Friday, July 27, 2012

July Free Motion Quilt Challange and Album Applique Updates

 

The July Free Motion Quilt Challenge (Sew Cal Gal blog) instructor is Angela Walters. She is a long arm quilter but her background fill design called Tiles translates to the home sewing machine very nicely.  This is a great little blank space fill design that can still be used with simple stippling or other background fill designs.  It shows better on a plain fabric and is much more difficult to see on a printed fabric but that is the case with many quilting designs. The tile effect can be done with box type tiling or with angled lines giving a more jagged appearance (see the right upper corner of my sample)  There is a picture of a quilt quilted with the angled line tiles on the tutorial, it looks very good with modern fabrics.

In between other summer activities I have continued working on my two album quilts.  Two more Ladies of the Sea (pattern by Sue Garman) completed, the USS Constitution, aka "old ironsides".   The second is a viking ship, the Osberg, circa 875, a long ship moved by oarsman
                                         
The block count on Ladies of the Sea is 14, only 2 more ships to go and I am on the borders!

I also have finished four more blocks for the red and green applique album.

  I had originally planned to do 42  blocks and have an applique border, but I am leaning toward adding blocks -maybe 63 - a 7 X 9 set- and then the sashing around each block and no border.  

 I keep looking at the picture of the antique quilt I saw at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum in Lincoln, NE. that inspired this quilt and I like its simplicity of just applique blocks and sashing. 
I am getting the patterns for the red and green block from all my favorite applique books.  These last four blocks were from the Kay MacKenzie book Inspired By Tradition. There are a couple more in that book I really like and I need to spend some time today prepping some more blocks to work on.  I enjoy the Olympics and I know it will be a great opportunity to get a lot of  hand work completed while watching television.
Happy Stitching All,
Cheri

5 comments:

  1. Your blocks are so very lovely!! I adore the reds and greens you are using.

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  2. Your willingness to add modern techniques to your existing beautiful, traditional techniques is impressive!

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  3. Your applique blocks are wonderful! I especially love seeing the ships! Amazing!

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  4. Your machine quilting look great, the stitches look really consistent. I adore the applique blocks. They are going to be two gorgeous quilts.

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  5. You did really well with the FMQ challenge. Nice job.
    Your applique is ebautiful!

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