Thursday, November 24, 2011

Colour Wheel Mandala Challenge


Quilt # 51

Colour Wheel Mandala
Four different guilds in the area take turns hosting a biennial regional Quilt Day.
Participants get to partake in many activities throughout the day as well as participate in blocks, quilt or other challenges .  In 2005, our guild, The Kirkland Lake Mile of Gold Quilter's Guild hosted Quilt Day 3.

These were the rules for the quilt challenge:

Quilt Day 3 - Mandala Quilt Challenge

Mandalas are circular designs regarded by some as having mystical powers. They are used in ceremonies in a variety of cultures including some of our own Native cultures. Examples of mandalas include the Chinese yinyang, rose windows of Gothic cathedrals, labyrinths, and Stonehenge itself.

For our purpose, your quilt can be a pieced, appliqued, embellished circle of any kind. The quilt itself can be round or a circular design on a square or any other shaped background.

The circumference (measure all around the finished quilt) is to be 100” or less.
(e.g. a 25” x 25” square or a 20” x 30” rectangle or less).

Any method can be used so long as it has 3 layers (top – batting – back) and is quilted.
Embellish to your heart’s content

Be creative!

I thought this was a good opportunity to make a Colour Wheel since the shape was right and I had wanted to make one for my sewing room.

detail

Choosing the colours and values was a really good colour  exercise. I added some buttons for embellishment and fringed the edges.

back
A pocket with a buttonhole works better than a hanging sleeve for quilts that are not straight at the top edge.   A thin piece of panelling cut to shape helps keep the upper section firm and the quilt hangs perfectly.
pocket and hanger


NOTE OF INTEREST:  What is supposed to be the darkest value  in the RED section has faded to look as light as the lightest value in that section.  It was originally as dark as the button.
fading colour




DOCUMENTATION
Quilt Name: Colour Wheel Mandala
Description: Twelve-sided mandala
Pattern: Original
Size: 22” across
Fabrics: 100% cotton
Predominant colours: All colours
Construction Techniques: Twelve wedges consisting of 5 values – light to dark
Back: Black 100% cotton
Batting: Hobbs 80-20
Edge finish: Fringe
Quilting:In-the-ditch
Quilted by: Terry Whyte
Sleeve: Hanging pocket
Label: No
Date completed: 2005
Quilt History: Displayed at Quilt Day 3 (2005) & Kirkland Lake Mile of Gold Quilters' Guild (2005)
Maker:Terry Whyte

Sunday, November 13, 2011

NOFA Meeting - November 12, 2011



The Northern Ontario Fibre Artists held their last meeting of the year. 

Marnie

We meet 5 times a year with one of those being a play day in June, hopefully spent at one of the members' cottage.

Marnie did a great demo on making a woven book cover which everyone is excited to try on their own.

Marie and Silvia brought in their work in progress on our next group project which gave us all inspiration to get going on our own part of the project.

These are some of the pieces shared this time around.
Terry

Terry - Finger painted Mono Print

Silvia - Leather Book Cover

Terry


Silvia


Silvia 

Marie - work-in-progress

Terry - Finger painted MonoPrint


Marnie - Fearless Designs Experiment


Karen - Hand carved stamp


Terry - Round Robin - One Colour Challenge

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

M & M


Quilt #50
M & M



This is my guild President's Challenge quilt issued by our guild president in 2001. The “rules” are on the label, which I printed at the time but never attached to the quilt because I typed the wrong year and intended to redo it but......you know how that goes.

back of quilt

Since I still had the label, I decided to change the date and attach it just before taking this picture. An altered label is still better than none.

The challenge was to use a picture as inspiration. I liked the blues, whites and browns in a photo I took of Cathedral Mountain, at Sedona, Arizona.  Sorry, can't find my original photo.


detail

detail

detail, burnt edges

The picture of my grandsons, Matthew and Mackenzie, taken at my parents' 50th wedding anniversary was depicted in the colours found in the Arizona photo.

It is one of my early “art quilt” and certainly the first portrait and probably first painting on fabric.

The applique was applied, off-center, to a diagonal strip-pieced background.
I believe I used liquid dye (Procion “H”) to paint the faces and hand and some of the shadows. I also thread painted and burned the raw edges on the bottom and right side of the applique.

The background was cut on the left and bottom to add a narrow border.

back detail

label - binding



Quilt Name: M & M
Description: Appliqued “portrait” on diagonal strip-pieced background
Pattern: Original from photo
Size: 23½“ x 19¼“
Fabrics: Painted muslin, hand dyed muslin, denim and 100% cotton prints
Predominant colours: Blue, brown and white
Construction Techniques: Strip piecing, applique, painted, thread painted, burnt edges
Back: hand dyed muslin
Batting: Warm and Natural cotton batting
Edge finish: Double fold french binding
Quilting: free motion
Quilted by: Terry Whyte
Sleeve: Yes
Label: Yes
Date completed: 2001
Inspiration: Photos
Quilt History: Displayed at Kirkland Lake Mile of Gold Quilters' Guild 2002 Quilt Show
Maker: Terry Whyte

Monday, October 31, 2011

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

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

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

Sunday, October 9, 2011

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

Friday, October 7, 2011

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