My Surprise quilt is designed from thoughts of Jack in the Boxes, so the surprise is in the fold-out "box" and all the other boxes lead up to it.  The red/gold boxes are painted bondaweb (wunder under? maybe), the fold-out is painted lutrador for stiffness in the same colours and the quilting is with a Madeira metallic. 

Petra's Surprise Quilt

The surprise is not the subject of the quilt but in the technique, as I did things I've never done before. I dyed the background fabric, always a surpise I feel, I never get bored with it I always think it's a miracle. I then layed it up with 5 layers of sheer fabric then stitched randomly with metallic tape, which I've never used before just letting the machine take me. I then randomly burnt out areas with a soldering iron and added some beads and used my new hot crystal applicater which I was pleasantly surprised with. So 4 new techniques, which I probably wouldn't have tried if it hadn't been for the challenge, so thankyou.

I love everyones quilts, I thought the standard was high for the Harmony quilts, but the bar has certainly been raised I'm blown away - amazing

Judy's Surprise Quilt: Heirloom Roses

Surprise was a tough one for me. I thought of a lot of things that surprised me, but the one that really stood out was the day I arrived home from a trip to my mom's house in Missouri. My sweet husband had purchased 3 roses to represent our three sons and placed them on my pillow.

In the quilt I quilted hearts to represent me and my husband. There are 2 roads quilted into the piece to show that there are many roads we travel and some of them have interesting stepping stones along the way.

When I was young I never dreamed of a certain plan for my life. I knew I wanted to have a loving husband, at least 3 children, and travel. All of those are part of my life. What I didn't see was having 3 boys, quilting and sewing being my career, and living in Texas. My life is wonderful with these surprises. No matter the twists and turns on the road I enjoy the planned and not so planned stuff. I grow with each one.

Patti's Surprise Quilt

Patti's Surprise Quilt

My quilt is a little random, and I am calling it Retirement - My life, it feels, has become unzipped. Feel like I have had a big adjustment to working for the past 20 years with its schedules and regularity. My meandering reflects that fact, and I decided to border the quilt with zippers. I wanted to try some of the thread painting with the twisty ribbons. Enjoyed the process but I will use more pleasant colors next time.

Carolyn's Surpise/Socrates' Shame!

When I learned that "surprise" was our theme, I immediately thought of an incident that happened several years ago when we had a black lab named Socrates - "Soc" for short. At the time, the "surprise" was a total shock to me. Now, I view it as a humorous event in my family's history.

One Christmas we hosted a large family gathering. When it came time to open presents, I put Soc in our bedroom. Later in the evening, I heard a commotion down the hall. I opened our bedroom door and found Soc sitting on top of our brand new, custom-made bedspread in a puddle of "you know what"! I screamed "Soc"!!! He jumped down and looked up at me with guilt written all over his face. Needless to say, the stain was permanent.

I quilted a quilt out of loud colors to represent the bedspread (not an actual replica). Then I sketched the dogs, transferred them to fabric, made the appliqués of Soc, the fire hydrant and the puddle, and stitched them onto the bedspread.

Soc, the puddle and the fire hydrant are on the front of the quilt. The surprised and shameful Soc is on the back of the quilt.

Andrea's Surprise Quilt: Need I Say More ?

silk-screened and fused

This quilt depicts a shared surprise experience that I had with MM Carolyn last August. MM Linda, Carolyn & I were to meet in Rockport, MA. where Carolyn, who lives in Texas, was staying with friends. Unfortunately, Linda was unable to join us. I suggested that we go to the quaint coastal city of Newburyport as Carolyn had not been there on previous trips to MA. We parked in a lot in the center of town where I have parked free for literally ( I hate
to say! ) decades. After walking around town, shopping and lunch we returned to the car to find a ticket prominently placed on the windshield! We then looked around the lot and saw that a "Please Pay Here" machine had been added. Whoops!

Rita's Surprise guilt

Rita's Seasonal Surprise Quilt
     Until my mid 30's I lived in central Illinois and southern Indiana where the change of season and scenery came and went like clockwork.  But each change of season seemed as a SURPRISE gift to me as if the current season produced amnesia of all seasons past.  We have lived in central Texas for over 30 years and I do miss the definite season change.  Someone once said that the four seasons in Texas are 1. almost summer, 2. summer, 3. still summer, and 4. Christmas.
     The background for the fused raw edge and edge stitched applique is a fun technique to design an original pieced block.  This technique was developed by Raymond Houston and was presented by him as a guest on Alex Anderson's TV show, Simple Quilts. To do this, start with a square divided into a 3 x 3 grid.  Choose a word  (I chose winter, spring, fall, and winter.) and draw a line for each letter from each of the endpoints along the side of the grid using Raymond's alphabetical chart.  Superinpose all the lines of one word on top of one another.  Make four copies of the lined grid and then following the rules of symmetry, create the design. This is always a SURPRISE as to how the individual grids interact withone another in different symmetry arrangements.  With sixteen copies of the grid, some additional SURPRISING secondary patterns appear as well.  These can hopefully be seen in the background squares.  The individual two inch squares were paper pieced (16 squares for each season) and before  being trimmed for this project, all of them together contained exactly 400 pieces.

Nedra's Surprise Quilt - Let's Party!!

My inspiration was a birthday party given for me by my best friend when I was 15 which meant a lot to me, thus the girly color scheme. I also tried to evoke the feelings I had when I entered the room and everyone unexpectedly and suddenly appeared and shouted surprise, so I wanted to make things pop!!!! I imagined an explosion of color and confetti and sparkles raining down around the word in the air of the room and tried to create that with my piece. I think that I accomplished that goal.

I did not take process pictures this time - so I will explain what I did.
I wanted to print the word surprise on a background piece but I wanted the letters to be scattered. Sooo... I printed the letters on paper and then using a light box, I traced the outline onto the background fabric. I wasn't sure how this would look, but I used setacolor paint to fill in the outline in a stencil like fashion. It came out pretty well so I then backed this fabric with fusible and cut out the letters, then fused to another piece of the background fabric in a scattered pattern. I then picked pinks and purples and applied fusible to them. I cut triangles of different sizes and shapes randomly and worked with them until I had an arrangement that appeared to pop. I fused these and used decorative stitching to embellish the edges. Next I cut confetti and streamers from the leftover fusing backed fabric and added them. When all of the pieces were fused, I sandwiched and machine quilted, finished the edges and squared it up. The finishing touches are metallic pieces and crystals which I glued on to add touches of sparkle. And voila, we have SURPRISE.

I have to admit that I made THREE pieces for this! After seeing them all together, I decided I liked the first one I made the best afterall.

If you scroll back in the blog postings, you may notice that I've posted twice. I wrote my post yesterday and saved it, but I didn't realize when I published it this morning it would still be dated 11/14. So I republished it for today's date. Sorry for the duplicate.

Alice's Surprise Quilt--Surprise in the Midst of Drought

The day after our last “reveal,” I went for an early morning walk, despite a prediction of a high of 100+° that day.  Much to my astonishment, just a block from our house I spied some lavender and purple wild flowers growing in a patch of dead weeds in the corner vacant lot.  How could they be blooming in the middle of the worst drought we have suffered in Texas in many decades? They were a total surprise!  Then I had an ah-ha moment:  I’d take a photo and base my Surprise quilt on those brave little wild flowers.  I used an enlargement of one of these pictures as a guide for composition and fabric colors. 

In constructing my Surprise quilt, I used the following materials and techniques:  For the background, I used a piece of hand-painted fabric, left over from another quilt, for the brownish yellow background.  The techniques I used included:  fusing raw-edge appliqués (the weeds); fusing and zig-zag stitching appliqués (the flowers and leaves); couching two different yarns for more weeds, to give dimension to the quilt; and beading for still more dimension (flower stamens). I hand-quilted with a running embroidery stitch, randomly placed, choosing a brown and an olive green embroidery floss.  The quilt is bound and backed with a multi-colored batik in the same colors as the dead weeds and the flowers’ leaves. 

Linda' SURPRISE Quilt - Hearty Beating

     I chose the topic "Surprise," having no idea what I could do. Not one idea came to me. I do love suprises. One should have them at every gathering, dinner party or even in blogs.

     Life intervened to save the day, somewhat. I had some wild times with my heart and some very good news as well, each happening a complete surprise to me. I won't bore you with the details, but the loud colors, the brash conflicts and smoothness of the quilts show the two extremes. Previously in times of Afib pondering, I had quilted and beaded these tiny rectangular heart quilts; and this assignment gave me a way to display them. Across the center of the 12 x 12, I sewed some fusible thread in an EKG chart similar to an irregular reading and placed foil over the stitching to iron the iridescent waves. The 12 x 12 quilt content is purposefully irregular and needs some balance and resolution but the topic has none, so that is appropriate for my "Surprise" journal quilt. The backing comes over the sides of the front to make the binding or edge. Click to enlarge to view the naughty errant heartwaves.

    

ALL the Harmony Quilts!

Andrea had a great idea!  Why not post ALL of the Harmony quilts in one posting, so that we can look at all of them without having to scroll down to see them one at a time.  This was easier to do than I thought it would be!  So here they are, right before our NEXT "reveal" day!  Can you believe how fast these two months have passed?  They appear in no particular order--I just added them and let Blogger put them in however it wanted to do so!

Barbara's

Andrea's

Petra's

Jane's

Judy's

Rita's

Patti's

Sara's

Linda's

Alice's

Carolyn's

Kathy's

Five Mavens at Festival in Houston!

As planned, the five of us there at the Quilt Festival in Houston got together Thursday evening for a delicious dinner and much fun conversation.  Above you see, from left, Alice, Carolyn, Judy, Sara, and Rita.  The latter two took classes, and they gave enthusiastic reports on how much they enjoyed them and how much they learned.  Judy worked a vendor booth, as she does every year (and at many other quilt venues!), so how she can look so totally un-tired and cheerful is testimony to her youth!  Alice and Carolyn chiefly feasted their eyes on the gorgeous quilts, concentrating primarily on art quilts.

The "big winners" were stunning, and the various sizes and categories of art quilts, amazing.

A highlight for Carolyn and Alice during Wednesday's Preview Night was seeing "up close and personal" the two different series of the original 12 x 12 group.  Karen was manning the exhibit [womaning the exhibit???!!!], and what a delightful person she is!  We identified ourselves, and she got out her iPad, went to their website or blog, and then found us in the sidebar.  She seemed to like in particular our banner, and she commented most favorably on our quilts.

Before dinner on Thursday, Carolyn and Alice went back to see who else might be there, and we met Deborah Boschert, Gerrie Congdon, Kristin La Flamme, Karen Rips again, and Brenda Gael Smith.

Thursday evening after our dinner we not only brought out and examined closely one another's little Harmony quilts, but Judy showed us how to Zentangel (is that a verb?) and also some lovely examples of her machine quilting.  Sara, the only Houstonian, had forgotten to bring HER quilt, so she

was the photographer for the picture of the four Mavens who brought theirs!  Sara, incidentally, had the group Alice in Wonderland puzzle quilt, for which she posted a photo here earlier, was a Maven who had a quilt exhibited in Houston.  What an honor!

Carolyn, Alice, Judy, and Rita with our Harmony quilts!

And here's Sara with her Harmony quilt!

Delighted to be Invited

I want to thank Andrea and Alice for the opportunity to be part of a new creative experience!! Andrea and I have been friends for many years as we are members of the same quilt guild and we are currently co-chairing a 12 X 12 challege for our group. It has been a great experience for me, pushing me out of my safe box of fairly traditional quilting. I welcome the opportunity to be a member of a group eager to try new things!!!

I have been quilting about 25 years and started off with traditional designs. I enjoyed piecing and applique, but spent the first 5-10 years working on patterns and kits. Once I became more skilled and comfortable, I tried original designs, but they were frequently inspired by things I had seen in magazines or shows; I "copied" very well. I have gotten increasingly interested in doing more original work. I have experimented with embellishments, fusing, stenciling and a little painting and dying, although I still usually work with commercial fabrics. My long-range goal is to create my own fabric, utilizing some of these techniques, as I want to develop a personal style. I also enjoy the quilting process and enjoy hand and machine quilting. Bright colors appeal to me and my most recent quilts have incorporated Kaffe Fassett fabrics. The picture above is my most recently completed quilt. The best way to describe my quilting style and work is to say it is always evolving and I am willing to try almost anything.

On a personal note, I am a retired dietitian, originally from Louisiana. LSU is my college alma mater and I completed a dietetic internship in Virginia. Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts have been my homes for the past 30 years. John is my husband and we have two children and two dogs. My other interests include travel, tennis, skiing, gardening, boating and volunteer work. That's probably enough about me.

Again, I'm so happy to be a member and have an idea for the Surprise theme!!

Now We're a Baker's Dozen!

Nedra Weaver is our 13th member.  Andrea suggested her as a possible member of our group.  I hope that she will soon write a post to tell us a bit about herself.  So now we have three from the East Coast of the United States:  Andrea, Linda, and Nedra.

Note that I have added her name to our list at the right.

Here's our schedule with Nedra added at the bottom.  You might print off this schedule and keep it handy, just so you'll know when your turn is coming up.  Of course, I'll also remind you!

(3) Jane chooses theme #3 on Nov. 15, 2011, for Jan. 15, 2012's quilt.
(4)  Judy : theme #4 on Jan. 15, 2012, for Mar. 15, 2012's quilt.
(5) Rita:  theme $5 on Mar. 15, 2012, for May 15, 2012's quilt.
(6)  Patti:  theme #6 on May 15, 2012, for Jul. 15, 2012's quilt.
(7) Andrea: theme #7 on July 15, 2012, for Sept. 15, 2012's quilt.
(8)  Alice: theme #8 on Sept. 15, 2012, for Nov. 15, 2012's quilt.
(9)  Barbara: theme #9 on Nov. 15, 2012, for Jan. 15, 2013's quilt.
(10) Judy W:  theme #10 on Jan. 15, 2013, for Mar. 15, 2013's quilt.
(11)  Kathy: theme #11 on Mar. 15, 2013, for May 15, 2013's quilt.
(12)  Sara: theme #12 on May 15, 2013, for Jul. 15, 2013's quilt.
(13)  Nedra:  theme #12 on July 15, 2013, for Sept. 2013's quilt.
(14) Wendy:  theme #13 on Sept. 2013, for Nov. 2013's quilt

Looking at my calendar just now, I noticed that our next "due date" is just three weeks away!  Where does the time go?  I hope you're at least thinking about your Surprise quilt by now.  No doubt some have finished theirs.  Not me, however!  Jane, I hope you've come up with an exciting theme #3 for us--if not already, then soon.  It might be well for me to remind everyone that themes can be abstract (harmony, surprise, identity) or concrete (dandelion, chair, window).  Choose whatever captures your fancy!

Looking forward to seeing all your quilts and hearing from all of you in about three weeks!

Harmony? The full picture...

Supplementary.... sorry folks - something happened to the photo of the whole quilt.

Here it is now!

At last! Harmony?

Hi all

I'm very happy to post my little quilt - Harmony? at last, with sincere apologies for the delay. The fabric is tea-dyed calico (I think in the US you call it muslin) with lines of quilting in the form of the five line staves of music. It's bound with a lovely black cotton covered in white musical instruments. I'm pleased with its simplicity in design.

Shades of Autumn for Norma

Norma in CA. was so thrilled with the little fabric birthday card that I sent for her 92nd birthday ( posted August 16, 2011 ), that I thought I would make her a little autumn themed piece. I silk screened the chrysanthemum's and then fused them on the background. Some are completely fused but 4 are only attached in the middle so that the petals could be lifted up.

This was a new technique which I will use again sometime. I also tried a little free motion stitching for the first time, which was inspired by the new book Sew Wild by Alisa Burke.

Post-Dated Surprise Quilts!

Now that I've learned how to do these mosaics, I've put together the Surprise quilts.  I've also learned that I can post-date posts so that this will appear on the blog where it ought to be.

Now to identify the quilters:

Row one: Barbara, Kathy, Linda
Two:  Alice, Nedra, Rita
Three:  Andrea, Carolyn, Patti
Four:  Judy S., Petra, Jane
Five:  Sara

Linda's Harmony block process: a little child shall lead

       As I reported earlier, Joe and I kept the grandchildren as their parents went to ready the new house in another state. My accuquilt cutter arrived about the same time, and I had no more cut out the pieces from a batik stash than the children started playing with the fabrics.
       I preferred their design to mine; but the size, for some reason, did not fit within our 12 x 12 goal. So I incorporated their own house design, honored it, in the center of my quilt. Homes and houses were definitely on their minds! Quiet time with three youngsters is a harmonious time!

Andrea's WHOOPS!

YUP...I DO have more "learnin" to do! I could only upload 5 photo's and they are in the opposite order from what I thought ( and explained)! Sorry.