A Little Bouquet

As usual, my thoughts and ideas for this theme challenge were all over the place, but I finally settled on using this image as inspiration. 

 This is a favorite coffee shop in my city. I enjoy it for the fun latte art (the coffee itself isn't my favorite) and the lovely little floral bouquets at each table. The floral bouquet is the inspiration for my quilt, but the coffee comes into play just a bit, too. 

I decided to challenge myself to see if I could make a little floral bouquet using all circles and squares. It was quite fun, although I had to think a bit on how to incorporate squares! Here's my finished bouquet. 

The blue fabric used for the table is actually an old chambray shirt my husband used to wear. My initial idea for this challenge was to use a larger piece of that shirt and add circles and squares to it. I started by adding coffee rings and was going to stitch around them, but then the rest of that idea just wouldn't settle in. However, I thought having a table with coffee rings was a fun idea (the actual tables at the coffee shop are pristine, in case you were wondering). 

Hopefully you can see those coffee rings in that photo. From there, I built the bouquet, using only circles and squares. The vase is two squares on point, set on top of a half-circle. The bouquet itself is a mix of circles and squares - I just let my imagination run. 

The pieces are all cut freehand. They were stitched to the quilt top using raw edge nachine applique, which got a bit wonky in plaees, but worked out okay enough for me. Rather than using batting for this piece, I used fusible fleece, which I fused to the background before I added the bouquet. Once the bouquet quilting was done, I added the backing to the quilt top and finished with some free motion quilting. It didn't occur to me to do circles and squares in the free motion quilting, so I just practiced a bit of my free hand, which still needs a lot of practice! 

The backing is a scrap piece of blue from my stash, and I had to add a striped binding to add a finishing little pop to the quilt. 

This was a fun challenge for me because I had never tried that free motion quilting around circles. It was a little bit of a challenge at first, but I may have to mess with it a bit more. I always learn some new technique with each challenge. 

Wendy

A Humming Collage

 My first thought when I saw that the new theme was collage was to do something simple, whatever that would be. I had a difficult time coming up with a subject along those lines. I started to peruse my books to see if I had any inspiration, and that's when I stumbled upon this book, given to me by my daughter awhile ago. 

I had completely forgotten that I even had this book. When she gave it to me, I thought I'd likely never try anything like that, but still hung on to the book. Even when I started paging through, I thought "don't think I could do this". On the other hand, it was very intriguing, and it seemed to fit the collage theme! 

Then Christian Dalbec, a photographer from northern Minnesota that I follow on Instagram, posted a photo of a hummingbird on his Instagram feed, a cropped image of the hummingbird's head, which you can see here. I reached out to Christian to ask if I could use his photo as inspiration for this challenge, and he agreed. Now I was committed. 

After reading through the book, watching some Susan Carlson videos and studying Christian's photograph, I dove in, sketching out the hummingbird head on fabric, then starting the process of building the collage. To say it made a huge mess is an understatement (bits of fabric everywhere), but what grand fun! 

This is the image in its early stages. There was much pinning and eventually gluing. Even after the pieces were tacked on with glue, some were changed. I could only work for so long before I had to step away and work on other projects, just to give my brain a break. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge. 

Eventually, it was finished. Once all the pieces were glued down, I did some thread painting using threads that matched the fabrics. My free motion quilting skills are still not great, and I didn't want my rudimentary skills with thread painting to be too obvious. It was fun to look at the back and see how my quilting got more relaxed and improved as I went along. 

This photo doesn't show it well, but I thought you'd enjoy seeing the back. I used 12 different thread colors, all Aurifil 50 wt., all from my thread stash. It was grand fun until it came time to bury the threads! 

And finally, the finish! 

This was, by far, my most challenging project since I've been part of this group. It was so much fun, but so much work! Will I make another one? I'm not sure, but I have been thinking about subjects, so maybe. This finished piece measures 18.5 inches by 26.5 inches, a very small project compared to the size of the projects worked on by Susan Carlson, the author of Serendipity Quilts. I'm terribly tempted to do something on a larger scale, but then I think of the time and the mess - but oh, the fun! 

I'll write up more details about the creating of this piece on my personal blog, if you are interested. Thanks for the fun, yet challenging, challenge! 

Wendy

Animal Kingdom: Henrietta

 When the theme Animal Kingdom was chosen, I spent days trying to figure out what to create. This happens with each theme. I think I need to do something on a grand scale - it takes me a few days to come to my senses. I considered quite a few different animals - the blue-footed booby almost won out (because they are so darn cute!). In the end, I went with a humble chicken. Ms. Henrietta, however, is anything but humble. Once I settled on this idea, I had a little fun. 

My inspiration for Henrietta is the Polish Chicken, those chickens with the crazy head floof. They bring a smile to my face whenever I see them (I think I might look a bit like that when I get up in the morning). It all began with the black and white improv. My plan was to make the head floof black and white, too, but that was not to be. In order to do that, I needed to find my Sulky Water Soluble stabilizer, which I had tucked away in a spot I was not likely to forget - heh heh. I'm still looking for it! 

The head floof (I don't know what else to call it) would have been made by using two pieces of water-soluble stabilizer, a base piece of fabric, and trimmings from cuttings. The trimmings are piled atop the base fabric, then that is sandwiched between the two pieces of water-soluble stabilizer. Then you sew it down with a thread that matches the trimmings, sewing over and over, until you feel that the trimmings are well-anchored to the base fabric. The last step is to wash off the stabilizer and let it dry. 

I used raw-edge appliqué for the entire piece, matching the thread. For the body, I stitched around the outline, then stitched vertical "feather-like" lines in the body and tail. You can't really see them that well, but here's a little peek. 

For the head floof, beak and waddle, I just did a simple outline stitch in matching thread. Henrietta has eyes under that floof, I'm pretty sure, but she didn't bother to let me fuss with them. 

Here's a photo of that floof, up close. 

She has quite the floof, doesn't she?! I told you she wasn't any ordinary chicken! Haha! The trimmings are from the cutting for my Postcards from Sweden quilt; I couldn't bear to throw the trimmings away, they were so bright and fun. Who knew that I needed to save them for Henrietta?

I pondered how to quilt her. In the end, I decided to use the same quilting idea as I did for my Sundance the Rooster quilt (I'll link all of these past quilts in my other blog post). Just simple rays behind her, to show her off a bit. I wanted to main focus to be on her. 

For the backing, I used a piece of bright blue Grunge. You can see the quilting a bit more from the back view. 

Henrietta measures 16" x 20". All of the fabrics are from my stash. This was such a fun theme, once I figured out what to make! 

Wendy

The Sea: Sea Spray

Since I live in Minnesota, no where near the coasts, I rarely get to see the sea. My favorite "sea" here is Lake Superior, and I go there as often as I can. I enjoy watching the waves crash over the basalt rocks, making them a deep gray. Lake Superior is a moody lake, particularly in November. My Sea Spray quilt is a nod to my favorite body of water. 

The finished quilt measures 16" x 20".  I started with a background fabric of grey ombre for the sky, blue for the water, and layered the clouds and rocks, freehand. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I stitched the clouds and rocks down by straight stitching along the curves and angles. 

With the clouds and rocks done, I got to work on the waves. I had added in two strips of blue faux cork fabric, thinking that would give the feeling of the light on the breakers as they rolled in. To soften the edges of the strips, I tried adding some sea foam by using a little free motion thread painting. I had never done this before, so it was a challenge to get it to look realistic. 

After that was done, I used white embroidery thread and began to add seed stitches to create the spray. That ended up being more work than I expected, with having to continue to add stitches to create the right combination of dense and loose stitches. 

Then I added binding, and it was done. I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge. It is one of my favorite quilts that I've made for this group! 

I have more information about the construction of this quilt on my blog today, if you are interested in reading a bit more about my process. 

Wendy

Inspired Challenge

It was challenging to figure out how to use my inspiration fabric, but in the end, I'm very happy with my two projects that came from the fabric given to me by Martha. However, I was so busy thinking and then working on the project, I forgot to take a photo of the inspiration piece before I cut it up. It is present in each project, so you still get to see it.

The fabric sent to me was a little piece of approximately 7" square of text fabric. I taped it to my wall and thought about it for awhile. To begin with, I decided to choose a phrase from the fabric and play with that a bit.

Here's the phrase I chose:

I'm not really sure why "twirling in circles" appealed to me, other than that it reminded me of a line from the movie, You've Got Mail. The scene where Meg Ryan (as Kathleen) talks about the photo of her as a little girl and her mother where they are twirling.

I thought I needed to add a little more challenge to that phrase, so I decided that all my fabric I used had to have circles in the design. The only fabric that had a polka dot design was the background fabric. The only non-circle fabric used was the inspiration fabric, which you can see here:

Of course, I had to use a circle design, so I decided on some curved piecing. I had been wanting to play with the new templates from Jen Carlton Bailly so this was a great project for some creative play. Here's a peek at my finished mini quilt:

This quilt measures 16.5" square. Here's a little closer peek at the circle fabrics:

I had fun with simple big stitching within the circles, around the edges, and then echoed the circles with some machine stitching in a soft gray that matched the background fabric.

I also added a little more stitching between the circles, for more twirling effect.

I used a gray Grunge for the backing fabric, and one of the circle fabrics for the binding.

I wasn't really satisfied that this little mini was an art quilt, and I still had some inspiration fabric left over, so I got the idea for something a little different.

I cut up some of the encouraging words and phrases from the text fabric, and made a little coneflower.

Using a piece of natural Essex linen for the background, I started by stitching the stem with 12 wt thread that matched the color in the inspiration fabric. I drew out the center of the coneflower and stitched it to the stem by machine, using raw edge applique. Then I glue basted the text pieces on separately, stitching each one down by machine, again using raw edge applique. I found a matching scrap of batik fabric that I used for the leaves and added those, using the same method.

I added a fun text fabric for the binding, and a piece of neutral fabric for the back. The quilting is simply straight lines with a matching thread color.

This little quilt is 8" x 20". Both of these little mini quilts will eventually end up on my mini quilt wall. I like them both for different reasons.

This was such a fun challenge. Thank you, Martha, for the fun inspiration fabric!

Wendy