Newsflash! Five Bar Blues is a Winner at the Houston International Quilt Festival!

The Awards ceremony was last night and my quilt Five Bar Blues won 2nd place in the Merit Machine Quilting category at the Houston International Quilt Festival!! I am honored and thrilled!

The show opens tonight and I am looking forward to seeing all the quilts and quilters visiting Houston. Please stop by to say hi if you are in Houston – I will be here through the end of the day Friday.

If you aren’t in Houston (or even if you are) pick up a copy of the newest issue of the International Quiltfestival Quit Scene Magazine.

There is a great photo on page 25 of Five Bar Blues!

I will post again as soon as I can. When I leave Houston I am traveling straight to Manchester, NH to A Quilters Gathering for Saturday and Sunday. I have two new quilts on display in the judged show at the Gathering. One is brand new, just finished Saturday night!

Silver Silk and Reflections of Tao …. more photos!

When I decided to sandwich a small a piece of solid silver silk blend sateen (Radiance by Robert Kaufman), I had no idea what I would discover.  This silver fabric has been in my stash for years because the color didn’t really ‘speak’ to me off the bolt.  Here is the “raw material” (next to ivory and gold for contrast)

When I started quilting and experimenting with different colors of thread, I was amazed!  I have taken too many photos and spent too much time experimenting with Photoshop to get the best [at least, the best that I can] color balanced photos to show you the amazing effect of different colored silk threads on this fabric.  The photo to the left is the feather plume that started it all.  The feather looks lavender (instead of silver)  because I used lavender thread to quilt and outline the feather.  Then I switched to shades of aqua / light green thread for the outline stitching, and the fabric takes on the greenish hue of the threads.

I used the silver silk fabric for the ‘Reflections of Tao’ wholecloth wall hanging to experiment more with different colors of silk thread quilted into this fabric. The center of the ‘Reflections of Tao’ wall hanging features the chinese character ‘tao’ (meaning ‘the way’, or ‘the path’) which is trapunto’d to make it stand out even more.

This detail photograph of the upper right feather and corner border shows the variety of colors of silk thread used in the machine quilting:

This quilt is now on display at the New England Quilt Museum as a part of the Silver Threads Challenge exhibit.  The best way to see this quilt is in person, so be sure visit the Quilt Museum and look for ‘Reflections of Tao’ if you are in the Lowell, Massachusetts area in the next month.  The Silver Threads Challenge quilts will be on display until late November.

My Free-Motion Quilting Challenge Trapunto Tutorial is available!

My guest tutorial for SewCalGal’s 2012 FMQ Challenge is online today!!  The tutorial is on one of my favorite techniques, machine trapunto.

I hope you will enjoy and learn from the tutorial as much as I have – I enjoyed writing it, and learned from the process as well!  I’m happy to answer any questions you have, either on SewCalGal’s FMQ Challenge blog, the 2012 FMQ Challenge Facebook group, or here.

I’m always trying to photograph trapunto from the side so you can see the depth and dimension this technique creates on quilts.  I’m not sure I caught the depth, but can you see the different colors of silk thread in the echo quilting?

I’m not sure you can tell, but one echo quilting line uses YLI’s ‘Silk Sparkle’ thread (next time I’ll use a lighter color for more contrast).  The Silk Sparkle is #100 silk thread twisted with metallic;  it is a very lightweight thread that blends beautifully with the rest of the silk quilting and adds a subtle sparkle to the top.

Watch for my 2012 FMQ Challenge Guest Tutorial! (plus my May FMQ challenge entries)

I was thrilled when SewCalGal asked me to be one of her FMQ Experts and offer a Bonus Tutorial for the FMQ Challenge this year!  I’m even more excited that it’s just about done and will be available next week.  Be sure to check out the 2012 FMQ Challenge page next week.

I have read and quilted most of the FMQ tutorials this year …  (although I haven’t managed to  post photos every month.   One of the things I really like is the variety of FMQ Experts and tutorials.  (I will admit) I have been reluctant to try out some of the tutorials that have not been in my ‘comfort zone’ of machine quilting.  But I have been really pleased every time I do!   So, here’s my take on the May FMQ tutorial by Leah Day.

Leah’s patterns are relatively large-scale background fill patterns and are different from my free motion ‘style’ which is smaller.    I tried the ‘railroad tracks’ version first while experimenting with different threads.  The quilt sandwich has light pink Kona cotton on top, with cotton batting and muslin on the back.  I used a bright pink silk thread for the first large ‘meander’ stitching, and then a variegated pink silk for the railroad tracks.  Here’s the first sample

and I used a light blue silk thread in the bobbin ( it was there already…)

Before stitching the second sample I wanted to come up a different way to use stipple quilting in Leah’s tutorial (I admit it: I don’t like traditional stipple quilting).  I finally remembered experimenting with these wiggly lines that look like  ‘linear’  stippling. I used a trilobal polyester thread on the quilt top with the same cotton thread  in the bobbin. This created a subtle texture on the front that I really like!

Reflections of Tao – NEQM Silver Threads Entry

It has been too long since I have written!

I finished my silver silk wall hanging for the Lowell Quilt Festival in August.  I promised a photo of the finished quilt, so here it is…

I used many different colors of silk thread to make the silver silk sateen top look iridescent, especially in the densely quilted area outside the feather border.  I used trapunto in the center chinese character, ‘tao’ (meaning the path, or the way) and in the feather border.  I’ll post some more photos soon!

July 2012 FMQ Challenge

I love SewCalGal’s July FMQ challenge and the Tiles design Angela Walters shared with us.

The Tiles motif includes one of my favorite free motion techniques, stitching straight lines with a free motion quilting foot. And even better, you get to quilt up, down, left, and right!  Because the Tile lines are not too long,  they are a great opportunity to practice straight line free motion quilting.   I can imagine many more ways to use this structured yet flexible technique, to quilt both large and small spaces.

I quilted a small sample to test the pattern first.  The top fabric is pink Kona cotton solid, layered with cotton batting, and muslin backing. The cotton batting is different from the wool batting I usually use, and results in a lower loft / flatter look and feel to the quilting.  I used slightly contrasting thread [still #100 silk) and this combination worked nicely for the Tile practice sandwiches.

I was excited to get started on a larger quilted sample.  I changed thread colors from the lavender to dark pink, and started quilting away.  At first I used the same design in each ‘Tile’ rectangle because I wasn’t happy with the way the different motifs in each tile looked in my test sample.  After filling a few tiles with feathers, I decided to try one – or two – more different fill patterns – but I repeated the fill in more than one tile (mostly…).

Sewing on silver silk and the NEQM Silver Threads Quilt Challenge

I finally finished binding my feather plume sample from the February FMQ Challenge tutorial by Diane Gaudynski.  (I highly recommend you read through Diane’s tutorial at least once – it is packed with excellent instruction and advice on free motion quilting.) I call the sampler ‘Rogue Feathers’ -  my friend Jenny named the little feathers at the bottom ‘rogue feathers’, surrounding the circle.  I quilted the feathers there because I couldn’t bear echo quilting any more!  I am pleased with my little silver sampler.

One of the reasons I love this fabric is the way it subtly changes to the shade of the silk thread used for free motion quilting.  I’m having trouble showing this in photographs,  so here’s another view that shows the color changes in a different light.

(I haven’t stopped participating in SewCalGal‘s 2012 FMQ Challenge -just running late with my posts.  Look for a new blog entry before the end of the month with my July challenge entry! In case you haven’t followed SewCalGal’s blog recently, she generously featured my quilt Five Bar Blues earlier this month in a post about the Road to California quilt show.  )

2012 is the 25th anniversary of the New England Quilt Museum and in honor of this silver anniversary the Museum has issued a ‘Silver Threads Quilt Challenge’.  The challenge is to create a quilt inspired by the word ‘silver’, and I had a project in mind using this beautiful silver fabric before I discovered the challenge.

Here is a sneak peek at the wall hanging … not surprisingly, it has feathers…

I just finished machine quilting my silver-inspired quilt, so it is ready to be blocked, bound, and finished.   The bright blue is from the water soluble blue marker that I use to mark my quilts (the blue markings are already gone since the quilt’s first immersion today in clean, cool water.)  The quilts will be on display at a special exhibit at the 2012 Lowell Quilt Festival from August 9-11.

From another perspective you can see my signature as well as my favorite circle-spirals.

Want to see the finished quilt?  Mark your calendar to visit the Lowell Quilt Festival, Thursday August 9 – Saturday August 11.  Visit the Lowell Quilt Festival website for more information about activities, lectures, and exhibits.