Friday Finish: Mustang

The Mustang quilt has actually been finished for awhile, aside from the binding. It's been sitting in a pile in my sewing room, buried under other half finished tops and stacks of fabric. It wasn't until I was attempting some organizing the other night that I dug it out and decided to finish it up completely.

The binding is finished by hand - that final step completed whilst watching new episodes of "Call the Midwife"..and in between crying jags. What IS it with that show? Always with the crying!

Backing with cross-hatch quilting.

So, this is a strange quilt. The color scheme is not my own, I followed the colors suggested by the pattern, and the whole thing's kind of weird. But also strangely compelling. I spread it out on the living room floor the other night and we all looked at it; myself, my housemate, my housemates cousin, some friends hanging around.

"I like it!"
"It's growing on me"
"At first I didn't like it, but now I do"
"I don't really like it, but I want to keep looking at it"
"Why are the horses pink?"
"That yellowy green fabric kind of looks like puke"

I started to feel like Robert Mapplethorpe or something - creator of controversial but interesting artworks, and all the opinionating left me with no further clarity on the quilt. Sometimes you get so deep with a project that you don't have any perspective anymore on if what you've been working on is crap or not. That's when other people come in handy. But to hear everything from "it's great", to "it looks like puke" isn't helpful.

So, here it is world. Make of it what you will.

Good Fortune Progress

 

After the blocks were paper-pieced together, it didn't take me long to sew them together into a top. The seam intersections are THICK with this quilt. I counted, and there are sometimes up to 16 layers of fabric all coming together at those points. In order to force them into submission, I took a hammer and gave them all a good pounding. This may be a slightly unconventional way of producing flat seams, but it worked pretty well!

Because of the simplicity of this design, it seems to call for some pretty cool quilting, so I'm gonna mull that over a little before I tackle it.

Friday Finish: Aviatrix Medallion

Well, here it is - the first finish of 2017! I was hugely motivated to wrap this project up because my church is considering doing an exhibit of my quilts and I had to present some of them to the Visual Arts Committee earlier this week for their review.

My church has a decent-sized exhibit space and puts on revolving exhibits from top-notch local artists. Even though I'm a member of the Visual Arts Committee and know it's a friendly accepting crowd, it's intimidating for me to be lumped in with such talented creators, and it was a little nerve-wracking for me to show them what I do. It requires a certain vulnerability to lay your creative self at the feet of others and ask for their approval, but it sure is fun when you get it!

I loved hearing the ooohs and ahhhs when I pulled this beauty out of my basket. This is such a cool quilt - the colors, the patterns, the way it all fits together so precisely. It's also really big, so it makes quite the impact.

I used an Amy Butler print for the background, just for something fun and different from the solids on the front. The binding is a darker grey cotton, and I finished stitching it down by hand. The quilting is a meandering squares pattern, and it's fairly dense since I've heard that the grey Essex Linen background material does better if it's firmly anchored with quilting.

The committee has given the go-ahead to proceed with an exhibit, but it won't be until 2018-2019 sometime. I'm relieved that I have plenty of time to make more quilts and hone my skills. Maybe by then I'll start considering myself an artist. 😉

Good Fortune Quilt

I've been doing lots of sewing lately, but it's all been free-motion quilting and there's just only so much you can write about that - it's boring!

So, as I've written before, I've discovered that paper-piecing quilt blocks is a good side project to have going on when you need a break from your "real" quilt project. I've had this pattern stored in my "Make Some Day" file for awhile now, and the other night I pulled it out and went to town. These are so easy to put together, and I love the crisp modern angles and shapes.

I'm using a bundle of Cotton + Steel fat quarters for the main prints and then the background is some Robert Kaufman yardage I bought when it was on sale because I thought it'd be a good neutral for something. It has a bit of a metallic sheen to it, so it's kind of cool.