Tag Archives: QuiltCon

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Saturday morning I took a six-hour class with Rebecca Bryan to make her Rainbow Remix quilt from her book Modern Rainbow. The book is filled with beautiful, rainbow eye candy. So many stunning quilts in a variety of styles!

Rainbow Remix is an improv strip-pieced quilt, which calls for fifty 10" squares. I went with solids, like in the book, and I think I ended up with 75 colors, which works great since I'd like a larger quilt.

I got my first 22 blocks made during class.

Here's a look at Rebecca's Rainbow Remix. She gave a design talk in the afternoon about piecing together the blocks into units to create the quilt top. I'm looking forward to having my completed blocks on my design wall to play around with.

Once again I found myself in class with a guildmate. (How fun to have so many common interests with these women I met four months after I signed up for my QuiltCon classes!) She and I have decided that we're going to work on our Rainbow Remix quilts at the May retreat. It'll be hard for me to keep my hands off all that rainbowy goodness, especially since I cut all my strips in class and just need a marathon sewing session to get them sewn together. Luckily, in the meantime I have plenty of other WIPs to choose from, like my improv crosses!

I was also in class with Silvia of A Stranger View. We were new quilt bloggers together and hang out online together on IG and Periscope. It was fun to discover that we had registered for the same class and would get to hang out together. Silvia sent me a few of her photos to share with you. The first is of me working on my rainbow-ish order. The foreground shows a classmate's palette. It was fun to see people working with non-solid fabrics. The second photo is of Silvia's palette. And the last one is of Silvia and Rebecca while they were working on the layout of Silvia's blocks.

 

I have two quilts to share from the show today. Both are related to Jessica of Quilty Habit. They also share the theme of trees. The first is Jessica's quilt, Home, in the Improvisation category. I love Jessica's eye for designing with improv piecing. Her artist statement reads:

"Home" is my tribute to everything comforting and natural - to me, this is my marriage. I was inspired by Carolyn Friedlander's Botanics fabrics to machine piece trees improvisationally. I chose low volume fabrics for a contemplative background. The trees each display the range of one color from darkest to lightest. Finally, on my home machine, I quilted woodgrain in the background to represent the rest of the forest, and swirls of wind high above. As Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros say, "Home is wherever I'm with you."

This second one that I'm sharing with you caught my eye both for the beautiful, saturated teals as well as for the orange peel appliqué, which made me think of Jessica, as it's one of her signature design elements. I immediately snapped a photo and sent it to Jess. Windy is by Emily Parson. It was in the Appliqué category. Her artist statement reads:

I was inspired by a crisp October day with a deep turquoise sky and the beautiful golden trees. I machine appliquéd the leaves and arranged them as if the wind was blowing the trees and making the leaves flutter around me. Stipple quilting in the background makes the leaves stand out.

 

Giveaway *closed*

I'm sharing some of my goodies from QuiltCon with one of you. I'll draw one winner on March 24th at 1pm PST out of all entries on my five posts about my QuiltCon classes. (This is the fourth of the five posts.) The drawing is open to everyone. To enter, please comment below and tell me one of the quilts on your bucket list. Followers can get a second entry by posting a second comment to tell me how you follow me (Bloglovin', Instagram, etc.). Thank you! Thank you to everyone who entered. The winner is Anja of Anja Quilts!

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Friday was my day to explore the quilt show. My sister lives in Orange County and came up to spend most of the day with me, visiting the vendor booths and viewing the show. That evening I took Jeni Baker's Creative HST Piecing Class.

The class focused on techniques in Jeni's book, Patchwork Essentials: The Half-Square Triangle. She brought in a variety of fun and interesting examples (that you'd have thought I would have taken photos of!) to get our creative juices flowing. After a short intro into the many different options for doing something different with HSTs, Jeni gave us a ton of time to sew. As we worked, she walked the room checking in with everyone about what they were working on and assisting as needed. Jeni was delightful and encouraging.

I chose to work with my Swoon scraps, because quite frankly, they are my favorite color palette at the moment. Most of my fabrics were in strips, so I began by piecing a large slab of mostly strips. The strips that were pieced from multiple pieces of fabric were necessitated by using smaller scraps. (That wonky triangle attached to the right side was just so I'd be able to cut out my third square.)

Once my slab was created I cut three 6.5" squares (mostly because I had a 6.5" square ruler with me) on point from the slab. I have some usable sections left, but without further piecing, three was the max I could get out of my slab.

Then I paired these pieced squares with 6.5" squares of my white text fabric to make half square triangles. These were made using the two at a time method of marking the diagonal and sewing 1/4" on either side of it.

Finally I used navy squares paired with the above HSTs to make these units, using the same method as the previous step. From my initial three squares cut from my slab I'll have twelve of these units, but I ran out of time and navy fabric for making more during class. I'm looking forward to finishing these twelve and continuing further with this project.

 

Today I'm sharing a couple of my favorites from the show that featured transparency. I love the play with fabrics to achieve this look. It's a bit of an optical illusion. First, from the Piecing category, Triangle Transparency by Yvonne Fuchs. I love her large-scale, graphic design. Her artist statement reads:

As a Quilt Design a Day (QDAD) participant, one of the challenge prompts is to try to use transparency in your design. Triangle Transparency was one of my earliest QDAD designs, because the color palette for the day worked well with transparency play. I carefully curated a group of modern fabrics to turn the design into reality. My goal with the quilt is to show how powerful modern tonal prints can be when used in a large, graphic design meant to emphasize dramatic color play.

 

This next one had the added draw of a rainbow of color. I love how the quilting added to the design of the piecing. Color Study (Triangles) in the Use of Negative Space category is by Erika Mulvenna. Her artist statement reads:

I first studied Color Theory as a painting student, following exercises in mixing pigments to learn about color principles and interactions.

The inspiration for this piece comes directly from one of those primary Color Theory exercises; use the 12 colors of the Artist's Color Wheel to create a subjective color model. Red, my favorite color, is centered in the design. As the shapes intersect, the 12 colors of the wheel move back and forth out to the very edges.

Creating this design with fabric was a challenge. After experimenting with several piecing techniques, I used a large-scale foundation piecing method.

 

 

Giveaway *closed*

I'm sharing some of my goodies from QuiltCon with one of you. I'll draw one winner on March 24th at 1pm PST out of all entries on my five posts about my QuiltCon classes. (This is the third of the five posts.) The drawing is open to everyone. To enter, please comment below and tell me your favorite quilting book. Followers can get a second entry by posting a second comment to tell me how you follow me (Bloglovin', Instagram, etc.). Thank you! Thank you to everyone who entered. The winner is Anja of Anja Quilts!

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On Thursday I shared about my first class at QuiltCon. After a one hour dinner break, my second class on the first day was English Paper Piecing with Johanna Masko. Again I ended up in class with a guildmate, which I enjoyed. Our whole table was filled with lovely people. I think we chatted more in this class due to some combination of the late hour and not having sewing machines between us.

Johanna asked us to introduce ourselves and share why we chose to take the class. A number of people before me shared that they love handwork. When it was my turn I promptly shared that I do not like handwork, but that I am at a stage in life where I keep finding myself in places where it would be beneficial to have a handwork project to bring along. I have no grand dreams of queen-sized hexie quilts, but I'm pleased to have added a skill to my repertoire. I'd like to get a hexie kit together to keep in the car for the times that I am a few minutes early to school pickup, or I'm waiting for the kids at a class.

It was a great beginning class, focused on how to English Paper Piece without purchasing specialized templates or tools. Johanna led us in making our own templates and we used the freezer paper method for prepping our hexies before sewing them. I had a little trouble with the freezer paper coming loose and moving around as I was trying to baste them, so I might try paper templates and use wonder clips to keep the edges folded over while I baste. I'm pleased at the progress I made that night. I still need to throw the pile into the car so I'll have them with me when I want them. I'm still just not likely to sit down with handwork at home. (I don't even hand sew my binding most of the time!)

 

A few more of my favorites from the show. This first one is Samarra Khaja's Candy Dots quilt, from the Minimalist Design category of the show. My photo doesn't adequately illustrate the 3D design of the dots. That lovely shadow on the lower portion of the dots was simply the shadow that the overhead lighting cast from the raised dots. (I missed getting a close-up photo of Samarra's artist statement.)

The next two are from the Michael Miller Glitz challenge. (I showed off another from the challenge in my last post.) First, my friend Tami Levin's Putting on the Glitz. I admired this on IG and then was excited to see it in person at a guild meeting. It was so fun to see it hanging in the show. I just love it. Her design. Her choice of pop colors. Her perfect quilting! Tami's artist statement reads:

The Michael Miller challenge fabrics reminded me of the glitz from Art Deco designs. Keeping that in mind I wanted the overall look to be on pointe. The squares were a bit too static which is why I opted to slash organize sub sections on the diagonal for each block. They were filled with contrasting solids that made me think of trees wrapped in fairy lights during the winter months, thus the surrounding white corner triangles.

This next one is Linked In by Julie Anderson. I really loved the geometric design of the rectangular links. And the quilting was a perfect complement to her design. Julie's artist statement reads:

Linked in... Even before creating the piece I wanted to challenge myself to use a piece from each fabric that was a part of the challenge set.

Linking all the squares and rectangles together before machine appliquéing them to the background.

 

Giveaway *closed*

I'm sharing some of my goodies from QuiltCon with one of you. I'll draw one winner on March 24th at 1pm PST out of all entries on my five posts about my QuiltCon classes. (This is the second of the five posts.) The drawing is open to everyone. To enter, please comment below and tell me your best EPP tip. If you don't English Paper Piece, share a general quilting tip. Followers can get a second entry by posting a second comment to tell me how you follow me (Bloglovin', Instagram, etc.). Thank you! Thank you to everyone who entered. The winner is Anja of Anja Quilts!