quiltmania mania...

Well I'm not sure how this blog gap happened. I have very little news on the quilting front. The TWENTY gallery for the Quilt Alliance auction and exhibit is up and there are many interesting works.  I hope they all sell well...

There's been more catching up with reading about sewing than actual 3D sewing going on around here. The fabric purchase drought in this house has sadly not extended to book buying. These are the latest titles that have arrived since Christmas. They are all books from Quiltmania. Their magazine is wonderful and all their publications are a guaranteed addition to any quilter's library.

The latest is "Promenade In A Dutch Garden" by Petra Prins & An Moonen. It is just fantastic. They have taken antique quilts and recreated them in new fabrics. While the new ones are fairly traditional, the designs are beautiful and would look equally gorgeous in modern prints. My interest in the book is in the old quilts as I love to learn about other countries' patchwork traditions. Here are a few of the works featured in the book...

The following are some more super titles from Quiltmania. An awful lot of the authors are Australian. Must be something in the water! They are all excellent reads...

quilt alliance...

Small quilts are so appealing and great for trying new techniques. Their very size makes them easy to finish and if the outcome is disastrous the investment in time and materials isn't too great. In the rush to post about my first art quilt on Saturday, I forgot to write about another small project I recently completed.

Above is my entry for the The Quilt Alliance's "2013 Quilt Contest, Exhibit & Auction". The theme was "Twenty" in celebration of its 20th anniversary. For those of you not familiar with QA, the following paraphrases the Quilt Alliance's goals:

"Quilt Alliance is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to document, preserve and share our quilt heritage by collecting the rich stories that historic and contemporary quilts, and their makers, tell about our nation's diverse peoples and their communities. "

You can spend hours combing through the Quilt Index (one of their projects) looking at beautiful quilts of every conceivable type. There is also video and audio of quilters talking about quilts. While predominantly American, membership is open to anyone. The "Twenty" contest welcomed entries from around the world. Managed to get my donation quilt finished one day before the deadline of June 1st. I wanted my design to look like a logo for the event.

The final small quilt to share came from a friend's guild's Silent Auction where I bid on and won this little sweetie. The picture does not do it justice. Why is yellow so hard to photograph? Anyway, the quilt is called "Lemon Drops". It was created and quilted by Doris Lovadina-Lee. I just love it.

By a strange coincidence that same night, I won a lemon-themed box of bath goodies from The Body Shop as a door prize! I never win anything so am a bit concerned that I've forfeited a future lottery win... 

cryogenics and sewing...

My dear friend Robin always takes shots for me of interesting sewing related images in her travels. This odd sign is from the Tank Museum in Danville, VA. She and her military buff husband visited recently. Am thinking of reproducing it for the entrance to my own space...

challenge 4 art...

I was so excited when Lisa from Color My World  asked me to join an online art quilt group called "Challenge 4 Art". The remaining two participants of the four are Amy and Claudia. The goal is to make 4 quilts in a year with a specific theme all measuring under 25" square. The first theme was GROWTH.

I decided to make a quilt about the city I live in. In March when I joined this group, Toronto became the 4th largest city in North America after New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City. It is the cultural, entertainment and financial capital of Canada and of particular significance to this household it is also called "Hollywood North". Lately, the most un-Torontonian Mayor of Toronto has been generating negative headlines but he is decidedly not a good representative of this rather sophisticated city. Everywhere you look there are construction cranes and buildings that seem to pop up over night. More than 100 languages other than English are spoken here. All of this diversity makes for interesting dining, exciting festivals and miserable driving. Due to the extraordinary expansion of the city gridlock is now worse here than the famed highways of L.A.

My quilt looks complex but once I figured out my process it was incredibly easy to make. I took a screen capture of the city at Google Earth:

I made a quick sketch of the aerial view and then scanned it to my computer. Using this great App called SplitPrint I printed and tiled my sketch onto EQ Printables to use as a foundation. The measurement of the quilt is 16" x16".

I cut up 3" squares of fabric that I thought looked urban as well as some strips of earth tones for surrounding farmland and blues for the lake. All of the fabrics were ironed to Steam-A-Seam2.

Using the foundation as a guide, when I had spare time, I cut out shapes and then finger pressed them on. It was just like doing a jigsaw puzzle. After a final press, I sewed around all the raw edges with dark thread hoping to evoke roadways.

The piece was started ages ago but unfortunately the binding is not quite finished. While it looks complicated, this technique was fast and easy. It was lots of fun to make and I look forward to sewing the next one. You can see what everyone else created at their blogs below...

Lisa: Love to Color My World
Amy: Crafty Shenanigans
Claudia: Machen und Tun