The Quilt Skipper

quilting makes me skip for joy

Jenny K Lyon

Quilting makes me skip for joy

Work In Progress–With a Little Help

After seeing Jan Soules’ work in last week’s River City show, I was inspired to retrieve these colorful Saw Tooth Star blocks from my dusty UFO pile. I pieced these oh-so-imperfect blocks about 5 years ago.

They are um, widely varied in color shall we say, and a difficult mix to make into something cohesive. I took them with me to a recent meeting of a great group I am a part of: “Sisters In Stitches” ( SIS). My SIS friends looked at them and Helen Hardwick suggested the striped surround for the blocks and my friend Laura Rylander suggested the chalky lavender “neutral” for the actual sashing. I NEVER would have chosen either of those fabrics, but I am kind of excited about the results-wanna see?Isn’t that striped surround fabulous? I like it layered upon the calming lavender. I have about 25 blocks in total-I doubt they will all make it into the finished piece. I am considering making the stripes into a tombstone square inbetween the sashing strips.I am also thinking about adding a scalloped insert to the border. Have you seen these new scallop rulers with their “push stick” companions?

The rulers make it super simple to add scallops to your quilts, see more here.

Excuse the quality of my recent photos-I had to send my camera in for repair. It will be WEEKS before I get it back and I am borrowing DH’s eight year old Nikon Cool Pix with the duct tape holding the battery cover in and a view screen of maybe 1.5″x1.5″. How will I ever live??? I might have to double up on my meds to make it through this difficult period…

I’m also playing with some fabric I recently got from JoAnn’s of all places-a flocked polyester. Now doesn’t that sound positively awful?  “Flocked poly”-eww! But take a look:Those flowers are about 18″ across! I see it for a garment of some sort. So far I have tried two things. I used my Tseuneko inks on the sheer part and it gives this lovely delicate color to the individual leaves.I also cut some leaves out around the flocking border so that the flocking created a stabilizing barrier around each leaf-looks almost stained glass like. No clear path yet on this one. I can’t believe I’m working with flocked poly-tsk, tsk! Got any suggestions/thoughts on using this unusual fabric?

Comments

  1. Oh, aren’t you the daring one! Perhaps a nice, unlined jacket with black bias strips applied to mimic the look of actual stained glass. Then you can color or not inside the windows. That’s if you really like to make clothing. I gave that up long ago. I can also see a sheer triple arched window wall hanging, or even as an actual window treatment. It’s a cool fabric!

  2. Wow, what a fun fabric. Can’t wait to see what you make with it. I like how you are mitering the corners on the striped sashing for the stars.

  3. I hope to have some creative time over Christmas and I can ponder this fabric-it truly is fabulous. Only problem is what to do with it….

  5. Thanks! The ink is surprisingly easy to work with-Diane Gaudynski got me going on the ink.

  6. Great stuff! I agree.The striped borders are de bomb. They make it.
    And I can just imagine the magic you’ll add with the quilting in the cooling lavender. You Go!