A New Year Means New Goals

Happy belated New Year all! Starting 2018 on the blog 3 weeks late. Awesome.

I usually like to start the year with a look back at the previous year. 2017 -- well, not a very productive year for me on the quilting front. Only 12 posts on the blog. I used to do 12 blog posts a month! I did finish a few quilts, but work and kids took over. And my quilting mojo disappeared sometime around May. The passion and a lot of ideas are still there, but the motivation and energy are not.

I would like that to change for 2018. I want to reinstate my 20 minutes a day routine. Hopefully that's doable. Since a lot of my motivation comes from goal-setting, here are my quilty goals for 2018:

• Get quilting for 20 minutes a day
• Finish my BeeSewcial quilts
• Reduce my stash -- my sewing space is feeling too cluttered these days
• Finish at least one project a month
• See if I can finish something in time to submit to the National Juried Show at Quilt Canada. This one is not looking too promising. 

This is what I'm working on right now:

The concepts I'm trying to explore with this one:

• Improv styles that transition from order to disorder/chaos
• Maxi colour to neutral
• Value progression through the neutrals
• Matchstick quilting with grey and rainbow thread

Too much for one little quilt? We'll see. 

Modern Block Monday - Layers

March's theme for Bee Sewcial was layers. Hillary (@entropyalwayswins on Instagram) wanted blocks that conveyed layers in turquoises, blues, oranges, greys and whites.

I knew what I wanted to do with one of the blocks early on. I did layers of the Fibonacci sequence on the first block, both horizontally and vertically.

The second block took a while to figure out though. In the end, I used some of the leftovers from the first block and then added more improv layers in the colour order going from warm to cool and back to warm again.

To see the blocks my beemates did, check out #BeeSewcial on Instagram. If you'd like to follow along with this bee, tag your blocks to #inspiredbybeesewcial.

TGIFF! - Separation of Church and State

Woo hoo! It's TGIFF! time again. I've got a bit of a weird naming story for the quilt I'm sharing this week.

This quilt started with the need to use up some scraps from an overflowing scrap bin. I wanted to try to use more tones and colours that aren't my favourites.

When I shared the finished top for Separation of Church and State a few weeks ago, I didn't share why it was called that because I didn't know. This was not intended to be some deep philosophical or political statement piece.

As I was playing with the layout, the expression Separation of Church and State just popped into my mind. There hadn't been a discussion with anyone or something on the news. I hadn't even gotten to the word play stage I usually try to come up with a name.

I just looked up at it and it was Separation of Church and State. It was weird. Then I looked at the top again and thought "well, maybe it looks a little like a stained glass window or some of the triangle points look like church steeples." But even I'll admit that it was a stretch.

I did add the line of Essex linen to help make the name work, but that was about it in terms of intentional design in the top to match the name.

The quilting was done with my favourite Aurifil thread (a beige colour #2847), using that great walking foot technique I learned from Healther Lair.

Here are a few close-ups:

Coming back to the story of the name. When I was burying the threads and finishing up the quilt, I was trying to help my son work on his poetry assignment from school, which was to make up three new stanzas for a poem. The poem was actually a prayer and he was losing his mind over it. As I was trying to be patient with him and his over-the-top reaction, I was secretly wishing for a little more separation between church and state.

Sometimes it just takes a while for the reason behind the name to make itself clear, I guess. ;)

Here's a view of the back where you can really see the quilting pattern.

Size: 25" by 30"

An InLinkz Link-up

BeeSewcial - Let's Get Planning

May is my month to be Queen Bee for BeeSewcial. I've known almost from the start what I wanted to  explore with this group. I'm asking my beemates to channel their inner urban planner this month. Our theme is direction.

My inspiration is Stephen Von Worley's maps coloured by orientation. I find his maps fascinating and would love to see what we could create with fabric. I would like each of my beemates to create a couple of neighbourhoods/city areas (2 - approx. 12.5" x 12.5" blocks) or one big neighbourhood/city area (approx. 12.5" x 24.5") so we can build a city.

Like most cities, some neighbourhoods are grids, others partial grids and still others are all curves or some combination of all three. Different areas of a city are planned over time by different people, but they still work together. Applies well to a bee quilt, no?

For some additional inspiration, I some photos I took on the plane to and from California to get a feel of what different cities look like from the air. Google Maps is also great for exploring layout ideas, but feel free to make it up as I did in my test blocks below.

Some guidelines so the blocks can work together:

• Background - medium to dark greys (no Pepper or Black). You can use one value for the background or several like I did for mine. I used greys in the Kona range from Coal to Charcoal, but it doesn't have to be Kona. 
• For Stephen's work, roads at approx. 90 degrees to each other have the same hue. For our purposes, the colours within a neighbourhood have the same hue, but can have different values of that hue (great for using scraps). 
• Please have at least one road leading out of your neighbourhood so I can link it to other neighbourhoods.
• Aim for roads to be between 1/2"-ish (residential roads) to 2"-ish wide (highways). 
• For those who would like to give our city some water, which every city or town needs - light to medium greys.
• I'm not a fan of appliqué and would prefer pieced blocks.

Here are my test blocks:

For anyone who would like to play along, you are more than welcome to do so! Add your blocks to #inspiredbybeesewcial on Instagram. We'd love to see what you do with this challenge. 

Questions? Fire away!

Separation of Church and State - A Work in Progress

The improv bug has definitely hit. That paired with overflowing scrap bins made doing some improv piecing a good idea this week. I separated my scraps into two piles -- brights and tones. This is what I did with some of the tones.

It's a puzzle:

Added a grey stripe and the improv pieces felt done:

Then I had a thought to add a border to showcase the quilting I had in mind. Also the border would help contain the busyness of the improv piecing.

Trying out some greys:

And then some Essex linen:

In the end, I switched out the grey for natural Essex linen and there it was -- Separation of Church and State.

I'll let you decide which section is which. Any guesses? ;)

Hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

Improv with Gwen Marston

Gwen Marston was the deciding factor for me attending QuiltCon this year. I've read her books for years and love her work. I decided that if I got into her class, I would go. And I did. Well, my husband is the real hero of this story.

See, I had a meeting at the time that registration for workshops opened for QuiltCon last year so I wasn't going to be able to register myself. My husband was going to be home that day though so I sat him down the night before, made him watch the "How to register for QuiltCon" video that the Modern Quilt Guild released and gave him my wish list of classes. We went over what order to try registering. Yes, I even had plan B and Cs for him, but I threw out plans D, E and F (you're welcome, honey). My top choices were classes with Gwen Marston and Melissa Averinos. He was such a good sport about it; mostly he found it so bizarre and amusing. I think.

The next morning as I left for work, I told him, "there's no pressure and I'll be happy with whatever options you can get for me." I don't think he really believed me. At 10:07, he sent me a text that I got my top choices. Eeeek! It took all of my self-control not to jump up and down at work when I got that  text, but there may have been an impassioned "yes" accompanied by a fist pump. I am a professional, you know. ;)

So now I was going to QuiltCon and I was going to take classes with Gwen and Melissa. Woo hoo!

I'll do another post for the class with Melissa, but today, I'll share some photos about the class with Gwen Marston. It did not disappoint!

Gwen's small studies:

One of my favourites of Gwen's small studies:

Another favourite:

Gwen demonstrating some of the techniques she taught us: 

Trying to get out of my comfort zone with this colour palette:

A little better:

Some progress on the different units:

Cute, eh?

Playing with placement:

Starting to come together:

Gwen and me! Eeek!

Some of my classmates work -- I can't remember who did what, but aren't they fabulous? Loved seeing the variety of work.

If you ever get a chance to take a class with Gwen Marston, take it. You will not regret it!