Fibonacci Twist - A Work in Progress

I decided to take my love of the Fibonacci sequence and my love of solids and challenge myself to see what I could do with it using my scraps.

I made these Fibonacci blocks several years ago and it sat in my WIP pile.

I pulled that out, took off the largest squares and made more 8.5" by 13.5" squares from my scraps.

Playing with the layout. Hmm, no. 

That's a little more like it. Now for a background that would make those colours pop. 

Let's go with charcoal grey. Yep, that's it. A finished top! 

I could see making more quilts with these blocks and my scraps. 

Hope you are having a great weekend!

Triad - A Quilt-It Modern Blog Tour Finish

I'm pretty excited about the finish I'm going to share with you today. It's part of the Quilt-It Modern Blog Tour featuring Riley Blake Confetti Cottons and Crayola Colors. If you are new to my blog, welcome!

Now if you have been following me for any amount of time, you know I love solids. I'm new to Riley Blake solids though and I must say that they are pretty divine! They have a great hand and they are great to cut and sew.

Through the magic of blog time, I turned this delicious bundle of Riley Blake solids (Charcoal, Cayenne, Geranium, RileyBurgundy, RileyRed, RileyRaspberry, Rouge, TeaRose) ...

into this ode to the triangle, which I call Triad.

Why the name? Threes abound in this quilt -- triangles have three sides of course, the three floating triangles, three main sections of the quilt design, three layers of the quilt, three thread colours. So Triad just seemed pretty apt.

While I hadn't planned it, shortly into the process of laying out my little triangles on my design wall, I was reminded of one of my favourite t-shirts, which you can see in these pictures (Hi Maritime MQG!). Clearly my subconscious at work, eh?

This was definitely a quilt that I wanted people to step closer to look at the details so I went to town on the quilting.

I started with echoing the triangle seams, which gave a fun star effect at the triangle intersections and many little triangles.  

For the negative space, I used the walking foot technique I've used in various ways on Heathia, Codex, Separation of Church and State, A Stitch in Time and Night Flight. Only this time, I used two colours on the top (a red Aurifil #2250 and a charcoal grey #2630) and a lighter grey (Aurifil #2625) on the back and kept to the triangle theme of the design.

I did two triangles in the red thread and filled the rest in with the charcoal grey thread. While this is a very time-consuming technique, the texture is so worth it! This technique looks so great against solid fabric.

I also threw in a little Fibonacci sequence in the large red triangle. Can you spot it? Hint: 1-1-2-3.

Let's go even closer...

The back is a lighter grey and it shows off the texture nicely. Finished with a non-mitred facing.

Final size: 22" by 37". I think Triad is my new favourite quilt. :) 

Have you seen the other projects created so far on the Quilt-It Modern Blog Tour? If not, definitely take some time to check them out. Fabulous projects! Serious inspiration. 

6/27 - A Bright Corner

6/27 - Salty Oat

6/28 - Trillium Design

6/28 - Allison Sews

6/29 - A Quilter's Table

6/29 - Bonjour Quilts

6/30 - Euphoria Jessica

6/30 - Material Girl Quilts

7/1 - Samelia's Mum

7/1 - Sassafrass Lane

7/5 - Quilt Matters

7/5 - During Quiet Time

7/6 - Sometimes Crafter

7/6 - Modern Handcraft

7/7 - Orchid Owl Quilts

7/7 - Piece and Quilt

7/8 - Sew Katie Did

7/8 - Tumbling Blocks

7/8 - Leigh Laurel Studios

Playing with Design

I have not been getting a lot of time in the studio these days, I must say, but I have been sketching a bunch of designs. 

I took a few of those designs and tried them in EQ7. Yes, I bit the bullet and got it. Early Christmas present? Yes! :)

Fibonacci Flow - uses the Fibonacci sequence up to 5. Dying to make this one using a fat eighth bundle of shot cottons I have. The colours will change, but this is the idea. 

Have you heard of Quilt Design a Day? This Facebook group's goal is to "spend a little time (15-20 minutes) each day, creating a quilt design. The design can be as simple or as complex as you like. To spark our creativity, we have users contribute images and color palettes for inspiration. In addition to producing a design daily, QDAD helps members strengthen their creative process and hone their creative style by sharing constructive feedback." (From the group's description on Facebook)

I joined in September, but have only completed one design to date. No plans to make this one, but it's fun to play with.

Looking forward to doing some more though! Goal for 2015? Hmmm...

Have a great day!

TGIFF! - Fibonacci Is Not Random - Part One

Welcome to TGIFF! I'm so happy to say that I've finished repairing the last of my Fibonacci Is Not Random triptych. Woo hoo! Even though it's the last one I've fixed, it's actually called Part One.

Like its sisters Part Two and Part Three, this wallhanging uses block measurements from the Fibonacci sequence up to 13" -- 1", 2", 3", 5", 8" and 13".  It was made back in 2003-ish for our old dining room. It was damaged a few years later so has sat waiting in my WIP pile to be fixed.

For the quilting, I used Aurifil # 2312 and used a walking foot quilting technique that I learned from Heather Lair. I decided that I wanted circles to be prominent on this piece for a sort of crop circle effect. I really love this style of quilting.

The back gives you a better idea of the quilting.

This quilt is 12.25" by 31", just like Part Three. I lost 3/4" on the width and 1/2" on the height from the tighter quilting.

Why do I find Fibonacci numbers so interesting? This short TED Talk by Arthur Benjamin shares what's makes this sequence so cool.

An InLinkz Link-up

TGIFF! - Fibonacci Is Not Random - Part 3

I had a wonderful time teaching my Modern Free Motion Quilting Sampler Workshop at The Country Quilter yesterday. Such great, hard working students! I suspect they all slept well last night. ;) The second class for May 22nd is now full so we've added a third for Thursday, June 5th. Yay!

***

Welcome to TGIFF!, where every finish deserves a celebration. After Scrap{Bee} 2.0, I needed something a little simpler and smaller to finish. Another piece of my Fibonacci Is Not Random triptych was just the ticket.

This is Part 3 of the triptych. It uses block measurements from the Fibonacci sequence up to 13" -- 1", 2", 3", 5", 8" and 13".  It was made back in 2003-ish for our old dining room. It was damaged a few years later so has sat waiting in my WIP pile to be fixed. It's done! Woo hoo!

The quilting isn't what I had pictured doing when I first made this back in 2003, but I didn't know how do to do this style of quilting then either. I do love the texture this quilting gives pieces. These triangles are my favourite section of the quilting. 

I used Aurifil # 2312, with some accent lines in gold thread.

Remember how I mentioned how much quilt shrinkage there was with Scrap{Bee} 2.0? Well, even on this small quilt that was 13" wide by 31.5" long, the tighter quilting I added reduced the quilt to 12.25" by 31".  I lost 3/4" on the width and 1/2" on the height. And this is a small piece!

The quilt underneath is Part 1in the triptych
and it is the same size as Part 3 was. 

The back:

An interesting post on Explorations in Stitch about straddling the modern/traditional quilting divide that is worth checking out! Thanks for the shout out, Jo! 

This is also one of my Q2 goals for the Finish Along with Katy @ The Littlest Thistle.

An InLinkz Link-up

Fibonacci Twist - A Work in Progress

While making Innocence Lost, Courage Found, I kept thinking that the Fibonacci sequence (related to the Golden Ratio) depicted in tile formation could be a cool quilt design. Wouldn't using the Golden Ratio as the founding design principle for a quilt almost automatically assure success? I wasn't interested in the spiral or conch shell look so much, but the graphic look of the square tiles.

I also thought it might be neat to play with complementary contrast and colour ratio (i.e. 1:3 yellow to purple, etc).

I made two blocks using the Fibonacci sequence up to 13 again and rotated one of them to get this:

Hmm, it has potential, but it needs more and I'm not sure quite what yet. Something to balance the colour ratios? Using the Golden Ratio is not so easy. LOL! Thoughts?