2018 Year in Review

Posted on January 11, 2019January 11, 2019 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilt Shows, Quilting, Quilting Community / 1 Comment

Around the beginning of every year, I like to look back on the previous year. I have usually accomplished more than it feels like I have, and 2018 was no exception.

I started the year with a 100 Day project which culminated in Resonance. Aurifil liked it so much they displayed it in their booth at Spring Quilt Market. Later in the year, I became an Aurifil Artisan!

Photo courtesy of Sylvia of Flying Parrot Quilts

In January, Lissa of LovinglyLissa.com and I finished the QuiltCon Charity Quilt for the Central Ohio MQG quilt that we designed together.

QuiltCon 2018 also included four of my quilts in the contest. Lateral Ascension (upper left of the photo below) even received third place in the Minimalism category! (It also received an honorable mention at AQS Spring Paducah and a 2nd Place at AQS Grand Rapids!)

My first cover quilt also came around last year. Raise the Roof is a particular favorite of mine, and it also received a third place at the American Quilter’s Society Fall Paducah Show.
Upward Perspective was a mini made for a Curated Quilts Challenge, and it was selected for inclusion in the magazine!

In 2018 I also started my second Block of the Month with Dabble and Stitch in Columbus, Ohio. This year’s quilt has pictorial representations of key Columbus landmarks.

I also designed the 2018 Row by Row for Dabble and Stitch. The theme was music, and I based the block on the state song, Beautiful Ohio.

My most exciting moment of 2018 was having my quilt, Infused Plaid, added to the permanent collection of The National Quilt Museum.

Photo courtesy of The National Quilt Museum

The 2018 colors of the year were Ultra-Violet (Pantone) and Tiger Lily (Kona), and I had a great time putting them together into this quilt! Zenith received a second place in the Modern category at the American Quilter’s Society Fall Paducah Show.

As 2018 drew to a close, I had exciting news that three of my quilts, including Complementary Convergence (below), were selected for QuiltCon 2019! I have added sleeves and labels to them this week, and will be shipping them off at the beginning of next week- now that is a great way to start 2019!

Walkabout

Posted on December 9, 2018December 9, 2018 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilting / Leave a comment

Walkabout has been a work in progress for well over a year, and I finally decided that I just needed to get it finished and entered into some shows. The first entry is into the American Quilter’s Society Spring Paducah Quilt Week.

The idea for this quilt came when I was walking through German Village, a historic neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio. This pattern of embossed brick kept appearing in the sidewalks, and it just cried out to become a quilt design!

I wanted to maintain the feeling of an embossed design, so I knew that I wanted to work with two fabrics and focus on value and density of quilting to create the texture. I designed the quilt on AutoCad, which helped me to create accurate templates for all of this very specific piecing. The lighter fabric is a Moda Grunge print, and the darker areas are a Kona solid.

The design is entirely machine pieced, and each circular ring is cut as a single piece which is set into the adjoining circles. Here is a back view of part of the quilt top:

For the quilting, I decided to keep it simple for the light blue-grey fabric, but do a more dense design in the dark blue areas. I was very undecided on what to do for the denser quilting, but I ultimately landed on doing mixed motif organic quilting. I liked the idea of exploring the juxtaposition of the geometric embossing of the brick with the leaves, moss, and pebbles that land on and surround the brick.

Quilt Stats

Title: Walkabout

Size: 53″ x 68″

Techniques: Machine Piecing

Quilting: Free motion quilting and ruler work on an A-1 Longarm

Fabric: Moda Grunge and Kona cotton

Batting: Hobbs Tuscany Wool

Thread: Quilted with Aurifil 50wt in two colors matching each fabric

Binding: Faced with the Moda grunge backing

Quilts Accepted into AQS Daytona Beach!

Posted on December 3, 2018 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Quilt Shows, Quilting Community / 2 Comments

I have definitely caught the quilt show bug! When I first started entering, I would enter a show here and there, mostly if I thought I might be able to attend. But once my quilts started getting accepted, I couldn’t help entering more too! And after I received my first ribbon at a national show, there was no going back.

Quilt shows have their own cycles and rhythms, and your quilts have to be available for each show for a lot longer than the week the show takes place. You also have to enter well before the show takes place. The entry deadline is often 2-4 months before the show week. Submitting entries, receiving jury notifications, shipping the quilts, and (if you’re lucky) attending some shows can quickly become a year-round event. It can make for some fun days if, like last Friday, you are submitting to one show while receiving notifications for another!

The Daytona Beach American Quilter’s Society show is the first notification of the 2019 shows, and I am ecstatic to have four quilts that were juried into the contest.

Lateral Ascension is in Large Quilts: Stationary Machine Quilted

Taking Flight is in Large Quilts: Movable Machine Quilted

Zenith is in Wall Quilts: Stationary Machine Quilted

Raise the Roof is in Wall Quilts: Movable Machine Quilted

I have never been to the Daytona Beach show, but I hope my quilts have a wonderful time there!

Resonance: A 100 Day Quilt Project

Posted on May 22, 2018 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in 100 Day Project, Finished Quilts, Quilting / 11 Comments

My 100 Day Quilt project was a success, and I want to thank everyone who followed the progress on Instagram! Resonance is the ultimate result. It was named in reference to the quilting stitches which echo out from a central point. If you would like to know more about the start of the project, check out the first post about the 100 Day Circle Quilt Project.

Constructing the blocks for the quilt took the most time- 89 days. Most blocks had two-three concentric circles, but several included multiple circles set near each other. Here are a couple of examples:

The next two days were spent trimming the blocks to their finished size.

Laying the quilt out was a bit tricky. Since it was too large for my design wall, I cleared out the kitchen and arranged the blocks on the floor. This photo was taken with my phone touching the ceiling, and I still couldn’t get far enough away to capture the entire quilt design.

After a couple more days, the quilt top was finished.

There were 13 different colors of thread used to quilt the project. A different thread was used for each fabric. This extended the color beyond the edge of each circle, and ensured that the back, as well as the front of the quilt, would show each color change. I knew that I would want lots of lines of stitching around each circle, so I decided to use 50wt thread so I could do lots of stitching without excessive thread build up.

Here is the quilt loaded and basted on the longarm.

The quilting process took quite a long time. I quilted each circle from the inside out to prevent bunching in the fabric, so there were a lot of thread changes.

Once the circles were quilted, I did large scale bubble quilting in the background.

There were more than a million quilting stitches in this project. I’m pretty sure that is a personal record!

The binding is mostly white, with some sporadic shots of color.

I love the way the back of the quilt looks!

To cap it off, Aurifil asked to use this quilt in their booth at Spring Market this past weekend! This is my first quilt to be included at a Quilt Market, so I was very excited!

Photo courtesy of Sylvia of Flying Parrot Quilts

Photo courtesy of Aurifil

Quilt Stats

Title: Resonance

Size: 79″ x 79″

Techniques: Hand Applique, Machine Piecing

Quilting: Free motion quilting with an A-1 Longarm machine

Fabric: Assorted solids and white-on-white prints

Batting: Hobbs Tuscany Wool

Thread: Quilted with 50wt cotton Aurifil in 13 colors

Binding: White Kona Cotton with colorful inserts, cut on the bias at 2″ wide, machine stitched to the front, hand finished

Raise the Roof

Posted on February 19, 2018February 19, 2018 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Publication, Quilting / 3 Comments

I made a pretty quilt! I very rarely make a quilt that I would call “pretty”- typically I describe my work with terms like graphic, clean, dynamic, or vivid. Raise the Roof is an exception to this trend.

Inspiration for Raise the Roof came from the architecture of the Horticulture Building on the grounds of the Ohio State Fair. The low volume background of the blocks echos the design of the rafters of the building, and the central stars are an abstract representation of the over-sized ceiling fans.

The pink, violet, and orange blocks appear to spin around the focal blocks in blue and orange.

Value plays a huge role in the design of the quilt blocks. The colors in the low volume background triangles have the same placement in each block segment, but the brightly colored star tips change depending on the block placement. Intentional placement of a dark and light version of each color on every point creates a three dimensional look.

After creating a few sample blocks, I decided to submit the design to Modern Patchwork. I was thrilled to have it accepted, and quickly finished the top. For the quilting design, I chose an all-over organic free motion design with a botanical flavor.

The juxtaposition of the organic quilting lines on the regimented, foundation paper pieced quilt top reminds me of the relationship between the beautiful floral displays against the architecture of the building. To make the quilting stand out even more, I used double batting for the first time. The top layer is a yummy Hobbs Tuscany Wool, and the bottom layer is Hobbs 80/20.

To top it all off, this quilt made the cover of the magazine! This is a first for me, and I am over the moon!

You can get your very own copy of the March/April Modern patchwork here!

Quilt Stats

Title: Raise the Roof

Size: 59″ x 59″

Techniques: Foundation Paper Piecing, Traditional Piecing

Quilting: Hand guided, mixed motif free motion quilting done on an A-1 Elite Longarm

Fabric: Assorted quilt shop quality, 100% cotton fabrics, and backing of wide-back Kona Cotton

Batting: Hobbs Tuscany Wool and Hobbs 80/20

Thread: Pieced using light grey Gutermann Mara 100, Quilted with 50wt cotton Aurifil

Binding: Cotton and Steel grey and silver dot bias binding, machine stitched to the front, hand finished on the back.