Hard to be merry today

Several years ago I was inspired to make this throw-sized quilt

for an acquaintance going through a hard time.

I liked the Kaffe Collective fabrics, and the letters

and the asymetry of it all.

Today I'm attending her funeral.

It won't be a merry day,

but I'm glad I had a small part in her journey.

You can read the back story of this quilt here.

I've neglected this space lately, and mostly because I've neglected my craft.

Not much sewing or quilting here for the last three months.

I feared my creative lull was becoming an abyss,

but in the last few days I've been digging out my sewing machine

from under piles of unfinished projects

and finding a spark of joy in fabric and stitches again.

If you're on Instagram, you can follow me @brendasuderman

No fooling around here!

are my bread and butter.

For all of my professional life I've written for a living.

I want to 

you too.

I know I've been absent from my blog lately

since I find Instagram a bit faster and easier these days.

But its not about

A couple of weeks ago I explained the basics of letter making to a local guild.

Since I made the samples and got the pictures, 

I'm sharing it here as well.

To give credit: I was inspired and instructed in letter making by

Tonya Ricucci and her 2010 book Word Play Quilts.

It's out of print, but you can buy the the ebook  here.

The letters are easy to make once you think of them as wonky log cabins.

Here I've built the beginning of a log cabin and formed the letter L.

You can see the scale of the strips and letters from the background cutting mat.

I make my letters relatively small.

These finish at 3  to 3.5 inches.

If you continue all around, you've got yourself an O

If you like a more rounded look,

sew off the corners like a snowball block

and do it again with the background fabric.

This is the basic building block for lots of lower case letters

like c and u and d and b and p and h and q and g

some letters have more angles,

and its easier to slash a square of background material

and insert the letter strips.

This keeps the edges on the straight of grain and easier to work with 

when you join them with other letters.

That little bit on the bottom of  the V gets caught in the seam allowance

Here's an upper case E

And this is what you get when you put it all together.

Sharp eyed readers may notice this is a different V than above.

I made two letter sets and experimented with layout.

I also tweeked the E to get it to the right size.

Once you're happy with the shape and size, sew them together

and add narrow strips or spacers between where necessary

to make sure letters don't run into each other.

Here are both versions with strips sewn around them.

You can see the bottom V turned out just fine.

I know there's lots of ways to make letters,

but the advantage of this one is there's no set size or pattern

and you don't have to tear paper off the back once you're done.

I've written a previous tutorial on how to make letters from strip sets.

You can find that here.

Big time crafting and quilting

14 by 44 inches

machine pieced and quilted with faced binding.

I'm heading out to the Winnipeg Art Gallery later today

to see my quilted banner on display

as part of their annual Crafted Show and Sale.

which runs today and tomorrow.

I made it with a range of hand dyed fabrics,

and the letters are pieced in.

Here you can see them before they were trimmed.

The letters are bigger than I'm used to,

measuring about 12 inches high,

with lots of curved and bias edges.

I quilted in different motifs around each letter

and there's lots of quilting in this one.

This is a juried craft show in the city's biggest art gallery.
The organizers also asked for 40 by 60 inch quilts
 to be donated to the local children's hospital.
This is the back of mine

and this is the front,

now hanging in the soaring entrance in the gallery foyer,

along with 150 others.

I helped hang quilts on Monday morning when the gallery was closed,

and here's a shot of a few of the bigger quilts

hanging from the mezzanine wall.

It's not a great shot, but my mother's donation 

is the one at the far left.

My little word quilt is being held up by a beaver made of bark

and wrapped up in a donated quilt.

It will be the first thing people see when they enter the gallery.

If you're local, head over to the WAG today between noon and 9.

Tomorrow's hours are 11 to 5 p.m.

Linking up with other Friday finishers

Crazy Mom Quilts

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

TGIFF

Big time crafting and quilting

14 by 44 inches

machine pieced and quilted with faced binding.

I'm heading out to the Winnipeg Art Gallery later today

to see my quilted banner on display

as part of their annual Crafted Show and Sale.

which runs today and tomorrow.

I made it with a range of hand dyed fabrics,

and the letters are pieced in.

Here you can see them before they were trimmed.

The letters are bigger than I'm used to,

measuring about 12 inches high,

with lots of curved and bias edges.

I quilted in different motifs around each letter

and there's lots of quilting in this one.

This is a juried craft show in the city's biggest art gallery.
The organizers also asked for 40 by 60 inch quilts
 to be donated to the local children's hospital.
This is the back of mine

and this is the front,

now hanging in the soaring entrance in the gallery foyer,

along with 150 others.

I helped hang quilts on Monday morning when the gallery was closed,

and here's a shot of a few of the bigger quilts

hanging from the mezzanine wall.

It's not a great shot, but my mother's donation 

is the one at the far left.

My little word quilt is being held up by a beaver made of bark

and wrapped up in a donated quilt.

It will be the first thing people see when they enter the gallery.

If you're local, head over to the WAG today between noon and 9.

Tomorrow's hours are 11 to 5 p.m.

Linking up with other Friday finishers

Crazy Mom Quilts

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

TGIFF

The reason I quilt

I had some fun with a pile of 1.5 inch squares 

which were originally intended for a much larger charm quilt. 

I love playing with little bits, but really don't enjoy the fuss of cutting little squares from scraps. 

So I used them in a quilt about why I quilt. 

It measures about 20 by 30 inches and is machine quilted. 

Since this photo, I've ripped out the loopy meandering in the white background 

and replaced it with a small all-over pebbles.

I bordered the word with a green Kona solid, and again with a Kaffe print.

I had a bit of fun with the machine quilting, putting in a needle pulling thread off a spool.

This is also the first time I've experimented with dense quilting around a letter

to make it pop.

What is the reason you quilt? To to touch fabric? 

See designs form under your fingers? To create? To buy more fabric?

This quilt is hanging in the MCC Quilt Show and Sale in Winnipeg, 

which opens today and runs through Sunday.

If you're near here, stop by.

Update: When I stopped in at the show, I overheard a young girl saying

"That quilt says touch but we're not supposed to touch the quilts."

Too funny.

I helped to hang the show yesterday and there's lots of great stuff to see,

as well as lots of goodies in the sale room, including my zippy bags made from upholstery samples.

I'm linking up with other Friday finishers at TGIFF

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Crazy Mom Quilts

It's my party and I'll defy if I want to

Last month when I posted about this quilt,

every one who commented told me the same thing:

it needs more quilting lines.

 

 

I don't disagree, but I defied all of you for one reason:

the minkee stuff on the back made quilting it a huge problem.

It already ripples despite the spray basting,

and it was difficult getting the quilt to move along the machine bed.

 

So I bound it, and I'm calling it finished.

In a perfect world, I would put in more quilting stitches. But this quilt marks the end of a relationship for a friend, who is taking back her family name of "Merry". She has mixed feelings about it all.
Life isn't perfect, and neither is this quilt. Yes, it could be better, but I think it's still a fun, cuddly, and affirming quilt. I know my friend will like it. And I've learned a few lessons too: minkee or fleece isn't the best backing for a quilt that needs heavy quilting, and don't ask a question if you don't want to hear the answer.

And so I defied all of you and didn't quilt it more. But today's my birthday -- so I'm taking to heart the message on the quilt: Be Merry!

I'm not sure it worked

I'm regretting the machine quilting on this project.

I had a vision of all over straight line quilting

so it wouldn't distract from the words,

but I don't think it worked.

What do you think?

I'm going to take it to my guild meeting tonight for in person reviews.

Friday finishes and a winner!

I'm showing off some of my finishes from my quilt retreat last weekend.

I completed the piecing on this throw, measuring 56 by 66,

after starting it at my January retreat.

The words are pieced Kaffe prints in 1 inch squares

and 3 inch squares in the side border.

I'm quilting the whole thing in a three inch grid,

coming off the side border. 

I finished the piecing on Anita's Arrowheads 

a speed piecing technique where you layer two 8 inch squares

and after sewing and cutting and sewing,

come up with one finished 9 inch block.

This one has been a WIP forever,

so I'm happy to have it done.

I also sewed Kaffe scraps into a zippy bag

and practiced freemotioning with my Singer Featherweight 222K.

The hardest part was attaching the hopping foot.

It works much better if the needle is removed

so you don't stab yourself.

Here's the inside -- the pink fabric dyed with the dental revealing tablets.

I realize I forgot to draw a winner.

 for a piece of the pink fabric.

It's comment #9:

QuiltSwissy said...

You are brilliant!!! I would never have thought of the dental things........I wonder how many more things will "horribly stain" my fabrics???

I'm linking up with Amanda and Sarah.

Warm Words

Yesterday I attended the opening of Warm Words,

a quilt exhibit by fellow blogger Joyce Debreuil

in a gallery in Morden, Manitoba, Canada.

Joyce displayed her many words quilts.

There's lots of scrappy and creative goodness there.

No pictures were allowed, but Joyce agreed to pose for me

at the entrance of her display.

You can see more pix on her blog

or go see it in person until the end of May.

Spreading a little love and joy

Two little word banners I made a few months back

are spreading some love and joy

in a nursing home in my city.

The chaplain sent me these photos of the banners (two sides of the same piece)

in place in the chapel area of the multi-purpose room.

And that's not a quilt in the bottom right photo, but a tile mosaic on the wall.

A sparkly and long overdue finish for Friday

Faith Seeking Understanding

free pieced letters

hand quilted and hand beaded, machine quilting

24 by 42 inches

This quote from St. Anselm of Canterbury dates back to medieval times

so I used the idea of an illuminated letter

(large, decorated first letter)

The capital F is hand beaded with seed beads,

outlined with a double line of big stitches

and then again in gold bugle beads.

I also included the English version of the Latin quote

in free motion machine quilting

Here's the back where you can see the density of hand stitching

and the machine handwriting

This quilt also incorporates a huge variety of text prints

in the background and the letters.

Fides quaerens intellectum

which translates to faith seeking understanding.

If you want a more theological understanding, leave me a comment and we'll talk.

I'm linking up to Amanda's last week of Finish Up Fridays

and Sarah's Can I get a whoop whoop?
and Sew Many Ways' Find a Friend Friday