Asian Circle Quilt Class

This blog entry has two purposes: one, to show you the lovely backgrounds the ladies designed in the Asian Circle Quilt class I taught on Saturday, and two, to remind them of the layout they had before pulling it off the design wall in class.

I'm sorry to say that I missed photographing one beautiful black and white background and another lovely layout with Indian fabric as the focal point. When those quilts appear at show-n-tell (I hope!), I'll get photos and post them. Hopefully there weren't any other missed photos.




















You all did a great job!

Seeing Circles

I did more work today on this circle quilt. The background got some tweaking because I didn't like that black half-triangle in the bottom right corner(see yesterday's blog). Some of these circles are already fused and four of the blocks need to be hand appliqued to the backgrounds. Sounds strange, but this is a sampler quilt for a class and I'm using different methods to apply the circles.

If I can get five circles hand-stitched tonight, I'll be able to put the quilt together tomorrow. Stay tuned...

Circle Quilt update

After a few days of straightening out my studio I finally spent all day today working on two circle quilts.

This quilt is finally sewn together and is ready for borders. I just love black and blue quilts and I'm pleased with the way this one turned out.

I also worked on this next circle quilt as a sample for a class I'm teaching in January. The background looked totally wrong, but I followed my instincts with color and layout and the result is...not bad.

This one is still in the design stages. The background blocks are sewn together (but not to each other) and are almost the way I want them. The bottom left circle is too big and the other circles are not sewn yet. I'll apply these circles using 4 or 5 different methods including needle-turn applique, fusing, and machine applique with two methods of shaping the circle. Students will be able to choose their method of circle application.

This particular quilt is also an example of using one fabric for all of the circles and different backgrounds. Reynola Pakusich's book, Circle Play: Simple Designs for Fabulous Fabrics, is loaded with design ideas and is the basis for the class I'm teaching.

Circle Quilt update

Here's where I am on the Circle Quilt which I started last month. I thought for sure that I'd have all nine of these 6" circles appliqued by now, but alas, I have four more to go.

I found a new way to secure these circles to the background as I needle-turn applique them to the background. FYI, there is a freezer paper circle pressed to the wrong side of these circles which helps me to keep the circle shape. Anyway, I found that if I will machine baste the circles in this way...

...they will remain secure and not shift as I hand stitch. This works much better than pins which don't actually prevent shifting. I also tried stitching in a circle about 3/4" in from the edge, but as I machine basted, the background gathered in an undesirable way...so if you must baste in a circle, use your walking foot.

This little Honey came into our lives for a mere 24 hours as he wandered through the neighborhood and was rescued by my husband. Sadly he had no tags.

We posted signs and called Animal Control to let them know we had "Barney". Barney smelled like he had just come from the salon, had excellent manners and was a gigantic love bug, but his owners called this morning and he is home with them now. Come to find out, he did have a chip in his ear; his dog tag. His name was actually Barrett. He certainly liked my pile of fabric on the floor, and covered his face with his ear to shade the light.

Circle Quilt Beginnings, Yarn Fun

Today I sketched and then laid out the background for a blue, black and brown circle quilt. Using smallish pieces of fabric, I folded them as needed and pinned them to the design wall to check my colorways and layout.

I like the way it turned out. Now I'll cut these folded pieces into the correct sizes and sew them together as my background.

Today, Main Street Yarns in Watkinsville, GA had a grand opening for it's new yarn dyeing studio and offered demo's. The yarn was soaked in vinegar-water before dyeing, then we were able to dye a hank of yarn with acid dye and a sponge brush. It was then microwaved to set the color. After a good rinsing the yarn is hung out to dry. Beautiful!

These are some hunks of roving I purchased at the yarn shop today which I hope to used to make felted pin cushions. The dark ones are yummy merino wool, and I hope to dye the light one sometime in the near future.

My latest scarf is nearly finished. It's simple but the colors are beautiful and will go well with my winter coat. It's great to have a small project to work on in waiting rooms...my method of "recycling" otherwise wasted slots of time.

Over-dye Success

This week I'm preparing for a ten-day trip to Germany by laying out a circle quilt which I'll be able to hand-sew while traveling.

As usual, I thought I had all the fabrics I needed for this black, blue and brown quilt in my fabric stash, but there just wasn't enough variety of color or movement. To amend the situation I decided to overdye some fabrics that were the wrong color but had the qualities I needed.

First, I chose the fabrics...

I wanted to be able to monitor the color changes following dyeing, so I recycled a used Tyvec bag (this one was a post office Priority mail bag) by cutting it into small pieces. The Tyvec will not dye, can be written on, and will not fall apart in the washing machine following the dye process (learned this trick in a Colleen Wise workshop). I numbered each piece so that I could match the "before and after" fabrics. Also, the fabrics were placed in two piles: one for deep blue dye and one for black dye.

Here are some of the results...

Now I have plenty of fabric choices for this quilt and will start cutting today!

Circle Quilt

I decided to lay out some fabrics on the design wall today for my next little project: a circle quilt sample for a class I'm teaching in January. This circle quilt will have one fabric for the circles (the butterfly fabric) and many colors for the background. The circle fabric is a good one because of the variety of value, density, color value, etc. It's hard to tell true colors from the photos, but they range from light blue-green and lime to dark blue-green with one brown fabric.

Circle Play: Simple Designs for Fabulous Fabrics by Reynola Pakusich is the best of circle quilt books, by far.