The freedom quilt

I have been working on this mini quilt for months, and finally it is finished and hanging in my living room!

I think I might have shown it to you when it looked like this... but maybe I forgot.  The words are improv pieced (my favourite technique and one I'm teaching tomorrow at the East Midlands Modern Quilt Guild) in shades of blue Kona solids, and the background is scrappy low volume.  

I put a 2" border around it using each of the colours I'd used for the words.  I then auditioned a potential scrappy low-volume border v. a blue binding.  The blue binding won. It was at this stage I realised I'd made the border to the exact size and it would change as I quilted it!  Off it came and a new border went on.  Yes, my pjs have sheep on them.

It was also at this stage that I realised I'd forgotten something rather important....

Credit.  These lyrics are from She Bangs The Drums by The Stone Roses, one of my favourite bands ever.  I embroidered the names of the two co-writers using the fonts on my Janome Atelier 5.

I bound the quilt in a blue Alison Glass print and added hanging corners.  I then got my Dremel out and cut a piece of dowel to size.  It's hanging from some yarn - I need a better solution than that!  I completely forgot to measure it, but from memory of doing the borders, I believe it is 33" wide x 39" long, so bigger than Silent Scream.

I took down Silent Scream from above the mantlepiece and put up The Freedom Quilt in its place.  Silent Scream was how I felt during depression.  My depression lifted shortly after my husband left so this Freedom Quilt is an expression of freedom both from him and from it. 

This seems to be the only close up picture I took to show the quilting and the binding.  I was planning on free-motion quilting it, but I just couldn't decide what I wanted to do, so I had a go at straight line quilting instead and quilted a grid.  It was fairly quick and easy, but I have to say I prefer the look of FMQ.  

I have a confession.  I didn't bury the threads.  In fact, I didn't even cut them off on the back, I just left them there.  This is, after all, a quilt whose back will always be facing a wall!  Don't think I'll be winning any quilting awards any time soon....

Now to decide on my next lyrics as I'll be starting a new quilt tomorrow.

Quilting with words

Last year I made a quilt about my depression called Silent Scream, and started working on a second.  It was a cathartic exercise and made me feel happy whilst I was making them.  Fast forward 6 months or so and I'm feeling good.  The depression is in remission.  My mental health is the best it's been for years.  I'm happy.  Time to make a quilt to express that.

It is now my belief, and that of my family and friends who can't believe the change in me, that my marriage was making a huge contribution to the depression.  Now I'm free.  Now the future is mine.

This is a lyric from She Bangs The Drums by The Stone Roses (if you don't know them, go and have a listen on Spotify, you won't regret it!) and sums up how I feel perfectly.  It is improved pieced using various shades of blue for the words and a low volume scrappy background.

I've also been sewing together scraps of low volume to help make the background around the words.  It's now time to start putting it all together.  I really enjoy this method of patchwork.

This rather blurry photo shows the tools of my trade.  To the left of my sewing machine (I'm left-handed) is my cutting mat with my rotary cutter and my mini iron, essential for flattening all those seams, I'm pressing them open to reduce bulk.  If you haven't tried this technique, I'd urge you to give it a go!

Silent Scream

I've been working on another quilt, a mini this time.  I didn't show you any progress photos as it just kind of happened one day!  I used the book Word Play Quilts by Tonya Ricucci which gives the basic technique of making improv letters.  I thought this would take a long time and thought that I'd try to make a word a week.  

I made all the words in 2 hours and took another 2 hours to put them together into a finished 30 x 30" quilt top.

I have just realised, looking at this picture, that this isn't a picture of the full quilt top!  There is a scrappy aqua border all round it and the name of the songwriter embroidered on a scrap of aqua.  Ah well, never mind!

The song is Broken Strings by James Morrison featuring Nelly Futardo.  I know it's a love song, but to me, this line is about depression.  This is what depression feels like to me.  I've called it silent scream as that phrase also sums up this horrible illness as far as I'm concerned.  Maybe those who have experienced the pain of depression understand what I mean, maybe not as everyone is different.

The background is a mixture of aqua scraps, which didn't start their lives as scraps, I had to hack into FQs as I found a grand total of 10 aqua scraps in my scraps bin!  The words are in various Kona cottons, one colour for each word.

I have since started the quilting by echoing just outside each letter in a variegated aqua/blue thread.  I plan to FMQ the rest, though I'm not sure how, I'm wondering about small spirals.

The backing fabric is a cheap cotton from Fabric land.  I intend this to be hung on the wall.  I may wash it when it's done, but I don't intend to wash it regularly so didn't mind using an inexpensive backing.

I will conquer you Improv...

I've been improving!  OK, so it's a very gentle kind of improving.  Sort of following a tutorial improving.  But improving is improving.  And I'm not talking about improving as in improving, I'm actually saying improving.

This cushion is made following Mod Mosaic, a free tutorial by Oh Fransson!  It's a great wonkilicious tutorial, though I don't do wonk very well, as witnessed by the minimum wonkiness above.

this gigantic cushion was made for Jacob, to go with his quilt, so uses the same Scoot fabrics with white.  I talked about the making of this cushion a few weeks ago, saying I was going to use a 20" cushion insert and wanted it to be snug, so had sewn it to 21".  Good job I did, when I went to buy the insert, I discovered The Range doesn't sell 20" ones, I had to go for a 22" instead.

I hand quilting inside each piece with Perle 8, wonkily and improvly.

and backed it with whatever I had to hand!  Slight miscalculation on the backing front - the whiter fabric was supposed to go over the zig-zag fabric.  I can't think in 3d.

purple improv

This month's colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is purple.  On Easter Monday I thought it was about time I got these done and dusted.

Out came the purple scrap bag, out came the tablet with 24 (I'm on episode 17!  Only 7 more, and then another 6 series to go!!), and on went the sewing machine.

I made wonky improv log cabins.  I forgot they were wonky at times, as you can see.  I just used whatever was at hand and which fit, no thought for value or design or anything.  Yeah, that's how I roll!  (It's called laziness in case you're wondering)

They all ended up 8.5" square.

I added borders either side, borders top and bottom and at each edge to make them up to a panel of 13" x 33".  These babies are set to be my next scrap bucket.

I did get a bit further than this, I quilted, cut to size and interfaced before sewing the shell up, but forgot to take photos as I was more interested in why Terry had amnesia...

Then I had to stop.  I was painting the kitchen at the weekend and Mr CA came home with more paint... damn!