My SAQA donation quilt and a class with Joe Cunningham

NOTE: I have two posts today. My other post is about my Really Big News! Be sure to read!!

I finally made a SAQA Auction Donation Quilt that survived my abuse! You may want to review previous fails here and here. So here it ’tis in all its glory:

Its title is to be determined. It is a very dimensional quilt, I hope these photos give you a feel:

The dark/light areas switch places as you walk around the quilt. The air wash-out pen marks are still showing a bit in this photo.

I hope these give you a feel for the dimensional nature of it. I used cotton sateen for the white, so there is a bit of sheen there. The wool batting plus the red Silk Radiance Prairie Points give it a ton of texture and that was where my mind was at – texture.

This will give you an idea of how difficult it was to quilt; it was deceptive:

That seam in the photo has 8 layers of interfaced Silk Radiance (4 above the seam, 4 in the seam), making it very difficult to quilt near a Prairie Point. PP’s that flipped into the area that I was quilting had to be firmly pinned out of the way. No, the ruler foot would absolutely not hump over it. Nor would the big rounded “echo quilting foot” work, I could not see the lines clearly through it. The walking foot with its big ‘ole butt at the rear – no. The dual engage foot, no – it couldn’t go over the 8 layers either. The only foot that worked was the #15 that you see above.

Because I could not use the ruler foot, I had to free-hand the lines, yet another challenge. The lines had to be marked. Each square was a different curve and direction, so it would have been impossible to use painter’s tape. I was really boxed in. This quilt was a LOT harder than it would appear to be!

Certainly it could be named “Third time’s a charm” or “Perseverence”, but I’m holding out for something that really grabs me.

And oh, by the way, I may not be done. I keep thinking I want to add hand stitching. I really want to add hand stitching so badly! In red! But the thread would show through the completed sateen top, so that won’t work either. But it may still get a little sumthin’ else before I send it off. Or not…

I did get to take a Joe Cunningham class, Mapping for the Masses. We used this Klimpt painting, “Portrait of Fritza Riedler” as a guide to where to put our fabrics and design:

Joe designed and constructed a quilt top in real time during class:

A couple of take-aways:
– Joe was surprisingly precise in his piecing. His top had some intricate inserts and he showed how he accomplished them.
– He said something to the effect that a well-designed quilt did not have to be something he liked. Hmmmmm.
– He has strong opinions about quilting. He said something to the effect of ” the quilting should reflect what the piece is saying”. Well a hearty AMEN to that from me! So he would need to study this piece for awhile before quilting it.
– He was also surprisingly transparent. Last year he was supposed to go to I think 3 continents and of course, all of that was shut down. So like many of us, he is teaching online in the meantime.

He was charming, knowledgeable, transparent and generous as a teacher. I thoroughly enjoyed the class and learned a ton in a short period of time.

Sooo, I tried to make my own:

First attempt above. Like the ombre, but there is not enough contrast. I thought I would love that cool, unique and odd batik, but it was way too shouty for this.

Okay, so this one was too blobby. These are MFA (Masters of Fine Art) terms BTW, grin. I was slapping up anything that might work on the left hand side. Because I wasn’t happy with my first big blob, I was not concerned about what might go on the side there. And those two little vignettes caused this:

Ugh. I had to clean all that up too so that I could make another video for my on-demand class. So it’s all packed up and I’ll need to unearth the 874 fabrics I pulled as “possibles” before I can start on this again. Ah, but I’m eyeing a quilted jacket too – I definitely want to make one of those. Oh look – squirrel!

This week I’ll be sharing with:
Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
and
Finished or Not Friday