Creative Life Sampler

 Raspberry/Peach Experiment Raspberry/Peach Experiment This is my latest experiment with irregular hexagons.  I found this lovely, soft, 100% cotton fabric line awhile ago and started collecting some of it's vibrant colors. (For this wall hanging I had a yard of each color.) It has a sateen finish so it kind of shimmers. I was excited to find a suitable project for this fabric and looking forward to working with it.  But looks can be deceptive. Though the feel and finish were so inviting, it was difficult to work with this fabric. It frays rather easily so cutting edges have to be sharp. They always tell you to start a new project with a fresh rotary cutting blade. This project brought that lesson home. The title of this wall hanging gives a hint of the other problem I ran into in pulling this piece together. I was experimenting with a new approach to these shapes so there was some expected trial and error. This fabric doesn't stand up well to a lot of seam ripping and ma...

A New Wall Hanging in Batiks Tangled 7-2021 This is the latest instalment in my experiment with irregular hexagons.  Solid color has been introduced to the batik theme which provides a contrast and makes the batik textures stand out in this 35x45 inch wall hanging. The lightest color has an extra layer of batting for a "trapunto" effect that gives the piece even more dimension. I'm already working on a different treatment for these hexagons, so stay tuned!

New Wall Hangings to Share   How Does Your Garden Grow? II Back in December I shared the prototype for a quilt I planned to enlarge for a bed quilt. I also envisioned using these polygon shapes to experiment with different color combinations in the future.  My main focus was to use some of the wonderfully vibrant batiks in my fabric stash. This approach was a fun way to play with textures and colors. But it turned out all those textures and colors bumping up against each other, without any place to rest the eye, felt a bit overwhelming in the larger size.  So, I split what was going to be a twin sized quilt and created two wall hangings.  Here you can see the hand pieced prototype, side-by-side with the first finished wall hanging, which was machine pieced in the larger version. You can see the original idea is about half the size of this later version:   How Does Your Garden Grow? I, with prototype on the right The original concept does not have binding...

 The Color Experiment Continued Rainbow Hexagons II This summer I created a series of  blocks by using strips of batik fabric in the color progression of a rainbow, building up from a small hexagon center. This was an interesting experiment in color placement because there are so many possible variations.  But once again I ended up with a bunch of blocks and no real plan to join them together. My first attempt at placement resulted in the spontaneous decision to go with a more organic form and lots of open space. (See:  https://creativelifesampler.blogspot.com/2020/07/newly-completed-just-quilted-this-baby.html  ) For this second version I've used up the remainder of my blocks and placed them on a grid. I've allowed for some "breathing room" between the blocks by placing triangles of the border color between them so they float on the background. The overall color progression is still apparent and, if you look carefully, you can see a star pattern emerge.  I...

Newly Completed Just quilted this baby blanket/wall hanging. My inspiration was a small collection of batik fat quarters I've had for some time. The navy, green, yellow, peach, light brown, pink, and purple were sold as a set and reminded me of the rainbow. I decided to experiment with hexagon construction and place them so they transition from one color to the next. Originally the whole surface was going to be covered with batik hexagons, but as I was laying out the blocks, this shape emerged. I liked its simplicity and the large spaces around it, so here you have it. Any way, there are still a lot of blocks remaining for second project,... which means there's more to come.

Linen Closet- Geisha Kaleidoscope Geisha Kaleidoscope This quilt was started in 2009 and finished in 2015. It was inspired by Maxine Rosenthal's book, One Block Wonders. The basic block is composed of six triangles which form a hexagon. The center blocks measure 10.5 inches across. The kaleidoscope effect is achieved with a technique called "fussy cutting". You begin with a large repeat patterned fabric. This was the one I chose: It has some lovely, small details and large, solid textured spaces which create a great contrast in this fabric design. The result was really interesting. It produced pretty blocks that highlighted different areas of the scene. Viewing these blocks side-by-side, it is as if you are looking across the original design through a kaleidoscope. You begin by dividing the fabric into strips at the exact same point in the repeat of the design. The width of these strips will vary depending on the size of the pattern unit. Note that a patt...

New Guild Member (2 of 2) My first contribution to the guild. I soon found that lots of activity goes on in a guild. Aside from the show-and-tell portion of a meeting and the opportunity to meet other quilters, the guild invites guest speakers to share their work. It's a great source of information, which you don't get when you're alone in your sewing room. A mission of this guild is to share the art of quilting and give back to the community. Members have created baby quilts for the Public Health Department, and donated quilts to people affected by the Thomas fires and last year's mass shooting in our area. With this in mind, they are gathering "text" blocks from members for their 2020 Quilt Con charity quilt. The theme is: "The Spirit of Giving" and submissions are words that reflect why we create quilts and give them away. Second contribution: "comfort". Since I've worked a lot with hexagons, I thought I...

First Project Completion for 2019   Blue Transitions I continue to work through my fabric stash.  Last year I used a warm color palette of mini prints to create Pink Lemonade , and followed it up with Pink Lemonade Deconstructed which used all the scraps left over from the first quilt (see these links if you missed them:  https://creativelifesampler.blogspot.com/2018/07/quilt-project-update-finally-pink.html  &  https://creativelifesampler.blogspot.com/2018/09/project-completed-this-quilt-is.html )  The idea of "transitions" in both pattern and color has caught my imagination for some time. I got to wondering what kind of color transition was possible in a hexagon pattern. So, I went back to my collection of mini prints and found there were more blues than I'd realized; a great color palette to experiment with this idea. Of course, I thought I'd use up the rest of the fabric for the backing. (The larger hexagons tie in wit...

Quilting Group Challenge My version of the Christmas quilting challenge A couple of Christmases ago, I gave my quilt buddies, Sara and Erin, a length of fabric and challenged our little group to use it in the new year. It was a horizontally striped cotton in a nontraditional color palette: Each piece reflects our individuality and interests.                                                             Erin finished first. Her creations feature our "inspiration fabric" in the snowman's quilt. She stretched her work on a canvas frame for each of us, so we have a piece of her folk art to hang during the season. Sara used the "inspiration fabric" to create a striped border around a log cabin square for a small wall hanging. The center square is a Christmas stocking print and the strips around it pick up the subtle colo...

Quilt Project Update Finally!!! "Pink Lemonade" is done. It still needs a label, but I really wanted to show it to you. I started this quilt to try hand piecing on vacation last year. The hexagons measure 3 inches across and the quilting in each center echos its sides. Random yellow and solid pink hexagons have a little more quilting in them, to give it texture and added interest. This was all done by hand.  Full disclosure: the straight lines of the borders and the backing were done by machine. I pulled the hexagon theme to the back in order to use up some bigger scraps. It was finished in a year, almost to the day, and it measures 76.5 x 92 inches. I'm glad I didn't give up on this one. I got lots of hand piecing and quilting practice, and learned a lot along the way, which I'll take to the next project. Press on, press on... 😉 PS- If you want the back story on this quilt, check out the three posts that began with this one: https://cre...

Catchy Tune     (3 of 3) I think we're all familiar with the times when you can't get a tune out of your head. As I began working on this quilt again,  Andy Grammar’s Fresh Eyes kept coming to me.  This song is about being with somebody so familiar to you that you’re surprised when you discover a different, or new facet in them, and you’re happy to celebrate the excitement that comes with that new insight.  It’s a catchy tune and it seemed to capture my mood about this project.  Clearly, I was looking at this project with fresh eyes, seeing the possibilities for it. I had been re-energized. And I couldn’t get that tune out of my head! Then it occurred to me that I really enjoyed this energy. In fact, I was really happy to be creative. You might be saying, "All this over a pink quilt?", but it was a case of making lemonade with your lemons, (pink lemonade, actually). I liked myself for being so excited that I was dancing to this song over it...

Project Interupted    (2 of 3) Well, this project began in July and by December it was pieced together. There was just a lot of pink. And I wasn't feeling too inspired, so, what with the holidays and all, it was folded it up and put aside. Fast forward to March. I finished off another project I'd been sewing by hand for over two years (reveal of that one sometime in the future). I needed a new portable project for all the times I'm not at the sewing machine, but still want to be productive. Since I just can't leave anything unfinished, I took it up the hexagon quilt again.  It had been a couple of months since I'd even looked at it. As I pulled together the backing and got ready to put it in the hoop for quilting, different pattern options for the stitching started to open up to me. It was interesting again.  My point is sometimes we just need to give ourselves some space. Walking away from that boring, perplexing or frustrating challenge, ...

Time to Refresh     (1 of 3) Last summer I set out on a three pronged mission to use up some of my accumulated fabric, try a new pattern, and find a portable project to take on vacation. Looking through my quilt "stash", I found a collection of mini prints in a rainbow of colors, some of which had accompanied us on our westward migration. Clearly I couldn't decide on which color I liked- so I got a bit of all three.   L eftovers- these sweet rose buds were used in multiple quilts and  Grandma  made a spring dress for my oldest with the daisies. These memories started to suggest a vintage theme to me. I always liked the nostalgic feeling of the quilt pattern known as "Grandma's Garden".  But I wasn't interested in dealing with lots of little pieces. So, I settled on enlarging the hexagon quilt block. I planned to randomly piece them together, which put the retro feel of the fabrics in a more modern setting. The colors fo...