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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