Class to Quilt-Compositional Drawing

As it turns out I am not very motivated to clean my studio. I headed out there this weekend with all good intentions of getting my space clean and I honestly cleaned (or more accurately, contemplated cleaning) for a total of five minutes before I found myself distracted by a drawing I had started at Quiltcon in my Compositional Quilting/DRAWING class.

I have to admit that after returning home from Quiltcon I have felt a little panicked. Panicked that I taught everything I had and that I was going to be out of ideas.

I began looking through some of the pictures I had taken while teaching (admittedly way too few) and that beautiful quote by Leonard Nimoy came back to me again.

"The Miracle is this, the more we share, the more we have."

Some Brilliant student work 

Wow.

Wow. 

Wow.

and WOW.

It was either the threat of cleaning or all of the energy and openness that I absorbed from my students that inspired me again....or maybe a little bit of both.

 I wasn't really out of ideas after all. Phew.

I put away any thoughts about cleaning (which wasn't hard) and started drawing and then quilting something I am pretty sure will be a sample for another class.

As a rule I don't generally mark on quilts. A whole cloth type quilt is obviously an exception to this rule. In my Compositional Quilting/DRAWING class we spend the class marking on mylar and then marking on a whole cloth.  Many years ago I took a whole cloth design class from Karen McTavish. It was a full day spent designing a whole cloth quilt that we took home to quilt. If you ever find yourself with an opportunity to take a class with her or see her lecture,

 DO IT,  I'm not kidding.

Whole cloth quilts are traditional by nature and are generally designed using beautiful floral or feathered motifs, stencils and if you have the patience the quilting usually involves some trapunto.

This was my finished Wholecloth quilt from Karens class.

From class to quilt.

In my Compositional Drawing-(expanded version) class it is my hope to merge the traditional with a more modern aesthetic. I don't know that a whole cloth will ever be considered "modern" but I do believe in my heart of hearts that there is a place for this type of quilting and design somewhere.

This is the fundamental basis for Compositional Quilting 

Filling in the blanks

I had to get rid of my free motion drawn swirls, I found I could not follow my own drawings.

I managed to quilt in the areas of feathers I should have left unquilted

Some new moon ideas

This is as far as I got, not bad for a weekend.

As you can see, cleaning is overrated and I am not out of ideas yet. I am hoping to be teaching this class and many others in the near future. I will keep you posted on the details here.

For those of you who feel inspired by this post, awesome. For those of you who enjoyed this post but feel less inspired and more discouraged by this post this last picture is for you.

While I openly admit I have skills,  I know that those skills didn't come without a lot of failures, practice and flat out shitty quilting.  Give yourself the benefit of the doubt, be ok with shit quilting, move on, take classes, learn as much as you can from yourself and others. You will never quilt exactly like me, just as I will never quilt exactly like Karen McTavish. And thank goodness for that, lord knows theres only room for one of her, and me and you. Be ok with that.
You be You. 

The Miracle is this:

I LOVE Austin TX.

 I just returned from teaching at Quiltcon 2015 and I really don't think I can do a blog post without at least mentioning how much I LOVE the food in Austin.  I'm not here to wax poetic about my diet or health but I will say I follow a pretty restrictive AIP Paleo diet and I found more delicious farm to table food than any celiac could shake a stick at.  Just sayin'.  Apart from eating at Max's Wine Dive a total of 5 times (in 4 short days),  I also enjoyed seeing some of my favorite people in the world and meeting some of my new favorite people in the world.  I am a very visual person and I am guessing if you're reading this blog, you are too.

  So, thanks for reading and come enjoy some photos with me.

This quilt; Diving Geese, pieced by Katie Pedersen, won best machine quilting at the show!!

Here are some pictures I took while quilting it. The last picture is a beautiful full shot of the quilt taken by Katie.

The Back:

The subliminal Star Trek emblem:

 Leonard Nimoy passed away four days ago and I started researching his life and his quotes. This one hit me hard and has resonated with me since.

"The miracle is this, the more we share the more we have."

-Leonard Nimoy

photo courtesy Katie Pedersen

I was able to share some of the things I have learned over the past ten years with my students at Quiltcon and I am so grateful to have had this opportunity. My students filled me with their energy and spirit. I made this as a sample for my zig zag sampler class, one of my students took it home as a door prize!

 I always love a rainbow.

 Speaking of teaching and sharing, have you gotten yourself a piece of plexiglass yet?

This is THE TOOL I could not live without. If you were in one of my classes you might want to shoot yourself in the foot rather than hear me say it again but if you don't have one yet,

 DO IT, BUY IT, TAPE IT, USE IT! DO IT! 

I use a 20"x30" piece of plexiglass that you can source from your local home improvement store. TAPE the edges with painters tape......trust me, even though you think you won't,  you WILL draw off the edge. Mark on the tape "drawing side" so you only use one side.

Lay that bad boy down on your quilt and you can try out every design your heart desires to-scale. Deal with the density of quilting, play with different designs in different places.

 This is not a marking tool. 

This is a drawing tool to help you visually understand the space you are getting ready to quilt. 

You are also building muscle memory when you draw your designs.

 I'm not kidding, DO IT.

Now that I got all my design work sorted out I can start quilting without stressing about what I am going to quilt. If you're wondering about this awesome quilt it is a pattern called Modern Mountains designed by my namesake bestie Krista. You can find the free pattern here. This version was made by one of my awesome customers, Amanda.

Do I draw in a sketchbook? Yes, all the time. But the sketchbook does not give me the perspective to deal with density of quilting and other to-scale design issues.

I'm gonna say it again. PLEXIGLASS. DO IT.

Use your sketchbook too. Use it every day, bring it with you on the bus, train, airplane.

Don't be afraid to use anything/everything you see.  Designs belong to all of us. 

  I love moons. I love drawing them. I love quilting them.

Here is a sneak peak of a quilt my sweet friend Jen Carlton Bailly made for Cheryl Arkison's book, You Inspire Me to Quilt, coming out soon.  Of course I consulted my plexiglass first:

Collaborations are so awesome when you are on the same page with your friend/customer/collaborator. 

Plexiglass is a great way to visually communicate with your piecer, or yourself, if you're lucky enough to have the time to quilt your own work!

Plexiglass again? Are you sensing a theme here? I finally finished my value quilt and have been sleeping happily beneath it, even though it still remains unbound. Sorry for the blinding flourescent reflection.

And Voila:

 The last photos I am going to share are more WIP shots from a quilt that I quilted for 

Elizabeth Hartman for her book Patchwork City. I was so happy to see her sweet face in Austin and teach two doors down from her.  I am always in awe of Elizabeth's work. This quilt is badass and completely blew my mind. There are some of the coolest blocks in this quilt that I have ever seen. 

 I love the way the brilliant piecing in this quilt informed my design decisions to explore so many unexpected possibilities. I wish I had taken photographs of the plexiglass for this project. You can trust me though, I used it.

As always, thanks for stopping by. I expect you to have a sheet of Plexiglass before my next blog post which technically means you are off the hook for at least another 6-7 months, right? 

DO IT.

Quilting Vintage Snowball Quilt

How I love feedsack.
When I first started longarm quilting I went a little nuts and bought a bunch of quilts off Ebay to "practice" on.... Of course some of the ones I got were way to precious to just "practice" on so they got hoarded away in my studio for years. Recently I have started quilting one of the most beloved of these:
 The snowball quilt, all hand pieced with Vintage fabrics and Feedsack. sigh.

I started by figuring out my design using dry erase markers on a sheet of plexiglass:
If you try this PLEASE mask the edges of your plexiglass. ask how I know?

I don't transfer this design onto the quilt top. It is just a tool I use to work through ideas, figure out scale density and design.

Then to the quilting!
 I used my IQ for the circle quilting, the rest is done freehand. I decided to quilt non stitch regulated for a more organic stitch quality. Of course no one is going to think it is hand quilted but I prefer the look to the uniformity of stitch regulation for this one.

Batting is Dream Orient, bamboo/silk blend ...another sigh.
Thread Superior So Fine

It isn't done yet, but hopefully I can make some progress this weekend!

I may be getting a wee bit ahead of myself but I received these gorgeous feedsack scraps from Marilyn, the lovely spidedcoffee on Flickr!

It would likely be a tedious task piecing these together for the binding, with the longest scrap being about 7 inches....would it be worth it?

Happy Mothers Day, enjoy a beautiful weekend!

Quilting Jen's Charming Neptune Wave

Jen's Charming Neptune Wave quilt may be one of my favorite quilts! I didn't want this quilt to end!

I quilted it with different designs in each section, sometimes echoing the fabric design.

Quilting Krista's Rainbow Log Cabin

I recently finished quilting Krista's twin-sized Rainbow Log Cabin Quilt using a Baptist Fan pantograph pattern by Jessica Schick. Both of our daughters think that the quilting looks like rainbows!