Improvising at Material Obsession

We were sewing up a storm today at Material Obsession in my Stacks of Improvisation workshop. Somehow I was so engrossed that I didn’t get to photograph everyone’s creations but here is a selection of works in progress and colour and desig exercises.

Flying in Circles

At Quilt Camp this year, I did a machine piecing workshop with Lessa Siegele. I learned a whole new way (to me) of making flying geese units and, between much laughing and talking and a side trip to Rumplequiltskin, managed to make three blocks.

String Theory

I have been making up [optional] kits for my forthcoming Colour Rhapsody workshops. One way or another, I end up for lots of narrow strips - just perfect for foundation string piecing*:

Each foundation square is approximately 15×15 inches. These images show what might happen if I decide to cut a single square into four pieces:
 
*This is one of many techniques that I cover in my Scrap Queen Odyssey workshop that I am also teaching at the Australasian Quilt Convention 2009.

The Humble Half Square Triangle

My first quilts were made from half-square triangles.

When I was riding the escalators in the London Underground earlier in the month, I was intrigued by the promotional posters for the latest album by piano rock band Keane (no I had not heard of them before either). A most quilt-like design, I think you would agree!

I have been working on this scrap quilt today:
  
With the particular values drawn from my scrapbag, I favour the layout on the left where the pattern is more pronounced. According to Judy Hooworth and Margaret Rolfe in their excellent book Spectacular Scraps, there are no less than 256 ways that four HST units can be arranged to make different four-patch blocks. That gives me plenty of options!

Transparency Tricks

I haven’t quite made it back to the sewing machine yet as I have been working on updating some of the instructions on patterns of my original quilt designs including Seaside Treasures:
  
Thanks to this useful tutorial for creating transparent backgrounds in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, mentioned on Blogging Basics 101, I have been able to make up these images setting out the steps for piecing an hourglass block.

Inner Piece

I’ve finished piecing Firebrand. I have some misgivings with how the miscellaneous purple sashing turned out. That casual wonkiness that is characteristic of so many of the Gees Bend quilts is surprisingly difficult to achieve from a technical perspective, especially when you are working with scraps. Still I am happy with the overall proportions (the piece is around a square metre) and I’m looking forward to experimenting with some quilting.
  

Simply Charming

On one of the quilting lists that I belong to, some one asked “What does one do with 5″ (or other sized) charm squares, that come along with various fabric club memberships, fabric packs and the like?” Here is my response:

First of all, I would sort the fabric squares into broadly compatible “families” such as oriental fabrics; soft florals; novelties and so on. (I love scrap quilts but in my view not all fabrics belong together in the same quilt. For example, I would not put a bright lime green square with a madder red reproduction print.) Then sort each family into “darker” and “lighter” piles.

I don’t like to fuss too much with further cutting of 5″ charm squares. Here are two minimum-fuss approaches:

• HALF SQUARE TRIANGLES - take one dark square and one light square. Draw a diagonal line from one corner to another on the back of one of the squares and put right sides together. Stitch a 1/4in seam along either side of the drawn diagonal line. Using a rotary cutter, cut along the drawn line and open out to form two half square triangles.

  Because fabric clubs seem to have a very flexible! definition of 5″, don’t worry too much about measuring the squares precisely to start off with. Instead,I just stack them up in pairs; sew the half-square triangles and trim them all to be a uniform size. This can be very therapeutic.

  According to Judy Hooworth and Margaret Rolfe in their excellent book Spectacular Scraps, there are no less than 256 ways that four HST units can be arranged to make different four-patch blocks. This gives you plenty of options!

• SIMPLE RECTANGLES - another Margaret Rolfe book (this time with Judy Turner), Successful Scrap Quilts shows all sorts of fantastic design possibilities using simple rectangles. A five inch square will yield two 2 1/2in x 4 1/2in rectangles. My quilt Technicolour Dreaming shows a scrap quilt made from some 5″ bright charm squares:

A Good Foundation

Over the last couple of days we have been lashed by high winds and driving rain resulting in the Central Coast being officially declared a natural disaster area. Things came to a standstill here at Casa da Praia as we lost electricity for nearly 24 hours. Except that we live in a pole house that lurches and sways so we are never exactly still. Thankfully those poles provide sound support and our home is still intact even if we feel a little battered.

A good foundation is a useful thing and, as many of you know, I have long advocated that beginner quiltmakers make baby quilts to experiment with new techniques and build confidence and skills. In these two very early quilts, I used Quilt Fuse, a fusible, gridded interfacing product on which you iron 2 inch squares and then sew up the seams. While I wouldn’t dream of using this method now, it was quite satisfying at the time:
   
Copacabana Beauty was another experiment with a different form of foundation piecing using a Benartex product:

Foundation piecing gave me exactly the border I was aiming for in Banana Flower Paradise:

And a “Pineapple Plus” class at the Auckland quilting symposium 2005 gave me an intensive two-day dose of foundation piecing. Guess which one is mine!
    
If you guessed this one, you were right. Alas, it has been sitting in my UFO pile for the past two years. But, if ever I get the urge to do some more foundation piecing, I know exactly where to find it:

Playing by the Rules

Now just because I enjoy free-cutting and freeform piecing does not mean that I take shortcuts on workmanship. Nor does it mean that I airily dismiss the skills required for precision piecing. We should all take the time to work on core quiltmaking techniques so that we have the skill set to execute the many quilt ideas that come into our heads whether traditional or contemporary style.

Although I am not a great gadget afficionado, there are some tools around that actually work. One that comes to mind is the Pineapple Rule from The Great American Quilt Factory in Denver, Colorado:

I’ve yet to make a Pineapple log cabin style block with it but the ruler is BRILLIANT for trimming up Square in a Square and Flying Geese blocks. I used this ruler to good effect in Vintage:

Up a Creek

Be careful what you wish for. Here was I craving a return to piecing and then I remembered that I had promised to make a 12″ Kayaks block for a friendship/farewell quilt:

As you can see, this block requires precision piecing and it’s been a while since I have required sharp points. In the end, I decided to go the foundation piecing route so that I can withstand scrutiny from the quilt police.