Two Years Of 12 x 12 Art Quilts

A group of local quilters has recently completed two years of making 12" x 12" art quilts -completing one every two months working to a selected theme for each one.  I really enjoyed this experience and am now taking part in a 20" x 15" challenge working to colour themes.  We have three months to complete these. 

Here are some of my 12 x 12 quilts

"Spring"

 

"Vintage"        

"Temptation"  -my idea for this was "The Grass Is Always Greener" and it is made in my favourite style of sewing small crumbs of fabric together.

"Perspective"

"Nursery Rhyme" - "Rain Rain Go Away"

"Autumn"

I will need to track down some of the other images on my computer and will put them in another post. 

It has been a long time since I last posted but we have been having a conversation about blogging in an on line group I belong to and it has inspired me to have another go at this.

QUILTY 365

This is my first 8 weeks of Quilty 365.  This will be linked back to http://quiltyfolk.blogspot.co.nz/2016/01/january-quilty-365-linkup.html

I started my blocks on November 1st and have decided to sew them together in 2 week strips.  I am thinking that I will end up with too many blocks to make a well proportioned quilt so may have to incorporate the last few months into the backing -we will see how it progresses.  My blocks are 4.5" square and I am varying the size of my circles.  I am using scrap pieces of my low value fabrics for the background -even piecing many of the background squares to use up smaller scrap pieces.  As I do a lot of scrap quilting and love working with tiny scraps of fabric I am also making some of my circles scrappy.

I belong to a private facebook group of 50 fellow quilters and several of us are playing along with this project. 

Fantastic Fusion and Flow

This is the quilt I started in Lisa Walton's Fantastic Fusion class.  It is 100" x 107" and is completely fused.  There is no sewing until you start the quilting.  This is the most intense quilting I have ever done.

Above is the 12" x 12" art quilt I have made with some of the offcuts from the original quilt.  I am calling this "Flow On From Symposium".  The topic is Flow.  We have our reveal for this round on Saturday.

Next two 12 x 12 quilts

We are now on to our fourth 12 x 12 topic - FLOW.  I am working on a fused piece using left over pieces from a quilt I started at symposium. 

We have had two other reveals since I last wrote about our group. 

VINTAGE - I did the following crazy patch mini quilt for that topic.

TEMPTATION - My piece for this topic is called "The Grass Is Always Greener"

 

This was made by sewing small scrap pieces of fabric together and has been hand quilted with a few beads added.

Mason's Quilt

 

I am so slack at posting on my blog -it has been several months.  In that time I have completed several projects.

This quilt was finished today and it is for one of my grandsons.  I have a very similar matching one on the quilting frame at the moment -it is for Mason's younger brother Kobe. 

The sailing ships were won from block lotto many months ago.  I ended up with 36 blocks and have now used 24 of them.  The letters in the name and the wonky stars are pieced.  The other blocks with the whales, seahorses fish and starfish are all raw edge applique.  For the first time I actually appliqued these blocks with the sewing machine -much quicker than doing it by hand.

Since winning these blocks I have won twice more so still have at least two more "Block Lotto" quilts to make. 

This month for Block Lotto we are fusing batik flower to a low value background fabric. We will not be appliqueing these but leaving it for the recipients to decide which method they will use.

 

These are my first three blocks.  I can make up to nine blocks.

New 12 x 12 group

I have recently helped set up a new 12 x 12 art quilt group in our area.  I have been playing in the background of another local group  for about a year - I made small quilts for there first six topics but was not part of their reveal.  Now that we have our own group up and running I have stopped making quilts for their themes. 

I held the first meeting at my house and chose the first theme - spring.  I chose this theme for several reasons:
                -the word has several meanings
                -it will be spring when we have our first reveal later in September
                -I thought it was a relatively easy topic for those who have not done this sort of work    
                 before.

I have made the following quilt and will call it "Spring Garden Festival"  - we have a fabulous annual garden festival in our region every spring.

 

I will also be revealing a second art piece that I made for another textile group I belong to.  I will call this "Spring Homecoming Ball".  Although there is very little fabric on this one it is made with a front, batting and backing.  I found the idea in a recent Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine.

 

 

 

I am really enjoying making these art quilts.  I will blog about some of the others soon.

 

 

New Toy

I am feeling so chuffed - I have shouted myself a new Juki sewing machine and swiftquilter frame.

 

When we set it up we didn't realise that it had an extension for larger quilts - will have to rethink how I set it up as I wouldn't be able to use the extension at the moment. 

 

However I have quilted one cot sized quilt already.

 

 

This quilt has been sitting around for awhile although I have only recently added the 4" squares in the border.  I made this quilt in response to a challenge on http://www.15minutesplay.com/ to use low value fabrics.

 

I also rescued a much loved small quilt from my daughters place that needed a few repairs.  Because of my love of using small scraps of fabrics I don't always use 1/4" seams and have had a problem with seams coming adrift.  I mended the seams with invisible thread and the quilted it all over.  Hopefully it will last a lot longer now.  I have no photos of this one.