My Quilts – Page 13

Around the World Blog Hop

When the amazingly talented Tina Katwal of Holy Scrap! Invited me to participate in the “Around the World Blog Hop”, I immediately said yes! Tina can rightly be called one of the queen bees of quilting in India. I love the whackiness – the flash of genius – she brings to her work. Tina administers Desi Quilters, a great online group for Indian quilters across the world AND she also runs a lovely Bernina store in Chennai, The Square Inch, dedicated to crafts supplies, classes and what have you!

I am supposed to answer a few questions which will give you an idea of what I do and why, before I introduce you to the quilters who will take this chain forward! Let me warn you, I love to talk – so here we go!

What am I working on?

Well, on the sewing machine, actually and sadly, nothing for the last five weeks. I have been on enforced rest because of sciatica. When my doctor forbade me to sit, ( I am allowed to stand or lie down – neither being conducive to sewing!) I had just finished this quilt for my son and daughter in law for their first wedding anniversary. The Oh, Fransson! Mod Mosaic pattern blocks were made by members of my online quilting bee.

92″ x92″ quilt using Mod Mosaic blocks (Elizabeth Hartmann)

,,,and had been working on this stash buster apple core quilt…

A Fons and Porter design for an Apple Core Quilt

But you can’t keep a quilter away from her quilts can you? So I have been spending my time reading some wonderful blogs, drooling over some lovely quilts on pinterest and flickr and adding to my about-to-explode list of must-make quilts!

Okay, but I have also been doing some work – a lot of fine tuning of designs and fresh designing too. Beginning July 2014, I am hosting a free Block of the Month quilt on my blog, Round the Year. I am doing the quilt in two colourways – four blocks are already up!

Round the Year Quilt Block 2 Evening at the Pond

That was the Dusk colourway, and here is the Rainbow.

I decided to utilize my time away from the sewing machine to try various quilt layouts on Quilt Assistant, a great free quilt design software.

I am currently also drafting foundation paper piecing templates for the Nearly Insane Quilt, which is next on my list of to-do-quilts, as soon as I can get some half a dozen UFOs out of the way! Like this Just Takes-2 2012 quilt top, lying ready to be basted and quilted, for over a year and a half now!

Just Takes 2 2012 – Quilt Top “Monsoon Evening”

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Does it? I don’t really know! Let me try to list what I feel defines my `style’ :

I like working with strong, striking colours.
I love the beauty and symmetry of traditional quilt block patterns, but I like to put my own twist on them.
I am fascinated by blocks which make secondary and tertiary patterns, besides tessellations. Favourites – winding ways, kaleidoscopes…
I also like patterns, designs and techniques that challenge me – which teach me something new every time.
I don’t think I can make a quilt where I would be required to piece the same block again and again and again! It would bore me to tears! This is probably the reason I like to make small quilts. Here are my experiments with the wedding ring and cathedral window blocks!

Mug Rug for a wedding anniversary gift

Cathedral Windows in a small table runner
These days, I have come to be captivated by the design element in `modern’ quilts. I find myself incorporating negative space in my quilt designs – also because I wish to practice free motion quilting, which I have embarked upon recently. I do not have access to modern fabrics and am not sure if I would use them in my quilts if I did.
I hate slipshod, untidy work! My points must match ‘just so’! So Jack, the Ripper, is my closest friend when I sew.

Why do I write/create what I do?

Because.

I am. Therefore I create. I create. Therefore, I am.

Like the blurb on my blog states , “This and that, some rhyme, not all reason“. I don’t think I could live if I did not create every day of my life – paint, write poetry, embroider, design or quilt.

How does my writing/creating process work?

I have been enjoying doing my own designing for the last two years or so. My creating process is usually triggered by something – it could be a quilt or a quilt block or a quilt technique which I wish to master, a fabric, a picture or even a poem, The process takes over my being and I cannot sleep until I have worked out the design and then the process in my mind. I get up in the morning and put down on paper what I have visualized. Here are a few of my `original’ quilts…

For my sewing area, the `Hippie Happy’ quilt… I tried a lot many techniques here, for the first time.

The Hippie Happy Quilt – Peace, Soul and Tranquility!

…a small quilt “Winter of Hope” inspired by a poem…

“Cruel harsh winter, Ablaze with flowers of hope. Summer’s in my heart.”

Another one inspired by a fabric and a desire to try out prairie points…kantha style quilting here…

Trapunto and 3 dimensional flowers and leaves to bring alive the fabric print…

The Octopus’s Garden came into being, inspired by the presence in my stash of the perfect ocean themed fabric for the convergence technique and the delicious fossil fern fabric for the Octopus…

Here is a panel from a counting quilt inspired by the most beautiful little girl, born to a favourite niece!

Seven kites, eight clouds, nine stars – all in in silk and satin!

And finally, pictures of a quilt inspired by a wedding in the family, coinciding with the Husqvarna Viking India quilt challenge. In this quilt, I loved bringing alive the magic of the winding ways block, sewn together to represent the sacred fire which forms an essential part of the Hindu wedding ritual.

The Saptapadi Quilt won me a Husqvarna Viking Sewing Machine ! This is the sacred fire circumambulated by the couple during the wedding ceremony.

If you look closely, you can possibly see the quilted footprints which give the quilt its name Saptapadi (Seven steps taken by the bridal couple while enunciating their wedding vows)

Thank you for visiting my blog. Hope you enjoyed looking at these pictures as much as I enjoyed sharing them with you! Before I sign off, I must introduce you to my tag-ees for the next week.

The first is the beautiful, multi-talented Brinda Crishna, whose signature style is traditional Indian fabric and hand quilting! She embroiders; she crochets, amongst other things, the most delightful little animals for her lovely grand children; she does water colours, and maintains the most fascinating hand written journal with her lovely sketches of everyday happenings. I do hope she will share some of this other stuff with you too; don’t forget to head to her blog http://embroideringmytale.blogspot.in/ next Monday, 13^th October, 2014.

My other tag-ee is Sobana Sundar, at her blog http://thequiltbug.blogspot.in/. Sobana lives on a self sufficient farm, growing her own vegetables and fruit, besides gorgeous water lilies (which she has immortalized in a pretty little quilt!). She loves embroidery, especially cross stitch, besides of course, quilting! She was more of a traditional quilter till very recently, but is becoming decidedly more adventurous now! She too will be sharing with you what makes her (quilting) tick, on 13^th October, next Monday.

The third quilter I am tagging is also from India, the gorgeous Elvira Threeyama! Her trademark is a great choice of fabric and the neatest, crispest finish you would see on anything that went under a needle – whether a quilt, or a wallet, pouch, bag, tote or even a skirt or a pair of trousers! She blogs at http://chez-vies.blogspot.in. I hope you will check her great sewing and quilting next Monday!

Keep quilting and dreaming of quilts!

A Royal (Blue) Finish on a Grey Monsoon Day!

This is a first anniversary present for my son and daughter in law, both great fans of grey and royal blue.

Cambric print in royal blue for the backing and lime green for the binding

I made it with the blocks from my Block Party on Bee Desi, my virtual quilting bee from the Desi Quilters group.

Before I show you the full quilt, I must show you the beautiful Mod Mosaic by Elizabeth Hartman blocks made by the Desi Quilters!

Mod Mosaic Block by Elizabeth Hartman — Brinda’s Block with an ethnic Indian touch

Elizabeth Hartman Mod Mosaic Quilt block — Vidya’s stunning finish in navy and lime

Mod Mosaic quilt block by Elizabeth Hartman — Elvira’s ‘reindeer’ block

There is something so fascinating about bee blocks! My son had got engaged at the time these blocks were being sewn. How appropriate that they should go into a quilt for him and his wife on their anniversary! I thought about the difficult time our family was going through with my daughter critically ill, around the same time. Somewhere, the love and care that each quilter poured into each of these blocks reached out to me and my family… As for the blocks themselves, as I quilted them I wondered about the story behind each print. I thought of a quilter generously cutting up some favourite new fabric to put into her block. Or were they scraps left over from a dress made for a daughter or a grand daughter? A much loved cushion? Or even a quilt? Who was using them now ? The child scraps, travelling miles away from their home to be made into a quilt which will now go all the way across the oceans to America…How very special bee blocks are!

I had a total of 9 blocks, all of different sizes and putting them together to make a whole quilt was impossible. To cut a long story short, I decided to put the blocks together in a horizontal row of 30″ with grey above and royal blue below! Then began the calculations as I wanted a straight line across where blue met grey! I worked on the free quilt design software, QuiltAssistant and came up with this!

9 Blocks arranged in a 30" row — 9 Blocks arranged in a 30″ row

Each giant block was a different width and quilt as you go (qayg) seemed to be the only option for putting it together! I used a great tute at the Quilting Edge, but I hated the qayg! The quilt came together in 3 panels, finally.

I used a cambric print in royal blue for the backing, joining up the qayg blocks and panels with narrow strips of a blue and lime green fabric. The batting was a thin 120gsm polyfibre.

The 46″ wide grey was quilted with a giant spiral covering almost the width of the panel, in a variegated grey thread in the centre and lime green on the outer circles. The rest of the panel was majorly filled up with a boxy version of the “etch and sketch”” filler stitch by Leah Day, petering out into wavy lines ending in tiny spirals on the left edge. To do this, I drew lines 1″ apart on the top and worked on that. Here, the quilting was in lime green thread near the spiral and a dark grey matching the fabric in the rest.

The ‘windows’ in the Mod Mosaic blocks were filled with different designs from Leah Day’s 365 days free motion quilting project and a few motifs from Lori Kennedy’s The Inbox Jaunt!

For the royal blue, I used Leah Day’s ‘cubic ripples’ as an inspiration, but gave them more structure and developed it into a ‘Tetris’ game like pattern. I drew lines at 2″ apart vertically on the 16″ row and quilted 2″ and 4″ squares and 2″x 4″ rectangles. This was a fun design, as I challenged myself not to stack up similar ’tiles’ in close proximity.

For the binding I chose a lime green to brighten up the drab grey which made up half the quilt. I cut the binding the wrong width – just 1.5″ but there was no way I was going to waste 400″ inches of binding. And I had already sewn half a side before it struck me what I was doing! So I decided to go ahead with it; I do want to think the 1/4″ binding adds a touch of elegance to the quilt – so “not over the top”!

All the quilting was done on my Husqavarna Viking Topaz 20 with its inbuilt auto sensor system for fabric thickness. I had some problems initially when using the spring action fmq foot, but when I switched to the echo quilting foot, I soon got the hang of the right rhythm and everything went smoothly – like a dream!

So here are the pictures, I’ll shut up and let them do the talking…

Mod Mosaic blocks in a row - the rightmost is the ninth - made by Sandhya S! — Mod Mosaic blocks in a row – the rightmost is the ninth – made by Sandhya S!

A giant spiral 38" in diameter to offset and soften the rectangular blocks. The lines were added to accentuate the horizontal panels. — A giant spiral 38″ in diameter to offset and soften the rectangular blocks. The lines were added to accentuate the horizontal panels.

Mod Mosaic block assembly — The quilted blocks being assembled through QAYG

Mod mosaic blocks by Elizabeth Hartman — A dash of lime to brighten up the proceedings

Quilting on the mod mosaic quilt — “Tetris” tiles quilted on the blue panel

The quilt is a square, may be used either way?

The quilt is a square - can be used this way too? — The spiral circle spacing gradually increases from 1/2″ on inner circles to 2″ outside

Ready for packing? Not before one last look at it!

Thank you, all you beautiful ladies, who made the blocks for this quilt!

BOOKMARKED! Free Pattern!

I quilted this bookmark as a gift for an unknown recipient in Japan! I used scraps (some as small as ¾” square!) of my precious Fossil Fern Fabric (by Bernatex) to piece the rose stem. It was totally improvised on a piece of fusible fabric stabilizer 2.5″ X 9″. When I discovered it could not be done in a single piece, I made a diagonal cut below the upper leaf, and pieced the lower leaf separately. The bud was an afterthought!

I have made a paper piecing template for the bookmark which can be downloaded here Bookmark -Rose Stem Paper piecing Templates. Remember to print the templates in the landscape mode of your printer! The instructions can also be downloaded separately as a .pdf file, as I have not been able to work out how to put the instructions and templates in a single file Bookmark -Rose Stem -Instructions L It is presumed that you know how to do foundation paper piecing! There are several great tutorials available online too!

( I used QuiltAssistant free software by www.timcosman.nl for making the pattern! I absolutely love it!)

Foundation Paper Piecing Template – Rose – Bookmark (2.5″x 8″)

INSTRUCTIONS

Fabric Requirement

Scraps of light coloured fabric for background (Coded 1)
Green for leaves – I used three shades of green (Coded 6, 4 and 3 – dark to light)
Scraps in any colour of your choice for the flower and bud – I used 5 shades (Coded 9,2,7,8,5 – dark to light).
2″ wide strip fabric for binding – 25″ long
3″ X 9″ piece of fabric for back
3″ X 9″ piece of heavy batting. You could use a double layer instead, if you do not have heavy batting.

Piecing and Binding

Print Paper piecing templates file. Remember to print this in landscape mode! There are 4 templates, A,B, C and D.
Reduce machine stitch length to 1 or 1.5 before you start piecing. You can trim the seam to about 1/6″, as the pieces are so small. Finger press to flatten after joining each piece. Do not trim the fabric that extend beyond the edges at this stage.
Using master template given below as guide, join the pieced templates.
Layer with batting and backing and quilt closely on background to highlight the flower and leaves. It would look even nicer hand quilted, I think!
Trim to 8″ X 2.5″
Binding
- Double the binding strip length wise.
- Cut 2 lengths X 9″ and 2 lengths 3″
- Attach first to the longer sides and hem/ sew to the back. Trim binding at the ends.
- Fold shorter edge of binding inside before you attach it to the width of the bookmark for a neat finish.

*Suggestion – Trace templates on to fusible stabilizer and use that for foundation piecing, as it may be difficult to remove paper from such tiny pieces.*

So go ahead, make your own bookmark!

Quilted Bookmark 2.5 — Quilted bookmark – Rose Stem

…and do link back to share your bookmarks if you decide to make them!

Bookmark -Rose Stem Paper piecing Templates – Please print in landscape mode

Bookmark -Rose Stem -Instructions

Update : November 2016.

I recently had the ocassion to make this bookmark and have revised the master template and added some details to the instructions. I used the freezer paper method to piece the templates and could avoid having to take off tiny bits of paper after piecing! As you can see, I also did a button hole stitch on the edges instead of binding them.

And the second prize goes to…Yayyyy! It’s me!

My winning quilt! — This Quilt Tells a Story (with an Indian twist!) This is a wedding quilt, the pieced winding ways block representing the sacred fire around which the bridal couple circumambulate and take seven steps ( quilted footprints around the fire) before making their vows, during a Hindu wedding ceremony.

Am so happy to share that I won the second prize in the Husqvarna Viking India Quilt Competition 2014, their Opal 670 Sewing Machine!

I had no plans to participate ,when HV announced their first ever competition for quilters of Indian origin in January this year, quilts to be submitted by February end! The theme was – A Quilt Tells A Story.…and the story had to have an India twist to it. But then they extended the date of submission to 31st March…

So my quilt, which is in fact a wedding present for my husband’s nephew who got married in April, was entered in the competition. Here is the story behind my quilt! ( I shall do another post by next week, detailing the piecing technique for those interested, with a free winding ways 8.5″ block and the fire pattern added on!)

The Saptapadi ( seven steps) Quilt :

I have long wanted to make a winding ways quilt – so this started off as a red and white winding ways quilt – red being my nephew’s favourite colour. At the same time, I did not want to do a traditional kind of quilt, I wanted a modern twist to it! Once I started playing around with the blocks on ‘Quilt Assistant’ software, I came up with something I liked! The ‘petals’ at the edges of the pattern looked like flames…the flames of the sacred fire, an integral part of every Hindu wedding. The couple circumambulating the fire seven times…

So I changed the colours to add oranges and yellows…what a happy coincidence that these happen to be the bride’s favourite colours!

I would quilt footprints around the sacred fire, symbolic of the ‘saptapadi’ – the seven steps taken by the couple, before they make the beautiful wedding vows, which have come down from the ancient Vedas.

“We have taken the Seven Steps.

You have become mine forever. Yes, we have become partners. I have become yours.

Hereafter, I cannot live without you. Do not live without me.

Let us share the joys. We are word and meaning, united. You are thought and I am sound.

May the night be honey-sweet for us. May the morning be honey-sweet for us.

May the earth be honey-sweet for us. May the heavens be honey-sweet for us. May the plants be honey-sweet for us. May the sun be all honey for us.

May the cows yield us honey-sweet milk.

As the heavens are stable, as the earth is stable, as the mountains are stable, as the whole universe is stable, so may our union be permanently settled.” (Source – Wikipedia)

The fire would be offset towards a corner of the quilt. To balance it, a ‘kalash’ ( round urn decorated with mango leaves) would be at the opposite corner. A few winding ways representing flowers would be added randomly to balance the composition. This photo shows the way it finally started shaping up on my design board…

Designing in progress

The original quilt was planned as 9×9 blocks of 10″ each. Around that time, the last date of this challenge was extended to 31st March, and I decided to participate. That meant a change in the size of the pattern and the layout. As I was working with fat quarters from my stash, the block size was changed to 8.5″ to make best use of the fabric.

One question I have been asked is why I did not use a black or charcoal grey for the background – it wuld have given a decidedly modern twist to my quilt. The answer is simple – those colours are inauspicious, and no Hindu would have them associated with a wedding ceremony which is a sacred ritual ( rather than a contractual arrangement).

I printed the pieces on freezer paper and set about cutting nearly 500 curved pieces for 49 winding ways blocks, over the next 3 days! Each of the pieces had notches on each side to mark the centres…

And then, I broke the bobbin winder on my sewing machine! My mother in law’s trusty old hand cranked sewing machine ( part of her dowry, circa 1936) emerged to do my piecing.

Once the piecing was done, various layouts were tried out. The brown corners of the 3×3 centre represent the innermost well of the three stepped ‘agnikund’, the wrought iron ‘fire vessel’. The other brown pieces were the wood used in the fire. I planned to quilt mango leaves ( a symbol of Mahalaxmi, the Goddess of wealth and prosperity) strung on a thread in the top row!

At this stage, my consultant ( who else, but Dear Spouse) vetoed all additions in the form of ‘ kalash’ and flowers or even quilted leaves. Too cliched, he announced!

The blocks came together on my sewing machine and much to my chagrin, I started discovering that my perfect 1/4″ seams were not so perfect after all. Here is the back of the pieced ‘fire’.

And so the top was readied, before I pieced the back. I decided to put the leftover fabric to use as a border around my giant winding ways 25.5″ block. This block would be centred exactly at the centre of the fire block on the front!

Then came the basting. I thread basted the quilt ( never again! The threads keep getting entangled in the quilting).

This is my second attempt at free motion quilting, the first was a mini 10″x 17″! This was truly baptism by fire! My original plan was to quilt it in red to yellow variegated thread, but I could not adjust the tension on the fine thread. So I echo quilted the flames in graded colours, a red, two oranges and three yellows. And yet, thread breakages, tension problems, beautiful eyelashes – I had more than my share of them all! What would take 10 minutes to quilt would take an hour and a half to rip 🙁

Till I was ready to give it all up in despair.

I have probably buried upwards of 1500 threads into this quilt! I am so proud that I did not clip a singe thread and I matched each quilting start off point and break off point perfectly, so that except in about half a dozen places, you cannot tell where disaster had struck!

I decided to go back to my trusted walking foot for the background diagonals.

It was just a couple of days before submission date, so I did something highly “not recommended”! I did the binding first to bring the quilt into some kind of completion stage, before I did any more quilting! For the binding, I used an orange mango paisley print on brown ( thus ensuring the auspicious mango was integrated into the quilt!)

Once this was done, I relaxed. I would submit it in an `as is, where is’ condition on last date of submission! Now I free motion quilted flowers to draw attention to the saptapadi – the seven pairs of footprints around the ‘fire’. I also free motion quilted stringed flowers within the diagonals, representing the garlands that decorate the wedding ‘mandap’ (canopy) under which the ceremony takes place! By now, I was fmqing with ease, and I could use the variegated thread, breaking it only once over an area of nearly 36″ X 36″!

fmq garland

So here is the back of the completed quilt …

Quilt pieced back with giant winding ways block

And here is the front!

I am quite happy with the way it has shaped up! ( Though, don’t tell anyone, but I am mulling over adding some more quilting – perhaps closer diagonal lines – to add more texture to the background!) Meanwhile, the newly married couple wait for their wedding gift.

So here is wishing my nephew and his bride…

May the night be honey-sweet for them…
May the morning be honey-sweet for them…
May the earth be honey-sweet for them…
May the heavens be honey-sweet for them…
May the plants be honey-sweet for them…
May the sun be all honey for them…

Here are some more pics of my prize winning quilt!!

fmq in progress — Quilting in progress – a ‘footprint’ can be seen here

Close up of white tipped flame in corner

Free motion quilting as seen from the back — Free motion quilting ‘flames’ as seen from the back

A Baby Quilt (?)

I started this baby quilt, believing I would finish it in four hours! But it took me all of four days 🙁

Desi Quilters, my virtual quilting group decided to donate fifty quilts through A Hundred Hands, a Bangalore based charity. I have been busy with a lot of things on the home front, so thought to give it a miss, till we started running short of the target! I decided I’d do a quick baby quilt in a pattern I’ve always loved, using soft blended fabrics. I cut some 6″ strips in 3 fabrics.
and in no time, the blocks were ready…
And the quilt top too!
That is when things started going wrong! No idea how it happened, but I broke the bobbin winder! And so I was stuck.
Out came my mother in law’s hand cranked Singer .

I decided to omit the batting, and added a simple solid green backing, catching up the the layers with stitch in the ditch on alternate blocks.
So here is the final ‘dohar’ ( literally ‘two layers’) – nice to snuggle into on a rainy Bangalore night!
Hope the little one who receives it stays warm and loved, always!

Category: My Quilts

Around the World Blog Hop

What am I working on?

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Why do I write/create what I do?

How does my writing/creating process work?

Like this:

A Royal (Blue) Finish on a Grey Monsoon Day!

Like this:

BOOKMARKED! Free Pattern!

INSTRUCTIONS

Like this: