Modern Quilt Guild Mini Swap

Last year, I attended QuiltCon in Nashville, TN with my friend, Christine.  I participated in the Make a Mini, Make a Friend Swap and my swap partner and I met at QuiltCon when we exchanged our mini quilts.  Evie made me the star quilt and I made the drunkard's path variation for her--I called it Maple Keys from Canada.

This year, I did not attend QuiltCon in Austin, TX, so I decided to sign up to swap a mini quilt with another quilter by mail.  I received my quilt from my partner, Ann, in Texas a few weeks ago.  I had told her that I liked Frank Lloyd Wright and orange when I filled out my swap form.  I think she nailed it!

Ann motioned she liked quilt designer/teacher Sarah Bond.  I had never heard of Sarah Bond before and set about doing some research to find out more information so that I could make a suitable mini quilt for Ann.  Sarah had done a webinar for the Modern Quilt Guild so I watched that and also googled images of her quilts.  I noticed three common themes in many of Sarah's quilts that I saw online...1.  Flying geese  2.  Curves and  3. Creative use of Striped fabric. I dug around in my stash and found some Kaffe Fasset fabric and a dark gray Essex Linen to use as a background. 

I don't usually design quilts on paper first, but I did this time.  I took a 24" by 24" square of paper and folded it in half diagonally and then folded it some more.  I used a piece of string and a pencil to create the arcs and then filled in the lines for the flying geese.  I used each of the flying geese arcs as a template to paper piece the flying geese. 

Here is the first arc. 

I used the quarter circle in the corner and the plain arcs as patterns for cutting out the background pieces. 

A little curved piecing and I was on my way!

The second and third arcs were completed and added to the quilt top. 

I used some turquoise and gray 28 wt thread for the quilting. 

The quilted arcs are blue and the quilting in the flying geese was done with gray thread. 

Some striped binding finished my mini off nicely. 

I used the leftover Kaffe fabric on the back. 

Here is the finished mini quilt. Ann has received it in the mail and loved it!

I would definitely participate in the Modern Swap again!  Maybe, next year, I will get to meet my swap partner in person at QuiltCon...

Design Workshop with Jacquie Gering

I spent three days in workshops with Jacquie Gering last week.  You can read about the first workshop here.  The second workshop was two days of learning to design the Jacquie Gering way!  We were told we would not need our sewing machines until Day 2!  We spend much of the first day using paper and scissors to experiment with achieving "exchange" (balance, harmony...) in our paper designs.  My first attempt is shown above and I got a gold star from Jacquie for this one!  My second attempt was not even worthy of a picture before it landed in the trash can!  I made two more--

By lunch time, we had lots of ideas up on the design wall on one side of the room.

Next, we looked at some of Jacquie's quilts and discussed the designs, some of which she loved and others that she did not love.  We talked about ways that some of them could have been designed differently to create different looks.

Our design challenge for the rest of the afternoon was to play with some paper blocks that Jacquie gave to us to create more quilt designs.  I could not believe the number of possibilities that the participants came up with in this exercise!  Here are a few of my designs.

On the second day, we discussed moving from paper or craft-foam designs to fabric.  I decided to skip the mock up of my design idea on using craft foam and moved straight to fabric.  I make 18 liberated drunkard's path units and started playing with placement on the design wall.

I have done a lot of garment sewing in my life so a few curved seams did not faze me.

At first, my blocks were too big so I ended up cutting them down to a smaller size and playing some more.

Jacquie and I played with this 16 patch design for quite a while, moving pieces here and there and trying to find a pleasing design.  After a while, she left to work with someone else.  I stared at what I had on the design wall and all I could see was the curved arrow on the upper right corner.   I then came up with this idea...

Others in the room, including Jacquie, concurred and after a bit of tweaking, this became my final design.   I sewed the blocks together and had my top together before the end of the day.

This was a fun and challenging workshop with ideas that will continue to influence the quilts that I make for a long time!  I already have my quilt basted and ready to quilt.  The quilting pattern is already chosen. I just need to find the right colour of thread...

Thanks again, Jacquie, for an amazing three days!