Tag: Tests

Fabric Painting

After the CQFA Steering Committee meeting at KAM’s house, we did fabric painting. KAM organized the whole thing and it was a nice ending to the meeting.

This is my first attempt:
After my first attempt, we watched a five (or so) minute segment of Simply Quilts. It was good to watch after, because I wasn’t too influenced by the demonstrator.

Here is the piece that I finished after we watched the segment.

One thing I got out of the segment is that simple shapes seem to be better, so I worked on this one:

My final piece is the best one IMO.

It was GREAT not to have to do any organization for the project but to just start painting on fabric. KAM was so generous with her paint, fabric, etc. It was wonderful. As you may know, I am not a big fan of messy work. I did enjoy doing this project as I could just play and not worry about making a masterpiece.

I plan to try the presentor’s idea of doing some curved strip piecing through the middle of my piece. I don’t want to make these the center of a piece. I just don’t think they could stand up to the scrutiny.

DCM and I discussed not having enough time to just play and wreck fabric pieces. We are both having a hard time getting over the feeling that each piece we make must be perfect.

A topic for another day….

Kansas City Star Blocks

Several years ago I bought a book from the Central Oklahoma Quilters Guild. It is volume three of a multi-volume set of Kansas City Star blocks. I looked through it recently and was reminded that the blocks make me drool with possibilities. Of course, the blocks would have to be redrafted for piecing. I have to say that the women who made some of the blocks when the blocks were first published were no sewing wimps. Many of the blocks have inset seams, irregular shapes, very thin triangles, etc. In that vein, I began thinking about the newspaper clipping of a Laura Wheeler block (newspaper clipping) and tried to remake it.

Snowball Wreath Pattern
Snowball Wreath Pattern

I didn’t use the templates given in the newspaper clipping, because I only had a picture of the newspaper clipping and not the original clipping. Also, the shapes of the pieces were crazy – at least for my level of skill in piecing! I am pleased with the way my block came out, even though I used different techniques (piecing combined with applique’ than the original block.

Snowball Wreath by Jaye
Snowball Wreath by Jaye

I would like to try again different ways, using different fabrics. I don’t think I got the spacing quite right. There is something not quite right about the newspaper clipping when compared with the actual fabric sample I made. I don’t think it is an easy task to look at a picture of a newspaper clipping and then create it in fabric, but it was a puzzle that I couldn’t put away.

I feel the same way about some of the Kansas City Star blocks. It would be a great project to try and remake them all. What a lot of blocks that would be. Some of them would be fine, but some would be quite challenging.