Done!

I don't always keep track of how long it takes me to complete a quilt, but on this set of projects made with African fabrics, I know I started on December 7, 2018, when I took a workshop with Bill Kerr on using large-scale fabrics, so five projects done over the course of 6 weeks, with one of those weeks spent out of town.  (The two pale green baby-quilt tops I'm leaving just as tops until I have someone to give them to.) I've posted before about the flying geese baby quilts, and the half-square triangle lap-sized quilt. I then went on to make a table runner and baby quilt out of what I had left from the yardage from which I made a table cloth some months ago. I used another large piece of African fabric on the back of each piece.

I particularly like the back of the table runner (below).  Maybe this will turn out to be the front.

 I bound the table runner in some hand-dyed rusty-red fabric, and the baby quilt with pieces of the same African fabric as the front.

 And here's a photo of the finished and bound lap-sized quilt. I used a deep royal blue batik for the binding.

And the back.

I've enjoyed working through this sequence of quilts, seeing how one thing could lead to another. Now I'm ready to do a significant clean-up in the studio, in preparation to start on some new work.

Back finished

I spent yesterday and today working on the back for the African fabrics quilt.  My goal was to use fabrics that didn't make it into the front of the quilt (although there a couple repeated from the front), to make an archive of the whole collection. I did my best to arrange the blocks in a way that worked, but I wasn't aiming here for a cohesive composition. With blocks this large, the only way to get that would entail being very deliberate about choice of fabric, and that's not what I was trying to accomplish here. My choice of fabric was limited, and I wanted to include at least one triangle of everything I had left. 

I'm glad I was able to use a couple of fabrics in particular: 1) the "Africa" fabric that is the center block in the 2nd row (click on the image above to enlarge and you'll see the map of Africa in the middle); a different cut of the same fabric used in the bottom right corner, and 2) the peacock blue fabric with embroidery on it, center block in 3rd row. Here's a detail shot so you can see the embroidery:

Next I'll start working on the quilting. I did some sample quilting on potholder-size blocks, and this is what I've chosen, straight-line quilting that echoes the seam lines--horizontal, vertical, and diagonal.

By the way, in this block, only 2 of the 5 fabrics happen to be African, upper left and bottom right triangles. The other corners are fabrics by Kaffe Fasset, and the center block is from a collection of fabric given to me by a former student about 10 years ago.

Top finished, back begun

I've completed the top made with African (and assorted other) fabrics; it measures about 50x70." It was challenging to arrange the blocks in such a way that both color and value were balanced over the quilt. I also didn't want any two triangles of the same fabric to be next to each other (unless it was in one of the 35 blocks with a diamond made up of 4 pieces of the same fabric). I ended up picking out of finished blocks a red fabric I had used that looked like rows of apples (below left). I liked having red as an accent, but I found my eye continually drawn to that fabric over others, I think because the pattern was too unlike the other fabrics (as well as being brighter). I think you'll see what I mean if you look at the earlier photo of blocks on the design wall, 2nd photo in this post. I cut back on the number of blocks with red, and I substituted another fabric that I thought fit better into the mix (below right). Looking at it again now, I think I should have left the blocks on the design wall overnight, and taken one more pass on re-arranging, but at a certain point, I just wanted it done.



Now I'm working on the backing for the quilt.  I decided to make very large blocks, similar to the ones on the front, but where the central diamond is just one large square. There will be twelve of these 20" blocks on the back, compared to seventy 7" blocks on the front. On the back, I'm using other fabrics from the African collection given to me, fabrics (for the most part) that I didn't think would work on the front. I thought this would be a satisfying way of "archiving" the entire collection in one quilt.

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Here's a size comparison of the front with one block for the back.

A cascade of quilts

I only intended to make one quilt, happy to be taking a class with Bill Kerr and to be using African fabrics that I'd been given a while ago, as I've previously written up.

But the construction of this quilt left me with a lot of half-square triangles, so I started playing with the print triangles.  In my earlier post about this, I forgot to mention that I was strongly influenced by a quilt made by Wanda Hanson, using all African fabrics cut in half-hexagon shapes. She first posted about this some weeks ago; here's a post with a photo of the finished quilt. I liked that Wanda put the fabrics right next to each other, no sashing or borders. I also thought that the combination of angled and straight edges added liveliness to the design--more so than simple squares or rectangles--and wondered how it might look using triangles. Well, now I had a chance to try out that idea!  I am still working on a final layout, but I've decided to go with the idea that Kathy Loomis suggested in a comment on my previous post:  "You could put them both [blocks with a central diamond all one fabric and blocks with each triangle a different fabric] into the same quilt!! Would be less predictable if the regular block pattern were broken up."  Thanks Kathy! This way I get the best of both worlds--some stability from the one-fabric diamonds, but with the liveliness of every other block being 8 different fabrics. (I highly recommend a visit to Kathy's website--inspiring work.)

This one will be a lap-size quilt. In the photo below (about half the eventual size), blocks are tentatively placed on the design wall. I won't sew them together until I have more blocks done and have played around with placement.

Finally, I wanted to do something with the green and blue triangles leftover from the first quilt. I pieced them together, thinking I could use them as part of the backing for the first quilt. But I think they look quite nice themselves, so I put on wide borders from some pale green hand-dyed fabric I had on hand, and voila, another top for a baby quilt. It is satisfying to get a very quiet quilt from the same source as the rambunctious one above.

And something I meant to mention in the post about the class I took: Bill brought with him a lot of fabric, books, and kits from Modern Quilt Studio, and I couldn't resist the kit for "Tube Socks." This is the first kit I've ever bought, as for me one of the chief pleasures of quilting is the selection of fabrics. In this case, I really liked their new fabric line, Warp & Weft, but didn't have anything in mind I would use it for. So when I saw the kit for this fun quilt, I indulged myself. 

2 options

The layout-on the right is the one I've posted before, the one on the left is new. In the one on the left, I put four pieces of the same fabric next to each other to form a diamond. I like both layouts, and may make both. I'm thinking of starting with the one on the left (with still many more blocks to add and placements to adjust). If you have a preference for one or the other, I'd be happy to know!

Using large-scale print fabrics

I have the good fortune of having received a large supply of African and some South Asian fabrics from two different sets of friends, both of whom had collected fabric over years of travels; photos of the collections are here and here. Beyond making return gifts for these friends, I hadn't used the fabrics. But last week I took a great class on using large-scale fabric from Bill Kerr, of Modern Quilt Studio, and I brought along these fabrics as well as some large-scale domestic prints.  Most people in the class worked on a version of Modern Quilt Studios "Follow the Leader" pattern, but we were encouraged to work on whatever we liked, so I chose a pattern by Blair Stocker that I've had my eye on:

"Leaving the Nest" by Blair Stocker, Wise Craft Quilts

I reduced the size the the triangles from 12" (long bottom edge) to 9" and used a variety of solid colors for the background instead of all white. When choosing the solids for each block, I aimed for some contrast between them, in order to minimize the dominance of the parallelogram shape between the print triangles. I used hand-dyed green fabrics that I had on hand, but also added in a couple of commercial solids in blue--fabric that I bought when I took my first class with Bill and Weeks in 2005!  I made a crib-size quilt, 36x55." I'll probably quilt it with horizontal lines, and will use one or more of the African fabrics for the binding. 

I made the flying geese blocks with a method that starts with one large rectangle (the print) and two squares (the solids). When trimmed, this results in 4 half-square triangles left over for each block, 2 solids and 2 prints.  The photo at the top of this post is a photo of the leftover print triangles. I've now started playing around with another quilt top made of just these print triangles. I tried adding in some scattered solid triangles, but I find myself liking the "hot mess" of all the print triangles.

Each of the 2-triangle squares is 4x4"; these are not sewn together yet. There will be a lot more moving around as I make more squares to have enough for a quilt. (The squares above would sew up into a piece only 21x28, so I have a ways to go.)

It is a great pleasure to spend time lining one fabric up with another, with so many choices possible. Not every pairing works, but many do--or they will when put together into a larger mosaic.  To show you some of the possible pairings, I chose four of my favorite African fabrics, and paired each of those with four other fabrics. In the photo on the left, the favorites are positioned so that they make a large on-point square in the middle of the four small blocks. On the right, they're positioned to all be in the bottom right corner. To better see the pairings, click on each photo to enlarge. In some there is a strong contrast between the two fabrics, creating a clear edge between them on the seam. In others the fabrics are closer in color and/or pattern and the contrast is less vivid. But if, when I tried out a pair, they were so close that they looked like they could be part of one pattern, I didn't use that pair. 

Four fabrics, each paired with four other fabrics (4 same triangles positioned in a central on-point square)

Here the 4 same fabrics are position in the bottom right of each pair.

I will be interested to see how this one turns out. . .

African fabrics

Several years ago, some friends gifted me their collected African and South Asian fabrics; you can see what I did with them here. More recently, other friends were cleaning out their basement in preparation for a move, and hoped I could might want the African fabric they had collected over many years.  Of course I said yes!  It includes a wide variety of styles and colors. 

The fabric had been in their basement for many years, and smelled badly of mildew. I put it through multiple washings, and finally got it to the point where the fabric could be used.

Some of the fabric is in yardage, some is clothing that I cut up.  There was just one large piece of yardage that they were reluctant to part with, but knew they would never do anything with themselves; they had been thinking of it for a tablecloth.  I offered to make a tablecloth for them, in gratitude for the gift of the fabric.  Deal!  I finished the tablecloth yesterday.  Their table is six inches wider than mine, so the drop will be less than you see here:

I had to seam together two pieces of fabric to get to the width I was aiming for, and the seaming was more challenging that I had figured on.  After trying alternatives, I decided that the seam was less obvious if I changed the direction of the triangle bases, rather than having them all go in the same direction.  And though I had thought I would cut and machine stitch, I realized that joining with appliqué would give me greater control, so that's what I did. Here's a close-up of the seam (down the center vertically)--success!

I finished the edge of the tablecloth with double-fold binding made from the same fabric.  I didn't have enough to make bias binding, so I was pleased that when I tried some out cut on the straight of grain, it worked. The fabric is a close weave, and I didn't think it would "want" to go around a curve, but I'm glad it did.  The binding makes a very nice edge finishing.

Using African and South Asian fabrics

A good friend of mine has travelled a good deal in Africa and South Asia, bringing back fabric from each trip.  She has used much of it, but a large pile has been sitting in the attic for years, and she decided to give it away.  I was the lucky recipient!  Some is in large flat pieces, other is clothing that I have cut up.

I talked with my friend about what I could make for her from the fabrics, and we decided on placemats.  While each fabric is beautiful, I found it a challenge to combine them.  I've made three placemats so far; I will show them to her, and then make 3 more, according to her preference.  

On the left--using the largest variety of fabric, including some solids.
In the middle--using the most closely-related selection of fabric
On the right--tighter range than the first, but wider than the second; detail of this one below.