 2 hours) and it couldn't have been easier. I had been wanting to try this technique that I learned on the Pajama Quilter CD and I love it for adding a lot of great texture easily and it's perfect for a quilt for a man. I can't recommend the Pajama Quilter CDs for new long/mid-arm quilter enough. They are excellent for giving you some simple but really effective quilting ideas. 

I used Superior King Tut on top and Superior So Fine! in the bobbin. 

After I completed that top Saturday I started on this quilt. It will also be a Veteran quilt. The red fabrics are left from the last QOV that I made. I had cut all of the half square trianges out and have been using them as leaders and enders. Saturday I made up the 12 blocks. Next time I will start adding the block frames and sashing. This should go together quickly.

Speaking of my QOV, I was thrilled to see my QOV in a photo on Alycia's blog. She rarely is allowed to take photos of quilt presentations so I was pleasantly surprised to see my little quilt with it's new owner. I hope it provides her comfort and strenght as she heals. As soon as I finish the pinwheel quilt I will make another QOV. Alycia is always in need of more quilts!

Community Service Projects

I admit, last year I didn't do very many community service projects. I did cut up a lot of my stash with my Go! Tumbler block and give those to my Mom's guild to make quilts for local boy's and girl's homes. But I think I only actually made 1 project, the QOV quilt in December.

I'd like to do a better job of consistently making some community service projects. My Guild has 2 active projects. One person coordinates baby quilts for local hospitals and someone else coordinates quilts for the VA Hospital.

With Walter Reed closing in Bethesda our VA hospital is getting more and more veterans and they need lots of quilts. I am going to make a better effort to contribute to both of these causes and also try to make at least 1 QOV quilt.

To that end, I decided that I would use my project scraps for some of these quilts. Usually I just pile my scraps in a bag or box. After I made the QOV I ran the scraps through my Go! and cut a large stack of half square triangles. I fed them through with the fabrics paired right sides together so they are all ready to sew.  I'm going to start with this project and use these triangles as leaders and enders while I work on other projects. After I get the triangles sewn together I will see what I have and what I can do with them to get to a 48" x 60" quilt.

I hope that Mom's guild gets done with the quilts for the boy's home soon so I can cut some girls quilts for them. I've got lots of girly fabrics in my stash that I'd like to give them.

Stash reduction combined with some community service quilts would be awesome!

QOV Quilt

Back in July, Alycia was the 3 Creative Studios guest artist and she created a great Quilt of Valor pattern for us.

If you are unfamiliar with Quilts of Valor please visit their site. It's a wonderful organization and a worthy cause for your quilts. Alycia is the coordinator for Colorado and does a fabulous job of keeping our soldiers covered. Late in 2010 she ran out of quilts. She and Judy put out a call for quilts.

I started a quilt when she was the guest artist and used the call to prompt me to finish it by the end of the year. I attached the label December 31!

Chris would like to keep it because it looks great on his recliner. But this one is not for him. It will be mailed to Alycia tomorrow with another quilt that Mom made.

Churning Stars

69 x 79.5

I used a lot of fabrics from my stash and I really like the scrappy look of it. Alycia has the pattern here if you want to make one. I quilted this with a Woodgrain panto and So Fine thread. Quilting went really fast and the binding is done totally by machine.

Alycia has a goal to make a QOV a month is 2012. There's no way I could do that but I will make more of them for sure. It's my favorite quilting cause.