Blue Moon Magic

After a year and a half the raffle quilt for the Genesee Valley Quilt Club (GVQC) is finally complete! Okay I will back up a bit to tell you why I care. So please grab a cuppa as this is a long story (I said it took 18 months). Okay I won’t blame you for not reading everything, but at least humor me by scrolling down, looking at the pictures and Oohing and Aweing and telling me how beautiful it is. 😉

A year and a half ago the president of the GVQC approached my mother and I and asked if we would be interested in creating the raffle quilt for the 2013 GVQC Quilt Show. We told her we would discuss it and get back to her. Well you know how it goes, someone asks you politely to do something and it can be hard to refuse. We thought that since we would be working on it together it wouldn’t be too bad right? So of course we agreed to do it.

Center Squares

Designing quilts from scratch was not a strong point for either my mom or I. We got together a few times and discussed the types of quilts we like to look at and searched through quilt magazines and past quilt calendars for inspiration. My mom said that she liked New York Beauty blocks and would like the quilt to have some of those in it. We found a couple of pictures of quilts that we liked the layout of to use as a starting point.

Sunrise Beauty blocks from EQ7

I was fortunate to be able to purchase Electric Quilt 7 (EQ7), a quilt design software, to help with creating the design. It was challenging to look through all the quilt blocks available in the EQ7 software to pick out the one I wanted for our quilt but I finally settled on one called “Sunrise Beauty”. I didn’t want the quilt to be just beauty blocks so I added some palm and crazy pineapple blocks.

Palm & Crazy Pineapple 6
from EQ7

The final blocks to add were the border. I wanted something that would have a similar feel as the beauty blocks without distracting from them. I added a one inch border first and then chose the “Staccato Border” and “Staccato Corner” blocks.

Staccato Border blocks

The next step was to choose the colors I wanted to use. My mom and I used some fabric catalogues to choose a pallet that we liked so I started from there. The colors that show up in the EQ7 software for each of the blocks is very different to how I colored them.

First try

I started with the beauty blocks, then the crazy pineapple (remember I wanted them to look like roses) and then the palm blocks. The final blocks I did were the borders. I just made sure that I repeated the colors from the rest of the quilt in the border and only added the white in the border.

Second try…getting closer

With the colors in place we took a trip to one of our local quilt shops to pick out samples of fabrics we wanted to use.

We liked this one

We needed a dozen different fabrics for this quilt and only purchased a fat quarter of each fabric. We still needed approval from the board of directors on our design. My mom took the fabrics and created a few samples of the blocks we wanted to use and I scanned the fabric into my computer and added those fabrics to the EQ7 design.

EQ7 design with actual fabric scanned

With printouts and sample blocks in hand the board didn’t hesitate to approve our design. After all nobody else was going to jump in with a new design any time soon.

The EQ7 software gave us estimates of the amount of fabric we would need so we hurried back to the fabric shop and picked up the yardage we needed of each one. When we took on this task we had no expectation of sewing the quilt together by ourselves. We chose paper pieced blocks for the quilt since they would allow for the most accuracy when sewn by many different people.

The next project was to create kits to hand out for our club members to assemble. This required writing instructions, creating guides so the right fabric went in the right place, printing the paper templates, cutting the fabric and bundling it all into kits. We had a fun cutting party at my house (I was so busy keeping everyone working that I didn’t get any pictures) to put the kits together and then handed them out at the next GVQC meeting in May 2012. We asked everyone to bring them back no later than the September 2012 meeting (the club doesn’t meet in July and August).

After all the blocks were returned we sorted through them, fixed a few problems and created a few blocks that we were short on. It was time for another party to assemble the quilt.

Chris, Anne and Claire
(left to right)

A couple of the ladies from the club joined my mom (Claire) and I to sew the blocks together. I pinned the rows up on a huge piece of cardboard and each one took a row. I pieced all the border blocks together.

There were a ton of seams to press!

We did the sewing in my dining room and pressing in the kitchen. I have a huge table that easily fit all of us and our machines. After a few hours the top was completed! Now to find someone to quilt it. Every time Claire and I stood up in front of the club asking for help we emphasized that we would like to find a member with a longarm quilting machine to do the quilting, but no one stepped up. Finally when we were collecting the blocks in September Karen Kiener of The Cottage Quilter finally offered to do the quilting.

Quilting detail

If you click on the pictures above you can see what a fantastic job she did to enhance our quilt. We really had no ideas regarding the quilt motifs to use and left it all up to Karen.

Back view of Center of Quilt

She did an amazing job and we couldn’t be happier with it.

Hand sewing the binding while Millie supervises

Last, but not least mom and I added the binding under Millie’s watchful eyes. All totaled there were about 70 ladies that helped to create this quilt. It really was  a group project and my mom and I want to thank all of you for your help. We certainly couldn’t have done it without you.

Very soon you will be able to purchase raffle tickets to win this quilt. If any of my readers buy a ticket just remember that if you win you have to give the quilt to me 😉 !

 

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Community Quilting

I am very excited to be participating in the creation of the Fearless Five Memory Quilt as it is such a labor of love from all of blogville.  Just as the pet blogging community has come together in the past to support each other during difficult times the creation of this quilt with bits and pieces from all over the world is yet another example of that.  It is also an example of what I like to call community quilting.  Even though in this case one person, Agnes Bullock (What’s Her Name) from Dachsies With Moxie, is sewing together the top and I will be adding the quilting there have been many hands involved with its creation.

I belong to two quilting groups, the Genesee Valley Quilt Club (GVQC) and the Perinton Quilt Guild (PQG) and currently I am involved in group quilting projects for both of them.  This year the town of Perinton New York is celebrating its bicentennial and as part of the celebration the PQG is making a quilt depicting places around the town.  A couple of the guild members planned out the quilt and put together kits with backing fabric and some information about what should be on the block.

I volunteered to make two of these blocks.  Each quilter was allowed to use whatever method they liked to create the block.  I chose to create mine by fused applique as did many of the other guild members making blocks. The only applique I have ever done was in a class I took this past fall so I was a little nervous about doing one that will eventually be on display in the town hall.

South Perinton United Methodist Church

One of the blocks I chose was of the South Perinton United Methodist Church.  I chose this block to make because I liked the architecture of the church and thought it was something I could do.  I was given the image above and used Photoshop to trace the lines of the church to create a template for the pieces of fabric I would need to cut out. This block is fairly large at 15″ x 12″ so I printed the outline using two pages and taped them together.  This was required so that the pieces I cut out were the exact size I needed for the block.

Applique pattern of church

After auditioning various fabrics from my stash I applied Steam a Seam to the back of the fabric and then cut out all the pieces I needed.  I traced the church outline onto the background fabric using my sewing extension table as a light table and started placing the applique pieces to the background.  I only attached the basic building pieces first because I wanted to embellish the white sides of the building with stitching to look like the clapboard on the building.  Then I added the pieces for the windows, door, stairs and railings.  After that I added the trees and shrubbery by just cutting pieces free-hand. When it was all glued in place I started by zigzagging the edges of each piece of the building and then added free-motion embroidery over the trees and shrubs.  Here is the finished block. You can click on the block to see the full-sized image.

South Perinton United Methodist Church Block

Here is a close up view showing some of the detail including the sign I created for the front of the church by printing the words on printable fabric.  My husband, Charlie came up with that idea because there wasn’t any other way to put words that small on fabric then I added fusible to the back and just cut out the shape I wanted.

Detail of church block

The other block I chose to do was of Powder Mills Park.  This park is primarily known for the fish hatchery so that is what I decided to depict in my block.  I found a couple of images to use for inspiration and through the magic of Photoshop created one image using elements from both of them.

Inspirational images for Powder Mills Park block

Here is a colored in version of the pattern I created using those images.

Powder Mills Park block layout

And here is the completed block.  As always you can click on the image to see the details.

Powder Mills Park Block

I added the people to the block to bring this scene to life.  To create the people images I just found some images I liked and reduced the pictures down to just a few colors using Photoshop. Then I printed them on the fabric just like I did for the signs.

I love how both of these blocks turned out and I can’t wait to see all the blocks put together in a quilt.  I will post pictures of the progress of this quilt as they show it at our meetings.

The final project I am involved with is for the GVQC. The GVQC creates a quilt to raise money in a raffle for the club every two years.  A couple of months ago the president of the club asked my mother, Claire, and I if we would be willing to create a design and organize the creation of the quilt.  The quilt needs to be completed by January 2013 so we have some time to get this done.  It is a very daunting task, but mom and I are confident we can pull this off.  One of the things that will help is my recent acquisition of Electric Quilt 7 software.  The box arrived yesterday and Nina helped me open it.

Nina checking for contraband

First she inspected it to determine how many people touched it before it reached our house.  I think her count was about 87 people.  When I got the box open she made sure the contents were correct for what I ordered.

Looks like you got the right thing Mom!

The software is loaded on my computer so now I just need some time to figure out how to use it and then come up with a design.

I know this has been a bit of a long post, but I wanted to show those that might be interested how I created my blocks.  I will keep you all posted on my work on all of these projects.

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