Pieces Collage

    Kathy    Andrea     Carolyn

Karen     Sara     Judy

  Nedra      Alice      Tricia

Here is my first attempt at making a collage of our posts.  I haven't figured out how to add names to the collage yet.  With more practice, maybe I can approach Randy's creative talents at this.  The background of the picture came out white and couldn't be changed.  There is not much rhyme or reason to the arrangement.  For some reason, the image of Sarah's quilt was not the same as the others and I could not make it larger without distortion so I put it in the middle and the others just fell into place.

 

Judy's "Pieces of my Heart"

 

A heart came to my mind right away when we received this challenge word, but I struggled with the heart, pieces, colors, etc. I pondered pieces of some special dish I would feed my family and the pieces I use to make it. Jigsaw puzzles came into the picture and of course quilts, but I still couldn’t get the heart out of my mind. 

I was never keen on the anatomical heart, but with the Covid-19 time we have been in, I thought of all the times my heart physically hurt, rejoiced, yearned, and many other feelings.

I mostly see the good in life and others, so the colors had to be bright. I used this one piece of ombre fabric from Jenny Bryer Fallert collection.

At first I was going to write words in each section of the heart, but the cloud background was a better fit for all the words I wanted to quilt.

I had black and gold bias tape that has fusible web on it already, yet they were too heavy for this heart. The gold rick-rack told the story better and was easy to apply with glue then stitching it down.

Sitting down and quilting all the words took a lot longer than I thought. They needed to fit in the space. Many words were thought of and I have a whole list that I will be adding to. It’s a good feeling to write down those words and bring back memories. Since it is in my journal I’ll be able to look at all the extra words that wouldn’t fit on the little quilt.

KATHY'S "PIECES"

KATHY'S  "PIECES"  

      

I think this Little  Quilt truly meets the definition of "Pieces" ! !

The Central Motif for this quilt was a 9" x 7" piece of fabric I picked up at a Garage Sale, or perhaps I'd already had "stashed away"  in my Studio ! 

The Green borders are pieces of  fabric that had been used in different projects, and they seemed to coordinate well with the colors of all the fruits and vegetables.  A different coordinating green fabric was used on the back of the quilt.

Using Monofilament Thread, I "Free-Motion" Quilted around each of the Fruits and Veggies, and then Free-Motioned through the background.

Each of the borders was stitched down using a "Walking Foot"  to keep the stitches straight, and to help the fabrics "Behave"  while they were being quilted  :-D

I think this "Little Quilt"  is going to become one of our "Standard Thanksgiving Day"  Quilts !

Peace and blessings to all....  Kathy Harte

 Sara's Quilt - Pieces of Me    

This challenge put me in mind of a quote from the Hasidic Rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Klotz. He said "There is nothing so whole as a broken heart". Life's traumas have certainly broken me apart and I've put myself together in a new way - not the same as before but hopefully more compassionate, empathetic, patient and  kinder than I was before.

I printed my picture on prepared fabric (EQ printables on an  Epson 3880). I then thread painted the eyes, mouth and hair before applying it to a fabric base and quilting it with monofilament thread

Alice's Quilt: Quilt Block Pieces

 

Two ideas jumped into my head as soon as I heard that Pieces would be our next theme.  I thought of jig saw puzzle pieces and the pieces that make up a quilt block.  Jig saw puzzles had been a great diversion for me during the pandemic lock-down days!  I tried to think of a clever way to compose a quilt using fabric cut into jig saw shapes, but that seemed daunting to me somehow.  So quilt pieces it would be!

First I looked for a quilt block that has squares, rectangles, and triangles.  I used Marsha McCloskey's BLOCK PARTY book, which has been a mainstay in my quilting life.  I quickly honed in on the block called Friendship since it had the requisite shapes I wanted to use.  I decided that I would I would actually construct this quilt block, using scraps from a recent Kaffe Fassett diamond quilt.  The diamonds were bordered with Kaffe's fabrics called Spot and I thought it would be fun to use chiefly those.  I wanted this quilt block to be the backing for my Pieces quilt.  So here's the block:

Setting triangles of two sizes, squares, and rectangles are all here!  

After making the block, I then fused some Wonder Under onto the fabrics I had chosen, and then I cut out the shapes I needed for my design.  After that I played with arranging them into a design that pleased me, and ironed them down.  I backed the quilt front with some batting, and then I appliqued them onto the background with a tiny zig zag stitch.  That became the quilting.  My quilt back was already made, and so the three layers were sandwiched, and then I bound the quilt with more of the green Spot fabric.

Tricia's Jigsaw Pieces Quilt

 I have always loved working on jigsaw puzzles. They are just filled with pieces. I thought it would be fun to try and create a simple jigsaw puzzle quilt. I took the photo this September at a friends summer house in Northern Maine. I just love the sunset colors on the flowers. Here is the photo that I used to start.

I had a friend print the photo onto broadcloth that was prepared for printing. I then downloaded a puzzle pattern. I enlarged the pattern for the photo with just 6 pieces. I stitched the jigsaw pattern on the photo but separated one piece of the puzzle.

CAROLYN'S FABRIC SCRAP PIECES # 1 AND #2

PIECES IN MY MIND

I was playing around with scraps to make these

quirky little quilts.  No pattern for this, I just

set them in place on my design wall, so they have no rhyme or reason.  All Kaffe fabrics except for the tiny hot pink squares and the blue polka dots.

SCRAPPY QUILT #2

Still playing with pieces of scraps, I made                

a second quilt, simply by sewing various pieces 

together until I had a 12 x 12 piece of fabric that

satisfied me. I quilted in the ditch and added 

various designs into some of the pieces.  I was

beginning to free motion circles when all of 

a sudden a part fell off my machine.  So here

are my two yet to be finished little quilts!

 

 

Karen's Pieces Quilt

 Walking the beach, finding pieces of glass...sea glass. 

Simple construction. Fusing small pieces of hand dyed fabric, stitching with monofilament thread. 

Have wanted to experiment with mosaics. This is the beginning!

(Posted by Tricia for Karen)

Nedra's Pieces - Olga's Treasure!!

 

As you can see, I focused on the Spanish coins known as pieces of eight as they were literally cut in pieces and came to be used to make change.  That is how our currency became to be called two bits, four bits, six bits - terms my Dad used for quarters and half dollars.   I chose to focus on repetition of "eights",  and my octopus holding the spoils of treasure came to be.  

Using a coloring book drawing for inspiration, I drew my own octopus and treasure chest on freezer paper and the large shapes were cut out.  A combination of fusing, tuille, and inktense pencils were used to embellish the octopus and chest and to affix them to the background.  Stencils that I drew and cut were used to create the purple "coral" in the background.  The coins are metal buttons stitched to the arms and glued on the inside of the chest.  Plastic "crystals" were used to add to the look of a mass of precious gems in the chest and cystallized glitter also sprinkled on top for the sparkly feel.  Of course Olga had to wear a pearl bracelet as she just loves  bling!!! The blue sea fans were stitched on tuille with wash away stabilizer  and affixed to the piece.  There is a king's crown included in the bounty.  What fun this was to create!!

 

Andrea's Pieces Quilt

 

Bits and Pieces
12" x 12"
Gelatin printed monoprint, silkscreen, stencil, acrylic paint

This quilt is composed of experimental "bits and pieces" of ideas for previous Material Maven quilts.

Some of these ideas were used, others rejected.  The end result is very different from my original idea for this theme.  When going though some of my fabric stash to donate to my guild, I came across a lot of small "orphan" pieces of "what if" experiments.  As the pile grew, I started to put them together in a loose composition and was liking how well they were "playing" together, so thought, why not?  I've added a skinny strip of Kaffe Fassett's "Cloisonne" fabric, which I've also featured in my last two MM quilts.  Not only was it fun trying to incorporate a bit of this particular ( my favorite Kaffe ) fabric, but I think it adds another element  to the composition that was missing.

I am once again so grateful to our MM group for the opportunity to create something that I most likely would not have thought of making.  Although far from one of my favorite MM quilts, is was quite satisfying to put together. 

The Beauty Composite

I haven't read Shakespeare since a required senior high school English class.  I doubt I will soon again.  But it seems appropriate to borrow a well-known line from his writing, "Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good night till it be morrow."

Yes, 'tis my last composite of Round Three, and, sad to say, my last composite for such a talented group of quilters.  I've told Alice that if the group moves on, I'm not going to move on with you.  I have written a church history book that is in the last stages of production, and it's going to demand a great deal of attention, so time marches on.  Parting is such sweet sadness but on to new adventures.

There is no special arrangement this time; they just sort of fell into place, squares, verticals, horizontals, and one dark background--done.

The heart in the sewing machine says it all.  You are doing what you love, what your soul needs.  Keep it up; it is a gift.

The flowers in the background are called fire-wheel or Indian blanket or Sundance or Gaillardia pulchella.  Native to North America.  We have a yard full of them in the late spring.

One last note of farewell.  The tag in the lower right corner is my way of saying other doors are open to new adventures.  Walk through them.  That huge iron art door is on the campus of McLennan Community College at the former Art Center.

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of the Material Mavens.  I've considered it a rich blessing.  

Randy

Judy S. "Sewing Machine Beauty"

 Beauty. I thought a lot about this word. There are so many things that I feel are beautiful, but during my lifetime a sewing machine is one tool that I can say can and has created beauty. Our sewing machines create beauty by making quilts that are used to cuddle up with, to comfort, to delight by having memories sewn into them. They make art that we hang on our walls. They tell a story.

Sometimes our sewing machines make quilts for those less fortunate. A neighbor had a fire at their home and when I gave her a quilt she knew someone cared. That’s what the Linus project does for children when they are given one. The Quilts of Valor project give quilts to veterans who have served our country. So many of them haven’t been thanked and when they drape those quilts over their shoulders it warms their hearts.

The sewing machine also helps us make clothes that we can feel good in or make clothes for our family members. They repair favorite clothes, and alter new clothes so they fit better. We use our machines to make gifts for friends and families.

The sewing machine is a beautiful piece of machinery that creates beauty that you see and feel.

I don’t know what fabric company or designer the sewing machine fabric is made from other than it is a quilters cotton. I only have a fat quarter of it and there is nothing printed on the selvage. If you look closely there is a cute little mouse on the sewing machine.

The background is blue silk and I used a bright pink thread for the quilting. I used one layer of 80% 20% cotton/polyester batting and one layer of wool batting to give more texture to the quilt. To answer the question of how long did it take me to make it, I only put a timer on when I am doing the actual quilting and on this 11” x 14” piece it took me 1 hour and 23 minutes. I do make it a tad bigger especially when I am doing intense quilting because it draws up quite a bit which means I have a few scraps with the quilting on them.

                                        

 

Andrea's Beauty Quilt

The Beauty of Simple Shapes

11"x14"

Fabric paint, freezer paper stencils, hand dyed cotton, 

commercial cotton, screen printed.

inspiration photo

 I took a series of photos of a single peony in one of my favorite Natalie Blake (natalieblakestudios.com) ceramic vases, with the hope that at least one would inspire my Beauty quilt design.  I am a bit obsessed with shadows and I love how they simplify and distort. I have been wanting to make a shadow quilt for 

awhile.  My first photos were of just the vase and peony, but as I moved "my model" around the room at different times of the day, they were casting the most fascinating shadows.  So my focus then shifted from the simple beauty of a classically shaped vase and single blossom to include the shadow.  I am most pleased with the outcome and this might be the beginning of a series of shadow themed quilts.  It was also great fun and very satisfying to build this quilt on my favorite Kaffe Fassett fabric background..

 

"FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH"

                            

                           FOR  THE  BEAUTY  OF  THE  EARTH

                           FOR  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  SKIES.

                           FOR THE  LOVE  WHICH  FROM  OUR  BIRTH

                            OVER  AND  AROUND  US  LIES:

                            LORD  OF  ALL,  TO  YOU  WE  RAISE 

                            THIS  OUR  HYMN  OF  GRATEFUL  PRAISE."

When "BEAUTY"  was given to all of us as this theme,  one of the first things I thought about was the much loved and appropriate hymn,  "For The Beauty of the Earth."  This seems so appropriate considering the many, many months of living in isolation, distanced from each other, and longing for everything to get back to "Normal."

This quilt was constructed using a Google image of our beautiful Mother Earth in the shape of a Heart.   The image has been machine appliqued to the background fabric that might resemble the sky, clouds, sunlight, and shadows.  The background was quilted in what I hope looks to all of you like gentle clouds !

My best thoughts, prayers, and gratitude to our Gracious God for providing all of us with this beautiful planet, our "Mother Earth."

 

Nedra’s Beauty —Angel Trumpet

 I loved this theme but had a very hard time choosing how to represent beauty.  Far too many possibilities!!!!  I finally decided to focus on the beauty of flowers, which some think of as nature’s angels.

My parents were avid gardeners and my mother worked part time as a floral designer.  She often used flowers from her garden to create beautiful bouquets and arrangements for friends and family.  I have inherited her love of flowers and their natural beauty, and a little of her skills.  Some of my favorites are peonies, nasturtiums, hydrangeas, foxgloves, zinnias . . .  ——  the list is long!!!  Another favorite, because of it’s shape and simplicity, is the angel trumpet.  I chose to represent the beauty of nature with a close up of a brightly colored angel on earth!

Limited supplies in my Maine home forced me to use only 2 batiks, one a stripe, and some acrylic paints to create the wonderful shading and texture of the flower.  The flower is fused and machine quilted.  Three trumpet flowers are machine quilted in the background.  I wanted to embellish the flower more but my sewing machine here is a basic Bernina.  I plan to add more definition with stitching when I can use my other machine.

Alice's Beauty: Say it with Flowers

As soon as I learned what this theme was, I thought of all the beautiful blooms featured in the Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics.  Alas, most of those flowers are hugely out of scale for one of our little quilts.  But I persisted and searched through my scraps and my stash of KF fabrics and eventually found some that would work.  

I adhered Wonder Under to these scraps and fussy-cut many flowers out.  For the background I constructed a crazy quilt type square, using different sections of one of the wonderful ombre fabrics I'd had such fun with for my last quilt.  I then free-hand cut out a vase and began the fun of arranging my bouquet of flowers.  I ironed these down onto the crazy quilt background.  I bound the quilt conventionally with the darker purple.

I laid my quilt aside for many weeks and then brought it with me to Michigan.  Yesterday I had fun embroidering the six sections of the background with a few different embroidery stitches, using Perle cotton I had brought from home.  I failed to bring my handy little embroidery stitch book so I couldn't try as many different stitches as I had planned to use.  And looking now at the photo, I wish I'd used a contrasting thread for the dark purple areas!  Alas, the deadline approached so I had to be content with what I had done!

Jane's American Beauty

 American Beauty

 As I approached the subject Beauty, I thought about Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Art is also in the eye of the beholder. Trying to be a part of the world of beauty by creating art has brought me much pleasure for the past 20 years. Being a part of the Material Mavens group has changed my life in a positive way. Being an American has given me the freedom to pursue happiness. 

I found this piece of fabric in my stash. It started as a commercial fabric, but I transformed it with paint. Even with the paint, it was just lying around. It was one of many experiments I have done on fabrics. With its red white and blue palette, I named it American Beauty. Quilting it gave new emphasis to the stenciled design. I finished it with a traditional binding. I used red thread to bring out the red in the print. 

A

Tricia's Beauty

 

Tricia's Beauty

The word "beauty" can be looked at in many ways. A few weeks ago my youngest daughter was married on the top of a mountain overlooking Lake Willoughby in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. There are so many beauties in the picture. The beauty of marriage, the beauty of the bride and groom, the beauty of the vista, the beauty of the flowers and the beauty of my four children gathered together for this moment. The beauty of all the family and friends that have gathered to celebrate their marriage. I can go on and on!

I created this quilt with a photograph printed onto fabric. The flowers from the wedding were so spectacular I wanted to create flowers for the corners of the quilt. I used Terial Magic on the silk to keep it from fraying. ( This was one of those products that one purchases at a show and never uses it ;) I finally used it). I cut out the petals, sewed them together and added beads for an embellishment. The colors for the wedding were blue and purple. I sewed blue and purple silk ribbons onto the edges for the border.

Karen's Beauty Bella Rosa

 Bella Rosa

The Language of Flowers is a favorite book of mine. Pink roses have lots of wonderful meanings. 

Fuchsia represents appreciation and gratitude. 

Dark pink, expression of thanks, admiration and gratefulness. 

Light pink, happiness and joy. 

My roses are a combo of all. 

Admiration for friends going through difficult times. 

Thankfulness for my family and friends. 

Happiness and joy from the "youngsters" in my family!

Appreciation and gratitude for the life I have. 

BEAUTY

The rose petals were free hand cut from various batiks. Layers and layers of petals that are stitched down approximately 1/2" away from the raw edge. The blossoms were sprayed with diluted Elmer's glue. I rigged them so they would hang upside down to dry. The petals dried stiff and standing up. 

They were originally stitched onto a rectangle for a class sample a number of years ago. 

I cut the blossoms out of the wall hanging, padded the centers with wool batt to create a rounded shape, and stitched just around the outer most petal, close to the inside to leave the edges free. Leaves made from the original background.  I spritzed with water to fluff up after 10 plus years on a shelf. 

Much better than the original. 

Carolyn's Black Beauty

I was born and grew up in El Paso, Texas. When I was a young girl, our Dad bought my brothers and me a Shetland pony. He was a reddish-brown color with spots scattered on his rump, so we named him Strawberry. Although I never had the opportunity to become a real horsewoman, I have always loved and admired horses. Years ago as the sun was setting, my husband and I were traveling in beautiful Wyoming. As we drove along, we were thrilled to see a herd of wild horses running through the meadow. Far ahead was their leader - a beautiful black stallion. He ran parallel with us with complete freedom until we finally passed him. It was one of those once-in- a-lifetime experiences.

 

One of my favorite childhood books was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. So when this theme for our final Material Maven Challenge was announced, I knew I would have to create a black beauty quilt based on the book and this memorable experience. 

 

I used scraps of hand-dyed cotton by Mickey Lawler for the sky, hand-dyed cotton by an unknown artist in a bold brass for the mountain range, and a hand-dyed lime cotton by Freida Anderson for the meadow. I added batiks for the grasses in front of the mountain range. 

 

I created the scene from memory. I applied Wonder Under to the back of fabrics for the mountains, cut them out free-hand, and applied them one at a time on top of each other to build the distant mountain range, ironing them lightly to a piece of light-weight resist paper as I went along so that they could be removed in one piece and permanently fused. I prepared the batiks the same way. The next step was to fuse the sky, mountain range and grasses directly onto cotton batting. Then I searched the Internet for photos and drawings of horses. I chose one to enhance to use as my pattern. Then the large grassy meadow was fused, cut out and applied to the foreground. 

 

The final step, and the most critical, was creating the horse. I chose a combination of two different black batiks for the horse - a solid for the horse and a patterned black for the mane and tail. These were then carefully fused, cut out and ironed to the meadow. 

The quilting was done with variegated Polyneon thread with Bottom Line bobbin thread. I combined two different embroidery patterns on my Bernina and simple machine quilting to complete the quilt. The back of the quilt and the binding is a batik in traditional southwestern colors.

The Migration Composite

 

I'll admit it up front.  The placement of the quilts on this one, in my vision, has no rhyme nor reason.  Quilters it seems are fond of flying geese!  I decided, again to eliminate the white background on the composite and add a cliche migration--realistic flying geese.  You'll just have to forgive me if it's overdone with the name tags of the same ilk; the colors just make a nice contrast.

Then, as to the placement of your quilts.  I began with Judy because I got tickled at her interpretation of the theme.  It reminded me of Rita's thrill of migrating on shop-hops!  Then I placed quilts in blank spaces where I could still see flying geese in the background.  In other words, a random pattern.

Nedra's Loons, Carolyn's Hummers, and Alice's Geese lead (migrate, if you will) your eye through the design.

Stopping traffic for a salamander?  That's a new one for me.  As a biology major in college, I do appreciate the effort--wonderful!  But flying cats?  I'm still grinning!

Kathy, God Bless America.

Again, another creative Job Well Done!

Randy

Judy S.- Fabric Migration

 

Migration brought to mind the normal thoughts of birds, butterflies and people, but nothing was popping for me and I did one with flying geese in the first year for "South". This one needed to be new and colorful. I realized that the one thing I have experience with is fabric. I made up this game in the 11"x14" format. 

The migration of fabric starts at cute quilt shops, quilt shows and gifts that I receive and give. From there it comes into my house and I wash and dry. Yes, I am a fabric washer because when I was growing up all fabric went into tubs to soak before we cut them out for garments. Preshrinking was a must and for quilts it is to get the extra dyes out. 

The next step is to iron it and get to know the fabric better. You really get to see the fun parts of it and it becomes your friend so that when you put it on your bookshelf, that only holds fabric, you will remember it and know when it is perfect for your quilt.

Now you have a stash of fabric that goes on to the next part of its journey. Cutting it up to make a beautiful quilt. Moving on down the game we chain stitch as many pieces together to make the quilt come together quickly. Once we have our block made we share those little accomplishments with our friends in many ways. Quilt retreats, quilting bees, or online. Then we finally have the fabric in its grandest form, a QUILT! That is a win!

To make this little quilt I went on the hunt for fabric that would show the moves on the game board. The cute characters with the quilt steps all come from a piece of fabric that I had a tiny bit leftover from years ago. It is similar to Lorelie Design fabrics, but I don't believe it was hers. I have such a small amount of it and no selvage to see who the real artist is. If anyone knows I would love to credit her. 

The only pieces that I didn't find printed on fabric were the quilt shop that looks like a cute mushroom to me and the quilt show banner. The bookshelf was a stripe fabric and I found smaller striped fabrics that I cut into little squares to look like fabric. The stripe fabric is all together in the photo. 

The chain stitched blocks and block next to the sewing machine were cut from a piece of Mary Engelbreit fabric that had little quilts on them. Those pieces were just part of a border around the center design. The washer and dryer I made real simple by cutting a circle for the dryer out of the orange circle fabric I had leftover from the word "Translate". It was a fun time of discovery in my quilt stash. I hope you enjoy finding where all the pieces came from in the photo.

Nedra’s Migration -- Loons of True Cove

 John and I became snowbirds 8 years ago when we he retired.  We began "migrating" to Georgia for the winter.  Our summers are spent on a lovely lake in Maine where loons frolic and serenade us nightly with their haunting calls.  Almost 20 of the loons on Lake Cobbessee call our True Cove home.  Losing their gorgeous black and white coloring in October for gray, they begin the journey to the coast for the winter.  Spring comes and with it are the beautiful loon.  An annual loon count is made every summer and includes the number of chicks that hatch.  Gray chicks can be spotted on the backs of the females until they are capable of swimming and fishing on their own. Migration suggested our annual journey as well as the loons.

                         

 My piece is an original block influenced by traditional  bird, geese and swallow blocks.  I choose blues and gray to represent the colors of the water and sky and the baby and migrating loons..   Cotton fabric is machine pieced and machine quilted.  An outline of a migrating loon is stitched in gray in the middle in addition to the straight line quilting.  .

Carolyn's Migration

 

I thought of all sorts of things that depict migration, but I finally decided on hummingbirds since they, and Carolina Wrens, are my favorite birds. May and June are the months that hummers make it to our area of North Texas on their journey back North.

 

I first viewed photos of all of the different species of hummers, and found to my delight that they come in a multitude of colors – everything from hot pink to green to purple, variegated and even a deep blue. And so my journey began into the fascinating world of hummingbirds.

Hummers are the smallest of birds. One species, which is only 3 inches long, makes the longest migratory journey of any other bird in the entire world. These tiny birds fly all the way from Alaska to South America on their Winter journey, and then migrate back again the next Spring.

 

My colorful hummingbird is made of various colors of hand-dyed silk fabrics.  The flowers and leaves are from a Kaffe Fassett cotton.  The bird was designed by fusing all of the various colorful components on top of each other one piece at a time with Wonder Under 805. Then all of the components were fused onto a hand-dyed 100% cotton background, and finally stitched with a variety of threads by Ricky Tims and Aurifil.

 

And best of all to my delight, I had my very first hummingbird visit to my feeder today!

 

Kathy's Migration Quilt

                 

                                     [  OK...  I made a slight change to our challenge word.  ]

With all the media coverage about "PEOPLES" from other countries wanting to and trying desperately to escape what's going on in their own countries and seeking asylum in other countries, I decided to morph our challenge word into  "IMIGRATION."

Here in Texas, our Southern Borders are shared with Mexico and Baja California.

And, most definitely, let's not forget our Largest State, ALASKA, that shares a very impressive border with Canada.   If you were at some of the most Northern sections of Alaska (near Prudhoe Bay), you might even be able to see one of our Country's other "Neighbors,"   RUSSIA !

In this "Migration" quilt, one of the images was "borrowed" from the Internet; the other image, "AMERICA," was made on my computer.

Note from Alice:  Kathy took another image of her quilt and asked me to substitute this for her first image.  

Alice's Migration: Flying Geese!

Two ideas occurred to me for this quilt.  One simple, another more complicated.  Waiting until this week to work on my quilt, I thought the simple plan would be most practical.  But alas, simple came out looking simplistic.  Even childish.  So I laid it aside and began working on complicated.

The old traditional Flying Geese quilt block design was my second notion.  But I wanted something more flowing, more swooping, more like how geese actually fly.  Google came to my aid and I came across a tutorial by quilt teacher Gail Graber for constructing flying geese along a curve.  Her step by step instructions were just what I needed.

First I drew the design, using a tool I've had for years but never before used--a flexible and curveable ruler.  Of course it took much trial and error before I came up with a design that I liked.  Once I did, I copied it onto drawing paper.  This was my master.  I then used regular printer paper to trace the design for paper piecing.  

Some years ago at the Houston Festival I bought four or five different half yards of an amazing fabric that has gradations of colors along its width, from dark to light and back to dark.  I used several pieces of this fabric for this quilt.  I knew I wanted my current quilt's background to be blue, so for the flying geese I chose a fabric for the "sky" part of the flying geese that, interestingly, had gradations that moved from yellow to orange to deep red and on to a dark red purple.  I did put in a few pieces of darker violet for the bottom few flying geese.  For the geese themselves, I used a gradation from lightest purple or lavender to dark violet.

When I started the paper piecing, I paired a light goose with the darkest "sky" background, then moved around to a dark goose with the lightest "sky" background.  Once the paper piecing was done (and I had tediously removed all those tiny pieces of paper!!) I decided to use reverse applique to apply the curving flying geese to the quilt's background fabric.  For this I used another piece of that gradation fabric that was primarily blue moving through pink and then purple.  Again, Gail Graber came to the rescue, as the second lesson in her series about making curving flying geese included excellent instructions for the reverse applique process, which I had never done before.  I bound the quilt with the same fabric I used for the quilt's background.  

Links to Graber's instructions:  

https://betteroffthread.com/2013/06/11/paper-piecing-curved-geese-a-tutorial/

https://betteroffthread.com/2013/06/18/reverse-applique-tutorial/

Andrea's Migration quilt

 When Cats Fly

11" x 14"

Raw edge fabric collage.

This quilt is the result of a brief email exchange that I had with Alice Baird and I am so grateful.  I mentioned to her that I was working with the migration definition of "moving from one place to another". My intention was to make something that had to do with my creative 'migration' since our first Material Mavens quilt in 2011. Alice thought of how many times she has actually moved.  This new perspective was my Ah Ha! moment as I moved from one part of town to the other in 2016.  Alice graciously gave me permission to use her 'moving' idea.  Soon after, the vision of a house flying over trees and rooftops emerged.  I wanted to make the house out of one of my favorite Kaffe fabrics using more realistic fabric colors for the background (blue sky, green trees etc.).  The house is rather small and did not showcase Kaffe the way I wanted it to, so decided to try using it as the background.  I then had the challenge of how to make such a bright, large patterned, busy fabric recede.  My original idea for just how the house would 'fly' was to put wings on either side, but as I moved ( migrated! ) with four cats, I thought it would be more fun to put the house on the back of a flying cat!  Now, as I had a flying cat, decided that my trees could be giant tulip-like flowers instead.  After all, this had become completely nonsensical, so why not?

Tricia's Migration

35 years ago when I first moved to Lincoln I noticed a few roads were closed on the first warm rainy night in March for "The Big Night". The Big Night is when the yellow spotted black salamanders and wood frogs cross the roads to get to the vernal ponds. At some point they stopped closing the roads and encouraged people to drive slowly. Not sure how one can really see a black salamander on asphalt at night.

When we downsized a four years ago, we moved to one of the roads that has a salamander and wood frog  crossing. We now go out and walk up and down to road on the first warm and rainy night in March to help the salamanders and wood frogs cross the road before cars come. I wanted to create a quilt with the sign, a salamander and wood frog for our theme Migration.

I took black fabric with highlights and machine quilted it to try to get it to look like asphalt. I photographed the sign and the wood frog and then printed on printed treasures. Unfortunately we did not see a salamander this year. I created the salamander from shinny fabric and fused yellow spots on him.

The Majestic Composite by Randy

I decided to do a background image this time to reflect my definition of the majesty (noun) or the majestic (adjective) nature of our world.  Some years ago my son and I were traveling to Colorado Springs to visit my brother.  He was driving.  We were somewhere between "The Springs" and Pueblo and there is not much to the east but grasslands and flat country.  I looked out the window and saw a pattern of 5 stacked rainbows--left to right.  Yes, I took a photo, but I can't find that image.  It is still somewhere in my collection.  If you will notice the large, first, rainbow, are the colors you all know, top to bottom: red, orange, green, blue, indigo, violet.  Check the outer rainbow.  The colors are reversed.  The red is on the inside and violet on the outside.  That is because the second rainbow is created by sunlight reflecting through raindrops inside the first rainbow--reversing the colors. Enough science; let's talk quilting.  Another majestic creation!

The composite came together mostly by format.

I placed Nedra's striking image in the middle because it was the only vertically oriented quilt.  Nedra, I have a story to share.  Many years ago, while I was teaching biology in Southern Indiana, we were privileged to have 7 students (6 young men and a young woman) attend our school (Vincennes University) from Swaziland, South Africa.  All 7 of them were children of King Sobhuza, but each had a different mother, but that's another story.  All spoke some Swahili and all spoke perfect English.

Alice and Tricia's quilts then tucked nicely on either side because they were perfect squares and each fit a common theme: the majesty of the great outdoors.

Often at looking at an image, a small detail will attract the eye.  I didn't notice until later, but the top row illustrates this point.  I placed Andrea's and Karen's images up top because they were both horizontal rectangles.  However on second and subsequent views, how often have we seen firework displays around tall spheres in the sky?  Also, the Eiffel Tower is a magnificent achievement by man in its setting.  Then notice the white line in Karen's quilt that draws attention in contrast to the white line in the tower, causing you to look again at both images.

Carolyn and Kathy's quilts anchor the composite to say "This Land is OUR Land."  Our land is majestic.  Let's take care of it--please!

What a treat to see your creative work.

Randy

Kathy's "Majestic"

  Kathy's Majestic 

The first thoughts that came to my mind for "Majestic" were some lyrics from my most favorite Patriotic song, "America the Beautiful,"

     "Oh beautiful, for spacious skies,

       For amber waves of grain.

       For purpled mountains "MAJESTY"

       Above the fruited plane.

       AMERICA,  AMERICA, 

       God shed His Grace on Thee,

       And crown Thy good

       With brotherhood.

       From Sea to Shining Sea."

In looking through my Fabric "Stash"  I found this almost as "perfect as could be" piece of Patriotic Fabric.   Although the words to this song are different, the impact they have on me for Patriotism is just about the same.  

Thank you for this amazing opportunity to express ourselves in such a variety of ways.

GOD  BLESS  AMERICA  MY  HOME  SWEET  HOME !

GOD  BLESS  AMERICA, MY HOME  SWEET  HOME  !