My Quilt Guild’s Quilt Show

Cimarron Valley Quilters Guild had a quilt show Friday and Saturday. I entered ten quilts in the show, five of which were in the judged portion, and two in the guild’s challenge. I am very proud to have earned three ribbons. Below are pictures of me in front of my winning quilts.

The top quilt with the blue ribbon is my Liberated Log Cabin quilt. This quilt was also accepted into the Fiberworks 2019 Exhibit that will be in Tulsa October 4 - November 24, 2019.

All four of the quilts in the above picture are mine. The quilt with the red ribbon is Sticks & Stones, which was exhibited in Fiberworks 2018. 

I entered two quilts into our guild's quilt challenge, which was to take one of three vintage quilt blocks (hexagon, fan, or maple leaf) and make a modern quilt with it; I chose the maple leaf for both of my quilts. The two quilts in the above picture are mine; the one on the left won a white ribbon.

Curated Quilts Mini Quilt Challenge - Black and White II

Here is my second submission to the mini quilt challenge. I'm not sure how strictly the black and white criterion will be applied, so this may not be considered. But it certainly won't be considered if I don't enter it.

Curated Quilts Mini Quilt Challenge - Black & White

I actually have two submissions for the newest mini quilt challenge from Curated Quilts magazine - here is my first:

Curated Quilts Mini Quilt Challenge Update

I am thrilled to announce that my mini quilt in the previous post was selected to be published in issue 9 of Curated Quilts. You can see the quilt in my post here.

Curated Quilts Mini Quilt Challenge

I have learned that I am motivated to make quilts for quilt challenges. One of my favorite magazines, Curated Quilts, has a mini quilt challenge going on right now, and I made a quilt for it. The challenge can be seen here, and below is the quilt I made for the challenge.

Two New Quilts

I attended a workshop with Jean Wells at Empty Spools Seminar back in February. This workshop took place at Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. It was a great class in a beautiful location, although I missed one full day of class because I came down with the worst stomach virus I’ve ever had. I worked on two quilts at the workshop and have now finished both of them.

The first quilt was started as exercises given to us by Jean Wells. She brought solid color fabrics of many different colors, and on the first day we were to choose 6 of her fabrics. We didn't know what we were going to be doing with them when we selected them. She demonstrated cutting and sewing gentle curves, and we were to use our fabrics to practice doing the same. She continued demonstrating  a variety of things that we were supposed to do, always without patterns; we were choosing from among our 6 fabrics and sewing them together in various ways. This is called improvisational piecing.

The next day we were to make blocks from our 6 fabrics. We could use the pieces we had done in the earlier exercises, or not; I used mine in the centers of my blocks. After we sewed our blocks, we were to put them together into a composition; I used some of the leftover pieces from the day before in this composition as well. The only fabric I added to mine was the background; all the other fabrics in the quilt are the 6 that I chose from Jean Wells' fabrics. I call this quilt, "An Exercise In Letting Go." It measures 22" X 46 1/2".

We were also supposed to bring photographs with us to use for inspiration. Although I brought quite a few photos, it turned out that I didn't bring very many that were usable for the way Jean Wells wanted us to use them. But I did find one that I could use.

I traced the major shapes onto tracing paper, then decided to crop it to use just the center section. I used the color scheme and the general shapes from the photo to create this quilt, which I call "A Paris Window." It measures 17 1/4" X 28 1/2".

I highly recommend Jean Wells as a teacher; I only wish I had been able to attend the whole class from start to finish. Not only did I miss one day of class due to illness, I also arrived late due to a last minute schedule change. This meant that I missed the introductions before class and the actual instructions regarding choosing our 6 fabrics. I was told by another student when I arrived to choose 6 fabrics, but I learned later that students actually chose 5 fabrics, then Jean Wells talked to them individually about their choices. After discussing their 5 choices, they chose a 6th fabric (they didn't know in advance that they would be choosing a 6th fabric).

Even though I didn't have the full class experience, I am very happy with how my quilts turned out, and I really enjoy working in this new way.

New Header

I have been meaning to update my blog header for a really long time, and I finally decided that today was the day. It didn't really take that long; I'm not sure why I waited so long. The three quilts in the header are, from left to right, Sticks & Stones, A Paris Window, and Happy As A Clam. All three are my original designs. Sticks & Stones and Happy As A Clam are improvisationally pieced (meaning that I didn't have a plan for the final outcome when I started each quilt) and were done independently. A Paris Window was started in a class I took from Jean Wells Keenan in February of this year at Empty Spools Seminar and used a photo I took in Paris in the fall of last year as my inspiration.

New Quilts

I have been enjoying a new-to-me piecing technique called Improvisational Piecing. This is where you sew pieces of fabric together without a plan and see where it leads. I have also started naming my quilts more consistently; I used to only name a quilt occasionally. Here are two of my latest quilts:

Happy As A Clam

I called this "Happy As A Clam" for two reasons. First, it made me happy to make it. And second, the quilting pattern on the main (center) square is called clamshell. It is 15" W X 18" H.

Sticks & Stones

I called this "Sticks & Stones" because of the straight lines and the (sort-of) circles. It is 21 1/2" W X 15 1/2" H.

Quilt Guild Challenge Quilt

My quilt guild had a challenge that started at our Christmas meeting last year. Each guild member who wanted to participate brought a yard of an ugly fabric from her stash. It didn't have to be ugly; it could be a fabric that was out of style or you were tired of. When we arrived at the meeting, we put our fabric into an unmarked brown paper bag. Then after all of the fabric was collected, each participant drew a bag from the collection. The only way you could put the bag back was if you happened to draw your own fabric. We then had to use at least 75% of the fabric in a quilt, and bring the quilt to our May meeting.

The fabric that I drew was truly ugly. In fact, if there had been a prize for the ugliest fabric, I believe I would have won that prize. It was Duck Dynasty fabric; here is a picture of it.

I knew right away that the only way I could use this fabric was to cut it up into very small, unrecognizable pieces, so that is what I did. Here is my finished quilt.

I used the challenge fabric in the narrow strips within the colorful blocks, in the background, and in the binding. My quilt won 3rd place. It was a really good challenge that stretched my creativity and I enjoyed it. Considering what I started with, I was very pleased with my results.

Polka Dots

My quilt guild is doing a challenge. In May, we were to bring one yard of polka dot fabric. We then tore it in half, kept half, and passed the other half around until the music stopped (think musical chairs but with fabric). We repeated this several times until we ended up with 5 different polka dot fabrics in successively smaller sizes. We are to make something with these 5 fabrics and bring it to the December meeting. We can add additional fabrics as desired. This is a sneak peak at my quilt, which I finished a couple of days ago. Four of my 5 fabrics show up in this sneak peak - orange with purple dots, black with multiple color dots, gold with purple and brown dots, and pink with white dots. My 5th fabric is green with white dots, very similar to the pink. It didn't have to be quilted for the challenge, but I was having so much fun with it that I just kept working and got it done.

Colorado Coneflower

This is my quilt that was selected as a finalist in the Quilting Arts Reader's Challenge.  I took the photo of the coneflower in 2009.  I manipulated it in Photoshop Elements, printed it on printer fabric, then thread sketched and quilted it.  It is 10" square.

You can check the June/July 2015 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine and their website (quiltingdaily.com) to see all of the finalists' work.

Happy Village

Finished my happy village quilt I started this weekend in Karen Eckmeier's class at Oklahoma Quilters State Organization's fall retreat.

Lesson 8 Abstracting a Photo

We were given three suggested ways to make an abstract design from a photo. I chose to use a grid. This was my final lesson for Katie Pasquini Masopust's Online Color Composition and Design class. I learned a lot from doing the lessons so it was a worthwhile class.  

Below is the photo I chose.

Obviously I cropped the photo considerably.  This quilt ended up a bit smaller than most of my others (it is 12" X 12" while most of my others were 14" X 14"), because once I had all the fusing done, I decided it needed to be cropped a bit closer.

Sister Trees

Little quilt I made in Frieda Anderson's fusing class at the Quilting Adventures spring retreat in Schulenberg, Texas.

Lesson 6 Abstract Landscape

My assignment in Katie Pasquini Masopust's Online Color Composition and Design Course was to create an abstract landscape.  This is actually my second attempt, as I didn't like my first one.  I found that it's true what they say - you learn more from your failures than from your successes!

Lesson 7 Simultaneous Contrast

This assignment in Katie Pasquini Masopust's Online Color Composition and Design Course was to use multiple values of analogous colors for the background and a complementary color on top.  The complement was supposed to look darker on the light fabric and lighter on the dark fabric.  For some reason, that didn't work in my piece, but I like the composition of this anyway.  And yes, this really is Lesson 7 (for those of you keeping up with my posts LOL); I haven't had a chance to finish Lesson 6 yet.

Lesson 5 Photo Value Study

In this lesson, we were to choose an inspiration photo, crop it to create a tight composition, and recreate it in an achromatic color scheme (using only black, gray, and white fabrics).  I exaggerated the value contrast from the photo to make a more dynamic piece.  I also simplified it by leaving out the water droplets (didn't think I could reproduce them in fabric!).  This is my inspiration photo:

And here is the cropped version:

Lesson 4 Lost and Found Line

I'm working on a series for my Color, Composition & Design class with Katie Pasquini Masopust. This lesson is about lost and found line, engaging the edges, and avoiding the centers. I used an achromatic plus color scheme (black, gray, and white plus red) and a diagonal layout.

Lesson 3 Negative Space

I'm working with the same shapes as lessons 1 & 2, but since circles were dominant in lesson 2, I made the triangles dominant in this lesson. I used a split complementary color scheme again, this time with red, orange (my 2 warms) and blue-green (my cool). And I chose a vertical layout. In order to add interest to the negative space, I pieced the background, and in order to stay with the vertical layout, I pieced it as vertical strips. I had all the triangles pointing up for the same reason.

Lesson 2 Composition

I chose an S-curve layout and a split-complementary color scheme (blue, violet, and yellow-orange) for my lesson 2 quilt. It is 14 inches square. I decided to use the same shapes and some of the same fabrics as I used for my Lesson 1 quilt.