International Quilt Festival-Chicago

I had two weeks to get my act together because I am doing a 2 hour demo at the International Quilt Festival in Chicago this Sat. June 22. The show is June 21-23, 2013. I am thrilled it is returning to Chicago after being gone for 3 years. I decided to make a wearable art-like garment and I cut the sleeves of a denim jacket I wasn't wearing and thought I'd raw edge fuse applique my business name to the back for some free advertising! The front has several felt flowers with button centers. I did funky stitching with variegated thread around the collar, armholes and front opening and chose to stop and say that was enough embellishments. I will wear it the day of my presentation so if you see me at the show s

stop and say "hi!"

Modern Roue Chromatique (Modern Color Wheel)

I found a photo of this quilt on Pinterest and loved it because of the rainbow colors and I love a double mirror image symmetry style quilt. I tried to find a pattern source and I found the origin of the photo from Australia and several color variations but no pattern.

 This is the pattern I found on Pinterest but didn't want the blue color hues to dominate. I used graph paper and designed the quilt the way I wanted the colors with blue on the outer edges, red and pink the dominating colors and yellow and green in the center. This became my placement guide for the piecing of the triangles and squares.

I made 3 more copies of my graph paper color placement and taped them together which allowed me to visually view the full quilt.

I then made oodles of half square triangle combinations, cut out plenty of the white swirl tone-on-tone background fabric and many squares as well. I am not a fan of Thangles because it is a paper mess and not necessary. I use the method of adding 7/8" to the finished size of the square for the cutting size. For example this quilt had a finished size of 2" blocks. I cut the squares 2 7/8" and drew a diagonal line through the square and sewed two together 1/4" on each side of the line, cut on line, press to darkest side, and ta-da, a half square triangle.

The most difficult part of this quilt was the placement of the triangles-I hade moments of seam ripper madness. There is NO wiggle room because the contrast is so strong in this quilt!!

This photo shows the "pebble" quilting. There is lots of negative space in this quilt, as is many of the Modern Quilt Movement quilts, and I chose the pebble design as a contrast to all the angles in the piecing.

I will use this quilt a a teaching tool for when I teach color theory and the elements/principles of design classes.

A Sunny Disposition

 I made this wall hanging for two reasons. One, Studio Arts Quilters Association was having a themed exhibit called Color Wheel of Emotions and, second, when I teach color I always talk about limiting the use of yellow in it's true hue because it will overpower other colors. So I was thinking if all the colors of the quilt were yellow then they would complement and not compete with each other. I have made this pattern three times before and love it so I used it again!! I have 25 VALUES of yellow and positioned them so the lighter ones are where the face applique will lay and the rest of the yellows fade to the darker shades toward the left side of the picture. I embellished the quilt with yellow and gold rhinestones in the background,  gold beads and a yellow felt button for the necklace, a silk flower in the hair, gold glitter on the lips and bead work on the cheek in the shape of a sun. I machine quilted sun motifs on the face as well. I am a sunlight person and I love certain songs with sun or sunny in the name. This quilt did not make the cut for the SAQA exhibit-there were over 260 entries and only 19 were chosen. I don't really care because I love my little sunshine quilt and I can also use it for my "Color Is Our Friend" class/lectures and for my design classes as an example of a monochromatic color scheme.

This photo is a close up of the face. I found this great batik for the hazel eye color-it looks like a real iris! The fabrics make me smile because they are so happy!! I chose to use brown as my applique color instead of my usual black because I thought it seemed softer than black but still provided contrast to the yellows.