I Love the Fabric, but what do I do with it? 2005
Wall Hanging, Machine pieced, Hand Quilted
Patter: From article in Oct, 2003 Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine
This is a two fabric quilt. One is a large print Japanese Cat pictorial or novelty fabric, and the second a co-originating print. The quilts in the magazine article show various ways the basic units can be arranged. Also showed what could be done with more “second” fabrics and boarders.
I am currently working on a Wizard of Oz wall hanging, using material left from “Christmas Oz” quilt, using this same basic pattern.
The Cats have been embellished with beads and fuzzy eyelash yarn. The Cats panels are outlined quilted and the triangle half blocks have parallel straight lines.
The Fabric – Types
Now that you have a pattern, you’ll need some fabric to make it with. If you found a pattern to fit the fabric from your stash your ready to go-but if you have a pattern and now need the fabric, well that’s a little different.
There are two things to consider when choosing fabric, type of material and color. We’ll deal with Types of Fabric now and address Fabric color another time. You can’t go wrong with 100% cotton fabric, whether it’s solid color or print, and get the best quality you can afford. Look for the deals/sales, in your Quilt Shop, Online Quilt Shop, Local Thrift Shops, Yard Sales, Road Side Free piles, Flee Markets. You will be surprised at what’s out there in unlikely spots if you just look!
When looking at Fabric Types in those unconventional places, pick it up handle it, if you don’t like it leave it. In a Quilt Shop you will find Fabric labeled as to it’s thread count, if you can’t find a label ask for help. If your comfortable about what you want look on line there are some great prices/sales going on right now.
Fabric Types
*Cotton: Natural fiber, easy to handle, long lasting, comes in many colors/prints Plain, Calico, Gingham, Lawn, Muslin, Satin, Organdy, all types of cotton giving you different textures – colors – prints
*Silk: Natural fiber, soft tends to be more costly than cotton.Organza, Flannel
*Wool: Natural fiber, thicker than most cotton makes warmer Quilt Flannel
There are other blends, and synthetics that depending what you are going to do with it may be your best choice. Fabric that does not work well for making a block may work well for an applique’ on the block. You should avoid knits, stretch, crepe fabric because they can be difficult, but not impossible to sew with.
The Golden Years Quilt
Original Design: Ellen Marie Mislo
Block Quilt, Machine Pieced and Quilted including 12 Embroidered Blocks
The Quilt is made up of 21 – 10″ blocks.
12 of those blocks where made by starting with a 6″ embroidered rectangle. A 2″ red patterned border was sewn around the block and then another 2″ block of background fabric was added to create the 10″ block.
The other 9 – 10″ blocks were cut from a repeating design patterned fabric,(They could be created by sewing together strips of fabric).
The assembled quilt was created by starting with 3 embroidered blocks, then alternating rows of embroidered/patterned/embroidered then patterned/embroidered/patterned.
A 4″ complimentary red border was added around the entire quilt, then finished off with a gold/green/red binding, tying the quilt together. The finished quilt measures approximately 39″X79″.
Ellen Marie has shown with this creation that very simply made blocks can become something very unique.
The Golden Years
So you want to make a Quilt – Fabric Part 3
Choosing your Fabric Color
In my last post on Fabric we looked at some basics in types and texture of Fabric. Perhaps a bigger part of choosing Fabric, whether we realize it or not is in the color of the fabrics we choose to use in our quilting projects. There are people who devote entire life times to doctorial studies on color and its affects in painting/fabric etc.
I plan to touch on a few areas to hopefully help – not muddy, in choosing Fabric colors for you next Quilting project. I had heard about the Ives Color Wheel. As it turns out that’s not easy to find, what there is out there are many interpretations of of Dr. Herbert Ives color research.
I found the following info in an article by Janet Wickell on color theory. The first wheel has the Prime colors – yellow/red/blue or yellow/magenta/cyan in printer ink talk. If you mix any two Prime colors in 50/50 you will get orange/violet/green which are your Secondary colors.
The next completed wheel shows the Tertiary colors which you get by mixing any two adjacent colors from the secondary wheel in 50/50, such as 50/50 yellow and green for yellow-green
Choosing colors to put together in a Quilt is where all the fun begins! You have some of the following color combos:
Analogous Colors – Take your main color choice the two colors on ether side it of the wheel those are Analogous
Complementary Colors – Take your main choice and the color directly opposite on the wheel is it’s complementary color.
Color Triad – If you take just the three Prime colors and think of that triangle, now turn that triangle around the wheel the three colors at the triangle points are all part of that triad.
Monochromatic Colors – This is fabrics all in the same color theme – ie. all blues
Confused? I hope not. There are three other considerations (notice a trend 3’s) that affect your colors.
Shades – This is adding black to darken a color
Tones - This is adding gray to make a color less intense
Tints – This is adding white to lighten
After you numb your brain with lots of color theory, it all boils down to pick the colors you like and go with them! Color choice all depends on what are you doing for a Quilt project – you may want quiet earth tones, for a soft warm quilt, or you may want your colors to clash and stand out,
so as I said find what you like and -
QUILT ON!
Next time Thread.
Lady of the Lake 1980
Wall Hanging: Machine Pieced, Hand Quilted
Pattern: Georgia Bonested’s Lap Quilting and More Lap Quilting
Georgia Bonested’s books have a similar basic pattern called Saw-Toothed Square. The Lady of the Lake uses more colors.
This wall hanging predates, rotary cutters, and any easy half-square triangle sewing tips or aids. With today’s easier more accurate way of constructing the half-squares you can get a much more uniform resulting squares. I know if I was to do this pattern wall hanging or bed quilt again now, lots more of the points would match up better! Not all of them mind you, that never happens!
The concentric squares of quilting result from throwing a “square” rock into the center of the lake.
Again if you arrange the half-square blocks differently and use a different color theme this would turn into a completely different quilt, so think outside the “square” as it were and have fun!
The Quilt Pattern-Where it begins
I have been trying to come up wit h a theme in Quilting, since starting this site over a year ago, to give me something to write about for these posts. At the moment I have caught up with all of the quilts that my wife and I have made, a wall hanging and bed quilt still in the works. So what I am going to attempt to do is walk through the making of a quilt from beginning to end. Along the way I hope to provide you links to other sites I have found in my searching for information and references. So here goes……..
Every quilt has a pattern, whether it’s highly intricate or very simple there is a plan that is followed to come up with the final quilt. Quilters I find are very individualistic, and their patterns reflect that for an unlimited rage of finished projects. I did some digging on the internet, an as with everything else there are thousands of sites offering patterns, many of them for free, when I searched “quilting pattern directory” I was given: Free Quilt Patterns Directory, Free Baby Quilt Patterns Directory, and Ask.com “Quilt Patterns”, also Penny Halgren’s Quilt Block Library. As I said there are thousands of other choices but these four will give you hundreds of patterns, many to download for free, or at least ideas to help create your own pattern if that’s what you like to do.
Don’t forget your local library for pattern ideas, there are usually quilting books, perhaps magazines, and articles. Your local Quilting Club or Guild will also, not only provide pattern help, but a connection to quilting “pros” who can help all along the quilt making process.
If I gave ten quilters the same pattern and told them to make a quilt, with the fabric of their own choosing, the final quilts would all be very different. So don’t over think it when it comes to a pattern, sometimes the fabric comes first, sometimes the pattern says “this is it” just enjoy the process!
Next time The Fabric – Types & Uses
Original design with stash material
Classic design
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My Second Quilt
Hollow Cube & Fly Foot Wall Hanging
Machine Pieced-Hand Quilted
While I wait to finish our film roll-witch has a picture of my Seascape Wall Hanging in its finished state, I’ll move onto my next project. For this one I wanted to do something a little bigger and a bit more entailed than the first one. I settled on four 8″ blocks. They are the same pattern, with variations in opposite sides. One block is the Hollow Cube which I got from Penny Halgren”s Quilt block library. The other one was called Fly Foot. To be honest I’m not sure just were i found it, it may have been Free Quilt Patterns.
The next thing I knew the sophomore jinx hit. I’m not sure how many lines of stitching I ripped out and redid! I finally got the two hollow Cubes done only to find out that one was a bit larger than the other(used the same pattern honest!) That was when my “in house” expert offered to applique the cubes onto a back round material that I was going to use to square up the cubes. She must really love me because we found that one was not set on the block correctly and was then re-appliqued.
The drawing is of the pattern I worked up for this project.
Next time the “Thangles”
Seascape Part 3
Wall Hanging
After sewing the top together I made my sandwich of Top/Batting/Backing and pinned it in place. I then hand quilted in each segment. With the sky and water I quilted using the color swirls as my guide. With the rocks and light house I quilted around rocks, shoreline, lighthouse. I made a footprint pattern that I used for a pattern in the two small “sandy” areas. Lastly I used the homemade pattern on the two L shapes (pinned in place in second picture). I suppose I should have made-clam-fish-etc. patterns for the edges but that didn’t happen, maybe another time!
Next time finishing off and the binding.
Seascape Wall Hanging
Phase 2
Working with the right then left halves of the top I machined each half together. The only tricky part was the “set in” when it came to putting the two halves together.
I sewed 1 & 2 together then added 3 to them. Next was 4 to the end of 1 & 3. Last was 5 to the end of 2 & 3. I repeated the the same steps for the left half. Lastly I combined to two halves, with the set-in in the middle to complete the quilt top. I then added the border.
The picture shows what i used for the backing. Its a piece of the kids old window curtains – last used in NC I think.
Next time pinned together and I start hand quilting.
Seascape
Wall Hanging
Original Design
Machine Pieced, Hand Quilted
This is my first Quilting project. I decided after setting up our web site and blog about quilting that i had better try a quilt myself. I played with several ideas for a pattern and then decided on a mostly original design. Then with my wife’s help we went threw the scrap boxes and found a seascape theme that i really liked. This is to be my “instructional” series on my first attempt. Hopefully it works out ok and is a confidence builder for you newbies like me. The picture is my pattern and fabric i choose to use, wish me luck!
