Art Quilt Ideas

Art quilt ideas can be found in the most unexpected places...

There is a beautiful rest area on I-85 in South Carolina where I have often taken photos and have mentally made plans for a quilt using them. The rest area is on a hill which overlooks a lovely lake. The view is shaded by tall pines, the likes of which I've only seen in the south. It's a pleasure to stop there when I have a guest traveling with me and to see their reaction to the peaceful setting.

This rest area is located on the northbound side of I-85 (about 105 miles north of Atlanta). It is the first rest area in South Carolina after passing the "Welcome Center" rest area. Stop in for a little peace of mind and some art inspiration.

Fiber Arts Alliance, Asheville, NC

While I was in Asheville with my friend enjoying the Fiber Arts Alliance meeting, my husband was hard at work in the yard with his buddy. They were digging holes, planting things, ...and cutting the telephone line. ha ha He spliced it for a temporary fix while waiting for the phone company to fix it, but today it's raining and the phone line is already nearly out. I'm rushing to get this online before the computer connection goes too!

Patsy Thompson, a member of the FAA, gave a wonderful program on machine quilting yesterday. Patsy has wonderful DVD's that show you how to machine quilt without pulling out your hair. I can't explain why, but my confidence level with machine quilting went way up after watching her first DVD. On her website, http://www.patsythompsondesigns.com/, she offers sneak peaks at her new DVD's, free downloads of ALL of her quilt designs on the DVD's, wonderful tutorials and more!

She also offers other wonderful tips; in her first DVD, she shows you how to successfully spray baste a quilt. The second DVD has wonderful directions from her husband on how to make a Plexiglass extension table for your sewing machine at a fraction of the cost.

Thanks, Patsy!

My Birthday was earlier this week and this was a Birthday gift from my son Bryan... the badges that he wore on his uniform in Afghanistan. The ISAF tag identifies him as a member of the International Security Assistance Force from NATO in Afghanistan. His airborne badge represents the unit to which he belongs. The flag...hum, can't remember why, but it is backwards on purpose. Box is his last name. Their helmets also have a tag that gives their name and blood type. These are all things that, as a Mom, I would have hoped to never know.

On a lighter note, if your sewing studio is looking a little rough today, here's what part of mine looked like a few days ago. Yipes! It looks worse in pictures. The large wall quilt and the miniature to its left are now in the hands of the Georgia Quilt Show, which runs from Oct. 16-18 in Duluth (just east of Atlanta) at the Gwinnett Center.


Have a good week!
A

Short Mitered Border Tutorial

Mitered Borders: A Short Tutorial

I always enjoy the look of mitered borders on quilts. This week I applied mitered borders to the small 9-patch quilt I've been working on, and took photographs of the process for a short tutorial. If you want a more precise length on borders before attaching, use your Pythagorean theorem to figure the length . I like mine to be plenty long for the miter.

1. Measure and jot down your quilt's length and width.




2. Decide how many strips will make up your borders and choose your fabrics. My quilt has three strips per border: two are my hand-dyed fabric, and the other is the black fabric.





3. Borders are applied, one at a time, on each of the 4 sides of the quilt. The length of each border = (the length or width of the quilt top) + (3 x the width of your full border) + 10" more. Your borders will be quite long, but you don't want to make them too short. **If you skimp on the length, you will not have enough fabric to sew your miters.




4. If you are using more than one strip in your border, sew the strips together and press; then cut to length. (You'll need 4 of these borders, of course, if your quilt has 4 sides.)




5. Now fold your border in half to find its center, and finger press to mark it. Mark the center on that side of your quilt.




6. Place your quilt on top of your border, right sides together, matching the center of the border to the center of your quilt edge, and pin.




7. Begin sewing 1/4" in from the edge of the quilt and back tack there, then sew until you are 1/4" from the other edge of the quilt; back tack again.




8. Attach the remaining three borders in the same way.



9. When all 4 borders are attached, and their ends are free, fold your quilt in half, diagonally (see photo).



10. Now, line up your two border strips perfectly and pin to keep them in line, as in the photo. Click on the photo for a larger view.



11. Make sure that your quilt is folded on the diagonal from end to end, then lay a ruler down to continue the diagonal line to the border you're about to sew. Mark that line with a soap sliver or chalk, and pin again for sewing.



12. Sew this line with a basting stitch first, if desired (I baste first). Sew on that line from the outside edge, right up to, but not passing, the place where your borders are sewn to the quilt.



13. Lay it open and see how it turned out. If it doesn't look good, tear out the seam, straighten your lines, pin and try again.



14. When the corner is mitered the way you like it, trim your seam to about 5/8" and press it out, up to where all the corner seams meet. Now press the corner of your quilt flat over it. You'll understand when you see it on your quilt. The corner of my 9-patch pressed flat right over my pressed-open seam. It's all in the math.



15. Beautiful!



16. Now do it three more times.

The more you do mitered borders, the easier it will get. The first time I sewed a mitered border it turned out fine. There's always one that isn't perfect that I have to pull out and re-do, but it's not the end of the world, and it looks great when finished. I nearly always baste my seam first to check them.

Good luck!

Here's to Agnes

My wonderful friend Agnes A. from the Pensacola Quilters Guild taught me (and many other lucky guild members) how to make string pieced blocks. I no longer live near Pensacola, but Agnes is often on my mind as string piecing has taken over much of my creative thinking when it comes to quilts.

This small Chinese Coin quilt, which you have seen in progress in previous blogs, is a reproduction of Agnes' miniature Chinese Coin quilts. I've seen other Chinese Coin quilts made with strings, but these miniatures are a thing of beauty. Mine is currently 12" x 12 1/2", but I may trim it down before sandwiching and quilting it. There seems to be a little too much border right now. It also will need some metallic thread quilting because the black batik's mottled look is not distinct enough and looks more like a flat black. Maybe I'll add some beads or something new to this little quilt...miniature fused applique? Humm. We'll see.

Here's the continuation of my string blocks. I now have 24 blocks and will add at least 12 more , maybe 24 more, before the top is the way I want it to be. Each block is 3 1/2" and will finish to a little less than 3". I think this will make a fine wall hanging for a long and narrow wall.

Another blog, which is a quick tutorial on mitered borders, is on the way.

A

Felting

Recently I stumbled upon a wonderful blog with colorful photos and wool felting ideas. The address is blog.betzwhite.com . Betz has written a book on felting and has wonderful free tutorials on her blog.

Here is my first wool pincushion made from two felted sweaters (well, 1-1/2" strips from the felted sweaters). Isn't it adorable? I followed Betz's directions for felting the sweaters and used some of her jellyroll pincushion directions plus some of my own ideas. Here are the Clover tools which can be found at Hobby Lobby and other arts/crafts outlets. Be sure to keep your fingers away from the needle ends, and lock your tool when not in use.

1. I cut 1-1/2" strips from my felted sweaters and then laid them across my felting brush, one on top of the other, and needle felted them together so that they would not move as I rolled them. For some reason, I couldn't felt the red "into" the cream, but the cream felted fine into the red (cream on top). Humm.


2. With a needle and thread ready to secure the rolled pieces, I tightly rolled the two together with the red on the "outside" (underside when rolling).


3. When the two became one jellyroll piece, I trimmed the white raw edge by about 1/8", sewed the red raw edge to the body of the jellyroll, and stitched several times through the body of the newly formed pincushion.


4. Finally, I needle felted the top and bottom a little so that they wouldn't separate with use.

Voila! Easy and fun.

Autumn is Here!

This evening we decided to sit out on the patio to enjoy the cool weather and to try out our new fire bowl. I've been wanting one of these for a while, and Bill bought this one for us last week. It seemed like a good way to burn up all of the dead fall in the yard and then be able to put the ashes into the gardens.

Well, look at that...a quilt art idea in the fire! Look at how the burning leaves have a bright glow around the edges. Aren't they pretty? I can do that with Lumiere paint! Four or five times I had Bill throw a sprig of leaves onto the fire to catch this photograph, ha ha.

Here are the aforementioned gardens. They are raised because we have that beautiful red Georgia clay... which is a bear to garden in. It's as hard as a brick in mid-summer if there's no rain. We just planted radishes and salad greens, and having grown this pepper plant for the last five months, we may actually get a pepper out of it. How, you ask? Fishing line around the garden to keep the deer from eating it! It actually does have a pepper that's about 1" long--our first of the year.

This is our herb garden, with two kinds of cilantro, two mint plants, some defunct basil seeds, and some surprise bush cucumber plants. The cucumber seeds were from 2007 and we didn't expect them to come up, but they did!

This third garden is eagerly awaiting its planting of garlic seed (cloves). We've turned under good topsoil, leaves, and about four months worth of kitchen scraps to get this baby ready. Last year's crop didn't do well because it was only topsoil over red clay (we had just moved in).

I love the South and fall gardens that last throughout the winter!