Saturday, March 12, 2011

March Preemie Quilt


Today, I decided to make my March preemie quilt.  I pulled out some fabric I washed and ironed, and made the cuts I needed.  I really like the bright colors in these fabrics.  After lots of sewing small seams, I came up with this.


I will add a border of the dot fabric at the bottom and another border of the owl fabric at the top.  These small quilts are 24" x 30".  The owls in this fabric are so cute.

Friday, March 11, 2011

My first convergence quilt


No.  This is not it.  This is a project I started doing with pieced curves.  When I finally started hand sewing the curves, I decided to scrap the original project, and see what would happen if I sliced this up, rearranged it, sewed and sliced some more, adding more fabric here and there.  This is the result.


Then, I got out my new Ricky Tims' book on convergence quilts.  I have wanted to do this for a long time.  I cannot afford any of the great hand-dyed fabric out there that is really perfect for this project, so I went through my stash to see what I could find that I could make work.  I found some fat quarters of African fabric that I have been collecting, and selected four for this project.


I followed the directions for the harmonic convergence.  I wanted the patterns of the fabrics to keep their strength in the finished piece, so I placed the first pieces carefully.  After cutting, sewing, turning, cutting, and sewing again, this is what I created.


I really liked it, but wanted to add just the right borders.  I selected bright orange for the small containment border and a gold on black pattern that mimics one of the patterns in the African fabric.  Once, I put it all together, I was really pleased.  I am calling it Tanzanian Tango.  I love this process and will be doing more of these quilts.


To see some of Ricky Tims' convergence quilts, take a look at his web site.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

A new block and a fun book


I am in charge of finding the block of the month for my guild this month.  I was looking through Quilter's Cache and found this one, Crossed Roads, a 16 inch block.  If you haven't been to Quilter's Cache, you owe yourself some time to spend over there.  There are thousand of traditional and original blocks with great directions.  When I present this, I am going to ask people to use purples with a floral theme and cream for the crossed pieces.  I think it will turn out great.
I also did a few other things in the studio.  I worked on my design for my Ricky Tim's style Rhapsody quilt, sewed blocks together for the D9P and squared them up, and I started making copies of foundation pieces for a few of Carol Doak's stars of the states.  I finally got a copy of 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars by Carol Doak, and I am pretty excited about making more of these foundation pieced stars.  I love the first one I did and am looking forward to creating companions.  If you want to see more of Carol's work, and find some very cool free patterns, take a look at her web site.