Beginning a Free-Form Quilt--Quilter Beth

Last night, I had a chance to work a bit on my free-form quilt. It is SO much fun to work without rules. I started with the blocks I separated from the quilt itself. (I'll work on the remaining portion of the quilt later.)

It is so dreary and gray outside right now that working with lots of color feels REALLY good. This is currently on my design wall.

Saving a UFO

Unlike Beth, I rarely finish anything before I am lured away to new interests.  I used to beat myself up about that but now have accepted that free-spirit part of my personality.  Because of my habits, I have tons of UFO's to choose from but I have decided to combine three pieces I created in my first Nancy Crow workshop.  None of them are worth finishing on their own but could come together nicely in a free-form quilt.

 The first assignment was to create a black and white motif sized at about 2 x 3 ft. 

 The second assignment was to use that motif to create a 2 x 3 ft piece incorporating whites, off-whites, black, and greys.  

 The third assignment was to create a 3 x 4 ft piece using the same motif and incorporating browns along with the previous whites, blacks, and greys.

 To join with them I found these orphans from another quilt that will begin to give some color to the mix.  These were cut back before I quit using a ruler to cut my fabric.

WISH ME LUCK!

Second piece from Rayna's book finished

Well, not finished finished but the quilt top is done!

Contain the Light

Commercial and Hand-dyed Cottons

38 x 47 inches

Progress on my white blocks

I first showed you the white 4 1/2 inch blocks that I am slicing and dicing in this post. The plain white blocks were slightly changed and marginally more exciting when I started.  I have continued working with them and have gotten far more free with my rotary cutter.  Here are some of my newer revamped blocks.

 I have started joining the revamped blocks with strip sets to create a new art work--my second from my experiments from Rayna's book.   I am very excited about this new work!   I'll show pictures of it as it gets closer to being finished.

Stripping Therapy

I got Rayna's book yesterday afternoon.  I opened it up and it was like she'd been spying on me in my most private moments in my studio.  I've been doing a form of this piecing for a couple of years and using the bits for bags and as backgrounds for art quilts.  I've even been calling it "free-form piecing."  But I never thought of cutting up those old orphan blocks and using them in quilts.  I wanted to run right downstairs and paw through my boxes of scraps and blocks and get stitching.

But, alas, on Fridays I am just exhausted, so I had to content myself with reading the book (yes, I read the whole thing) and going to bed with visions of strips dancing in my head.  I was really taken with her quilt, "Strata," and took a few moments to analyze what I liked best about it so I could create something with that feel in my own manner.

So this morning, after I fed the darling husband and myself, I divorced myself from the rest of the family and boogied downstairs to commune with the scraps.  I got down the two boxes of strips that I had been saving (cleverly labeled "cools" and warms") and ran my fingers through them feeling like Midas with his coins.  Then I got out the laundry basket of scraps and the box stashed under it.  Then I excitedly got out the box of orphan blocks and discovered the finished pieced baby quilt top and another bag of blocks.  Then I sat down on the floor, feeling totally overwhelmed with all this stuff.   How was I ever going to sort through all this stuff?

Okay -- maybe I should just forget this for a while and go to the grocery store.  But then I remembered what Rayna's friend said, "When all else fails, sew strips."  So I pushed the box of orphan blocks, the overflowing laundry basket, and the boxes of "warms" and miscellaneous scraps away from me and picked up the box of "cools" and set it next to the ironing board.  I realized that what I liked best about "Strata" were the cool greys, blues, and greens and the soft golds punctuated with the bits of reds and purples.  The reds and purples are arranged in such a way that they look like structures in an Asian landscape.  Very appealing.

 So I pulled the lighter colors from the box and started stitching them together.  I found a half of a block and some strip-sets from other projects, so I sewed them together too. Then I started pulling the darker colors from the box and sewed those together.  I stopped when my bobbin ran out and the needle needed changing.

This is where it stands.  I'm going to the grocery store now, but I think when I get back, I'm going to get into my stash and pull out the soft golds and greys and start sewing together strips of those.

Who knows, I might even find a use for this ridiculously ugly piece.  I've kept it for years because it is a really nice piece of fabric (good-quality sateen), even though, in a spectacularly bone-headed moment, I stamped on it on the wrong side.    Not that it matters, it's still staggeringly ugly.  I guess I should admit, I don't love all the bits I sewed together today, but none of them compares to the piece above.

Sorry about the verbosity of this post, I usually try to save that for my own personal blog, but there will be only one post from me today and this is it.

Orphan???

I am one of those obnoxious people who finishes every quilt started. Ugly but true. Then I remembered a traditional quilt I made for myself that held very special meaning to me. It was a green and purple "Drunkards Path" 96 "X 96".

When I was making the 24" blocks, I made one too many. I do believe that makes it an orphan. I started to take the large 24" block apart into the 16 - 6" units then stopped. I think I will leave some of it together and see what interesting slices I can make. I still don't have my book back yet and I actually haven't read one word of it. So I am anxious to get it back so I can catch up with everyone.

Poor little orphan

I've Picked My Project for January--Quilter Beth

I'm SO thrilled that Rayna Gillman is our guest blogger for this month. I have been a fan of hers for quite some time; and I have several UFOs, orphan blocks, and other miscellaneous quilt pieces from which to choose a project.

I'm hoping to do more than one piece, but I'm not sure whether time will allow it. I have, however, chosen a piece to start with. It is a piece I made when I worked through Lyric Kinard's "Art + Quilt" book. As I worked through each exercise, I documented my progress on my blog. (If you'd like to check that out, you can see it here. Enter "Lyric Kinard" in the Search box.) It is a project I did when I was working on a Value and Hue Exercise from her book. It met the requirements of the exercise, but it was nothing I actually would use.

I'm thinking I will like it much better after some manipulations using suggestions from Rayna's new book "Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts." I'm excited to see how different it will look.