Like Peas in a Pod - free motion quilting Cameo 16

Like Peas in a Pod - free motion quilting Cameo 16

Not like two peas in a pod, because these pods take a little more than two peas and as you know by now, I don't like my motifs to be that alike. Some individuality is good and 'consistently inconsistent' is a motto I live my quilting life by. First quilt the pod - which takes you back to your starting point at the top of the pod - then fill in the center with peas - which very conveniently takes you to the bottom of the pod, ready to start the next one. Make them as fat or as thin as you want and stuff in as many peas as you can - you won't have to shell them!

Enjoy

Thanks for dropping by...

Hilary Florence

Ee -bah-gum - free motion quilting Cameo 15

Ee -bah-gum - free motion quilting Cameo 15

Essential a 'e' in a box, this is a very satisfying one to do. In a simple straight border it is very elegant. As you can see here, the 'e's can be squashed up or stretched out to go around corners or fit into small or large spaces. The two halves of the 'e' can be symmetrical or not. The choice is yours!

Enjoy

Thanks for dropping by...

Hilary Florence

Finger Print - free motion quilting Cameo 14

Finger Print - free motion quilting Cameo 14

OK, this isn't exactly a design motif, more a way to use parallel lines, but what a way! Columns of parallel lines are much used to great effect by Laura and Linda  Kemshall  laurakemshall.blogspot.co.uk and lindakemshall.com
They are great for covering area and not detracting too much the terrific surface design that Laura and Linda are famed for.

They can also be used as the star of the show, rather than just the supporting cast. By gently opening out or closing each parallel (which, if you want to be pedantic, or course means it is no longer truly a parallel!) the columns can be made to twist and turn to go around just about any shape you want. Of course, you can also alter the width of the columns. Here, I've also altered the space between the columns, making them also gently open and close. So often, the un-quilted negative can be used to form an important part of the over-all effect.

The combination of all these variables gives a lot of room to play - and we haven't even thought about thread colour!

Enjoy

Thanks for dropping by

Hilary Florence

Encore - free motion quilting Cameo 13

Encore - free motion quilting Cameo 13

Doesn't this just look like crowds of people jumping up and down going crazy for more? It is very forgiving and doesn't need to be at all symmetrical to look good. In fact, the more variation to the figures, the more fun they look as if they are having. I've done it quite tightly here, with my audience in neat, well behaved rows. It is very easy to open out for a much looser density and is a wonderful motif for awkward spaces.

Enjoy

Thanks for dropping by...

Hilary Florence

Banana Bunches - free motion quilting Cameo 12

Banana Bunches - free motion quilting Cameo 12

May be Banana bunches isn't quite the right name for this one - may be Jungle Leaves? Anyway, it's another one that has many possible tweaks, each of which will give it a different character. Each 'finger' here, has a slight curved and slanted sharp cornered finish, which echoes the motif above. These fingers could be finished with a straight edge, or a rounded end, or a point. Each side of the central line could have three or more fingers. The fingers themselves could curl in or out. And so on.

That is the joy of doodling to create designs - there are so many possibilities and variations.

Enjoy

Thanks for dropping by...

Hilary Florence

Sherri Lynn Wood and improvisational duets?

Sherri Lynn Wood is a quilter who uses improvisation in her piecing and quilt construction, or as she puts it 'improvises quilts as a life practise'. You can learn more on her blog daintytime.net. If you scroll back a bit, you can read how she applies her insights from a course in improvisational theatre to her life and quilts.

She is currently writing a book about her improvisational piecing and looking for quilters to try out her projects. Our styles are very different, but as a musician myself, (and a quilter who never follows a pattern!) I was intrigued and volunteered.

This post is manly for Sherri as she asked to look at applicants' blogs. Since I haven't been blogging very long, I thought I'd put up some past pieced pieces, to show when I am not dyeing, printing or machine quilting, I do actually do some piecing!

Sherri, if you get this far, I hope you enjoy it - as I hope the rest of you do too!

Catching the curve - a first piece in curved piecing

 This was one of my first forays into curved piecing, using an idea by Ann Johnston in her book The quilter's book of design. Slightly curvy strips are sown together to make blocks. Using a 'stack and wack' approach, the blocks are cut with  gently curving 'V' shapes before reassembling.

Blue and Brown Boundaries

 This piece basically uses 2 colours - a bright turquoise and a russet brown. The variations come from 'dulling' each dye by adding differing amounts of its complementary. I admit that there is a touch of gold which I did not dye!

The piecing is entirely improvisational - there was no plan at all. A real, have rotary cutter - will travel and make it up as you go along - approach. Each piece is outlined in a bias of the complementary colour and the pieces assembled in ever increasing sizes.

Cross-roads

Here is the next piece using the same technique. The dyes are a scarlet and charcoal and I've livened things up a bit with a touch of silver. This time, the bias insets vary in size and also have their own curves.

Sunset Trees 2

Autumn Trees 1

 Tray dyeing provides the backgrounds for a series I did on winter trees. Biased insets give the tree outline. Cutting the tree free-hand with a rotary cutter makes sure that each tree is unique. I've finished them off by quilting a free-motion leaf motif.

Nine Lives

This piece started off life as 'ten not quite green bottles, hanging on a wall', but the more I looked at the pieced 'bottles' (now the bodies), the more all I could see was cats. In the end, I gave in and appliqued heads and tails and 'Nine Lives' was born.

Nine Lives - detail

The cats' bodies and the blocks are cut free-hand with a rotary cutter. The quilting is meant to be a kind of stone wall. There are also a few mice hiding around - but not on this detail.

Improvisational piecing - work in progress

No curves for once. This is really inspired by using up scraps - with a splash of gold because even scraps can be special. I've got quite a lot more, so not sure yet how this will end up, but there will of course, be some quilting. I'll post about it when I get there.

Enjoy

Thanks for dropping by

Hilary Florence

Bubble Wrap - free motion quilting Cameo 11

Bubble Wrap - free motion quilting Cameo 11

This is a real textural piece. First, each chain of circles is echoed. This in itself looks good. Filling in the gaps with more 'circles', which of course become more ovals as the space changes, gives a richer, denser texture.

Enjoy

Thanks for dropping by...

Hilary Florence

Square Division - free motion quilting Cameo 10

Square Division - free motion quilting Cameo 10

This is great to use for pieced squares or diamonds. It can be made square, as here, or easily elongated a bit to fit more pointed diamonds. A half drop repeat will cover the whole surface, where as a simple repeat, as here, creates a negative square which becomes part of the design.

Enjoy.

Thanks for dropping by

Hilary Florence

Fresh Focus on fmq - working out from the corner

All three samples today have started from a corner working out in a circle.

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This is using one very simple motif in different sizes to give a variety of density. The 'negative' 

un-quilted rings also take on an important part of the design. At some point I will try the same idea with other motifs. For this one I did draw some free-hand guide lines for the rings. They are not perfectly circular, but as I've side before, I like things slightly out of kilter. 

For this one, as you can probably tell, I did not draw guide lines, but just went for it. This is the first time I have done this design as a circle. I usually do it in straight lines. I do like the way the two circles meet and intertwine like a zip, but I think the two unquilted corners distract and don't quite work. Might be back to the drawing board with this one.

This is one of my favorites. I particularly like the two sets of triangle in the lower right half. The shapes are almost shaded in with the tread. It's quite a small sample, not quite 6"s not quite square which means using a thin 50/2 cotton thread. Anything thicker at that size produced knots. (Sorry about the camera strap in the corner - that is not part of the design!)

Dyeing to Quilt - How it all began and my first quilt

Dyeing to Quilt – How it all began

My first career was as a musician. I had trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London and then moved to Paris to study for a further year. One way or another, I got stuck there, and one year turned into ten. I then moved to Germany, having been persuaded by a very famous German flautist that there was a lack of good flute teachers there.  (There certainly was a demand for being taught by a famous name – an ‘unknown’ wasn’t quite so popular, but I did manage to get a post, earn a living and learn German into the bargain!)

One of my treats on my annual holiday home, was to stop off in London and spend a delightful afternoon browsing in one of the really big book shops. I can’t remember what book I was looking for on this occasion, but the book that caught my eye was ‘Dyeing to Quilt’ by Joyce Mori and Cynthia Myerberg. I loved the colours and was absolutely fascinated.  But I was neither a dyer nor a quilter, so there seemed little point in buying it. It went back on the shelf. The next year and a different book store, and suddenly I found myself with the same book in my hands. I remember distinctly looking at a colour gradation showing eight values of the same colour - a delicious blue ... and something in my soul stirred. I was sorely tempted, but, I persuaded myself, the book, and therefore the dyes used, were American and would not be available in the UK. ‘Dyeing to Quilt’ was again returned to its shelf.

Move on another year, another book shop and there again, staring me in the face, was the same book. This time I decided fate really wanted me to have this book, and I returned home with ‘Dyeing to Quilt’ in my bag. My fears over supply were of course unfounded – Procian MX dyes are readily available in the UK (where I had now returned to live). 

One kitchen swathed in protective black bin liners and I was on my way. I started by dyeing two colour runs. I was thrilled and enchanted by the jewel like colour of each 8” square steeping in its dye filled plastic beaker. I was disappointed and perplexed by the greyed apology of a colour that each square possessed once rinsed. The jeweled effect had certainly departed down the plug hole with the spent dye.

With the help of my book, I diagnosed the problem as a lack of urea. My step-father, a retired chemist and inveterate collector of maybe-could-be-possibly-in-the-future-be-useful stuff appeared with half a sack of urea that he had 'rescued' from a disbanded lab years previously. It had been sitting in the garage for years, had gone solid and had (don’t ask me why) got quite a lot of bits of straw in it – but it worked. My next dyeing attempt left me with a washing line full of little squares moving in incremental steps from blue to green. Over the weekend, red to yellow followed and even some experimental browns and bronzes.

Wonderful! I now possessed a collection of colours squares of cloth that delighted me – but what was I going to do with them. The obvious answer was to sew them together. I bought a basic sewing machine. Since I had squares, squares seemed like a good place to start. Much as I love colour and fabric, I am not a fan of traditional patchwork and didn’t want to follow a traditional pattern. I decided that I would chop up and reassemble the squares, making each one different. I had no plan. I just improvised each square, making it up as I did it. It became obvious to me, that each one being different was just going to look muddled, so I decided on a few patterned squares amongst solid colour – rather like bathroom tiles.  I didn’t have quite enough to make it as large as I wanted and at that stage did not have the skill to re-dye matching colours. So I bought some red and yellow fabric, put a broad band of yellow around my squares, then made a border of all the meaning bits a pieces, adding in a sort of log cabin way (although I didn’t know it then) strips of red and a final yellow to complete.

You will notice that there is no quilting. I didn’t know how to quilt, so fixed the layers together with buttons. It is quite simple, but I love this quilt. It has been used as a throw, warming my knees on cold evenings and gracing the back of the sofa the rest of the time. My cat is very fond of it too. It really need a clean, but sadly, such was my lack of experience then, that I didn’t prewash my bought fabric and I am frightened that the colours will run in my washing machine and shrink. Has anyone any experience of dry cleaning quilts and if it avoids such catastrophes? The dry-cleaners here will not guarantee.

An ugly duckling

This piece started out many years ago as an experiment in dyeing. I wanted to create muted colours by doing a colour run between complementaries - and for some reason chose various shades of pink and  green. The result was not pretty! The material lay forlorn on a shelf, where I occasionally looked at it and decided I so disliked the colours, I really wouldn't like what ever I made with it, which quite discouraged me from making any effort.

A couple of months ago a slow roof leak just above my stash of fabric forced me to wash everything and brought these 'ugly ducklings' to light. I decided to over dye them with charcoal. I wish now I had a photo of the original to show you. At first, I wasn't quite sure about the colours but it was definitely an improvement. So, out with the rotary cutter - and here is the result - a somewhat small throw - and I now love the colours. I hope you agree with me that my 'ugly duckling' dyeing turned into a swan in the end.

This gives you some idea of the size - not very large, but I didn't have enough material for more.

At the moment, I am focusing on free motion quilting - my other passion, apart from surface design.

I cut the pieces into 2" squares so that I could quilt a motif in each one and pieced them in a spiral. I also decided that although I really like the greys and taupes, they need a little lift, so I added thin slivers of silver insets which catch very nicely in the light.

I wanted the whole piece to have a randomness to it. There is no pattern to the sequence of colours or where the silver insets come. Likewise, the fmq motifs have no sequence, but I did try to avoid putting the same motif twice close together.

I did at one point toy with the idea of making every motif different, but that was a bit too ambitious! I used a lot of paper doodling to come up with the number I had anyway! Besides which, I think it looks good with some repetition in it.

So there you are - my first serious blog.

Creating my first post

Hello and welcome to Quilting Worshop Blog.

Although I've been dyeing, printing, piecing and quilting for 15 years, I have been blogging for only 15 seconds! So, whilst I try to work out what I'm doing, below enjoy a sample of my work.