Modern Wedge DONE!

This quilt has been a long time coming, but it is finally done.  I started it at a workshop over two years ago with Kathy Doughty from Material Obsession. It has been a pondering quilt.  I have worked on it off and on, with lots of thinking time in between sewing to figure out what to do next.

The background is quilted with an asymmetric grid, as suggested by Jacqui Gering at the walking foot quilting class I took in the spring.

The curves are quilted with curvy organic quilting--the narrow one is quilted with turquoise thread.

I used red thread on the wider one.

I matched the binding to the background fabric and the adjacent wedges. 

While I was taking pictures in my yard this morning, I noticed this decorative grass seed head...

It goes with the curves of my quilt!

Modern Wedge Binding

Today is the Slow Sunday Stitching linkup over at Kathy's blog.  There, she encourages us each week to slow down and do some hand stitching.  I have not had a specific long term hand stitching project this summer but I am happy to be able to participate this week. I will be finishing off the hand stitching on the binding of my Modern Wedge quilt.



My husband and I went for a 15km bike ride last night and then sat in the gazebo for an hour until it got too dark to sew and read. The gazebo is a wonderful place to stitch--we have a bubbling rock nearby which makes a wonderful sound, the birds sing in the trees, and the chipmunks and squirrels scurry around the yard for our entertainment. 



I decided to match the binding to the background and the wedges...it took a little longer than usual to make and attach the binding by machine yesterday.  Today, I will finish off the hand stitching and take some pictures of the finished quilt for a future blog post. Have a great day!

Creating Texture

I have spent much of my sewing time over the last 2-3 weeks creating texture in the background of this quilt.  I started this top at a workshop in 2014 with Kathy Doughty from Australia. The workshop was called "Modern Wedge".  

I put the background together earlier this year and hand appliqued my snaky wedges to the background.  I brought the quilt top to the Walking foot quilting class I took in April with Jacquie Gering.  It was Jacquie who suggested the asymmetric grid for the background of this quilt.  It has taken me several hours, but I am finally finished quilting the texture into the neutrals.  

I have an idea of how to quilt the curved parts but wanted to finish the background parts first.   Now that this part is done, I can change my thread colour and start on the curves.

 Don't forget to come back to see if my idea works!

Guild Sewing Day

Today was our annual summer sewing day for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild. I brought along too many projects to do in the time available, as usual...  I did, however, make a list of three things I really wanted to get done before I went home.

First up...a comfort quilt top that Cathy and I worked on together.  These friendship star blocks were made by several members of the guild.  We managed to put the 35 blocks together and add the borders. Cathy will quilt this one and someone else will add the binding.

Next up, lunch!  I bought all of the ingredients (except for the milk) for my lunch at the local farmer's market this morning.

My second project was a baby quilt--I had made 14 of the blocks before I arrived at the sewing day--I completed the last 5 blocks and set them 4x5.  This quilt top was made from a jelly roll that had been in my stash for too long and needed to be used!  The solids were scraps leftover from other projects.  I have already picked out the backing and the batting is cut and ready to go.

This will be a gift in waiting for a baby someday. It is always good to have a gift ready in case a baby shower invitation comes in the mail.

I also brought along two quilt tops, one of which I hoped to baste before the end of the day.  This was my third goal for the day.  It counts as my slow stitching project for this week.

I will be working on this quilt this week when Christine comes over for sewing night this week. The other quilt will be basted and quilted once this one is done.

Preparing...

This week, Christine and I are going to a two day workshop with Jacquie Gering:  "Machine quilting with your Walking Foot".  This weekend, I am preparing my quilt sandwiches to use in the class.  I have everything cut out and I am in the process of hand basting all of the sandwiches. I am using up all of the spools of thread in my stash that just have a little bit of thread left...so far I have emptied 5 spools! There are 11 sandwiches in various sizes to make.  This is using up lots of stash fabric and lots of my batting scraps as well. I am using fusible tape to piece the batting.

I have taken two classes with Jacquie before.  In April 2014, she was the speaker at the London Friendship Quilter's guild and did a workshop called Stitch and Flip.  Here is a picture of my project:

 

(I have still not finished this project but plan on taking it with me to the retreat next weekend so I can work on it.)

 

 

The second class was Improvisational Piecing and took place at Black Creek Pioneer Village in July 2014.

 

 



I finished this project and quilted it with a spiral using my walking foot.

 



I plan on taking this quilt with me this week to show Jacquie. 

I am really looking forward to the workshop this week.  I am fairly proficient at "organic quilting" with my walking foot and feel confident with spiral quilting but would love to have more "tools in my toolbox" for machine quilting my own quilts. 

 

 



We are each supposed to bring a quilt top that we have made and part of the class with be discussing quilting possibilities for each of our quilts. I am taking my "Modern Wedge" quilt with me.  I have the backing ready and hope to quilt it next weekend at the retreat after getting some quilting ideas at the class.



Jacquie is an excellent teacher...if she is ever teaching a class in your neck of the woods, you should go!!!  I am so excited about seeing Jacquie again and learning all I can from her this week!!!

I am linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching.

Here is my stash report...lots of fabric out this report for my daughter's quilt and those quilt sandwiches!

Fabric used since my last stash report: 10.25yards
Total fabric used this year: 38.5 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report: 3 yards.
Total fabric added this year: 46.25 yards
Net fabric added this year:  7.75 yards

I am digging myself out of the red hole...

Also linking up to Patchwork Times...

Modern Wedge Slow Stitching

 

To prepare for Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow, tonight, I hand basted the wedges down to the background on my modern wedge quilt. I started this quilt at a workshop taught by Kathy Doughty from Material Obsession in Australia when she was in Ontario a couple of years ago.  I have been playing around with layouts on my design wall for a few weeks now and finally settled on this layout:

 

 

 

I used red thread for the basting. I thought about just pinning the curved sections on but was afraid that the pieces would shift as I sewed them. 

 

 

Basting on the wider wedges:



 

 

I need to get this project finished up so that I can free up half of my design wall for my daughter's new quilt.  There are lots of pieces to keep track of and they all need to stay in the right places or the pattern will not work out properly.   I washed the fabric for her quilt this week and will start cutting this week.  In the meantime, I will be hand appliqueing the wedges down onto the background fabric.  I started tonight with the narrow wedges...

I am turning under about a 1/4" as I sew and trying to keep a smooth curve in the process. So far, so good!

Next, I will have to figure out how to quilt this project.  I am going to do it on my DSM. If you  have any ideas, please let me know!  The London Friendship Quilters Guild is having their quilt show this October and I want to finish off a few of my UFO's in time to put them in the show.

I will be linking up with the other slow Sunday stitchers at Kathy's blog.

Puttering in the Sewing Room

I have spent a few evenings in the sewing room during the last couple of weeks.  I made another house for my 30's prints neighbourhood--this is house #3.

I put together the 9th liberated basket quilt for my basket sampler quilt from the workshop I taught in January.  I used selvages for this basket.  If you look closely, you can see that the handle fabric also has scissors on it. I have some machine applique to do on one more block before I can assemble this quilt top.

 

Last week, I celebrated my birthday and my husband gave me a couple of quilting books..."Free Range Triangle Quilts" by Gwen Marston and Cathy Jones, and "Quilt Lovely" by Jen Kingwell.  There are lots of inspiring quilts in both books.  I was drawn to a quilted pillow in Jen's book and decided to make one for myself.  I need 16 paper pieced arcs for this pillow.  These are the first two arcs.

 

 

I have been working on more arcs and have 10 done now.  I need to go digging through my scraps before I make the last 6. They are not very big and will measure 2" in the finished blocks.  There is quite a bit of curved piecing in this pillow...I will get to that when I finish the arcs.

 

 

I have figured out the final layout for the modern wedge quilt.  I took the lighter wedges off the wall and will use them in another project.  I will be hand appliqueing the curvey parts onto the background, perhaps as my slow Sunday stitching project this weekend.

 

 

 

It was cold and frosty on my way to work this morning so I just had to stop the car at the side of a country road and take a few pictures.  Everything looked so sparkly!

 



This and That

Since my design wall was installed last week, I have been puttering in my sewing room on various projects.  I made a second house block using my 30's prints.  They look like good neighbours!

I also made some more mug blocks.  We will call this picture a "mug shot"...  The darker blue one on the left side may be too dark for this little quilt so it may become a mug rug.

The colours for this month's block for the Elgin Piecemaker's charity quilt are rust, brown and cream.  I designed this block myself...no pattern used.

I also made a low volume rail fence background for my modern wedge quilt.  This is one block of 12.  I figured I used almost two yards of fabric for this project...funny how the bin of low volume fabrics still looks just as full.

I have been playing with how to arrange the wedges on the background...this is why I wanted a design wall before completing this project.  I have not made a final decision yet and would welcome any comments you have about the layout of the quilt...

I am not sure I have found the right layout yet...

Have a good week!

My New Design Wall

I have wanted a design wall for a long time...probably forever!!!  Since setting up my new sewing room last Summer, I have been contemplating which wall I would use as a design wall.  I finally made a decision and my husband went out a couple of weeks ago and purchased some rigid foam insulation. Then, this past weekend, we bought the rest of the supplies...duct tape and command strips.  I ordered the flannel design wall fabric (gray with a grid on it--designed by Kaffe Fasset) from Hyggeligt (there is a link in my sidebar) in St. Mary's, Ontario. The fabric got washed, dried and ironed on the weekend so we were all ready to work on assembly by Sunday night. We actually worked on this for two evenings--Sunday and Monday.

First, we measured the height of the wall--in my case--81" from the top of the baseboard to the ceiling.   I used a utility knife and a drywall T ruler to cut the insulation to the right height.  I used 4 two feet wide pieces of 1" thick insulation.

We used duct tape to put two boards together to make two 4' wide sections.  We taped the seam on both sides of the board.

I had to sew a seam down the middle of the fabric and then cut it into two sections--one for each section of the design wall. There was 2-3 inches of fabric to wrap around to the back of the insulation on all sides.   We used duct tape to tape the fabric to the board.  We taped the bottom first and then stretched it and taped the top followed by the sides.  We tried to keep the lines on the grid straight on the sides and top of the design wall as we taped it.

You can see the seam in the middle of the design wall.  This is the first finished section before we hung it on the wall.

We had to cut a hole in the second section for an electrical outlet. We cut the hole before taping the fabric to the insulation. I cut an "X" in the fabric where the hole was and used duct tape to tape each part of the X to the back of the hole.

We hung the section with the hole in it first to make sure everything lined up properly.  The bottom edge of the design wall rests on the top of the baseboard.

I did not want to use anything that would damage the wall.  The hardware store had these nifty hook tape command strips by 3M --I purchased 4 packages.

 It took me a while to figure out that I needed to take two strips and book them together like this to make this work for the design wall.

I scrunched them together and took the paper off one side so I could stick it to the back of the design wall.

There are four of these across the top and three across the middle and bottom of each section.  We carefully leaned the bottom of the section along the top of the baseboard and once we were sure we had lined everything up properly, pressed it to the wall to get it to stick.

It worked!  And, if I ever have to take the design wall down, there should not be any damage to the wall or the paint.

It did not take me long to start adding projects to the wall and put it to good use...

This project is from a workshop I did 2 or 3 years ago with Kathy Doughty (from Material Obsession in Australia).  I need to rearrange the pieces and make a background.  I want to get this UFO done but needed a design wall to get it all laid out.  No excuses now for not getting it done!

I am just thrilled with my new design wall and can't wait to get sewing and add more blocks to the wall.

I also hung up my Mexican Stars quilt and a counted cross stitch picture I made years ago in my sewing room.  I have a few more quilts to hang up in there too but they need hanging sleeves.  I will post more pictures as I get them hung up.

Now...off to sew!!!