Bloggers Quilt Festival - Upriver

We are allowed 2 entries into Bloggers Quilt Festival so my second entry is into the Art Quilt Category.

This is called Upriver and it was made for the Mid-Western branch of the Irish Patchwork Society's exhibition on the 1st June.  The exhibition is called Local Landscapes and the size is 16" x 40".  If you happen to be in Limerick 1st to 6th June please come visit, there will be some beautiful art quilts on display.

One of the first workshops I signed up for when I became a member 2 years ago was a fabric dyeing workshop with Paula Rafferty. We made 11" squares of fabric in glorious rainbow colours and I have had them sitting in a box ever since.

Paula gave a demonstration at one of the meetings of a pictorial technique by Laura Wasilowski and I signed up for both her classes on Craftsy one of them being Landscapes.  I highly recommend these classes, they are full of bright colour and fun projects.

So Limerick, my home town, was founded on the banks of the Shannon, by the Vikings and the river is a massive part of life here.  We have 4 rowing clubs in the city area and walking across the bridges in the late evenings will give the most beautiful sunsets reflecting off the water.  I made a very small sketch and using the rule of thirds came up with a river scene with the sun setting as my composition.

Using bondaweb/steam a seam I freehand cut wavy strips with my rotary cutter and layered them on parchment paper to look like, I hope, flowing water.  The Shannon is tidal and you can get strong currents!

 It needed a little bit more though, so watching Laura's class, where she shared a  technique for the grass cutting zig-zags and layering them too gave me a perfect addition.

I love Kona Navy.  It is probably my favourite dark fabric and I knew I was going to use it to set off the colour so I played with proportions on the computer and ended up with a 3-3.5" border.  

And to give the eye somewhere to travel to I added a boat and again took inspiration from Laura's class and added a tree made of purple (yes it's supposed to be the setting sun having an effect - and it was the darkest colour I had in my hand-dyed fabrics!!!) and the same green in the grass cut into small snippets.

The quilting gave me problems.  I had no trouble with the water, a few skipped stitches on the boat, massive tension problems on the grass and a swirl or two that had to be unpicked and left holes so lots of steam applied!

So this is my colourful sunset on the Shannon that I am calling Upriver for some reason.  No idea why it just seems to fit!  I think maybe I need to give the boat a name...

Bloggers Quilt Festival Entry - Scrap Happy!

It's bloggers quilt festival time again and I been struggling trying to decide what to enter!  I've been trying not to enter exhibition quilts to save them for hanging on display and that's almost all I've been working on lately.   So I'm giving in and going with it and entering my Modern Irish bee quilt.

In January 2014 I was Queen Bee of the Modern Irish Bee (annual bee formed from members of Modern Quilters Ireland).  I decided that I really wanted to pick a modern block that would be a nice gentle start to the bee, it being the first month and all.

Inspired by the back of one of Elizabeth Hartmann's quilts I came up with these blocks, all squares and strips and no curves and thought this will be great, an easy going block that only needs 1 fat quarter for 2 blocks.  Ahhm, my hive mates didn't think so.  I had given them the job of piecing 1.5" squares and 1" strips with lots of little seams.  Sorry guys!

Still they did a brilliant job and threw in some fussy cut pieces to really give charm and whimsy to the quilt that really is a happy one for sure!  For the bee we had the choice of a Kona solid background, white, black , snow or ash.  I chose ash with scrappy centres and white sashing.  I love how it turned out, the scrappy colours work really well with it.

All I had to do was figure out a layout and make 3 more blocks for a 5x5 layout.  That only took me about a year!  No idea why I was complicating it so much in my head.  In the end I just sewed them together, rotating the blocks until they looked good together!  to break up the squareness I made my 3 blocks as stars and dotted them about in the layout.

Tomomi suggested square quilting and it worked a treat (thanks Tomomi!)  Just stitched in the ditch in the squares and finally finished  just in time for the Happy exhibition on display from the 25th onwards in Dublin.  I hope all my bee mates get to see it hanging there and thank you guys for all your gorgeous blocks!

It measures 60" x 60" and I'm not sure if it is best entered into the scrappy category or the original.  In the end as there are so many people involved adding such lovely little touches I'm entering it in the original design category!

I am nearly finished writing up the pattern, just working our yardage! but if you want to make some scrappy blocks the tutorial is here on Modern Ireland Quilters blog for the 3 different square and rectangular centres.  Hope you enjoy the blocks as much as we did, small and all as the pieces are!

Thanks again Modern Irish Bee members 2014!