Week in Review 2015 - 09/04

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

Color scheme A
Note that the suns are all colored
the same way.

Color Scheme B
Played with value in both the sky
and the suns.

The word for the day is perseverance. This is a topic I return to again and again. That in itself is perseverance. I find pushing forward against obstacles is a common theme in several aspects of my life. It was most obvious this morning as my husband and I battled our bodies in order to set a new personal best of 31.9 miles biked before 6 a.m. without and this is key, without stopping to refuel or rehydrate. Four months into the National Bike Challenge and this type of feat is possible. Not so at the beginning of the challenge. Tomorrow we will make Diamond status (5,000 points since May 1st.) To put that into perspective there are approximately 4,000 registered participants in our local challenge and less than 40 have made Diamond to date. In order to achieve this the axiom of mind over matter is true. It is also true when it comes to pushing through a design concept and creating the next artwork. 

Color Scheme C
Kept the value changes for the suns
but simplified the night sky.

Color Scheme D
Same suns, but added the
sunrise streaks to the night sky.

This week I pushed through a series of design trials for Deconstructed Sunrise #3. Once I had tweaked and fiddled with the design to a point where I thought I knew how to proceed I started the piecing process. This resulted in a few more tweaks. And so it goes. Despite the biking and design obsession I was still able to do a few more projects as well. Here is how the week went:

1) Finish Deconstructed Sunrise - Done!

2) Deconstructed Sunrise #2 (Due September 8, 2015):

• Add it my website and FaceBook page - Done!
• Ship it to the gallery - Done!

3) Deconstructed Sunrise #3 (Due November 30, 2015)

Piecing of Deconstructed Sunrise #3 begins
with the night sky. 

• Add registration marks to the freezer paper templates - Done!
• Decide whether to create new fabrics with dye, paint and ink - Done! Opted to stick with my commercial fabrics and all ready made hand dyed and hand painted fabrics.
• Either create the fabrics OR start the piecing process - Started piecing

Dandelion Fluff is a FMQ motif by
Tracy of Whirls 'n Swirls.
She demoed to styles with the curving in and out.
I tried them both.

4) Free motion quilting practice. 

Add fun trying out another one of Tracy's FMQ motifs.

5) Post the number of days I have worked in my studio in 2015 - 68.5/126

6) Perform a random act of kindness - Done!

I am looking forward to next week. It is time to taper down the biking and ratchet up the piecing. My list of projects to work on, as you can see, is getting shorter.

1) Continue piecing Deconstructed Sunrise #3 (Due November 30, 2015)

2) Free motion quilting practice. 

3) Post the number of days I have worked in my studio in 2015

4) Perform a random act of kindness 

I am now linking up to two blogs on Fridays. The first is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays and the second is Free Motion Mavericks.

Quilting Along with Leah Day - Week 41

Front Side of Wrapped Gifts aka
Invasion of the Pods.
The yet to be quilted section is on reserve
for a future assignment.

"Invasion of the Pods" is the catchy title that Leah Day gave to this week's assignment. The mission, should I choose to accept it, is to quickly knock off  the quilting necessary to turn a WIP or UFO into a gift for some lucky person this holiday a season. I might have chosen "Gift Wrapped with Love" as the title. In fact that is just what this free form pattern has you do. First you create the "gift" and then you wrap it with love by surrounding the gift pattern with echo quilting. You can give the same gift multiple times on a quilt or custom select a different gift for each section.

Detail of Snake Paisley including the gift wrapping echo.

My first step was to create a practice quilt. I wanted something large enough to practice on and I like to have a few seams, just for the challenge of crossing over them. I also like to select multiple fabrics, since most quilts are not have the same hue and with a varied value. I went to my stash and chose five compatible fabrics from my violet/fuchsia stack. I cut each of the five into 12.5" wide sections by the height of the fabric. Sometimes this was 14" and at other times it was closer to 20". I alternated the violets with the fuchsias, seaming them along the 12.5" side until I had a length of fabric approximately 90" long. I cut this in thirds and this time seamed the resulting three segments along the 30" length. Viola! Instant quilt.  I think this method would be a great way to use fat quarter packets. One of the advantages of various lengths of fabric is that the "blocks" are randomly staggered.

Detail of Flowing Leaves

Now it was time to select the "gifts" or free motion quilting pattern that would be at the center of each segment. I turned where I often do for inspiration, to Leah Day's 365 Quilting Patterns and looked through her pivoting patterns. I thought I should wrap four gifts in order to both practice the wrapping and how to move from one quadrant or section of the quilt to next. I choose Snake Paisley, Flowing Leaves (one of my all time favorites that I have used in numerous quilts) Pebbled Paisley and Dandelion Puff.The first gift I created was Snake Paisley. I had no problem with free motion quilting the design. Nor did I have an issue with echoing the outer perimeter of the clump of paisleys. However, I did struggle with what to do about echoing the sections near the outer corner and along the edge of the quilt, because echoes assume an even border, but this was substantially wider. I "faked" it. If I were to use this method on an actual quilt, I would either want to make sure my paisleys did a better job filling a segment evenly or work out a better method of echoing large, open sections.

This is where the four gifts come together.

An even closer view of the juncture of the four gifts.

The rest of the gifts/segments basically went without a hitch. So, perhaps I learned sufficiently from the first segment to adapt the final three. As for using this method of quilting to rapidly quilt a UFO or WIP, I think not. Other than stippling, which I could have chosen, any free motion quilting pattern takes time and so does echoing to do well. However, if you have time, this could be a lot of fun, especially if you theme the various gifts to go along with the quilt's theme - say leaves and flowers for a garden path quilt.

Backside of Wrapped Gifts