Saturday, August 24, 2013

Program for Chinese Group

It was my privilege to speak to a group of international students last week. One of the outreach efforts of my church, University Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, is a weekly meeting with students or spouses to help them with our culture, language, and our practice, led by my friend Virginia Butler. I had spoken to the same group a year ago,

and when they learned about my China trip in March of this year they wanted to hear about my experiences there. I gave a PowerPoint presentation about the quilt exhibit "The Sum of Many Parts" in Dalian and Beijing as well as describing the talks I gave at several schools. They were excited when I told them that the above picture was a part of each of my programs!
I also showed several pieces of my fiber art and explained the techniques and stories behind them.
 
Using scraps and strips


Telling how I used bobbin drawing to quilt sunflowers from the back

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Scraps and Strips

I'm still in my scrap mode. After making two small quilts with large squares (6"-7") surrounded by large strips (1"-3"), I have been playing with small strips. Rayna Gillman's book Create Your Own Free Form Quilts calls working with strips "therapy sewing." She joins strips randomly and then slices and inserts and rejoins to come up with unexpected results. Here is the result of some of my therapy sewing. These strip sets don't have a plan yet; they are just addictive to stitch!

I liked three of the pieces enough to layer and quilt and finish them. The yellow/green piece has a traditional binding; the blue one and the sunflower (long) piece are finished with rat-tail cording.
The long skinny piece is backed with sunflower fabric; this gave an opportunity to quilt from the back to make the sunflower design show up on the strips on the front. Click to enlarge to show the stitches.






 

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Love Those Scraps

I've been working with scraps lately and having a great time. Unlike a friend of mine who says "I don't like scraps--too much like eating leftovers," I really love scraps (well, actually I like leftovers, too). Most quilters who promote the use of scraps say to put them in a box or sack and just reach in and take whatever you come up with. Afraid I'm not that relaxed about the process--I like to pick and choose what I sew to what, so I suppose I'd say I like Controlled Scraps.

Scrap Quilt 1, Log Cabin
 Both of these quilts start with a square or rectangle about 6"-8". I chose mostly strong primary colors in busy prints and then added strips to enlarge to about 12"-13". In Scrap Quilt 1, I added strips to all four sides; in Scrap Quilt 2 I only added strips to two sides and varied the orientation of the square (upper right, lower left, etc.), with the guideline being what was the most colorful and interesting layout. All squares are not the same size, so the actual blocks are somewhat disguised. The rows had to be the same size to fit together. Scrap Quilt 2 has a striped border; Quilt 1 has no border.
Scrap Quilt 2, Offset Log Cabin
The cat didn't realize I was only spreading the top to take the picture, but he knew where the center was.