Wholecloth Quilting

It's done -- the wholecloth quilt.  It's a wedding gift for my daughter and her husband.  I hope they like it.  Here's my evaluation:  I like the basics of the design a lot.  The idea of random circles in the first border was fun and turned out well.  The center circle is interesting with all the filler ideas in each circle around the leaf vine.  It was hard to come up with 22 different ideas to fill those circles.  I love the fabric color.  It is a silver and has a shine to it that is really nice.  What I would do differently:  I think the quilt needed some other design introduced somewhere.  My daughter didn't want a quilt that was heavily quilted for their bed so that really limited me on what I wanted to do as filler in many areas.  I would have chosen to fill in the center circle around the vine and leaves with something very small.  The area in the center square would have been nicer with a small design too (in my estimation).  But all in all, I'm happy with the overall look.  It has made me think of some ideas for another wholecloth that might be show worthy.  I do love wholecloths even though they take a lot of time.  One of the pictures show my kitties who were constant companions in the quilting.  They chased every thread and binding piece; they continually walked on the quilt even while the machine was running, Tux took a liking to the pins on the magnetic pin cushion and Wolverine decided that he could carry my wrist pin cushion around the house (I found it under the dining room table one day).  Normally I don't let the cats near customer quilts and keep the door to my studio closed but since I know how much my daughter likes cats I thought they should help with this quilt!  :)

Wholecloth Quilting

This quilt has been kind of in my head for about a year.  I've had the grey sheets for many months.  I decided last week that the theme of this quilt would be circles.  It's for my daughter and her husband who were married last year (who says wedding gifts should be on time)! 
Just like my last wholecloth quilt, I don't really know where this one is going.  I know the theme is circles and I want it to look contemporary.  There is an X made in the center of the fabric so I know where the center is (though they rarely are perfectly centered).  You see, I'm just not the planning, tracing out kind of quilter.  I would rather challenge myself to be creative as the quilt progresses.  It is a huge challenge and it may be disappointing in the end but I also feel great excitement as I anticipate what might come next. 
So stay tuned and I'll post pictures as it unfolds.  I have two weeks to do this quilt before I must do the next customer quilt.  I'm excited!

Expo Quilt Show

I saw some stunning quilts today. Many art quilts at this show. It was fun to see what other quilters entered in the show. When I first came into the show I headed to the right to go down the first aisle of quilts and there around the first corner was my wholecloth quilt hanging. It was exciting to see it especially with the blue ribbon hanging next to it. There were a couple ladies standing by it insisting that it was all done on a computerized longarm. I didn't correct them -- if only they knew how much work that quilt really was! Here's a couple photos of me by the quilt and then after the award was given holding the certificate I received (along with the check for the award). A good day in the quilting world for me!

First Place

My whole cloth quilt won 1st place!!!! I am so excited. I screamed when I got off the phone with the quilt show coordinator. I've put quilts in that show for about 5 years now and never won anything. This was an amazing quilt and I'm so happy it won something. It makes me want to do another -- well maybe not until next year :) I don't think I have an extra 40 or so hours to devote to doing another right now. I guess it will be in the local newspaper tomorrow and the awards ceremony is next week -- on the day that my sister will be here. I'll post a picture of it at the show. For now I'm just so happy!
(the show is the NW Quilt Expo here in Portland Oregon)

Whole Cloth Quilt Is Done!

Wow -- it's done! It was much more work than I anticipated. I put this quilt on the first part of August and it took a month. Of course I didn't work on it constantly and during that time I was on a week's vacation as well as my week out at the fairgrounds helping with 4-H. I didn't keep track of the hours. Maybe I should have but I decided early on that I didn't want the clock to be this nagging pressure on me to get it done. I would guess that it was somewhere between 40 and 60 hours to complete. Some of my favorite parts are the paisley tear drop shapes in the wide border and then repeating them in a much smaller scale in the center and also I love the background around the center design. The most difficult part was the binding on the scallops. I wanted to have a double edged line around the scallops and found it very difficult to get even close to perfect in stitching it down. I ended up handstitching much of the binding around the scallops. In hind sight it would have been better for me to stitch this from the back side of the quilt using my sewing machine rather than trying to do it on the longarm. I'm also still wondering if I shouldn't have put the scallop on all four sides, but most of my family has thought that just three sides with the straight side being for pulling up under your chin on the bed a logical idea. Well, it goes in a quilt show at the end of this week. How it will do I have no idea -- when I know in a couple weeks I'll let you all know.

Two Borders Left to Quilt

I finally got the quilt off my machine. Not that it's done. I still have two borders left, but I wanted to turn the quilt to do these so it had to come off. Which was a good thing, I need to do 3 customer quilts before I get back to this quilt. I'm happy with the way it looks. I see things that could be done better. And there still is a lot of work to be done. The scallops will have some tiny background quilting and then there's circles to put in between the parallel lines. I imagine there's still 4 - 5 hours left in the quilting. After that the quilt will be sprayed with water to remove any marks, squared up and then the binding. Did you notice that the scallops are only on three sides? I decided since this is a common thing for scalloped bed quilts and this will go on our bed eventually, to do it this way. So what do you all think so far? I probably won't post again until the quilt is completely finished.

Too Much Fun

This quilt has become too much fun! I love working on it. Unfortunately I haven't had the time this last week like I thought I would. But every new design I add has been so much fun to stitch down. And so far I'm very pleased with the results. The center circle (not pictured) is a little disappointing so I may try to rework it or just add more quilting lines. I probably need about another week of work before this will be done. Hmm, customer quilts may have to wait! (I have no idea why these pictures turned sideways -- so tip your heads to view!:)

Only a little progress

Last week I was gone on vacation. Our family spent most of the week in Sunriver, Oregon. It was so great to all be there together. One morning I was coloring with my granddaughter and thought of some design ideas. I drew out 3 ideas and my granddaughter choose the one she liked (which was the one I liked best too). It was the ideas for the inside of the tear drop shape. I couldn't wait to get home and try it. I think it turned out better than my drawing, but that's usually the case (I'm not that good at drawing)! This week I have almost no time to work on it and it's driving me nuts. I now have the whole rest of the quilt designed in my head. I'm a working out at the local county fair this week in 4-H with the sewing projects that the kids do. It takes a lot of time and energy but it's something I've done for almost 15 years and I love it. I want to encourage young people to sew. Hopefully next week I will have plenty of time to get most of this quilt done. There's a few customer quilts waiting to be done before the end of August. Too many quilts -- not enough time!

Spontaneity

I like to quilt outside the box. What I mean is, I don't like patterns, especially those that are just repetitious and you see them on so many quilts. Now that doesn't mean I don't do that kind of quilting. It's really the bread and butter of my quilting. But being creative, just going with the flow, not really sure what I'm going to do until it's actually done -- that's me. So as I have mentioned in this blog before, I want to do a whole cloth quilt. The books and other instructions I have read all say to draw out the designs on your fabric before beginning. For me, that's a mind block. It's tedious, and requires too much thinking and planning. So yesterday I ironed a solid piece of fabric that was purchased to someday make a whole cloth quilt. I drew a big X in the center and then another so that basically there are 8 lines coming out from the center of the quilt. Then I loaded the piece on the longarm. I have decided that other than these 8 lines, everything else just comes as I think of it. Not much planning and not a lot of thought. This quilt will probably be on my machine for several weeks (it's my break from customer work -- remember) and I'll just do a little whenever time permits and I have a new idea. I have no idea what the end result will be. I'll try to post pictures throughout the process. I may hate this quilt and say, "that didn't work" or it may end up in a quilt show! I've called this quilt 'Spontaneity'. Stay tuned!

Whole Cloth Quilt

I have been toying with the idea for several years now of making a wholecloth quilt. Tonight I spent a bit of time looking at photos on the internet and in my own stash of books and pictures from quilt shows. I have two different wholecloth tops in my studio that are just begging to be done. One is a golden beige fabric and the other a plain off-white. I have thought about just loading one of them on my machine and simply designing as I go. It might be really interesting and definitely a challenge I would enjoy. But would it turn out? I wish I had several weeks to put all these design ideas I have in my head down on cloth. I'm still thinking -- just don't know where it will take me! (The photo is of some design play done while my sister was here last year)