All Fired Up - Part One

I am literally all fired up to be an Island Batik Ambassador!  So, it seems fitting that my second quilt for them, a miniature, be called "All Fired Up" after the line of fabrics called Fire Island.

I received all these beautiful black fabrics above.  Black isn't usually my color in my quilts though I do wear a ton of black and white.  I was scrolling through my Facebook feed thinking about what I wanted to do when I saw a picture of a traditional pumpkin seed and/or orange peel quilt.  I knew it would really showcase some of these black fabrics.

However, I can never do anything the easy way, so I had to adapt it somehow and make it my own. So I went into Electric Quilter 7 and started playing.  Here are the four designs I came up with:

I decided on the third idea above because I really liked the circle in the center.  I figured out I needed 40 of the orange peel shapes.  I knew there was no way I was going to be able to draw 40 of those leaf shapes and have them come out symmetrical.  So what did I do?  I called my mom.

My mother is also a quilter and she happens to have an ink-jet printer.  I don't, we have laser.  I knew that I could put my favorite Steam-a-Seam 2 through an ink-jet printer (no laser because they heat it!) and get symmetrical shapes.  I simply cut 1/2" off the 9" inch wide sheet of Steam-a-Seam 2 and it went right through the printer without any troubles!  I will definitely be doing this again.

I knew I also needed a grid on my background fabric to help me align the leaves so I drew one with a white iron-off marker that would come off when I ironed on the pieces.

Once that was done I started putting on the pieces!  It was so much fun.  I knew I needed a little more light to see the white lines on the yellow fabric, so I found a great new use for my LED light box:

 Here is the progression as I added more pieces!

Come back on Wednesday to check out the next step!
Suzy

Picking Fabric for Snowflake Table Runner

I keep wishing we had more snow so we could go sledding, but since we don't I decided that making a Snowflake Table runner would have to suffice.

I started by drafting a snowflake pattern:

I decided I wanted to do three snowflakes, but I didn't want to blanket stitch around this snowflake three times.  So I took off the more challenging leaf part for the outer two snowflakes and made them simple six pointed stars with dots at the ends.

Now it was time to pick fabric.  Here are some of my considerations:

I love this icy blue background.  I thought it would be great to put blue snowflakes on.  I like this dot fabric with it too, but when I thought about cutting the narrow leaf pieces from it I thought the color variation would be too much.

I love the snowflakes in this fabric, but they're not printed evenly and I thought it might take away from my own snowflake design.

I love this purple and blue fabric and thought it would make great snowflakes.  However, it has 4-fold symmetry instead of 6-fold symmetry like my snowflake.

I love this fabric too, but again it has 4-fold symmetry.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but this blue has lots of silver paint on it and it would've been great for snowflakes, but it was a slightly different color than my background so I decided against it.

Here are three darker fabrics for snowflakes.  I decided against the top one as it was too dotty.  The middle one was too windy and the bottom one is actually tiny blue flowers so that didn't seem right either.

Then I found these two fabrics.  The top one totally reminds me of snow so I decided to use it as my background fabric.  The color varies from turquoise, to sky blue to lavender.  I thought I would use a simple dark blue batik for the snowflakes so that the background could stand out.

Then I did what any girl would do.  I showed it to my mom!  And her comment was that the blue should be the background and the print should be the snowflakes.  I decided that would make any machine quilting I did show, so I went for it...

Suzy

Beginning Blog Quilt #3 - A Rainbow

I know, I know.  I'll work on a title.  But it's hard to do when you're in the middle of the process and don't know what it will look like complete.  I started with a long skinny design.  You can see the shapes below.

I knew that I wanted to play with a rainbow of color so I cut each piece out of eight different solid fabrics.  They're luscious Michael Miller Couture Cotton solids.  They have a nice high thread count and are my favorite solids to work with.

I then took the 8 pieces and gradated each column.  Since I used eight fabrics, I ended up with eight columns of color.  Now, I have to decide how to arrange the columns.  Here are some possibilities and my thoughts on them:

I like this.  If you look at it sideways it looks like a color tree....or so my husband says.  I wonder if it's too close together.  I also think it would be hard to align this perfectly on a background.  You'd have to draw a grid and be really careful it was straight or it would bother your eye.

I definitely like the shape that this gives with moving the columns up and down.  However, which the color changes I don't think it's as effective as the design above.

I like this design too.  The  columns are moved up and down, but with a lot less variation.  However, the colors still seem off and don't flow together like they do in the first picture.

If  you look in the middle of the right side at the cornflower blue shapes you can see that I tried to align them next to each other.  I don't like this effect either. It seems jumbled.

Here I tried spreading the shapes on the left further apart.  Not my favorite either.

Here I made the center dots go in a wavy line.  I like this effect the best so far.

This is another variation of the wavy line version.

Right now I am leaning towards either the top or bottom picture.  I haven't decided yet.  I'm going to work on appliqueing down all the pieces and then play some more!

Suzy

Mirror Inspiration

I was at my friend Julie's house the other day to sew with a bunch of friends for Quilter's Night Out.  Next to her front door was a skinny mirror with an interesting frame.  I took this close-up.

I love the circular design in the middle.  It would make an interesting applique or an interesting quilting pattern.  Decisions, decisions!

Here's a draft of a possible applique pattern.  I think if I were to actually make it, I would overlap the shapes so I don't have to worry about leaving space between them.  It's easier to make it look symmetrical when things overlap and you're not trying to have 1/8 inch spaces turn out equally spaced.

Suzy

Refining an Old Design

I was itching to start a new applique project, but wasn't in the mood to design.  So I went into my Adobe Illustrator files to see what I had there that I'd never done anything with.  I found this design:

I liked the design, but I didn't like all the little dots and paisley shapes, so I took them out.  Then I refined it some more until I ended up with this drawing:

I added the diamond shape to the border so I could cut it in pieces instead of one large circle which would have been a major challenge as I am using 9 x 12 inch sheets of Steam-a-Seam 2!  I also wanted a more interesting center and a bit more layering.

Now to play with fabric!

Suzy