Quilters' Chat

i was catching up on other things besides sewing after I finished hand quilting an old window pane top but now it is time for our local group to sign up for the annual UFOs (UnFinished Objects) so I signed up for two.  One is a 30+ year old patchwork on an even older blanket that recently decided to shrink drastically.  So I'm adding two towels, fixing the patchwork, and adding more to make it a single-sized quilt again, cotton blanket and towels, mixed fabric appliqued patches, in shades of cool greens.  The other one is a pile of sunflower fabric I've been collecting and "stash" yellows, oranges, and browns to match.  It's going to be design as I go, three to five pictures, including one with a barn and quilts hanging on a fence with more traditional patterns (and sunflower fields in the background) and probably a vase of sunflowers among other related pictures, Then a background and framing in either subtly colored traditional blocks or randomly mixed half-square triangles in shades of yellow drifting to mixed shades of orange and brown.  Maybe some of each depending on how much space I need to fill to make the pictures--in different sizes and borders--fit together.  i figure some will be pieced for the pictures (fields made of stripes or diamonds, etc) but some will have to be appliqued.  How much is machine appliqued will depend on sizes and my schedule.  Easier to watch my shows while I'm hand sewing than when I'm machine sewing, but when nothing is on, I'd just as soon machine sew.  I have no destination for it yet, but that's one of the reasons its a UFO: the annual challenge gives me an incentive to make progress on such deadline free projects that I've had fabric for for awhile, and maybe eventually I'll get my act together enough to try to sell some of them on etsy or something.  Take a lot of them being ready to make it worth a consignment shop or some such, i imagine.  Maybe after i retire and have time to manage a craft shop on the side...

I was thinking of some series to post and have a mystery quilt that might work but I have to work out how to get the pictures on line. If someone comes across this post and doesn't mind sending me a snail mail address, I'll send it as paper. meanwhile, I'll talk about my favorite topic, which is designing crazy quilts. I've done all kinds, including when I was cluelessly figuring out quilting without class or teacher. (My first quilt is diamond shaped because I didn't know how to square off). A couple of them are true patchworks: an old blanket or a couple of old beach towels appliqued with patches until one side is covered with patches and the other side has either scrap of the base material from trimming off the uneven edges or some closely matching material to peed the back the same color as the original.

Usually I pick a color theme: blue, green, and stick mostly to that with just enough variety to brighten it up. Mostly I pick very close range of blues, solids and patterns, but lately I've been looking at some scrappy quilts that are less close, yet still of a theme, a rainbow of blues you might say, with a rainbow of crams or some other color, matching or contrasting but subtlely so. I'm redoing green quilt that shrank a lot, expanding and flattening the pieces that didn't shrink as much. That I'll keep to the current country green as closely as possible, but the one after that will be more variable shades in the same family, maybe pinks with peach and rose and maroon, or blues from bluegreen to violet to sky blue to navy and see how much color a single color can handle. With that in mind, I've been shopping for fat quarters with patterns but less strong contrasts. Not my usual for shopping, but mostly because I didn't know what to do with them rather than because I didn't like them. With the mixed color patterns, I can more easily incorporate my overstocked stash of solids, perhaps.

Anyway, maybe I'll talk more about that in future posts. i do love a crazy quilt and they offer so many possibilities.