My Quilts – 2010 to 2014

2014 finished up with a few more completed quilts.

Easter Egg Roll, 14 inches by 42 inches

Jeweled Leaves, 39.5 inches square

Dancing Stars, 41 inches square (quilted by Nancy Rab)

Kansas, 40 inches by 32 inches

One downside of attempting more complex quilting is a lack of finished work. Here’s In The Clouds (16 by 32 inches), finally done in early November.

Here’s some pieces I completed over the past few months through September, 2014.

Swimming Upstream

Shirtsleeves

Purple Rays

While my guild’s Sweet Treats challenge isn’t due until later this fall, I overachieved and finished my piece in August. Dandy Candy uses only colors found on a Peanuts M&Ms wrapper.

I never posted this photo of Alex’s Windows, a piece I finished in early 2014. It uses many pieces of hand dyed damask tablecloth.

Although it’s July and a few months have gone by without anything new shown here, I have indeed been at work. I did finally finish a small improv piece I call Open Door by mounting it on a prestretched canvas. The edges are finished with yarn that I zigzagged stitched on, and I painted the sides of the canvas with black paint.

I wrapped up my seasons small quilts in late May of 2014. Each is about 21 by 32 inches.

7 Years of Bad Luck is one of two quilts that resulted from this wonky curves tutorial from the Quilting Edge. After I started it I came across Kathy Loomis’ photo of a broken mirror on her blog. I developed the quilt inspired by that photo.  The quilting is mostly free motion zigzag in gray Aurofil and silver metallic thread with some aluminum foil thrown in.

Forgot to put in Chutes and Ladders, an improv piece I began and finished a few months ago.  It was inspired by my scrap strips and some painterly fabric I had. I enjoyed quilting the slightly off grid of lines, inspired by the work of Eleanor McCain.

Another piece that’s been in the works for some months is now finished.  It doesn’t have a title – I just call it printed leaves.

12 Carat Diamond can now be added to the completed pile.

Broken Glass is my latest larger (about 34 by 37 inches) size quilt this year.

WPM is the first finish of 2014.

At the very end of 2013 I finished up 2 projects that have had long gestation periods.

Mosaic

Pong

Subtle Points is a November 2013 finish.

Here’s another in my “messing around with fabric” series – Argyle.

Tipsy Lampshades is a twofer.  I finally made a wonky log cabin quilt and I finally used a lot of brown.

The quilt below, Just A Sliver, won a blue ribbon at the recent Streetsboro Quilt Show.  The marvelous quilting was done by Eva Birch.

Recent finishes (August 2013) have been old projects that I finally completed.

Heart in Gold is my latest attempt at the Storm at Sea pattern.  I love this pattern and have spent many happy hours coloring in outline drawings of it. I used John Flynn’s quilting design for it in a red thread to remind me that love is passion that binds us.

Making Tracks is doodling with cloth and thread that began as a piece for the Stupendous Stitching Craftsy class. I fused organza to it, couched some yarns I found at Big Lots, went a bit crazy with decorative machine stitching, and mounted it to a quilted piece of hand dyed gradient cloth.

July flew by with a few finishes.

Beaded Curtain has had its issues, but is finished in my book.

The Words Pillow now resides on my rocking chair.

The verdict on Partial Eclipse is still out.

Breeze Blocks was fun to piece, and not so much fun to free motion quilt.

For the sake of completeness, here are two finishes I’ve blogged about.  The first is “Boxed Up” – an evolution from sewn together leftovers.  The second, “Broken Circle,” is also a spinoff of leftovers from another project.

Here are two quilts I just finished in May 2013, Canyon and It’s Brown.

A few of my quilts exhibited in a local quilt show.

Fadeout

Going Nova

Here’s the first fully finished quilt of 2013, called Wish I Was Here.  Most of it was actually done in 2012, but the quilting and facing had to wait until the new year.  It’s very loosely based on a class I took from Joen Wolfrom.

I’m most satisfied with the right hand panel as I got more nuance in the water and sand.

I said goodbye to 2012 with a few more finished quilts.

Triangles in Boxes featured mostly solids and some leftover half square triangles.  The edges really are straight, despite how they look in the picture.

I realize a table runner may not be considered a quilt by some, but it has three layers held together with stitching, so it meets a quilt show definition.

Much to my shock, my guild challenge quilt is done, big stitch hand quilting and all.  I ended up calling it My February Fantasy.  I can’t find the ladybug buttons I bought for it, but I’m sure they’ll turn up after the quilt show. (Oh, I just found them after I bought replacements.)

I have no idea why I made this little quilt, called Jewel of My Heart.  It was as if I was guided by voices. Forget anal probes; aliens seem to take over my stash.

The crib quilt for my nephew and his wife is done.  As I usually do with quilts for babies, I just backed it with flannel and didn’t bother with batting.  It makes the quilt easier to wrap around the baby.

Here’s Where Did The Hexies Go?, my small appliqued hexagon quilt – a twofer.  It’s for my Modern Quilt Guild and a quilt show silent auction.

At last Corduroy Boomerangs, aka The Project from Hades, is done.  Not content with slithering all over the place when I was quilting it, the quilt’s burgundy pre-washed binding decided to bleed into only one of the light fabrics.  It’s now been washed three times.  I really hate this batting – it’s heavy and stiff.

In the Summertime is a reworking of a circle project I thought was finished.  Then I decided it needed more, so I mounted it on the yellow fabric and added large turquoise and blue beads. (Update: this was donated to the NQA little quilts auction.)

Stacked Stitches came about from a mashup of a fabric assemblage and big stitch embroidery.  I added the portrait backing and buttons to make it seem a bit more important than a pot holder.  I also used paintstiks. (Update: this was sold at my guild’s small quilts auction.)

The following quilts are my pre-blogging efforts.  Some of the photos are clearer than others – totally the fault of the photographer.

My Garden Without My Glasses uses couching, decorative machine stitches, and beads.  It’s won ribbons at some local shows. I found that beading is not an embellishment I’ll be using often.

This one, called 107 Pyramids, is based loosely on a drawing by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr.  I was intrigued by the idea of nested different size equilateral triangles.  It was improvisationally pieced and quilted with lots of closely spaced diagonal lines in variegated thread.  Hint:  use lots of starch on your fabric before you cut this kind of triangle.  Bias edges alert.

I finally tried out a specialty ruler for making flying geese on the above quilt.  It’s OK, but I’m glad I won it rather than bought it.  This quilt, which used up lots of scraps plus a batik I haven’t found a use for in six years, was given to a friend to celebrate her retirement.

This one was made for a guild challenge.  It’s called A Real Fake, and is inspired by page 13 from a magazine.  That page advertised a fiberglass door made to look like wood.  I gave it a George Washington theme – the cherries and the guy standing up in the boat.  You know, “father, I cannot tell a lie”…

Back to Nature resulted from my hoard of assemblages in combination with raw edge applique tendrils and colorful fabric I found at JoAnns. (Update: this was sold.)

This is a scrap quilt called Akron Amish made with cut off corners from other quilts.

Fun to make and based on Sandi Cummings’ book “Thinking Outside the Block.”  It’s called There Are Strings Attached.

Afterglow even gets into some embellishment.  I saved all those bits of fabric for a reason.

Labyrinth is from a quilting magazine pattern called Winding Ways.  It used up lots of scraps, plus that red eyelash yarn.

Tie Sticks almost used up the ties I had fused to interfacing.  It’s loosely based on the Chinese Coins pattern, and features decorative machine stitching and prairie points made of the tie ends.

Too Much Coffee speaks for itself.

Leafing Out contains fabric I bought at NQA in 2008, and was my attempt to use more green.  The quilting pattern is large, closely stitched leaves similar to a hosta plant’s.