In the Fiber Arts Studio

This past month, I’ve been playing with color—I made a color wheel quilt and then made a scrappy modern quilt with small slices of leftover fabric.
I still have lots of bigger pieces of these colors because the color wheel took only a wedge of a 5” square out of a fat quarter. I did the quilting on my longarm even though they are just small quilts.

18-inch square

14 x 18 inches

I’ve been making some practice pieces from Jean Wells’ book, Intuitive Color & Design, and made the small blocks into these “off the wall” quilts. Miles made some plain wooden frames out of 1 x 4 inch lumber and I covered them first with batting and then with my little quilts. It took a bit of problem solving to work out the engineering, but I’m happy with how they turned out. I also did  some hand embellishment and hand-stitched the backing. I quilted these on my Bernina, then sewed the sides and back with my serger, which made the corners easy to turn and I like the finished edges, even though they’re on the inside where no one will see them.

A grouping of these little “off the wall quilts” makes an interesting mantle decoration. They are 12 x 12, 8 x 6, and 8 x 8 inches.

My large summer project is a king-size bed quilt that will go on my bed. I’ve made two other bed quilts this year, so decided I was ready to tackle this challenge. What’s different about this one is that it is made entirely of 2 ½ and 4 ½ inch half-square triangles. I’m making it from a kit, since it requires 9 different black print and 9 different tan print fabrics, and they all need to coordinate. If someone had asked me my favorite colors, black and tan would not have been my answer, but I have discovered that for my living space I like the neutrality of the tans and the sharpness of the blacks.

Here’s a picture of the first cut—into 5” and 3” strips ready to be sub-cut into squares, then joined in light/dark combos and stitched together, then cut into light/dark squares.

And here’ a picture of the 4½” squares (all 240 of them).

​Only 940 2½” squares left to mark and sew. I put my task analysis skills to work and counted 11 separate steps to create each square. This may take longer than I thought.

I also worked on some hand-dyed projects that I started almost a year ago, when I was dyeing some onesies for grandson Lincoln. I was experimenting with resists, including glue and crayons, and made a couple of turtle prints.

I decided the larger piece had too much white remaining so I applied more Elmer’s gel glue to the main design, then tie-dyed it again, with turquoise and navy, with a little yellow. Haven’t finished it yet; I’m thinking it might need some metallic thread for the quilting.

This small quilt is 12.5 inches square, and I used crayons as the resists, along with rubber bands for achieving the tie-dyed look.

This piece is 19 x 22 inches, and I used glue as the resist.

For the studio, I got some great looking shelves hung over my desk; the brackets are pipes, and the shelves are weathered wood, so they have sort of a “steam punk” look. The room has an eclectic, whimsical personality, with my steam punk shelves, different colored walls, and tree mural (painted by my daughter in law, Kate). It’s a different space from the rest of the house, unconventional – a room for creativity.