Fiber Artist Journey: UFO Sunday

Showing posts with label UFO Sunday. Show all posts

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Piquant Progress

Piquant:
1. agreeably pungent or sharp in taste or flavor; pleasantly biting or tart
2. agreeably stimulating, interesting, or attractive

Doesn't that word just make your mouth feel a little strange, but good? I'm working on my projects this weekend and am faced with a little sense of this odd flavor treat as I work on my "Onion" for the Salsa series. I did something a little different from my Tomato and Tomatillos on this piece. Rather than having everything be freehand machine applique, I put a layer of organza for the sliced face of the onion and just sewed in the lines of the layers of the onion. This gives it a translucent, shiny appearance, like a real onion.

Now that I have the onion finished, I need to make the background on which to applique it. I'm a little unsure how I'm going to do the trapunto on this one, as it has a real sense of depth with each onion behind the other. I'll have to think on that. I should have it finished in the next couple days and will post the rest of the pictures from the process of making it.

First two rows stitched
together

I'm also finally starting to get my Waterfall quilt UFO pieced together. I'm planning to try our a quilt-as-you-go method, per Leah Day from her Freemotion Quilting Project. I've put together these two rows and plan to quilt 2 rows together at a time. I've been thinking I'd use Leah's "Mesh Curtain" design to quilt this, but I'm a little worried that it will be too busy or will dominate the quilt, making the color shifts and curved pieces less noticeable. Any thoughts or suggestions on how I should quilt it?

Waterfall quilt UFO on the design wall (some pieces
have now been changed.)

You might also be interested in:


Week 4 - Tomatillo	5 x 7 Week 3- The Start of Salsa!	52 Week - 5 x7 Challenge to Readers	Curved Piecing Video Tutorial

Check out these other great blogs:

Stitch-by-Stitch... my quilting journey

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Curved Piecing Tutorial - Waterfall Quilt

Last week I promised to get back to my UFO "Waterfall Quilt." Well, I've made some progress with it:

Waterfall Quilt last week

Waterfall Quilt this week

One of the waterfall squares with
curved piecing

As you can see, I've added a couple rows (and I obviously need to get a larger design wall that my pieces can stick to!) More importantly, I think, is that I removed pieces that I felt didn't really work, either due to the patterning of the material, or more likely, the color flow wasn't right. Actually, now that I look at the photograph, I see a few other pieces that I'll probably switch out, since they don't have quite the right value. I call this my waterfall quilt as I wanted the curved pieces to make it feel like water trickling down, as well as the blues and greens to represent the water and surrounding forest.

I thought you might like to find out how I do the curved inserts which I'm working on adding to all the blocks. Believe it or not, it's a fairly simple process. Certainly simpler than doing the video... so please excuse me if my videography needs a little perfecting!

For other interesting blogs and tutorials:

Check out how other quilters are finishing up their UFO's on Leah Day's Freemotion Quilting Project

Carol's portrait of Max, a yellow lab shows a great progression for doing a pictorial quilt.

You might also be interested in:


Week 2 of the 5 x 7 Artist Challenge	Fireworks Freemotion Quilting Design	How to Make a Knotted Blanket Stitch	Quilt Story's Block Tutorial Links

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Winter Project Time

Today was a fairly low-key day. I'm trying to go along with Leah Day's Freemotion Quilting Project focus on UFO's each Sunday. Today her FMQP blog post discusses getting negative reviews online. I guess I'm kind of shocked. I feel like Leah has given such a wealth of knowledge out for free and that she does a beautiful job. Please stop by and give her some positive comments (if you haven't seen her blog before, you really need to check it out!)

Back to UFO Sunday, here is the UFO that has been on my wall without progress for 6 months. It's a color progression with a contrasting curved piece through each block. Although I don't normally do block-based quilts, I wanted to practice some simple curved piecing and started on these 8" squares. I kind-of ran out of space on my design wall however and obviously haven't finished up the curves in all the blocks I have up yet.

My thought has been to sew 1-2 vertical rows together at a time and then quilt them in those rows, putting the whole quilt together after doing the quilting. I'm still struggling a little with how you put the quilt together after quilting, but want to try it out, since I hopefully have quilted my last king-sized quilt on my home machine after it was all pieced! I'm thinking that using Leah Day's "Mesh Curtain" pattern for the long vertical rows.

So, my commitment is to make some progress this week with this quilt, before the next UFO Sunday!

The other piece I've worked on today is my second week's 5 x 7 Challenge piece. I completed the paper piecing and now need to aapplique the center circle and rungs of the windmill blades, before I can start quilting it.

Beyond my indoor projects, my husband Randy and I, along with our two boys Ryan and Coleman and our dog Dexter, went for a winter's walk at Marymoor Park in Redmond. It was about 30 degrees and the frost twinkled on the trees and shrubs.