Ulu

 Ulu is the hawaiian name for the breadfruit.  It doesn't have much of a taste but it is a starch and can be made into poi.  This is a quilt that I started years ago.  The size is 65 ' wide by 95' length. Enough for a twin size bed.  The fabric is from a scrap bag that I bought from the Sig Zane store in Hilo.  I could have bought a nice Hawaiian dress, but instead came home with 4 bags of scraps.  Sig Zane is a designer of hawaiian shirts and muu muu.  He designs the patterns and is very popular with hula dancers.

 This was all in one bag.  The pieces were pretty big and it was a challenge putting the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.  I'm glad I decided to finish this quilt.  I stopped years ago, because I was having tension problems with the free motion quilting.  I was using a #12 top thread, but I don't think I had the right size needle.  I finished the free motion quilting using a regular #50 variegated thread.  No more tension problems.

It was nice to finish an unfinished project.  Surprisingly after years stuffed in a closet, it still looks pretty good.  The light blue against the dark black background is striking.  I'll have to start on those other 3 bags of scraps.

Confetti Ties

 This is the third quilt that uses the leftovers from the Woven forty two quilt.  The border squares are the leftovers from the bowties of the Woven Ties quilt and the scraps are the leftovers from the first Woven forty two quilt.  Cool.  It is so satisfying using up scraps to make something.

I took a class from Stacey Sharman called Confetti Quilts.  She had 3 basic rules.  Sew at least 1/4 inch seam.  Sew a straight seam to a straight seam.  I forgot the third rule, but it was very basic.  I just started sewing all the scraps together to a shot cotton purple fabric.  The purple actually comes from a red warp and a tourquoise blue weft.  I love this fabric and color so much, that I had purchased it three different times.  I kept forgetting that I already had it.  Fortunately I usually buy 1 yard lengths, so altogether it was enough to be the base color for this quilt.

I took Mabry Bensons advice and quilted it in simple lines.  There are double lines to create interest in the quilting.  At first I started quilting from the top to the bottom and then started at the top again.  After 3 squares, I realized it was a lot of stopping and starting and tying and knotting.  So the rest of the quilt is quilted by moving the quilt around and straight sewing with a walking foot.  It was easier to quilt this way.  The border was just quilted in the ditch.  The binding is the same shot cotton purple.  I decided not to do any more quilting in the sashing.  The woven fabrics are busy enough, that your eye needed a resting place in the calm borders.

woven ties

This is what I made with the leftovers from the Kaffe Fassett woven forty two quilt.  There were 42 strips of 10" x 18" shot cottons.  I went through all my fabric to look for wovens to match the woven shot cottons.  I pulled the plaids, the stripes, the ikats, the squares, the dots, the woven feathers, the guatemalans, the japanese stripes and the feathered ikat.and made a classic Bow Tie quilt.  Isn't it striking.

These plaids were from a 5" charm pack from the Voices in Cloth show.  I think the brand was named Olympus japanese fabric that were yarn died.  I also bought some Japanese woven plain colors that had a wonderful feel to the charm pack.

The orange and green ikat fabric was used in the binding.  Because only a quarter of an inch shows on the binding, you see only the orange and green as if it was a stripe and not a square.  I just love the look of the fabrics.

With such a large selection of stunning fabric, I first sorted them into groups, plain arrows with woven outs, woven arrows with plain outs and plain arrows with plain outs.  The woven with plains were put in the center, the plain with the woven surrounding those and the plain on plain in the outer border.  Somehow those woven plaids in the center have a illusion effect on your eye.

I used red sashiko thread to tie the corners.  Because this is a tied quilt, it is not admissible into PIQF.  Too bad. 

woven forty two

 the Kaffe Fassett shot cotton quilt is finished.  There are 21 warps and 21 wefts to make a woven forty two.  I had to come up with a title because I want to submit this to the PIQF competition.  The deadline is coming fast, and I still have a lot to do to submit it.

 The photographs do not do the fabric justice. Because the shot cottons are woven, some with different color warps and wefts, there is an iridescence to the fabric when you see it in different angles.

For the quilting, I used 42 matching color threads.  That is also hard to see in the photograph.  For the 21 warp threads I used the matching thread to stitch in the ditch for the 2 warps or up and down colors.  For the 21 weft threads, I chose to quilt on the diagonal.  I thought there would be more contrast doing it this way and yes you can see the diagonal threads better than the stitch in the ditch up and down threads.  But when you stand back, or take a photo, you hardly notice it.

I chose to use the red Cherrywood fabric for the border.  Why? Because it was already made and waiting for another project that I am working on.  Now I have to cut up more Cherrywood to finish that last project.

Santa Rosa Quilt Show

 The Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County held their quilt show earlier this month in Santa Rosa.  D. J. Berger was the featured quilt artist.  This is a picture of her San Francisco quilt.  I love the way the dragons tail made the lombard street twist and turn.  So well thought out and executed.

 This fabulous quilt of yukata fabrics was made by Judy Mathieson.  She was last years featured artist.  Such a beautiful way to show off such beautiful fabric.

The detail shows the shibori hand stitching where the flowers were continued in the red, pink, purple and blue sections.  

Isn't it fun how this quilt used the sock monkey fabric.  I can't remember his name, but I think it was Jim.  I thought I caught the label in this picture.  He makes such a technically hard to piece quilt look like it was fun to make.

As you can see, the quilt show was amazing.  I am always surprised at the beautiful quilts at this show.

Ananse Village

This is a retirement quilt that I just finished and have already given away to my coworker Sharon Bush.  I wanted to make her a special quilt for her 36 years at the post office.  She is a special lady, so I chose this pattern of african ladies and used the fabrics from the Ananse village scrap bag that I got from the PIQF show last year.  The border fabric is a special find from the remnant section of Stone Mountain Daughters fabric store.  It was an overdyed and stenciled fabric that I thought was a very unusual find for a commercial fabric store, but you never know what you'll discover in that remnant section.  Each of the black flowers looked like they were hand stenciled onto the brown dyed fabric.

As a retirement quilt, I would usually have my coworkers sign the front of the quilt and use it like a big card.  I so liked the way this quilt turned out, that instead of having everyone sign the front of the quilt, I kept the back of the quilt white, so everyone could just sign the back.

The pattern comes from a quilt that I saw by Pat Bailey at our Voices in Cloth show.  I talked to her at the show and told her how much I liked her quilt and the african ladies pattern.She said she would send me the pattern, but I ended up just drafting it from a picture.  I don't know what the size of her block was, but by drafting the design on my own, I could make the block size to the dimension that I wanted.  Pats quilt had sashing and a border.  I chose to just use the one fabric.  The same fabric was used as a binding.

Voices in Cloth 2014

 What an amazing quilt show.  I am so proud to be part of the EBHQ quilt guild.  The natural light from the Richmond Craneway Pavilion really made the quilts sparkle.  Here is my Dragon Treasure.  I was surprised to see other silk quilts.  I guess once you start looking, your eyes are open to other styles.  Knowing how hard it was to piece the silks, I can appreciate silk quilts much more.

 This is Clamshell Mounds.  I received so many compliments on this quilt.  People were astounded that I hand pieced and hand quilted this.  Yes it takes longer, but when you're sitting and watching TV, its nice to have something in hand to work on.

 This is the workshop wall.  The Dragonfly quilt was made in a Marjan Kluepfel workshop.

 The yellow and brown pineapple pattern was made in a Rita Hutchins workshop.

Hello Marti.  She is sitting under my Obachan quilt made in the John Marshall workshop.