Vesey's Coneflowers

Quilt # 49

Veseys Coneflowers

I love making Challenge Quilts. I always challenge myself to try something different when making any quilt, but to do it with a group is so much more fun.

Vesey's Coneflowers was made as a result of a mini challenge at our guild.

Members were asked to bring along a sandwich baggie of scraps, which were exchanged amongst those wanting to participate.

The challenge was to make a quilt using some of the scraps, one other fabric could be added in the quilt top.

Other fabrics could be used for the borders, back and binding.

While some baggies were quite full, mine was pretty skimpy.  Nine tiny scraps. I used them all.

I found inspiration on the back cover of Vesey's Seed Catalogue.  I fused all the scraps, cut out coneflower petals from the brightest colours.  A purple patch was big enough for the centre of the flowers.

detail

This left me with a mosaic looking green, a plain grey, navy with small circles containing stars or something, and a big floral in blues. These were all cut into skinny strips to represent the leaves.

detail, leaves borders

I just happened to have a piece of that same floral, so I used it for my border, back and binding.

I just won't throw away any left-over paint or dye. I had previously painted a small piece of fabric with liquid dye after finishing another project that worked perfectly for my background.

I fused all the leaves to the background and stitched them down. Then added the petals and lastly the centres of the flowers.

back of quilt, sleeve and label

I picked up the red from the floral fabric for my skinny border and used the floral to finish off the quilt.

I stitched-in-the-ditch around the skinny border and then quilted a double grid right over the whole centre part of the quilt.

label

You may have noticed in the detail shot of the leaves above that I signed and dated the front even though I have a label.  That is a very good thing to do either on the front or back of your quilt. Since starting this blog, I have come to realize that after quilting for over 20 years, I'm really struggling in trying to figure out when quilts were made if I have not done that and attached a label.

I really liked how this little quilt turned out. I probably would never have used all those fabrics together.

But that's what's fun about challenges.

DOCUMENTATION

Quilt Name: Vesey's Coneflowers

Description: Floral Landscape

Pattern: Original

Size: 23¾” x 13”

Fabrics: 100% cotton

Predominant colours: Blue, green, rust, purple, yellow, black & white

Construction Techniques: Raw-edge Applique, fused and stitched

Back: 100% floral cotton print

Batting: Hobbs 80/20

Edge finish: Double fold french binding

Quilting: stitched-in-the-ditch and double grid

Quilted by: Terry Whyte

Sleeve: Yes

Label: Yes

Date completed: 2009

Inspiration: Picture of coneflowers on the back cover of Vesey's Seed catalogue

Quilt History: Displayed at the Kirkland Lake Mile of Gold Quilter's Guild Show in 2009

Maker: Terry Whyte

Seeing Stars

Quilt # 48

Seeing Stars 

Seeing Stars is a reversible Quilt made using Sharon Pederson's technique from her book Two at a Time.

This technique allows you to "quilt" each block individually by using the stitch and flip method on the reverse side of your block.

detail

I made these star blocks (quarter square triangles) many years ago to practice sewing points and they sat  on the shelf for a long time. 

Ohio Star block

I chose to do crazy patchwork on the back side using red scraps.  My rule was that as long as there some red in any value, from lightest pink to darkest red, it was fair game.  

Seeing Stars - Reverse side

Batting was added to the block and the patches placed on the batting, stitching through all layers.  The bobbin thread is what is showing on the star side.

detail

Since I was working with 12" blocks, I chose fairly large pieces. 

Crazy patchwork

I used a dark red print for the sashing strips on the Star side and was fortunate to still have some of the background fabric from the star blocks.  That became my sashing and binding on the crazy patch side, which helped to ties the two sides together.

Sashing and Binding

Quilt Name:  Seeing Stars

Description:  Reversible Quilt 

Pattern: Ohio Star blocks with crazy patchwork on reverse

Size:  49" x 73"

Fabrics:  100% cottons

Predominant colours: All values of red

Construction Techniques:  Piecing and Crazy patchwork (stitch and flip method)

Blocks - quilt-as-you-go and sashed together using Sharon Pederson's technique described in her book Two at a Time.

Batting:  Polyester 

Edge finish: Double fold french binding 

Quilting:  Quilt-as-you-go by stitching and flipping crazy patches.

Quilted by:  Terry Whyte

Sleeve:  No

Label:  No

Date completed: 2008

Quilt History:  Class sample

Maker: Terry Whyte

White on White Sampler

Quilt # 47

White on White Sampler

I always wanted to make a white on white quilt using very subtle variations of white, off-white and beige.

I made all the blocks from Block of the Month patterns offered by our guild probably around 2006.

I designed the quilt on graph paper setting the blocks randomly in a grid of squares.

A one inch border framing the 12” blocks were a good fit for the 3½“ x 3½“ squares.

Starflower

Quilt Name: White on White Sampler

Description: Nine sampler blocks set in a grid of 3½“ x 3½“ background squares.

Background squares

Pattern: Original setting. Some of the blocks names are: Starflower, Tessellated Hydrangeas, Country Wreath,   Card Tricks, Spiderweb

Size: 62” x 76”

Fabrics: 100% cotton

Predominant colours: White, off-white, beige, soft gold

Construction Techniques: Piecing

Back:   Extra-wide 100% cotton – white with gold leaves

Batting:  Hobbs  80-20

Edge finish:  Double fold french binding

Quilting, back, binding

Quilting: Long- armed machine quilted

Quilted by: Marnie Mascioli of Calico Cat Quilting

Sleeve: Yes

Label: No

Date completed: 2007

Quilt History: Displayed at the Kirkland Lake Mile of Gold Quilter's Guild – 2007 Quilt Show

Maker: Terry Whyte

Off-centre log cabin

Quilt # 46

Off-centre log cabin

This is the last quilt from my first binder of Journal Quilts, which I will be glad to put away, as it (the binder) has been hanging around the computer for a long time.

I'm hoping to take more photos of quilts soon, especially of my King size quilts, and I will have to do this outside on the clothesline. My inside board is not large enough.

The trouble is that the sun has been shining fairly steadily for a few weeks now and I'm waiting for an overcast day. What a problem to have!! The weather has been gorgeous and I'm enjoyed every minute of it doing lots of outdoors chores.

Have a great day,

Terry

Off-centre log cabin

Challenge: I wanted to try using the log cabin method starting with an uneven hexagon centre.

Technique: I cut strips randomly (3/4” to 1”) wide and stitched and flipped around the hexagon. I tried to avoid placing 2 similar values next to each other.

Quilting: I quilted in the ditch around and around from the centre using invisible thread on the top and red thread on the back. I then added a swirl of leaves using a decorative stitch and lime green thread.

Edges: A couple of rows of zigzag in lime green thread.

back

Back: Left-over pieced squares from another project.

Conclusions: I would like to try this method to represent a sun or other round or oval object in a pieced quilt. I really can't imagine making a bed size quilt from this technique but Mrs. Dyer did.

Mrs. Dyer's quilt c. 1940 

Inspiration: From Quilter's Newsletter Jan/Feb 2007, a quilt made my Mrs. Dyer of Perth, c.1940.

Date Made: March 24, 2007

Maker: Terry Whyte