Here is a beautiful detail from Gloria McKeehan’s miniature quilt which took first place at the recent Miniature Quilt Lovers Guild show. She brought a lovely selection of her own miniature quilts as well as those of her fellow guild members to the October Moonlighters‘ meeting for a miniature quilt trunk show. I love how the sashiko sets off the appliqué just perfectly.
For those of you attending the IQA Quilt Festival this week, be sure to look for Gloria’s prize winning (and very large, not miniature at all) quilt in the World of Beauty exhibit.
The Freehand Quilting workshop with Joe Cunningham was a blast. Redlands Unified School District was out for the week because of the wildfires, so Annika joined in the fun. Here she is with Joe and the kitty she worked on.
And a closer view of her and her fine work. She really enjoyed being a part of the class.
Finally my practice sandwich. This is a sampling of designs you can quilt freehand by hand (no marking!). There is an excess of hanging threads because we had to keep moving on to the next pattern so we could try them all in one day. We also used a thread twice as long as usual so you can start quilting from one end to the middle and then quilt from the other end when you’re done. GREAT TIP! That way you don’t have to knot at the beginning. We learned a great technique for ending the thread without knots as well.
I enjoyed doing the feather most of all. I’m imagining all sorts of fanciful feathers I’d love to try my hand at quilting. Perhaps I’ll bring a sketchbook along on the flight to Houston and see what they look like out of my head and onto the paper so I can see what sort of spaces they might fill.
The next day Joe gave a wonderfully amusing lecture and trunk show. Go to Joe’s website for links to some video highlights of his presentation at our guild. Check out the gallery as well to see photos of his latest quilts (they’re great in person, but nice in pictures as well).
Stay tuned for Houston highlights this weekend!
That sashiko is interesting, haven’t seen it on a miniature before. I love miniature quilts myself and am always wondering what the measurements are when I see photos.
Lucky you, actually going to Houston! I hope to someday but at least this year I can watch on their webcam. It’s on this site. http://www.quilts.com/home/ Just click on the ruby shoes. No affliation, just thought I’d share.
I think there is a definite place for hand quilting in the art quilt world, especially the large stitches like in Gloria McKeehan’s piece. I love big, evident swirling stitches, and they are easier to do by hand than by machine. I want to learn to do them too.
I can’t remember the exact dimensions of Gloria’s quilt. I think it may have been about 20 inches across.
When doing the large stitches on a quilt you want to enter in a show, you might want to also include little stitches to fill in the empty spaces. I did only big stitch hand quilting on my Zephy quilt and one of judge’s “needs improvement” comments was that I should have done more quilting.
There was a gorgeous applique quilt at Houston with large flowers outlined in sashiko. I’m flying home this afternoon and will post photos later this week. For some reason I can’t get into Blogger from my hotel room.
I’m sooo jealous of you. Not only did you get to go to Houston, but taking a class with Joe C.? And all those marvelous beads too. yummy.