Wholecloth Experiment

I've been mulling over an idea about doing a colourful wholecloth using the walking foot quilting technique I learned from Heather Lair, which I've decided to start calling Lair Quilting. I first used it on Heathia, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Heather was an amazing artist, who passed away in 2013. I took a class with her in 2011 in St. Andrews by the Sea, NB. She was very generous with her art quilting knowledge and I haven't seen anyone else do her quilting technique other than me. Now that I use it so much, I've decided to call it Lair Quilting after her. Hope she doesn't mind! :) It also looks quite labyrinthian and that fits with the name too, eh?

Usually when I do Lair quilting (Heathia, We the North Since 1867, Triad), it's using one or two colours and it's meant to blend into the background. This time, I wanted to experiment with making the design with the quilting.

First, I laid down some black guidelines, with a mix of straight lines and circles.

Next I started filling in the spaces between the lines in different colours with my favourite Aurifil colours. 

Adding more colours...can you feel the rainbow yet?

Here it is from the back. Mmm, loving that texture. 

Just as I was finishing up the quilting, I thought it needed a little more. I started adding some hand stitching to define the shapes and make the colours pop more. I used 3 strands of DMC embroidery floss -- it adds a good line of colour, but isn't too heavy. 

Finished up the hand stitching this morning and blocked it. 

Updated: Here is the full view of the blocked quilt. Just the binding and hanging sleeve left to go. Calling this one Blessed. 

I'm getting impatient for this one to be done.

Hope you are having a great weekend! 

TGIFF! - We The North Since 1867

Welcome to TGIFF! I'm definitely doing the Carlton Happy dance with my finish this week. It's why I've been so quiet on the blog; besides our vacation, every spare moment was spent working on this quilt since early July.

I shared the finished We The North Since 1867 top last month. I actually designed this quilt last year, but then struggled with the motivation to start it. Fear is such a little bugger. Once I got started though, the obsession took over. Tea and Buffy the Vampire Slayer kept me company on many a late night.

I made We the North Since 1867 to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary next year.  Yeah, I know I'm a little early to be doing a sesquicentennial quilt, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I love to travel and experience other countries and cultures, but I love coming home too. I feel pretty lucky to be born in this cool country so I wanted to make something to celebrate it.

Don't let the simple design fool you; it has a lot of meaning behind it (at least for me). It has 13 values of red (mostly Konas) for the 10 provinces and three territories.

When we typically talk about Canadian culture, we often use the term 'mosaic' to describe all the nationalities that now call this place home. I wanted the central maple leaf to convey that idea as well, but I wanted more of a glass-like feel to it to remind us that it is fragile if we are not careful.

I machine appliquéd 1867, the year of Confederation, to the lower right of the maple leaf.

For the quilting, I used two colours of Aurifil thread (Red 50 wt. 2260 and Charcoal 50 wt. 2630), representing our two official languages. The quilting is the walking foot technique that I learned from Heather Lair. The spacing is 5/8" between the lines. Done on my Bernina domestic machine, the quilting alone took about 30 hours. Yes, totally crazy, but worth it.

I outlined the central maple leaf with some hand stitching and included some hand stitched partial maple leaf 'watermarks' in the background.

I also hand stitched one small red maple leaf in the upper right to represent our 'little' country in 1867 (only 4 provinces and 3.4 million people at the time).

We the North Since 1867 is done and it turned out just as I had hoped. Bliss.

For those who like to see under the covers, here's the back (it's really hard to photograph red):

Size: 34.5" x 44"

I know I say this a lot, but this is now my favourite quilt. Sorry, Happy Canada Day, Eh! I still adore you too though.

An InLinkz Link-up

TGIFF! - Night Flight

Oh happy, happy TGIFF! all! I'm thrilled to be sharing my finished Night Flight quilt. This quilt started with the scraps from Quilt Fix.

I used the leftover triangles from the 45 degree seams from Quilt Fix to make half-square triangles (HSTs) and then paired them into flying geese units. These flying geese then begged to be put into rainbow formation. Who am I to say no when they lined up so nicely?

We discussed how much negative space was enough and then the quilting options. The 'quick' part of this quilt ended when we got to the quilting though. I really love this walking foot technique, but it definitely doesn't fall into the 'quick' category. I think I spent more time quilting Night Flight than all the other parts of the quilt process combined.

It was so worth it. I'm so pleased with the finished look and the flow of colours in the quilting thread (different colour for each flying geese unit). The walking foot quilting in moon ray formation has all the precision I was hoping for.

Finished Size: 24" by 29"
Fabric: Kona Charcoal, Scraps from a Kona Dark Jelly Roll
Thread: Aurifil (2630 for the grey and many other numbers for the flying geese), Guterman, Coats & Clark

An InLinkz Link-up

TGIFF! - Heathia

Happy Friday/almost Friday everyone and welcome to TGIFF!, where we share and celebrate our quilty finishes.

I'm definitely doing the happy dance with my Heathia finish this week.

This wallhanging was started in a workshop with Heather Lair this summer. We looked at the fabulous work of Sonia Delaunay, a Russian-French artist and designer, who inspired some of Heather's art. As my piece really combines both of their influences, I decided to call it Heathia. :)

When I shared this with you a couple of weeks ago, it was at this stage:

Top Before Borders

To finish it, I laid it on a larger piece muslin to give it a border effect. Then I quilted it within a 1/4" of it's life with my walking foot. Heather showed us a way to add another layer of design with this style of quilting - love, love, love. I used Aurifil (28 wt. light blue-grey - 2612) that Alex Veronelli of Aurifil generously sent me in the spring. I've been looking for a project to play with some of those threads and I knew this one was going to be perfect.

Quilting Detail

Quilting Detail

I know I've said it before, but I love Aurifil thread! I quilted just over half of this piece with one bobbin. I kept checking the bobbin because I was sure that I was running low, but nope. It's nice and thin so the bobbin holds a lot more than some of the other threads I've used and there's very little lint. I really like how fine the thread looks on this piece too -- no knobbies (is that even a word?).

I loved doing the quilting this way; it adds great texture to the quilt. When I got bored doing lines in one direction, I'd just switch it up and start going in another. I think the 1/4" spacing between quilting lines gives enough continuity so that you can switch directions or shapes easily. Does that make sense? I also added in one circle of red orange thread for a bit of pop in the quilting.

Check out the back:

Heathia - Back

I faced it in blue (using this tutorial by Susan Brubaker-Knapp) because I thought that the blue facing would add a little pop of colour from the side. I'm wondering a bit if I shouldn't have used the muslin though.

Heathia - Front

Quiltography: "Heathia," by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau, Ottawa, 20" by 28", 2012.

Thank you so much, Heather, for teaching me how to do this. I definitely see more of this style of work in my future.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation...

There's time to enter my Back in Action giveaway, if you haven't had a chance yet. I'm still responding to comments, but I'm loving the colour combinations you guys are sharing so far. Yum!

***

While I was away, I had the opportunity to take a class with Heather Lair at the Sunbury Shores Nature and Arts Centre (gem of a place with great kids programs too!) in St. Andrew's. She was running a five-day course, but with family commitments, I couldn't attend all of it. She graciously allowed me to come for the first two days.

Let me tell you, those two days were AWESOME! I learned so much from her. There were three students in the class so we got a lot of individual attention. The first day, Heather showed us her work, which was displayed downstairs in the gallery. I had looked at her work on her website and was blown away, but it's even more gorgeous in person. Afterwards, Heather showed us how to paint fabric with acrylic/watercolour/fabric paints. Fun! Then she showed us different ways of using that fabric. More fun!

I started three pieces in her class. Yep, three more to add to the WIP list. :D

I'm tempted to call this first one Heathia because I learned it from Heather, who was inspired by the work of Sonia Delaunay. Think they'd mind? This was mostly done using fabric that I painted on the first day of the workshop. I used a marine blue fabric paint and burnt umber watercolour paint for the lighter brown/tan. Key lesson here for me was that precision painting on fabric doesn't matter -- if the fabric is wet, then paint will go where it wants to. It was quite interesting to see how the fabric came out once it was dry.

See that rust fabric? I rust dyed that! I found this cool rusted metal piece one afternoon while beachcombing with the boys so I did what any sane person would do. I brought it home and laid wet fabric on it for five days (I'm told that you can speed up the process to 24 hours if you soak the fabric in vinegar first, but I didn't have any). Then I soaked the fabric in salt water, which is supposed to stop the rusting process. Smitten!

For the design stage, we looked at some of Sonia Delaunay's art and how she used and deconstructed basic shapes in her work. She tended to use much brighter and bolder colours than I did, but this is what was working for me. I have to say that playing with the design and moving the pieces around with Heather was one of the highlights of the weekend for me.

It may not look like much yet in the photo, but I've since layered it on a piece of muslin, batting and backing, and started quilting it. The quilting will add another design layer, completely different from the painted, fused shapes. I'm excited to see this piece take shape and I'll probably have this finished for next week's TGIFF! when I host.

The second project is another technique that Heather taught us for using the hand painted fabric. This first layer was laid out in about 10 minutes, mostly so I would remember what to do when I got home. There will be layers of quilting and painting added to this so it will change quite a bit.

This next project was, again, started quickly so that I would remember what to do once I got home. Can you guess what it might become? This is the beginning of a torn-strip appliqué landscape, a technique that Heather shared with us and that I absolutely adore. Check out Heather's site to see what a finished landscape looks like. I can see me making a lot of these and I have some ideas for using this technique in other ways. 

If you are reading this, Heather, thanks so much for a great class. It was energizing to spend that time with you, Judy and Mary (my classmates), both in the class and during our lunch breaks.

Speaking of Judy, I scored some fabulous wool roving in a variety of yummy colours to play with from Judy, who raises Alpacas, sheep and goats near Saint John. How cool is that? She cards and dyes the wool herself too in beautiful colours. Should I get into wool felting, I know exactly who I'll be calling for more. Thanks Judy!

So that's some of what I did quilting-wise on my vacation. I also worked on my Stained Glass Lillies, but I'll give an update on that project another day.

For those participating in this month's doozy of a Colour My World White Challenge, the linky party will go up on Friday. Guess I better get my butt in gear!

Even though this isn't my usual WIP Wednesday-style post, it is about some WIPs so I'll link up to WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network and to W.i.P. Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. 

See you on the quilt side,
M-R