The Collection Quilt (Round 2!)

Posted on January 3, 2017 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Classes, Finished Quilts, Quilting, Quilting Community / Leave a comment

Last year, I was thrilled to teach Carolyn Friedlander‘s Collection Quilt through a local quilt shop, Sew to Speak. The first version I made as a class sample is similar to the overall aesthetic that was used in the original design, so when I constructed a second version to use for demonstration purposes, I thought it would be fun to do something entirely different. This is my pink-loving-little-girl version!

My color palette this time around was mostly pinks and oranges with some red and violet and shots of green.

Some fussy cutting added a bit of whimsy to the overall aesthetic.

The backing is the same fun unicorn fabric that appears in the front in a different color way.

This quilt is the perfect way to learn needle turn appliqué, and I am excited to be teaching it again this year! Each month we will do a block that build on the skills covered in previous meetings. If you are interested in joining the class, please contact Sew to Speak in Worthington, Ohio. This technique opens up a whole new range of quilting designs!

Quilt Stats

Title: The Collection Quilt (Pattern by Carolyn Friedlander)

Size: 40.5″ x 51.5″

Techniques: Needle turn appliqué, machine piecing

Quilting: Computerized linear edge to edge pattern (my original design) done on an A-1 Elite Longarm

Fabric: Assorted quilt shop quality, 100% cotton fabrics

Batting: Hobbs 80/20

Thread: Applique and piecing done with neutral and coordinating Gutermann Mara 100, Quilted with 50wt cotton Aurifil

Binding: Striped bias binding, machine stitched to the front, hand finished on the back.

Crystalized Citrus: A Blogger’s Quilt Festival Entry

Posted on September 26, 2016September 26, 2016 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilt Shows, Quilting Community / 6 Comments

Crystalized Citrus is my second entry into The Blogger’s Quilt Festival hosted by Amy’s Creative Side. I hope you will all set aside some time this week to look at all of the amazing inspiration provided by the festival entries- there is some amazing work on display!

Crystalized Citrus

I originally created this quilt for this year’s Hoffman Challenge which required the use of this digitally printed butterfly fabric. I enjoy transforming distinctively patterned fabric into something completely unexpected, so I was excited to transform the butterfly wings to the flesh of citrus fruit.

The center of each fruit is improvisationally pieced before being set into the surrounding “skin.” The entire fruit is then hand appliquéd to the background. I used matchstick quilting in a range of coordinating colors to ground the pieces on the white background.

For more about this quilt you can check out the original Crystalized Citrus post.

Columbus Skyline for the Row by Row Experience

Posted on July 13, 2016 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilting, Quilting Community / 7 Comments

This year Dabble and Stitch, a fantastic local quilt shop in Columbus, Ohio asked me to design their row for the Row by Row Experience. It was their first time participating in this event, and it was my first time designing for it. I am really excited by the results, and I hope lots of people get to make up this fun block. During the Row by Row Experience the patterns are available for free in their “home” shop, but can only be distributed by picking them up in person. Kits for this row are available for $20. Later this year the pattern will go up for sale and can be sent to you if you can’t make it to the shop.

The theme for this year is “Home Sweet Home,” and we thought it would be great to create a row featuring the Columbus skyline. This view of the city is taken from a bridge in Bicentennial Park.

I was standing right next to this guy as I snapped the photos!

Using the photos I took, I designed and rendered the skyline using AutoCad and Photoshop.

The block is constructed using needle turn appliqué, but you can also do raw edge appliqué using this pattern since I included lines on the templates that show the finished sizes of each piece. This is what the row looks like finished and ready to incorporate with other rows.

For the shop, I made the row into a mini quilt by adding borders. The quilting changes from building to building, and for added fun, I quilted the shop name and city into the borders. I think this looks great as a mini, and I am hoping to make one up as a long pillow for a sofa or bed.

I love mixing up my quilting thread colors to match the fabrics on the front of the quilt. I went with a white fabric on the back to show off all of that quilting.

If you are traveling through Columbus this summer, I hope you stop in to pick up a pattern!

Quilt Stats

Title: Columbus Skyline

Size: Row itself finishes at 9″x36″ With borders the mini finishes at approximately 14.5″x41.5″

Techniques: Needle-turn Appliqué, Pieced borders

Quilting: Free motion longarm machine quilted with an A-1 Elite

Fabric: Assorted 100% Cotton Prints

Batting: Hobbs 80/20

Thread: Appliquéd using Gutermann Mara 100, Quilted with eight colors of 50wt cotton Aurifil

Binding: Straight grain binding assembled to match the borders of the mini, cut 2″ wide, machine stitched to the front, hand stitched to the back.

Hills and Valleys: 2016 Riley Blake Challenge Quilt

Posted on July 6, 2016July 6, 2016 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilt Shows, Quilting, Quilting Community / 6 Comments

This year’s Modern Quilt Guild / Riley Blake fabric challenge was one of the best challenges I have ever participated in, and I am very excited about the resulting quilt!

The print that was selected for the challenge fabric has almost endless possibilities since it contains so many different designs. I had the fabric draped around the studio for a long time before I decided what direction I wanted to go with it. I still wasn’t entirely certain what I was doing when I ordered the solids to coordinate. Emerald green has been very appealing to me lately, and I decided to draw my color scheme from it.

I enjoy taking linear prints and cutting / reassembling them into a star formation, and I started out thinking that was where this project would lead. In an effort to step out of my star-shaped box, I decided to consider other options that could produce a similar effect with the pattern of the print. I drew the fabric print to scale in AutoCad and started to experiment. Ultimately I landed on this design based on a traditional clamshell configuration. I thought that the greens I had selected would create the illusion of abstract rolling hills, and the black and white print would look like giant flowers bursting forth from the landscape.

I developed and printed templates for each shape using AutoCad. Since I had already planned the design with the fabric in mind, I was able to print the templates with guidelines that matched the print. Cutting was super easy this way!

The clamshells are machine pieced to one another. I used the templates to mark the start, center, and end of each seam which helped me to accurately position and pin each seam. The top row of clamshells is hand appliquéd to the light blue background fabric.

The quilting was the most fun part of the process. Solid fabrics give so much room for play, and I loved the idea of creating movement in this piece. Each “hill” has a different texture from those directly around it, and the quilting thread matches each section. This is also my first project to incorporate hand sashiko stitch quilting. The large stitches in contrasting thread helps to draw your eye around the quilt.

I was excited to submit this quilt to the challenge, and I was absolutely ecstatic to find out that it received second place! If you would like to see the other fantastic quilts that placed in this year’s challenge, you can find them on this Modern Quilt Guild blog post.

Quilt Stats

Title: Hills and Valleys

Size: 41″x43″

Techniques: Machine piecing, Hand Applique

Quilting: Freemotion and Ruler work on an A-1 Longarm machine, hand sashiko accent stitching

Fabric: Riley Blake black and white sashing print and Riley Blake solids

Batting: Hobbs 80/20 cotton blend

Thread: Pieced and appliquéd with coordinating Gutermann Mara 100 thread. Quilted with five colors of 50wt Aurifil cotton thread. Sashiko stitching done with dark grey Aurifil Floss.

Binding: Faced with Riley Blake fabric

Goal #3 is Finished!

Crystalized Citrus: A Hoffman Challenge Quilt

Posted on July 6, 2016 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilting, Quilting Community / 11 Comments

Crystalized Citrus is my first Hoffman Challenge quilt, and I am thrilled with the result! I was cutting it really close time wise, so it was quite a relief when they extended the deadline by a week- it saved me a late night getting the binding on!

For many years I had seen the Hoffman Challenge quilts exhibited at the Rotary Quilt Show that coincided with the AQS show in Paducah. It was my first introduction to the concept of a challenge quilt, and I was intrigued. This year was the first time I was able to find the fabric in a local shop before it completely sold out, and it is the best fabric challenge print yet! The butterfly print on the right is the required challenge fabric and the print on the left was an optional coordinate that I really liked, but didn’t end up using in the finished design. Both of these fabrics are printed digitally so there is an almost infinite range of colors since the process isn’t limited by traditional printing processes.

When I’m designing with a specific print in mind, I like to alter it to see it in a new way. I had thought about creating a “Butterfly Garden” by turning the wings into flower petals, but as I was starting the idea of vibrant citrus came to mind. The butterfly wings turned into the flesh of the fruit and the neutral space of the print became the membranes. I pulled a variety of prints from my stash to create the skin of the fruits. My main goal was to keep the challenge fabric the star of the show.

I intentionally chose to balance the representational aspects of this design with the abstract. The pieces of fruit do not overlap and the improv piecing in the flesh of the citrus doesn’t create an ultra realistic image. These aspects of the design allowed for quilting that defies realism and creates a more abstract overall design.

The primary quilting design is matchstick quilting going both horizontally and vertically. Most of the horizontal quilting is done in white with guest appearances from purple and the local color of each fruit to create a grounding shadow. The color of each piece of citrus infuses the background above it with colorful vertical matchstick quilting. Free motion quilting further defines each piece of fruit in the composition.