Well, here is the 70th piece! It's a special one for me. My oldest grandson is turning 5 in January and its time for a big-boy quilt. I had some discussions with him about possible subjects and he agreed that he would like a dragon quilt. I asked if he wanted a cute dragon or a scary one - he was definitively in favour of a scary one, with lots of different colours. 

I made the overall quilt and quilted it before I applied the dragon. Here's the front and the back. Piecing the back was definitely more work than piecing the front, but I got to use all the Chinese dragon fabric given to me by a friend.

Finally, I used quilting lines to attach the pieces onto the base quilt. The faced pieces were appliqued using quilting lines leaving the edges free, which I thought would be fun for a 5 year old. Here's the finished product and a close up. I found the perfect crystal button for the eye.

I hope he enjoys his quilt and I hope you have enjoyed my journey, which has taken almost 2 years longer than I planned. Watch for an update on my next plans.

I've been busy on a big project, which is one reason why I haven't been posting lately. But, in the meantime, I did three more vignettes, which are off to the Gallery at Place des Arts in Coquitlam tomorrow for the Positively Petites show.

This one is called Visitor.

This one is Erosion.

An this one is Moonlight.

​Thanks for dropping by.

I've long been fascinated by the textile work of Jane Kenyon - she made pieces solely from thread, working very intensely on Solvy. She has moved on to other techniques, but I enjoy trying to explore how she did these pieces.

Recently I found, in my stash, a collection of small (about 3" diameter) embroidery hoops and thought it would be fun to try some little purely thread pieces.

I drew a circle on solvy and then roughly sketched my idea for each piece. Following that I sewed a base of background threads in appropriate colours (beige for land, green for leaves, blue for sky and ocean) to anchor the other threads. Then, working from furthest to closest, I filled in the blocks of colour and added detail. I used all kinds of threads (variegated, shiny, two threads through one needle). For example, in the piece below, I used one blue for the sky and that blue plus a grey for the water

Here are four pieces ready to dissolve the Solvy, using very hot water. After that, I used Heat and Bond to adhere them to a piece of sheer and then mounted them in the hoops.

Here are the finished pieces, all together. The one in the upper left didn't work out the way I planned, so I may try to re-do it, but overall they were a lot of fun to do.

Thanks for dropping by.

Remember the small rectangular Kawandi piece I completed in May of 2023? Well, if you don't want to go looking for it, here is a short summary of the process:

Kawandi is a technique imported to India from Africa, originally created by the Siddi people of Karnataka state. The basic technique is to layer a base fabric (and batting if you like), turning over the edges. You then hand press the edge of a piece of material and, with the two turned edges placed together, use a running stitch to join the piece to the base along the turned edge. Then add another piece, turning all the edges at the outside edge and the edge which will cover your first piece. Continue the running stitch along the outside edge. Continue to add pieces all around the edges of the piece in the same manner. Depending on the width of your fabric strips, you may wish to run another line of running stitch before you add the next row of fabric. Proceed until the entire surface is covered in fabric and stitch.

At the end of that post, I said I would like to do another and wondered what it would be like to do a round one. Well, here it is.

I was originally going to add random coloured pieces, but somehow it morphed into alternating dark and light rings. The above picture was taken almost 2 years ago. It was getting harder to make the curves  look somewhat smooth - the angles are trickier as the circles are smaller and I couldn't decided where the piece was going.

The piece is 17" in diameter. Still not sure if I like the wonkiness of the circles, but I was amazed that the last stitch was actually at the centre of the circle - I wasn't expecting that!

Thanks for dropping by. 

The backing I received for the hospice quilt (last post) was a little wild! With the leftovers I decided to make a baby quilt. Here's the fabric.

I picked 4 coordinating pieces from my stash and some white kona cotton to calm things down. I knew I wanted to do a square-in-a-square-in-square and originally thought I would use equal sized strips of white and colour, but, after trying it out, I realized that a narrower colour strip worked better. For each colour I made one block with the colour next to the flower fabric and one with the white next to the flower fabric. And, of course, since I prefer to sew the series of strips on with equal sized strips, I ended up with a bunch of partial seams (lucky I practiced them on the last quilt, eh?).

I laid out the blocks so that there was only one of each colour in each row/column with alternating inside/outside blocks. I was planning on a white border, but then remembered how baby quilts are meant to be used, so I thought "I think not".  Flower Power fabric to the rescue!

The backing was pieced together from my flannelette stash. The quilting is stitch in the ditch plus some meanders, loop-di-loops and stars.

Here's the finished quilt, off to Baby-go-round! And the final scraps of the flower fabric are off to another member of the guild - looking forward to seeing what she will do with it!

A friend (and a member of a guild I belong to) recently died in a hospice facility. In her honor, members of the guild have created quilts for residents in that hospice from her stash. I normally don't do very many comfort quilts, but I wanted to participate this time. I was given a jelly roll of some bright coordinated prints, batting and backing to work with.

I've always liked the look of french braid quilts, especially the ones where the rows of chevrons are connected with a lot of partial seams, so I thought I would try that. I couldn't find actual instructions for that design, so I developed a pattern myself.

I started at a quilt retreat and cut the jelly roll strips into 6.5" lengths and started to piece them into braids, leaving the edges loose. (Note to self: count the number of partial seams which will need to be sewn BEFORE considering doing this again). When I started thinking about putting the braid strips together, I realized that the colour and pattern were overwhelming. Decided to alternate the coloured braids with a neutral. Luckily I had won a gift certificate to Chitter Chatter Fabrics at the retreat and stopped by on my way home. I found a series of three solid grey tones which worked well with the colours.

I started piecing more braids in the 3 greys, but decided that I couldn't face that many more partial seams and decided to use strips of the greys to separate the coloured braids. The quilting was quite simple (mostly lines, with a few hearts in the border). I learned to use a Hera marker (or in my case, a wooden letter opener) to mark the lines - it worked well!

Here is the finished piece - it's bright but not overwhelming. A couple of lessons learned: 1) because I designed my own pattern, there is a design flaw (can you spot it?);  2) I don't mind partial seams, but I think I would not normally do this many!

​I really hope someone enjoys this!

My mum spent a lot of time in her Lazyboy chair towards the end of her life. It was a comfortable chair, but kind of ugly - she had covered it with an old quilt she made many years ago. which was definitely showing its age, so I decided last fall to make a quilted cover for it. I asked her what colours she would like in the quilt and she said she wanted it to pick up the colours of the Persian rug on the floor.

I saw a block pattern on Pinterest which was quite interesting, but I altered it so that I would have more space to do some creative quilting. All the fabric came from my stash (and a cotton table cloth we never use). Here are a few blocks foundation paper pieced.

Here are the main blocks.

I then constructed blocks to add to the sides to cover the arms of the chair. When I was at about this stage, my mum's health suddenly worsened, she went into hospice and died just before Christmas.

I finally got back to the project a couple of months ago. I finished piecing it, layering it and quilted it using a lot of stitch-in-the-ditch and the free-motion "flowers" in the middle of each block.  I attached the arm pieces using a quilt as you go technique and used continuous binding (interesting figuring out the inside corners where the arm pieces meet the main piece). 

The Vancouver Quilters' Guild has been operating primarily as an on-line guild since the pandemic (rental rates have gone through the roof!) and, as a result, we only have access to our library for an hour a month at our (very kind) librarian's house. In order to encourage people to come and look at books (and visit), we decided to hold a library challenge, where members who make a quilt based on a pattern in one of our library books, are eligible for a prize. This book is not one that I would normally think would interest me, but, as I was flipping through, I saw a pattern for paper-pieced snowflakes

I picked a white and a dark blue Schwe-schwe fabric with a tiny white print. The foundation paper-piecing was fairly simple, but tiny. Six triangles of each pattern to make one snowflake. Here are the five different snowflakes, each sewn together in 2 half hexagons on the background.

The pattern called for appliqueing the snowflakes onto the background and some inset white strips, but I decided that I preferred the look of inset snowflakes which would also break up the regularity of the background print. I was going to make the piece rectangular, but the design critics at the retreat I was at  felt that the bottom should be irregular (and I agree - much more interesting!).  I quilted with silver thread in a gentle wave pattern and faced the piece.

Here's the final piece (23" x 39"). It was fun to do, but another time I hope I would think through how many layers of fabric need to be matched at the centre of each hexagon.

In the FIBR2RT group, we have a new challenge "Green in More Ways than One". My mum was quite proud that she had over 100 spools of green threads in her stash, so I decided I would use those threads in my piece. 

A couple of years ago I learned about an artistic/psychological process called neurographic drawing (here's a link to a demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoIgdt-uQR0). It involves creating a line which crosses and re-crosses itself, creating something that sort of looks like neurons. Once the line is done, you smooth out all the intersections and then colour in the cells. Very satisfying! 

Mum also had a roll of very heavy Solvy, so I decided that I would create a piece for this exhibit using just thread on Solvy.

The piece will be a lot of work and I thought it would be a good idea to start the process with something smaller.

I put a piece of the heavy Solvy in my hoop and drew the design on it using a sharpy. Then I started filling the spaces with threads - using one colour in each space. For each thread I used the same thread in the top and bobbin - lots of bobbin winding. Some of the threads were much more cooperative than others. Some would just not cooperate, so I will NOT be using them in the larger piece. I liked how the width of the free motion foot create a nice circle within the hoop.

Once I finished covering the spaces, I needed to reinforce the lines and found some narrow twill tap which I folded in half and sewed on to cover the lines. I also put a line of tape around the whole circle. Then I trimmed the excess Solvy, basted the whole thing to a piece of muslin (to help it keep its shape) and removed the Solvy with very hot water. I then mounted it on a pale green background on an artist's canvas (8" x 8").

Here is the finished piece. I'm glad I did a test piece. When I do the full piece, I don't think I will put the outside border and I need to find a better way to round off the intersections to give it a more neurographic appearance. But all in all, a very useful experiment.

Above are some fabrics (IKEA curtain offcuts dyed in indigo, some hand painted flowers, and some branches from my Mum's stash. and some remnants of matte board.

I made the flowers by fussy cutting the silk into blossom shapes, adhering it to some dyed pellon and coating it with matte medium, I used an old plastic egg carton to give some dimension to the flowers and embroidery thread for the centre.

The process of making the box involves cutting the matte board to specific sizes, covering it with fabric and sewing the pieces together by hand. The lid is made in basically the same way, but needs to be carefully measured so that it fits snugly, but not too tight. I had planned to use the branches made by Mum, but they weren't working and I found I had a small piece of fabric exactly right for cherry twigs and wrapped it around some pipe cleaners. The blossoms and twig were anchored to the lid by hand. Below is the finished box.

Just after I finished the box, I took an online class with Jenn Houlden. She did a pre-workshop session and suggested that participants could get stated on their backgrounds. I looked at the stuff that I had out for the box and thought "why not?" Below is what I was looking at.

I made the sky from some indigo dyed t-shirt material - I put fusible on the back of two pieces, cut one with vertical wavy lines and the other with horizontal wavy lines. I then wove them together, pressed them to adhere to each other and to the batting, then quilted with a nice shiny thread.

The land was made using a stitch and flip method for curved piecing. Even though it was effectively quilt as you go, I added a few lines of quilting to make the piece lie flat.

And I am  very happy to report that both these pieces were accepted into the Cherry Blossom Textile Translations show and, if you are in the neighbourhood, you can see them at the Silk Purse Gallery in West Vancouver from April 9 - May 4 (check their hours before you go).