Thursday, March 18, 2021

Iridescent

The Midnight Quilt Show with Angela Walters may have been over for more than a year now ... but I'm certainly not done making quilts that were featured in the show. My latest finish is Iridescent, a bright all-solids quilt designed by Slice of Pi Quilts.

Iridescent was so easy and so satisfying to put together because it's just squares and half-square triangles. The color placement would have been very confusing except for the fact that the pattern offered up a helpful chart, so there was no mix-up at all. Sometimes I just don't want to have to think.

But I do enjoy thinking when it comes to figuring out a quilting design. For the quilting, I designed a simple pattern that used a combination of dot-to-dot designs, a pebble and swirl fillers, and all the blocks are connected by a ribbon candy. That gave it a secondary effect which is always fun.

I really enjoy quilting all-solid quilts because I don't have to worry about obscuring prints or figuring out what to do with prints, and in addition, all-solid quilts really show off the quilting!

Some quilts aren't fun to quilt and I just push through it to enjoy the end result, but I truly loved every second of working on Iridescent. Once I figured out the quilting pattern, the execution was incredibly fun and satisfying. The last few weeks have been snowy and dreary here, so these beautiful colors certainly make me happy!

Thursday, March 4, 2021

Graffiti Quilting Fun

I'm a huge fan of Karlee Porter, who is known for her unique and awe-inspiring graffiti quilting. Although I own all her books, I wasn't quite able to understand the concepts well enough, until I finally took a Graffiti Quilting Master Class with her awhile ago.

I've taken quite a few quilting classes over the years, but most of them are just fangirl moments for me. I'm excited to meet the instructor, but I rarely take away that much from the classes because I tend to learn best from books. However, Karlee's Graffiti Quilting Master Class definitely taught me a lot more than I expected, and it was one of the best classes I've ever taken.

I didn't actually do any quilting during the lessons, and instead practiced drawing. This was my first attempt:

Then, I tried a bottom-up approach. On a longarm, I would have to quilt top-down, obviously.

Finally, I decided to have some fun with gradient coloring while I drew my 3rd sample.

I still haven't had a chance to try this on a real quilt, but I have no doubt that if can draw it, I can quilt it. I've been having so much fun just drawing them, though! In a way, it reminds me of improv piecing, where my brain hurts because it's on all the time, but the results are usually surprising and exciting for that very reason.
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