Machine Applique Baltimore

Look at all those bright colours and pieces but this one was machine appliqued and machine quilted. Again, it was a block of the month that helped to keep my creative juices flowing in my left brain job. It was one of those quilts that when I got to the end I found I had made a major error. The lengthwise sashing on the right, with applique done wasn’t long enough to join on. I needed about another inch or so. I resolved this by adding the additional length, cut on the bias, before adding the sashing. The dense random quilting effect means, unless you know where to look, it is barely discernible in the finished quilt.

The quilting journey is often about learning and fudging errors and this was one of those situations. I obviously hadn’t measured twice and cut one on this occasion.

Row By Row

This was another block per month by Ngaire Brookes. It is part applique and part piecing. Some of the pieced blocks were quite tricky.

When Charlotte was a baby and quite little I used to babysit her while Kate went to work and this was her favourite quilt. We would make up stories about the blocks on the quilt - like where the grasshoppers might be going or why the rabbits had to run run run.

While I don’t make quilts in this manner these days it is a lovely jaunt down memory lane to revisit the ones I made on my journey. It is pictured here hanging on the fence during one of my quilts in the garden charity openings. It must be late spring/early summer as those are dahlias coming up in front of the quilt

Amish Wedding Ring

Being contrary again, I decided to make this quilt in non traditional colours - choosing colours the Amish often use in their quilts. My last year of school was spent as an AFS exchange student in Iowa and sometimes we would drive through the Amish communities and you would see the women/girls sewing in the window either by hand or on an old treadle machine. Their customs forbad the use of electrical machinery. The quilt sheet would then often be quilted in a community quilting bee but I never got to see that in progress. Their clothes were always in dark colours - black, purple, burgundy, blue - so that influenced my choice of colours here. You would also often see them in their horse and carriage coming to get grocery basics. It must have been extremely cold in the winter as the breath of the horses sometimes made ice around their muzzles, Instead of the usual white/cream inners I used a bluish purple creating the pieced circles out of scraps but concentrating so that the small purple circles joined up creating a secondary pattern.

About the time I finished this quilt golden papers came on the market and I was keen to try them out. This was an early machine quilted piece using the golden papers with the rose stencil traced onto them. It seemed such a good idea but removing all the little bits of yellow tissue like paper at the end was not such a fun thing to do. Maybe my choice of stencil was too detailed. I hsven’t used the paper for quilting since but I have occasionally used the left over part of the roll for stitching through to make portraits or similar for embroidery

This quilt is machine pieces and machine quilted.

A Far From Perfect Quilt

This photo was taken before all the threads had been trimmed from the top. It is an interesting quilt as for me it represents business travel in the very busy years of our life. The blocks are hand appliqued and I would prepare a block before we set off somewhere to stitch on the aircraft or in airports. It was a way of keeping calm. One whole block was stitched waiting in Heathrow because a flight from Paris had been delayed because of fog and we had to wait several hours for a connecting flight to New Zealand. Naive style quilts are not my favourite style but this one was kept with simple shapes because of the manner of its making.

Because the blocks were made piecemeal over several years, when I went to joint them and the borders, I had quite a bot of fudging to do to get them to fit. As a learning curve for quilters, there are often adjustments or alterations that have to be made in the final stages. Hence I call this quilt “The far from Perfect quilt.”

The blocks were machine pieced and the stipple quilting was free machine quilted. The full quilt is a generous Queen size quilt.

Over the River and Through the Woods

Again, I found the subtle colours in this quilt very restful. It was another block of the month. I worked on the embroidery at night and set up packs of the squares in the weekends. I remember rushing home in my lunch hour to stitch the squares. I could get two squares pieced in my lunch break. So it seemed to come together quite quickly . In my later quilts I would have been more tempted to quilt in the negative spaces of the embroidery but that step was still a way off at this stage

The quilt is machine pieced and quilted using very basic quilting repetitions.

Antique Sewing machines

I loved the antique colours in this quilt and stitching each antique sewing machine at night kept me calm from an exhausting day job. Today we would call it slow stitching or being in the moment but when I made this quilt it was just a relaxing way to spend each evening. I often marvel at how my instinctual draw to working on a quilt in the evening helped to balance my day work. In my book, “Life is a Journey” I call it one leg of a three legged stool: writing, quilting (art) and gardening.

I have seen other renditions of this quilt in a standard square block layout. I think the diagonal layout in the single Irish chain is very pleasing and I prefer it to the standard one. I don’t know that i would be so keen to join all those little squares today but the colours are still very appealing to me.

African Oyssey

There was a phase when naïve patchwork on ethnic themes, like Africa, were quite popular. I purchased the pattern for this at a craft fair and then had the added pleasure of selecting the fabrics from my stash - which was growing all the time.

While the style is quite different from the traditional American style patchwork I had been following,. choosing bright colours to stand out against the more sombre background was fun.

It looks like it was windy the day I took this photo with the quilt pinned on the fence as the quilt is not hanging straight but looks like it is in motion.

When I was exhibiting the quilts in the garden for a garden ramble someone said to me that I didn’t really have a style. I do not know that I even have a style now. My interest is captured by new techniques and new challenges and what if questions. I do know my more recent quilts use a more subdued palette, almost monochromatic.

This quilt is hand appliqued, machine pieced and was a very early machine quilted piece, using predominantly stipple stitch

The 30 Year Quilt

I call this the Thirty year quilt because, if I can go by the date on the bottom Baltimore Quilt block, it took me 30 years to complete it. As you can see, it is quite a large quilt. It was begun as a block per month, designed by Ngaire Brooks as a NZ Baltimore. The squares are hand appliqued (not very well) as I was still very much a beginner.

I daringly discarded some of Ngaire’s designs and replaced them with my own. This was a major step forward from my thinking that I had to follow the rules. I loved doing the applique birds so I put in the keruru and the kea. I can’t remember what the blocks were that I discarded. I joined the squares together and then it sat in the UFO pile for a very long time - not sure what I would do with it or how I would finish it.

As the years past, I decided to go into first machine quilting and then free machine quilting as per Karen McTavish’s great book. I found drawing out the quilt patterns on fabric to be a tedious process so free machine quilting gave me some immediacy and was better suited to my temperament.

In 2018 I joined the on line Creative Strength Training with Jane Dunnewold. Studying the archetypes that affect all of us and learning about the committee in our heads that tell us our work is not good enough or no one will like our work, I discovered that my Saboteur whispered in my head that if something wasn’t completed, it couldn’t be criticised. I decided it was time to put the Saboteur to rest. I took out my NZ Baltimore centre and decided this would be the year that I completed it. It was a mammoth task. First I added the borders, complete with the applique ivy and berries and then I began the quilting. The trapunto diamonds were the first to go in.

As I began the free machine leaf design from Karen McTavish’s book - I think she calls it a fire design or open Cs but my designs always form a leaf type outline. It has become one of my staple designs). I began to feel the quilting needed a bit more. I introduced the random butterflies and dragonflies into the background. I felt this provided an additional design element. I was really getting into free design by now.

I did not want the borders to detract from the squares so the ivy and berries are just on alternate corners . They are stipple quilted around but the rest of the borders are just straight line quilting.

The hand applique hadn’t improved but it was less a focus now.

I include this story because there are many who have UFOs hidden away and maybe this story will encourage them to take out their work and revisit it. I was pleased with the end result and most people who see the quilt are more interested in the overall design and effect than the less than perfect applique.

In the gallery below you can see the individual blocks and quilting a bit better.

Love is . . .

This began as a block per month helping to keep me sane as I worked at the office during the day and stitched the redwork centres at night. I added the last three stitched panels ( designed by me) to increase the length of the quilt. So I was beginning to be more adventurous and not so by the book in may ways.

Not my favourite colour scheme but sometimes we need to push boundaries. The panels are hand embroidered, the piecing is done by machine and the quilting is one of my earlier attempts at machine quilting using stencils to mark out the design.

A Log Cabin

Log cabin displayed over the side of the gazebo in the bottom garden

Early days in my quilting Journey: Using log cabin blocks to create a medallion effect and concentrating on the graphic effect of the barn raising layout.

Blue and white are always a traditional and refreshing combination. Once again I was forced to find a coordinating fabric for the outer border as my original amounts were not sufficient to make a quilt large enough for our bed. All part of the learning journey and pushing me more and more toward using multiple fabrics and back to where I started making quilts from remnants of hand made clothes.

This quilt was machine pieces and hand quilted

Even though my choice was to work in blue and white, I was fascinated by the tradition of building the block around a central square, representing the hearth and warmth of the home.

My First Pieced Quilt

This pattern was called Bear’s Paw and I was upset that I didn’t have enough fabric to create all the pieced squares the same. I certainly wasn’t into the scrappy look in those days. Focused on symmetry and everything being as the others. So this was a jumping off point of allowing things to be different. A long way from what I do today but still the learning is there. The Bears Paws are stitch in the ditch quilted and the dark green alternate squares are hand quilted. I still seem to be working in fairly “masculine” colours here.

The very first square was completed in a class and we had been told to bring fabric in teal colours. All the completed squares were put up on a board to show how a colour palette blended the different squares together. I still wanted my finished one to be all the same but it was a learning curve for me. Maybe not having enough of the pattered fabric to do the middle square was synchronicity.

A Crazy Quilt

Jewel colours in a traditional format

I had never really been a fan of crazy patchwork until my sister, Rae, went to a class and showed me what she was creating. Her work was much finer than my one but the ability to sit at night and embellish the squares appealed so this is the result. I tried to make each square different and each square had a butterfly and a hand embroidered flower somewhere in the square.

It was fun to work with satins and velvets rather than cotton. The rich colours and reflected light brought a whole neew effect to my patchwork. The sashing is black velvet but the finished quilt with all the embellishments is quite heavy. You will note, I am still working in the traditional block format.

Finding embellishments from broken jewellery and $2 shops was also part of the fun in creating the embellishments.

Playing with Values

Values described by half square triangles

The colours in this quilt always make me feel better. Perhaps it is the sunny yellow - a colour I don’t work with very often - or just the haphazard way the triangles create their magic. It was made during a very difficult period in my life and was just a pattern taken from a quilting book. I liked the idea of playing with scraps of different values to create the blocks and then joining them in a manner that created alternate shapes. Concentrating on the joining of the shapes took me out of my mind set and calmed my spirit - something that so often happens when I start creating and there is too much other stuff going on in life.

My scrap fabrics were sorted into lights and darks and then the half square triangles were joined one light to one dark in a fairly random manner.. I did concentrate on having the yellow triangles pieced so they would meet in the centre of the square blocks. I like those pops of colour in contrast to the subdued tones in the octogen centres.

Someone said to me, when I had my quilts displayed in the garden for a garden ramble, that I didn’t really have any style. Maybe I still don’t, but I was concentrating on refining skills in all of these quilts so that my repertoire and understanding of shape, colour and pattern was growing. Basically I was just making quilts that appealed to me and learning basics of design at the same time.

Hidden Designs within a Design

This knee sized quilt was a mystery quilt. It wasn’t until I had it all together that the circular nature and secondary pattern of the alternate squares became apparent to me. I have emphasised this feature in those blocks. Still working very traditionally and maintaining the block structure with the addition of sashing. I liked the way the plains and patterned fabrics play together in this configuration. The strong burgundy picks out the secondary shapes while the cream and floral create their own interaction. The blocks are machine pieced. Remember this blog is a Quilter’s journey so the quilts are very different from what I create today. These quilts have a more practical base as well as traditional construction.

Stained Glass

My quilting journey tended to follow the trends that were in vogue at the time of making. This quilt was another block of the month. Some of the bias is a bit uneven as I made my own - now I think you can purchase ready made bias for such a project. It is very bright, almost too bright for my colour preferences today. There are lots of marbled fabrics in this quilt The blocks were hand pieces and then joined by machine.

This photo was taken from a Quilts in the Garden exhibition which I held in conjunction with the garden rambles a few years back. Several of the older quilts were photographed in the garden during this time. I remember it was quite a job handing them (or finding places to hang them) but those that visited were very interested in the stories behind a lot of the quilts.

Country Was IN

9 Squares in a Country Tradition

Revisiting quilts I made such a long time ago is a trip down memory lane for me. This was the first block of the Month project I did. My work was very left brained (accounting/management) and drained me so much that I needed a creative outlet to re-energise. I found the block of the month options were a real plus. Each month a block with all the fabrics arrived in the mail so that I could focus on that block and work away to get it done before the next block arrived. It really helped. living remotely from any patchwork or fabric shop, getting the monthly block was also a bonus. You can learn the skills of accounting but never really enjoy the work and my quilting was the outlet I needed to keep going.

This quilt was a mixture of pieced and applique. I was still hand quilting at this stage.

I spent a year as an AFS scholar in Iowa so the American Country theme harked back to that time. While my style changed over the years, becoming less traditional, it is fun to look back on where my development began

McKenna Ryan Country

A McKenna Ryan Block of the month

For quite a while I was enamoured of McKenna Ryan’s quilts. They were quite a challenge as each block was like a mini quilt in itself. And then they had to be joined. From memory there was a bit of fudging that went on to get each block to align properly. This was the frst one I did as it harked back to our farming heritage even though some of the images are quite American inspired. I have always thought it would be fun to do a quilt with the round haybales that are now such a common sight in the rural community. I love the tree in the block at the top of this quilt. I had grown away from the country themed quilts like the one I did early on in my quilting journey but this was a return to base almost. Of course batiks work beautifully in quilts like this because they give such depth with their marbled patterning.

Entering the World of Applique

My First Applique Quilt

This Rose of Sharon quilt was the first applique quilt I made. The central flowers are machine stitched with rayon thread. This began a long time love affair with the effect the shiny rayon could introduce into quilts and was an early design decision away from doing what was expected. The green of the leaves has faded quite a bit over the years but I do not mind the colour shift. Originally the leaves were a very dark green.

It continues the traditional idea of working in a block/grid format which would predominate in my journey for quite some time.

Although the flowers are stylised, it also reinforces my preference for representational imagery. This is something that I periodically try to move away from but always seem to come back to. I do find abstraction difficult without an anchor of a form of representation. I can admire the bold lineal shapes of the true abstractionist and follow compositional rules to create pieces that are lineal based. Somehow I come back to representation as a preference.

This quilt is hand quilted. Somewhere on the border the grid is fudged to get it to meet. This was another “learning curve”. I don’t think I have ever made a perfect quilt. I am not like the Amish who purposefully put some error in their work. They believe only God can make something perfect. My errors happen and then I have to work toward “fixing” them. During covid lockdown, I joined the inaugural group of Textile.org Stitch club (UK) and was introduced, in one of their workshops, to Gregory T Williams. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from that course was to “Embrace your whoopsies”. Maybe i was already subconsciously doing that but, since then, mistakes are incorporated into the overall whole of my creations by finding a way to incorporate them into the work. I was reminded of Julia Cameron’s words in “The Artist’s way”: don’t fear imperfection. The perfectionist will redraw an image until the paper tears. Perfectionism can also be a means of stifling creativity. Often you are the only person that knows where that imperfection is.

In the Beginning

An early quilt

For as long as I can remember I have sewn. Dolls clothes as a child, my clothes as a teenager, my children’s clothes and things for the home as a young Mum. Textiles have always been part of my life. When the children were little I made very thrift bedcovers for them from a range of left over fabric from making clothes with old woolen jerseys joined together as wadding. At night we would talk about the fabrics and the stories associated with them - this was a piece from the end of year preschool dress I made for the girls. Or this was a piece of Craig’s pyjama material. It was a far cry from the quilts of today. There weren’t many classes and nothing on line so it was basically teach yourself. I don’t have any photos or parts of those early quilts but I know they were quite crude.

I finally found a course at Grandmother’s Garden a patchwork outlet that taught drafting and piecing and plucked up the courage to attend. This is the result of that course. Machine pieced, hand quilted. Twelve squares in traditional blocks drawn out on a graph pad and then cut out with seam allowances. Very traditional with a slanted colour palette very masculine I was told.

Oriental 3 D Baltimore

The idea of 3 D applique is continued in the quilt which has another block of the month with an Asian theme. There were lots of new techniques to be learnt in creating the blocks. I chose a black background to set off the brilliant colours in the blocks and then white sashings as a foil to each square. The quilting is machine done but the blocks are all hand appliqued using the various methods that came with the pattern.