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Kaleidoscope Quilt

kaleidoscope-quilt

Many of you quilters are at QuiltCon, but I am just going to sew all weekend. I’m disappointed about missing out on all the fun, but it’s part of my resolution to get a better balance on my income versus expenses this year. That means only one sewing trip for me; fall market in Houston. For all of you quilters who didn’t make it to QuiltCon this year, what are you working on at home?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m working on a quilt for the kids’ school auction. The theme of the auction is kaleidoscope, so I immediately thought of the Shoeman’s Puzzle quilt in Denyse Schmidt’s latest book. I am making this quilt with a traditional kaleidoscope design, but I created templates so that I could paper piece it. I’ve shared my templates below if you’d like to make this block. Just click on the images for the .pdf file. Be sure to print full size (de-select the “fit to page” option). Although your outer lines may get cut off, the block with seam allowance is 8 1/2″, the width of standard paper.

If you follow me on Instagram, you saw yesterday that I was trying to decide whether to paper piece or use templates, so I increased the size of the block from 6″ to 8″, which means I only have to make 64 instead of 100 blocks. I like the precision of paper-piecing and I actually enjoy the process. Cutting fabric is one of my least favorite tasks, so this skips that step. Each of the pieces for the quilt was hand-dyed by the kids and when it all comes together, it should look something like this. I limited the colors to varying shades of blue, yellow and green so that the subtle patterns in this design will still be seen.

Hoping to get the quilt top made this weekend, so wish me luck!

kaleidoscope-quilt-BLOCK-LA

kaleidoscope-quilt-block1 kaleidoscope-quilt-block2

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Fabric Dyeing Experiments

I have foolishly volunteered to make the school auction quilt this year. Two years ago, I spent a lot of time working on this quilt that was embroidered by all 400 of the kids. It took me about 6 weeks at the school sewing with each kid. Though it was lovely to introduce the kids the kids to sewing, I have learned a few lessons. This time around, we are having each kid dye a piece of fabric which will then be incorporated into the quilt. A much faster and easier process. I’ll post more later about the process of dyeing each piece individually if anyone is interested.

But above you can see some experiments that my kids and I did with patterned fabric. Ultimately we’re using only those with subtle or small-scale pattern and skipping the fabrics that grayed out too much in the dyeing process. I am using a kaleidoscope quilt design, so I think the quilt will be busy enough without too much additional pattern. Here’s the stack of fabric we have so far, and I think we’re close to halfway through the almost 400 kids who will be dyeing fabric. You can see I am sticking with shades of green, yellow, and blue and striving for lots of color variation. I’ll keep you posted on the process.

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Improvisational Quilting Class

I’ll be teaching an improvisational quilting class this Sunday at Intown Quilters. We’ll be working with improvised blocks like this one, using line as the main element. You’ll use strip piecing and pintuck pleats to make pieces of fabric that we will then cut up and piece together in an improvisational way. Whether you want to use perfectly straight lines or make a wonky block, you can explore line and improvisational techniques. We’ll talk about choosing fabrics, making color choices and mixing linens and thinner fabrics with traditional quilting cottons.

There are still spots available! It’s Sunday from 2-5 pm. Sign up here. No quilting experience required. I hope to see you there!

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Dog-tired

My friend and photographer Laura Malek was over taking some photos for 1, 2, 3 Quilt today and our dog Peabo insisted on being in the shot. Looking at the photos tonight, I’m thinking that I’m dog-tired. Peabo’s actually not tired too often and I could use a bit of his tiny terrier energy. I’m worn out from months spent working on this book and exhausted from being a parent these days.

Anyway, I’ve got plans to make some things soon, so I hope to get back here and share them with you!