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.

Fiber Pirates Rock! - Awesome New Quilt

I belong to a Yahoo Group called the Fiber Pirates. We are a cyber ship of quilt and fiber artists from around the globe. We are also a talented group of men and women who seem to collect interesting bits and bobs for making art with. I blogged earlier about the Baggo quilt I just finished for MrsK that is made with dupioni silk, fake rose petals and ribbon yarn (15 April 2009 for a picture)...

We, the Fiber Pirates, annually (somewhat) do a project called the Bag o' sCraps (aka BaggoCrap) or Baggo for short. The basic idea is that each participant collects a gallon bag of fabric and other stuff and sends it off to the Baggo Swap Mum. She, in turn, send that bag back out to someone else. That person then makes a quilt from whatever of the contents of the Baggo they want to use or feel they can use. Sometimes that is the biggest challenge of all. As in, "How in the World am I Going to Do Anything With This Lot?"



These are the contents of the bag I sent for the 2009 Baggo.

We can add stuff from their own stashes if necessary. For instance, for the one done last year, I did knitted jelly fish from a metallic yarn for it. I have blogged a picture of that quilt in an earlier post (also pictured on the 15 April 2009 post).


This is a picture of what I am getting back. This picture is pretty craptastic as there is a metallic fleck in the green fabric. It appears that most point and shoot cameras REALLY, REALLY don't like metallics from what I have been experiencing. I can tell though, that it has an amazing amount of quilting. I just cannot wait for it to come home so I see it for real. I will also have to find its place of honour on one of my walls.

It looks so amazing! I didn't even recognize it as belonging to me as it is WAY BETTER than the contents of my Baggo would have suggested. Earlier, I had thought that one of the other quilts posted was mine as it does have fabrics in it that are in my own stash as well.

Collage Mania

I would like to suggest that you all go take a look. Most especially, as I have been the beneficiary of the American Cancer Society's good works.

http://www.virginiaspiegel.com/CM2009Collages1.html

It's a reverse auction of art work in various medias, but primarily fiber related. I know a lot of the artistes from various art quilt groups I belongs to on-line.

You'll also see some of the Raven Challenge Postcards. I participated in this challenge as well. I blogged about it somewhere in the older posts.

I have been knitting more than anything for the last couple of years. I do keep my hand in quilting with challenges like the Raven card I did with QA and the Slice Quilt and the Baggos I do with the Fiber Pirates. Which reminds me I have to do a quilt for the Coffee Challenge with the Quilt Mavericks. It's due next week.

Here's part of a challenge we did over to the Fiber Pirates, it's my section of a slice quilt. Here's the Raven Challenge Postcard from the Quilt Arts group.

Quilt Guild Door Prize and Life is Funny that Way

This morning was the meeting of the Piecing Partners Quilt Guild of Colorado Springs, CO. I have been a member of this guild since I moved to the Springs last year. I am the Block of the Month Coordinator as well. This requires that I pick out a quilt block and choose the fabric colours and type. I then make samples to show the ladies how it will look when finished. Last month was a paper pieced Aspen Leaf, to be done in a medium to dark blue background and yellow-green leaf. Rebecca and I are the only ones that got it right. Rebecca got it right, cuz I gave her the yellow-green fabric, LOL.

It has been a challenge to get the ladies to stick to the chosen colours consistently. I can't figure out if they don't know what the colours are (even tho I make 3-4 samples for them to see) or if they just don't care and are doing their own thing. To that end, for the Appliqued Columbine that I chose for next month BOM, I stole an idea from Vinda (also a member of the Guild and in charge of the Guild Challenge Quilt) and got paint chips in the colours chosen for the block for them to use in helping them pick their fabrics. We shall see what we shall see. It is a challenge to the winner of the blocks to make something from all of the blocks if they are difficult to put together, either colour-wise or size-wise.

I also induced my friend, Rebecca to join the guild a couple of months ago. She has been setting up her CQ kits to sell at each meeting. So, last month I won a door prize and as I had at least one of, if not more of every object in the bag, I gave them to Rebecca as she didn't have a bone folder or a magnet wand for picking up pins. The deal is, win a prize and bring another one back the next meeting, so I brought a pack of fat quarters of batiks this month.

Well, I won another door prize today. I got the bag and turned to Rebecca and said, "I wonder what I am giving you this month?" Then I opened the bag and there was fabric I recognized! It was a crazy quilt kit that Rebecca had put together and donated for the door prizes! What was even funnier, is that it was a bag of greens that I had given the fabric and embellishments to Rebecca so she could make kits from it. We about had hysterics over it, along with Rebecca's friend, Sheryl, who we have also induce to join the guild. Rebecca IS so bringing the door prize next month!

I also showed off the Baggo'Crap quilt in the making at show and tell as it will be finished and on it's way back to the owner before the next meeting. Yummy, dupioni silk, fake rose petals, beads, velvet, ribbon yarn and tassels. Ye Gods, it sounds like a stripper! A Baggo Quilt is made from a gallon zip bag filled with bits and bobs of stuff. The bags are sent to a central person, who them sends them out again to someone else. The challenge is to create something from the crap in the bag. After the quilt is completed, a picture is posted to our Yahoo Group, the Fiber Pirates and the person who's bag it was claims it and gets the quilt that resulted. Here's a preview of what is to come. I am pretty sure the person whose Baggo I got doesn't read my blog so I can get away with posting a partial view of it, I hope.

Edited: 22 April at 9:20 pm to add picture of the finished Baggo 2009.

While the Octopus is Away was the 2008 edition of the Baggo..