Courthouse Colourplay - a new workshop

I'm so pleased to introduce my latest workshop sample, Courthouse Colourplay. Creating this quilt in a completely (somewhat planned) improvisational style was so much fun for me and I hope that my future workshops will have the same effect for students. I love log cabin variations and it is no secret that the Courthouse Step block is one of my favourites.

This quilt is actually deceptively small at just over 40" square. When I showed it at the last Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild meeting, that was the first thing most people said, "It's way smaller than I expected!". Ah, the beauty of social media photography. Wouldn't it be a fun playmat for a baby/toddler? Or a cheerful wallhanging outside your bedroom door to wake you up in the morning? It is made almost entirely of Free Spirit solids, giving the quilt a fun paper lantern look.

This is my first attempt at free-motion ruler work. I still need lots of practice, but I enjoyed it! Lots of colour changes, making my way through my Aurifil 40 wt collection.

I decided to make this second version after creating a mini for my MQG swap partner at QuiltCon last February. I pieced the blocks at a retreat last spring in the company of mostly traditional quilters. They watched with wide eyes as I free cut (rotary cutter, no ruler) all of the strips from fat quarters and started piecing blocks from the middle of the quilt out. Nothing is squared up....rather the blocks are "built out" with filler strips (pictured below) made from trimmings. This is the fun part for me! Bonus: there is very little waste in creating this design.

A little bit of handquilting using Aurifil 12 wt thread in the softest pink.

Based on the comments of my fellow retreaters (how are you going to put this together?? You haven't drawn it out first?? How do you know what colour to use next?? Will it end up square??) I realized that this could be a wonderful addition to my workshop roster. Yet another class for the Improv Curious quilter.  This is rapidly becoming my specialty and I LOVE THAT. Sharing the freedom of improv quilting with folks ready to move on from the constraints of making other people's patterns is incredibly exciting for me.  

The workshop debut takes place Saturday, February 23, 2019 at a modern "staycation" retreat put on by the super fun team at Dinkydoo . We'll be sewing at their fancy new warehouse location about an hour outside of Vancouver and local accommodation is available about 5 minutes from the venue. For those of us who can't make it to QuiltCon2019, this is a great alternative! I can hardly wait. I know it's going to be a weekend full of laughs and creativity. 

I'm also booked to teach this (and 3 other workshops) at QuiltCanada 2019 in Ottawa from June 12-15. That will be a super exciting weekend with a killer workshop line-up. The classes haven't been announced yet, but the faculty is introduced here.  I'm so happy to have this opportunity and look forward to seeing many friends in Ottawa next spring!  If your guild might be interested in trying this class, feel free to email me for availability - I'm booking into fall of 2019 now, but I still have some spring dates available, too.

To further explore the construction techniques I used for Courthouse Colourplay, I'm recreating the quilt in a queen-sized version using upcycled men's shirts and jeans. I'm going to call this one Casual Fridays. The swishiness (highly technical term) of woven shirts is proving a bit challenging, but I am taking a very liberated approach and not worrying if the final quilt is exactly square or not. Here's a snapshot from the clothesline. I will be adding two more rows to one side of what you see here to bring it up to about 90" square.

What fun new things are you working on lately?

Bloggers Quilt Festival Spring 2015 - Power Nap

Hello and welcome to another edition of the fabulous Blogger's Quilt Festival: the only quilt festival best enjoyed in PJ's and bare feet! I've been participating off and on in Amy's great festival for years and I always enjoy meeting new quilt bloggers and enjoying the work of old friends alike. 

This time I'm sharing my first ever QAYG (Quilt-As-You-Go) quilt, made with upcycled, worn out work shirts of my husband's along with some chambray, linen and a few yardage scraps. I'm entering it in the Scrappy Category. This quilt was gifted to a friend of ours on the occasion of his 50th birthday last month.

Most of the blocks were spiral quilted individually, then joined together into rows with narrow joining strips. The rows were then joined with wider sashing strips stuffed with a strip of batting and quilted with straight lines. Initially, I liked the idea of the red "power tie" in the centre of each improv pieced block, surrounded by shirt fabrics, so the quilt was going to be called Power Tie. Then I found out that our friend likes to take a brief nap every afternoon in his downtown office, so I renamed it Power Nap (plus, he's not a tie kinda guy anyway).

There's even a sleeve placket with button and a chest pocket left on and quilted over. 

 The quilt was started in a class with Marianne Haak at the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild last fall. Before the class, I precut all of the laundered shirts into strips of various widths. Each block began with a red square-ish shape in the middle area and was built out improvisationally. At one point, I made a very traditional style log cabin with light fabrics on one corner and darker fabrics on the other. When laying out all of the blocks, that one really stuck out, so I decided to make three more and put them in the corners. I like the resulting big blue circle effect!  Check out Marianne's blog for excellent tutorials if you would like to try this technique. It is a great way to create a big quilt, fully quilted, on a small domestic machine.

Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to check out the rest of the festival. You can really make someone's day by nominating a quilt for Viewers Choice sometime in the next week, then vote for your category favs when voting opens on May 22!

Power Nap

Here's my latest finish: Power Nap.

This quilt was constructed using the fun Quilt As You Go (QAYG) method. It is mostly made of upcycled old work shirts of B's, some linen, chambray and a few shirt-stripe scraps from my bins. I thought it would be fun to add the red in the centre of the log-cabinish blocks as the "power tie" to the shirts.

I even left a cuff button on - can you see it? I sewed the placket closed before piecing that sleeve into the block.

Marianne Haak visited the VMQG and gave us a trunk show and workshop. She is definitely the most experienced person I know using the QAYG method. Check her blog for detailed tutorials on every step of the process and admire her gallery of quilts. If you want to create a large quilt on a small machine, then this is a great way to go.  All of the blocks are quilted individually, squared up, then joined with strips. If you are creative with your piecing and plan a little bit, you can hide your joining strips very well!  I used skinny strips to join the blocks into 3 rows, then wider strips (stuffed with a strip of batting) to join the rows and elongate the quilt a little bit so that it wasn't perfectly square. It ended up about 58" x 62".

The first two blocks that I built in the class were very random and improv. I made a few more like that and then decided to make corner blocks in a more traditional dark/light log cabin. I like to organize my chaos a little bit ; )  All of the blocks were quilted with Aurifil 40wt thread in cherry red. Most of them have a spiral, but one I quilted with straight lines. I didn't like how the straight lines were pulling and distorting the stripes in the shirt fabrics, though, so I went back to spirals.

Our friend, neighbour and investment guru turned 50 last weekend and his wife threw him a great party that we really enjoyed. There were strict instructions for no gifts, but I'd already decided to give him this quilt after discovering he likes to take a power nap at his office most afternoons. That's why I called it Power Nap instead of my original idea of Power Tie.  It is always a little nerve-wrecking giving a quilt away, especially to a guy. I took it over the next day in time for him to spend the afternoon on the couch watching the Masters. Luckily he not only loves it, but he also appreciates the time and effort that has gone into it. Win!

Craft Hope for Haiti - Aprons!

I read about Craft Hope's latest initiative over at Maureen's lovely blog the other day.  When Craft Hope ran their first fundraiser on Etsy for Haiti, I donated a small art quilt. Turns out the purchaser was also a blogger. We exchanged emails and Duff became a lovely and HI-larious friend.  Since that time, I hadn't really kept up with Craft Hope (I understand their website is under reconstruction so they are operating on Facebook these days - probably why I'm out of the loop. I'm useless on fb).  I'm rambling.

The gist of this latest project is supply pretty aprons for women who are rebuilding their lives and homes in Haiti. Easy. Especially when Maureen has written a fantastic tutorial so that you can  make an apron in about an hour out of 4 fat quarters. Seriously! I made this one yesterday afternoon right after she posted the tute.

In her post, Maureen suggested the over skirt pieces would be perfect for drying hands, so I ran with that and used linen for those pieces. A repurposed linen shirt of B's, actually. You can see I left the shirt tail hems in tact along the bottom.

modeled by the lovely D

I had two pretty Amy Butler fat quarters for the centre panel and ties and used a pink/green print, who's origins completely escape me now, for the waistband.  Anybody recognize it? (eta - of course, it's from Heather Bailey's Freshcut. Thanks Katie!)

Think you could whip up an apron and ship it to Tennessee by May 31st? If so, all the info you need is in this post.  While you're at it, why not make up a second one for your mom?  Mother's Day is next Sunday here in North America!

Upcycled Jean Skirt Sewing Command Center

Allow me to introduce the latest in hip sewing machine fashion:

It's the Upcycled Jean Skirt Sewing Command Center! I've written a ridiculously long-winded tutorial describing how I made this amazingly useful item from an old skirt and you can read the whole thing (if you don't nod off first) over at the incredibly inspiring corner of blogland inhabited by Michele at Michele Made Me.

It's Drop Dead Denim month! An entire month of fabulous tutorials and links to all things groovy and denim. Please visit and add Michele to your regular reading list. She is my recycling guru and writer of hilarious, yet insightful posts on all things crafty. It is my absolute pleasure to guest post on her blog!