Saturday, April 29, 2017

Key Lime Galaxy (New York Beauty)

This is my own crazy design.  I wanted to try my hand at making the New York Beauty block.  But far be it from me to just do a standard block...  Nope - make them big and stretch them out.  I did this using EQ7.  Worked like a dream - it drafts the blocks instantly so there is no struggling with the math of having to do the elongated blocks and then it prints out the papers needed for the paper piecing.  I'm really happy with the way it turned out!


Above - the EQ7 design sketch.  I don't fuss a lot about getting the colours to match up exactly because I usually don't know what colours I'm going to use, exactly.  Depends on what I have.  But I did have a general idea of the colours based on a bundle of fat quarters I wanted to use - and I have a ton of that lime green.


Above - the finished top - it's actually pretty close to the sketch.  Below - locked and loaded - ready for quilting.




Above - all quilted and bound.  Below, close ups of the quilting.  Lots of ruler work - but also lots of freehand.  Notes for the quilters out there:  I didn't spend a lot of energy/time quilting in the printed areas because it just wouldn't show up.  But, as usual, I went a little nuts in the solid areas where the custom quilting would show up.  Also - my original intention was to leave the grided areas unquilted, but in the end, I put the grid into them because some of them were just too big and needed something.










I named it "Key Lime Galaxy" because I was thinking stars.  I Googled "star names" and one of the hits that came up was Fantasy Name Generator with a sub-page Galaxy Names.  One of the names that it generated for me was "Lemon Galaxy".  I thought "close - but not quite right - quilt is lime green".  So I thought "Lime Galaxy" - then I thought "Key Lime Galaxy".   My mind works in a weird sort of way I think.  Either that or I'm always thinking about food.... (Key Lime Pie).


Summer Solstice

This is Carol's Summer Solstice - a wedding gift for her son and now daughter-in-law.  A beauty!








Monday, April 3, 2017

Gravity Quilt No. Three

Geraldine was given my name by a lady in my quilt guild - the Calgary Modern Quilt Guild.  This is a great group of ladies and I love this guild!  But I don't know everyone's name and this person's name was not familiar to me so Karen if you see this post, please introduce yourself to me the next time you see me at a meeting!  And thanks for the reference...  

Now - back to Geraldine's Gravity Quilt.  These are really cool quilts so it's not surprising that so many people want to make them.  As noted, this is the third one I've quilted.  I don't tend to refer to previous ones for a couple of reasons - I don't want them to be identical and it takes extra time to find the pix, etc.  Having said that, after three, I've got a few design motifs stuck in my mind so there are some familiar patterns here.  At the same time, there are significant differences. especially in the grey borders, which actually account for a majority of the quilt area.  Honestly - I get bored with doing the same thing, so the borders for sure are different for each of the three quilts.  

Here goes with the pix....


























Geraldine had some of the fabric left so she put it together for the backing, which features a line of the coloured fabrics.




A thread note if you're quilting this quilt.  I've approached these quilts in a couple of different ways.  I've done all of one colour before moving to the next colour - using the same thread for several blocks (e.g., a blue thread for all the blue or bluish blocks).  For this quilt, I worked from the top down, centre to edge, so essentially changed thread for each block.  With so many thread changes, I didn't bother changing the bobbin thread - I think I used a cream colour on the back for the coloured blocks, and a light and dark grey bobbin for the grey blocks - depending on whether they were light , dark/grey or black.  For these big quilts I'm going back to attaching the top to the top roll bar.  I've just had too many issues with floating/basting.  This quilt went swimmingly - absolutely no issues.