This month for the Bliss circle of do.Good Stitches, Carol, a.k.a. Orangebird242 requested a completely new kind of block to me. She requested blocks using a log cabin construction, but the logs are to be made using a strip-pieced fabric. Carol guided us to a blog entry by Joan, a.k.a. Wishes, True and Kind to get the pieced fabric swath together. This is how mine turned out:
Our fabrics are to be all solids, in medium to dark blues, greens and purples, EXCEPT the center squares, for which we were asked to use a contrasting color, and could incorporate a simple print. So, I started by slicing off a few strips from my pieced fabric
and then applying them to my chosen centers, going around, just like a regular log cabin block.
Until I ended up with 3 blocks, each approximately 8".
I decided to send the section of the pieced fabric that I did not use back to Carol, in the hopes that she might be able to use it if she needs to build out more blocks than what is received in the group. This was an interested technique for using up left-overs (though I actually had to cut strips from yardage for this particular project), but I'm not sure if it's one that I'll try again - only time will tell, I suppose.
finishing some unfinished business
Here in Portland we've had a long, LONG winter, a very cool spring, and are only recently seeing any signs of summer (coincidentally, those signs began just about the same day as the official first day of summer). Considering that the best place for me to photograph my finished quilts is hanging from my neighbor's fence along our back yards, I waited until just a little over a week ago to shoot some of the quilts I began much earlier this year.
The first quilt I began in 2011 is this one:
which I've been calling Multi-Faceted in Sherbet, a follow up to an earlier quilt:
I did a post about getting this quilt started back in January, beginning with the gorgeous Philip Jacobs fabric I used on the border, and choosing as many prints as I could muster that pulled the colors from within that print.
The process itself went quite smoothly, and I got a finished quilt top just a few short weeks later, but it was the backing and quilting that really brought it all together. The original "Multi-Faceted..." quilt I quilted myself, echoing one of the off-set diamonds, and had chosen a Kaffe Fasset shot cotton for the backing. That was the best choice I have ever made in my quilting career - introducing me to the beauty that is a quilted shot cotton! And so, I went back to Cool Cottons to find just the right color of shot cotton to back the sherbet quilt... and I found it.
Also, in the meantime, I had been introduced to the flexibility of piecework on the backing. I had so many strips left over from the quilt top that it seemed a waste to throw them back in the scrap bags to be mishandled and forgotten, so I decided to use what I could to spice up the backing on this quilt. And this is what I ended up with:
Now, for the stunning quilting you all see, I have the lovely Melissa Hoffman, a.k.a. Fiddlestitches Quilting, to thank. Based in Newberg, OR, wine country just a bit outside of Portland, she is a wonderful person to have in one's corner, and I have never seen quilting of her's that does anything less than enhance the quilt!
The plan, now, is to continue the line of "Multi-Faceted..." quilts in different colorways, and see what I come up with down the road.
The first quilt I began in 2011 is this one:
I did a post about getting this quilt started back in January, beginning with the gorgeous Philip Jacobs fabric I used on the border, and choosing as many prints as I could muster that pulled the colors from within that print.
The process itself went quite smoothly, and I got a finished quilt top just a few short weeks later, but it was the backing and quilting that really brought it all together. The original "Multi-Faceted..." quilt I quilted myself, echoing one of the off-set diamonds, and had chosen a Kaffe Fasset shot cotton for the backing. That was the best choice I have ever made in my quilting career - introducing me to the beauty that is a quilted shot cotton! And so, I went back to Cool Cottons to find just the right color of shot cotton to back the sherbet quilt... and I found it.
Also, in the meantime, I had been introduced to the flexibility of piecework on the backing. I had so many strips left over from the quilt top that it seemed a waste to throw them back in the scrap bags to be mishandled and forgotten, so I decided to use what I could to spice up the backing on this quilt. And this is what I ended up with:
Now, for the stunning quilting you all see, I have the lovely Melissa Hoffman, a.k.a. Fiddlestitches Quilting, to thank. Based in Newberg, OR, wine country just a bit outside of Portland, she is a wonderful person to have in one's corner, and I have never seen quilting of her's that does anything less than enhance the quilt!
The plan, now, is to continue the line of "Multi-Faceted..." quilts in different colorways, and see what I come up with down the road.