Gerber Daisy Wall Hanging - Part 5

The Gerber Daisy wall hanging got finished this past weekend and then I was off visiting friends out of town including Karen who had her birthday yesterday and this quilt was for her. She totally loved it and Gerber daisies are her favorite flower. Here is a picture of the finished quilt.

I didn't have enough of the forest mist fusion fabric so the binding was done in the onyx mist fusion.  It turned out great in that the onyx colour acted like a frame for the quilt. For the quilting I did some Gerber leaves in the lower area around the Gerbers as well as some stylized ferns. At the top of the quilt I did Wisteria and a hummingbird. The borders were quilting with silhouettes of hummingbirds going around the quilt. Here are the details of the quilting. First the Gerber leaves.

This is the fern.

Here is the wisteria.

This is the hummingbird, it is a amethyst throated hummingbird.

This is the quilting in the borders.

I really enjoyed making this quilt wall hanging for Karen.  It's size is 36" wide by 38" tall. The interesting thing is not only does she have Gerbers growing in her garden but she also has ferns and wisteria in her garden and hummingbirds do come to visit her garden.

Gerber Daisy Wall Hanging - Part 4

All 5 Gerbers have been appliqued and the details of the petals have been stitched in. This is what the wall hanging looks like at this point.

It may be a bit difficult to see some of the details on the flowers so I have some close up shots. Here is the first Gerber. On this Gerber I used printed batiks.

Here is the second one and on this one I used hand dyed and printed batiks.

On the third one I used Fossil Fern fabrics.

The forth one has hand dyed batiks, a mist fusion and a Fossil Fern.

On the last Gerber I used a mist fusion, a couple of fairy frosts, a printed batik and a hand dyed.

On the Gebers there are anywhere from 3 to 5 thread changes (excluding the dark brown center). I'm using Madeira's Polyneon polyester thread.  The thread is made in Germany, was developed for machine embroidery so it's very durable and the colour selection is amazing. The other nice thing is the price is great, especially if you are on a budget. I do love my Superior Threads, they are expensive and they are worth it, but it's hard to build a stash of thread when one is on a budget.  My friend Sue introduced me to Madeira thread and she was introduced to it by a quilting teacher when she took a thread painting class. I got my thread spools from a company called All Stitch for $2.63 for 1,100 yards. They also ship to Canada which is great. Here is the thread that I'm taking about: 
http://www.allstitch.net/department/sort-polyester-40-spools-color-card-order-10192.cfm
If you are looking into buying an assortment of threads I would suggest getting the colour chart first since they are made from the actual threads and you can see what the actual colours look like which are very different from what appears on your monitor.

Well time to start making the quilt sandwich.

Gerber Daisy Wall Hanging - Part 3

I've been busy all week working on this wall hanging. I finished putting the borders on the diamond background and this is what it looks like now.

I also got all the Gerber daisies drawn out onto fabric and cut out. The back of my fabrics are fused with Misty Fuse. I've got them all arranged now onto the background and this is the layout that I'm going with.

I now have to mark the center position of each Gerber and then will remove each one. Next I will start with the darkest one at the top and start the ironing process to fuse it to the background.  Once I have that flower in place I will work on stitching in the details of the petals for that flower. Once I've completed that one, then onto the medium red / fuchsia Gerber and repeat the process. Then it will be the peach one, followed by the bright pink one and last will be the pale pink with the mauve centre.

Then I will be ready to put together the quilt sandwich. I will outline the Gerbers as part of the quilting. Then I plan on doing some Gerber leaves, and I'm thinking of adding some Ostrich ferns over on the left hand side. I'm still not quite sure what will get quilted in the upper green area but my mind is thinking of possibly adding a humming bird to the mix. As the quilting evolves I'm sure this piece will speak to me and I will know what needs to go in the upper green area.

Well time to go back and carefully remove all my Gerbers from the background piece and start fusing the dark Gerber. Have a great weekend everyone.

Gerber Daisy Wall Hanging - Part 2

I finished sewing all the diamonds together for the background layer of the Gerber daisy wall hanging. I'm very pleased with how it turned out and this is what it looks like.

I now just have to add the narrow pink border and the wider mid to dark green border.  I'm going to wait until I have my pink Gerbers cut out and placed against the background so that I can then audition the border fabrics to make sure I pick the ones that will best compliment both the background and the flowers.

Now working with these diamonds and the bias edges does have its challenges, the biggest ones being that you don't distort or stretch the diamonds while sewing &/or pressing them.  When I first ironed all my fabric I did use some spray starch.  I found this helped with the cutting of the diamonds as well as in the sewing of the diamonds. When it came to ironing the rows of joined diamonds Jan Krentz recommended to make an ironing template to keep the strips straight when you press them.  All you needed was a plain piece of cotton fabric and then just draw on it parallel lines the width of your rows of diamonds.  Then you just pin it to your ironing board.  This is what my cloth looks like.

Then you lay one of the rows of diamonds so that it is aligned between the lines that you have drawn. As you iron make sure that you keep the row in place.  I found using this cloth kept my row nice and straight and nothing got distorted.  I also used a dry iron since in the past I have found that using steam can distort blocks with bias seams. Here is what one of my rows looks like on the pressing template.

The next challenge is joining the rows and getting the intersections to align. Jan had several methods outlined in her book.  I tried a few, some sort of worked, but not consistently enough for me.  I think it is something that does take practice. I did though find one method that seemed to work for me. It was the one where you actually take each row separately and without any thread in the sewing machine, go and stitch just at the seam area a 1/4" line to mark your fabric.  Here is a picture of a row at the machine being stitched.

This is what it will look like after you take it out.  Please note that the holes the needle leaves works well in tight weave fabrics like batiks, but if you have loose weaves then this method might not work so well.

Now that you have your fabric marked, take a pin and stick it at the stitched line into the seam of the two fabrics.

Do the same to the second layer of fabric.

Finish pinning the two sections together.

Continue doing this for all the intersecting seams and then sew your 1/4" seam. This is the end result that I got with this method.  I did have a few intersections that I had to rip out and redo, but for the most part I got really good matches.

So this weekend I'm going to be busy with making my Gerber daisy patterns for the 5 flowers and then getting all the pink fabrics prepped and cut. That should keep me busy.

Gerber Daisy Wall Hanging - Part 1

My new project that I'm currently working on is a Gerber daisy wall hanging. The actual design for this wall hanging is my own and I'm making it for my friend Karen who loves Gerber daisies. The Gerber daisies will be fused applique and what I did to come up with my design for the daisies was to first study many photographs of Gerber daisies. I had some of my own that I have taken over the years plus I did several Google searches to find some good specimens for my research.  I decided that my Gerber was going to be multi-layered since the petals of this flower typically have several rows as do the smaller central petals near the centre of the flower.

I did a test run to see how it would look and was pleased with my results. Here is my sample piece which I turned into a mini wall hanging that I now have up in my sewing room. The flower is about 7" across which was a nice size to work with. If it was much smaller then I think the cutting and sewing would become tedious.

For the actual wall hanging I'm planning on having 5 Gerber daisies in various shades of pink from light to dark on a pieced green background. The background is what I have been working on this week since I also wanted to try something different there as well. I have been interested in the diamond blocks that are used in Jan Krentz's book "Diamond Quilts and Beyond". 
http://www.jankrentz.com/store-details.php?ID=9

After going through my stash of green fabrics and realizing that I was a bit shy on the dark greens, I picked some up at a couple of quilt shops while I was visiting Buffalo and Rochester a couple of weeks ago. I got my various green diamonds cut and spent the last few days working on the design wall arranging the background layer. This is what it looks like.

I'm quite pleased with the results since I have managed to get that colour washed effect I was after.  So now comes the fun part of sewing all those rows of diamonds together, yes we are talking biased seams. Now I did use spray starch when I was ironing my fat quarters to help with the stability issue. I tried first to cut one strip as per the instructions in Jan's book and found that without the starch there was too much stretch and I knew I would have problems when it came to sewing all those diamonds. Hopefully with the starch I will have saved myself some headaches. I will let you know next week.

Ricky Tims Seminar - Rochester NY

I attended the Ricky Tims Quilt Seminar in Rochester NY from July 12 - 14. This was my second time, the first was almost 2 years ago in Cape Cod. My friend Sue from Long Island who went with me to the one in Cape Cod also came to this one. We were both fairly new quilters at that time, really enjoyed ourselves but also found some of the stuff over our heads. We thought this would be a nice get away, a chance to see each other, doing something quilty and hopefully pick up on stuff that the first time wasn't all that clear.

Let me tell you we had a blast, learned some new things and reinforced some old stuff. Ricky, Alex and Libby were great teachers as well as very entertaining.  This was their biggest turn out ever with 740 in attendance. The only downside to the event was the stadium seating which either caused issues for those with back/hip problems due to the stiff seats and/or issues with knees/legs due to limited leg room.

I have to say if Ricky's seminar comes to a city near you, you may want to consider going just from an inspirational perspective this seminar really packs a bang. You can check out the details here:
http://www.rickytims.com/seminars/seminar-main

Ricky also had some quilts on display that he, Alex and Libby have made as well as some from his private collection. This quilt is one of Ricky's newest ones and is called "Lifelines 3: Can Something Come From Nothing".

Here is a close up of some of the detail work.

This quilt was done by Alex Anderson but unfortunately there wasn't a label on it so I don't have a name. It is hand quilted.

This quilt was done by Libby Lehman and is called "Pinata".

Finally this quilt is from Ricky's private collection and it is called "The Man From Snowy River" and it is by Helen Godden from Australia.  It is a very large quilt and where it was hung I couldn't get back far enough to capture the full quilt. You can get more information on Helen and her work here:
http://www.helengodden.com/index.php?option=com_imagebrowser&folder=Quilts&Itemid=75

This past week I have been busy prepping fabric for a wall hanging art quilt.  I will be putting together some posts on the progress of this project so that you can see what I am currently working on. I need to have this ready for a birthday in mid August.

Recovery, New Quilt Oriental Odyssey & Ricky Tims Quilt Seminar

So what have I been up to this past month.  I have spent some time recovering from the thyroid surgery. It was a good thing that it was removed since they did find cancer in both the lump and the thyroid but it was in the very early stages and completely contained. Also nothing had spread to the lymph nodes and that was really good news. 

When I felt up to things I was working on a new quilt called Oriental Odyssey.  This quilt I was making it for my Tao Shiatsu therapist Alex. He is currently working on renovating a building that he purchased at the beginning of this year and the hopes is to open a new healing center by the end of this year.  He was having his first fund raising event this past Friday and it was held at the new place so people could see where the new center will be and what his vision for the place is. I'm very thankful to Alex for his treatments since they have been very beneficial as I have been going through my recovery from the iron deficiency anemia and then this thyroid stuff. Sometimes just plain western medicine isn't enough to get a person back on track.

I made this quilt for his silent auction that he is going to have in September in the hopes that he will be able to raise some money through my contribution since I'm not in a position at this time to make a financial one. The quilt was a big hit at the event and hopefully it has created sufficient interest for the silent auction that will be held in September and Alex will have a good turnout for that event.

Here is the front of the quilt:

Here is the back of the quilt:

So tomorrow I'm actually going away on a mini vacation to Buffalo & Rochester NY. I'm going to do some shopping, visit some quilt shops and then it's on to the Ricky Tims quilt seminar. If you have been a follower of my blog for a few years you will likely say but wait a minute you've already been to the Ricky Tims quilt seminar in Cape Cod a couple of years ago.  Yes that's right, I was. I went with my friend Sue from Long Island and yes she is coming to this one as well.  We had so much fun that we decided to take it a second time. The first time we went to the Ricky Tims quilt seminar we were both quite new quilters and now that we both have a few more years of experience we figured we would get a different take from it.  Also it gives us a chance to see each other and have some fun.  I'll be back on Sunday and will give you a review of what I think the second time around.