Saturday, May 23, 2009

Surprise! I Really am Working on Some New Quilts

Many of you readers may not know that I have actually been a quilter far longer than I have been a knitter. How so ever, knitting has been a force of nature and pretty much taken up all my attention for the last two years.

Since I finally felt I was missing something in my life, I volunteered to be the Block of the Month (BOM) coordinator for the Piecing Partners Quilt Guild. This was as an incentive to get some quilting back into the rotation of things I enjoy doing. Keeping my hand in quilting is also the reason that I have been participating in the sorta annual Baggo Challenges and the Slice Quilt with my Fiber Pirates friends.


Last month, I designed a Columbine Applique Block for the BOM we turned in this month. Here's a picture of one of them.






This month, I picked a Simple New York Beauty type block from 101 Full Sized Quilt Blocks and Borders for the BOM. The guild block is going to be Red, White and Blue. Here's a photo of one of the R, W & Bs that I did for the sample board. The guild members each will make a quarter block with red, white and blue fabrics and then bring them back for a drawing and winner take all and they'll get a scrappy top and hopefully they learned something new in the process.



I have been a fan of this block for a while, so I really enjoyed revisiting it again. To that end, this is what I did today. I made eight quarters to make two circles. This may end up either as a wall hanging or a table runner. I do have enough of some of the fabrics to make some matching napkins. Most of the fabrics were sold to me as fat quarters which are 18 x 22 inches.


This one is an analogous colour run starting with yellow green and ending at blue red. This is now the second time I have made these blocks in an analogous colourway. Since I was having so much fun, I made a third analogous colour run starting with blue green and ending at red purple, this one used two fewer fabrics than the first one did.






Here too, is a photograph of the first one I did, complete with the quilting and binding. I made this as a class exercise for Heather Thomas' Infamous Colour Class back in 2003. It is in the collection of a friend of mine from the Quilt Mavericks as we did a trade for a piece of each other's art.






More to be revealed, so stay tuned, dear readers.

9 comments:

Anne Huskey-Lockard said...

Love New York Beauty blocks----they have so much possibility! I always wanted a bedsized quilt of that.
Now with the king size...oh, forget it!
By the way, your work looked lovely!!!

Tristan Robin said...

NYBeauty is my absolute all time favorite block.

however,

more importantly,

HOLLY GOLIGHTLY IS YOUR AUNT???????

I just passed out, hit my head, and hope to wake up at Tiffany's

Leslie said...

No, she was not my Great Aunt, she was my Great Aunt's best friend and was the genesis for the character of Holly Golightly,and a character she was. I met her when I was about 6 or so..

Wake up in Tiffany's with a Platinum Gold Card in hand, eh?

IsDihara said...

Ooh, your New York Beauty blocks are bright and jazzy. Love 'em!

One day I will jump into the wide world of machine quilting. Heh, I even own a Bernina "Quilter's Edition" sewing machine. When I do, I will be asking you for advice.

Leslie said...

Dear Isdihara,

I don't know how much help I can be, but I will certainly lend an ear and any such guidance I can. And you with a Bernie! Jealous (1)...

The Big Burbs said...

Your quilting is just spectacular!
Your 'simple' NY Beauty block hardly looks simple! I've done just a few simple quilts and I find quilting much more challenging than knitting as I definitely lack color sense.
I see in your quilting, a very sophisitcated understanding of color. Beautiful!

Leslie said...

Hey Kathy,

Thanks for the comment on the quilting bits.

The only reason I am half so good at colour is that I have a colour wheel and I am not afraid to use it. If you were to get one, it would go a long way towards helping you to understand how colours work with each other and why. I find it to be an invaluable tool. That and the year long colour class I took in 2003. I redo the lessons each month every 2 years or so to refresh my memory and again to try new things.

The other thing to know, if you are going to make a quilt, is to find a focus fabric you ABSOLUTELY love and then look on the selvage for the colour registration dots. Match your other fabrics to those dots and wallah you have colour sense and no one is the wiser...

Jan said...

oooo - I love this block design... great color choices too.

Celia said...

That's lovely!!