Thursday, August 3, 2017

Blue and Green

Back in March, we had our annual PTA retreat....PTA stands for Piecers, Talkers, Appliquers OR Professional Textile Artists. This wonderful group has been together forever and once a year we treat ourselves to 3 days of sewing, eating, drinking champagne and laughing our sides off. We usually have way more projects than we can finish but heaven forbid we run out of something to do. I was way off in La-La Land with the expectations I had for myself...My first project was pieced hexagons which I recently finished (click here) and had this as a backup..What was I thinking.
Well, I am not a piecer as I have commiserated about before...although I love pieced quilts. Here is a prime example of why...After making blocks, I was to cut them on the diagonal to put back together.  I discovered early on...I was cutting them on the wrong diagonal...so the first 2 blocks went into the trash...
It took months (grabbing moments here and there) to get to this point...ready to sew everything together.

After getting them sewn, it was time to sandwich it and quilt. I loved the circle prints and thought this would be a nice quilting pattern. I found around 7 - 8 different size circles. The table in my studio was covered with dishes, pot lids, plastic lids etc.....lots of sizes to choose from.
I started at the center drawing around dishes etc...quilting it and then moving to next circle. I did a few at a time and then laid it down to draw more circles. I used several threads...a 30 weight rayon which was more subtle and Madeira's Lana which used to be called Burmilana and one of my favorite threads. It's quite heavy but will thread through a "topstitch size 16 needle" using an old fashion needle threader. Lana is a wool and acrylic blend but has the appearance of the threads used in Crewel embroidery...remember that? I thought a combination of both threads worked well together.
For the binding I used a polka dot....
and here's the finished piece...looking for a name.

6 comments:

  1. I'm not a piecer either! Nothing I piece ever comes out right and I just get frustrated, but your quilt turned out fabulous! What a great play of color and print!

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  2. It's wonderful your persevered and have a wonderful finish. Love these colors.

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  3. This really turned out nice!!!! I was wondering how you would quilt it. I've used the Lana thread only for hand stitching. I'll have to look at using it in my machine! Again, Nice job...love the black/white fabric!!! Really adds so much to the quilt!

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  4. Took me a minute to figure out what the original block was but I love it and definitely will make a scrap quilt using this technique in the future!! Very different and I haven't seen this one before.

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