Quilts made from blocks from others

Reading Paula the quilter’s comment on my previous blog post:

That is such a wonderful idea to make a block like that. I suppose if one kept the background the same or similar a whole quilt would be the result. Our guild doesn't do blocks like yours does but cuts simple quilt kits for donations.

reminded me of a really neat setting for blocks that were contributed by many quilters.  If you will go to the Electric Quilt blog
http://www.doyoueq.com/blog/?m=200910 
and scroll down to Oct. 27 you will see the pic of a quilt that was made from blocks from quilters around the world.  Each one of the contributed blocks is certainly made of fabrics that are different from one the other, so there is no way that those blocks would have the same background.  Unless is was quite by accident.

The whole quilt comes together as a planned quilt because of that layout.  My eyes are drawn to the diagonal setting and then I see each individual contributed block.

My block is the first block in the 5th row.  Here’s a photo I took of it

The palm tree is thread-painted on top of appliquéd patches.  The sun is turned under appliqué, hand stitched.  Bottom row of 9patch background is paper-pieced.  9patch background is sewn together with bumpless intersections.

Thread-painted wallhanging

A new year. 364 days left to accomplish many things. Some big. Some small. Resolutions? No. I stopped doing that many years ago. All I do now is make “to do” lists and then try to cross things off my “to do” lists. Yep, I’m a list maker. And a bean counter.

I subscribe to thequiltshow.com. In 2008, they presented an appliqué Block of the Month – “Bouquets for a New Day” designed by Sue Garman. Although I don’t usually do appliqué, I find I am doing more today and then thread-painting parts of it. Something about the August block caught my eye. And I liked that I could incorporate some beading into it. And here’s the finished wallhanging. I love the bright colored flowers and the lime green leaves.

I’ve also made a slideshow with some close-ups of the thread-painting and beading.
http://anotherpat.com/ss08bathwh The appliqué is the raw edge technique. I used basting spray to hold the layers together for quilting and thread- painting. I used cotton batt. For the backing, I used sew-in interfacing. I like to use interfacing for small wallhangings as it adds stability to the piece and I don’t have any stabilizer to remove after thread-painting. If the back looks really bad after all the stitching, I make a “false” back of fabric, sewn in place just before I sew on the binding. I quilt in a few places to hold backing in place. I like to take a pic of the back to record all the stitching before the “false” backing is sewn in place.

I love the bright colors of the fabrics in this wallhanging, especially on that burgundy background!

Wild Roses - I won!

My luck is such that I usually am the one clapping while others are the ones accepting the prizes. Not this time. This time I won! Patchwork Pie just celebrated a one-year anniversary (Congrats Sunnie!) and Sunnie had a drawing with names entered of all who commented on her blog within a time frame.

The little quilt is just gorgeous. That background fabric is perfect for the batik flowers and leaves. The thread painting made it all pop. The centers of the flowers were done with clusters of tied embroidery thread. Nice effect. Binding was handsewn to back. Be sure & click on the image to see an enlarged version.

Close to finishing

I’m thread painting on my current project. Getting close to finishing it and details will be posted then. I’m very happy with it and find myself walking by and admiring it!

I had bought the fabric on 9/25, but with interruptions for moving a couple of websites and creating this blog along with learning the stuff you can do with a blog, I haven’t had the chance to work on it as often as I would have liked to. A couple more Lifetime movies and I should be finished. Except maybe for the beading.