imagination | threadonthread

Hello! It’s Easter Monday and, for me, it’s a day of tidying up loose ends. The list isn’t terribly long and I’m optimistic that I can cross off several items.

Several months ago I entered my name into a fabric challenge, put on by Riley Blake fabrics. The rules for each challenge differ and for this one I just needed to use the fabric that I was given and create something quilted, by April 30. The fabric line is called Rockstar and my pieces were orange, white and aqua.

I was awed by the Best in Show quilt at QuiltCon in Savannah, (See post here – QuiltCon 2017.) so decided to try my hand at paper piecing. Hmmm, how to draw a star? Freehand didn’t look so great. Thankfully, Google and YouTube came to the rescue! Once I had the star, I broke it into smaller pieces and assigned each piece a number and a colour. Hopefully this would help me get it all back together in fabric.

Once the fabric star was pieced I machine-embroidered the names of my favourite Rock Stars who are no longer with us. Leonard Cohen, Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison plus several others are stitched on in silver thread. The silver is a bit too subtle and I’d use a stronger contrast another time.

The finished star was then appliquéd onto the black background. I quilted the star with a mix of straight lines and triangle shapes. The quilting on the background mirrors the shape of the star. The batting is 100% cotton and the quilting thread is Superior King Tut in Temple. The piece has a one inch facing instead of a binding. It measures 32″ x 32″. Here’s a photo.

It’s not meant to be centred, if you’re curious! Also, the background fabric didn’t come in my package so I had to purchase it. It never dawned on me, until I got it home, that the white marks look like cemetery crosses – kind of fitting!

This is my third challenge piece and I don’t expect it to be prize-worthy in the judges’ eyes. However, I enjoyed having to use my imagination and I acquired some new skills along the way.

Now for the next thing on my list – cleaning out my thread cabinet. Now that’s a challenge!

Thanks for reading.

Swim

Happy New Year! I think I’ve got the blog organized to the point where I can start making regular posts. There will be lots of tweaking as time goes on, but let’s get started.

I began sewing in junior high school. My Mom and Grandmother were both accomplished sewers, knitters and needle-pointers, so it was no surprise that I carried on with fabric-type crafts. I took home ec in high school and remember being called to the office to explain why my flannelette had hockey players on it, instead of fairies, princesses or other more feminine designs. Dare to be different, think outside the box – both describe my persona.

This seems to have carried over to my new love of quilting. I want to use my imagination to create and don’t want to be restricted to a pattern. The quilt in the photos above was the sixth that I’ve made. I swim a lot in a pool. One day, while doing laps, I realized that the tiles on the bottom of the pool were laid out just like a quilt. I began collecting blue fabrics with a watery look. Armed with a large sheet of graph paper, a metre stick and some coloured pencils I drew up a scale version of three lanes of a swimming pool, complete with lane dividers.

The fabric was cut into 2 1/2″ squares, sewn together into rows and then the rows were joined together. It didn’t look like much for a long time, but gradually it began to look like what I’d envisioned. I added a white border, used a mixed blue backing and a black binding. It’s machine quilted with a horizontal wavy pattern.

I think this is my favourite quilt so far because it is an own-design that reflects my love of sewing and swimming. It’s very different and definitely outside the box!