Tuesday, January 17, 2017

“Nice Cup o’ Tea’ by Jen

Here's my entry for Project QUILTING challenge 2.   I call it "Nice cup o' tea" because when the challenge was announced, I was disappointed and thought about not participating because the block was really not my cup of tea.   

So, I started to do some research about the plant.  I learned that they grow in shade or part shade in the forests of the South and Eastern United States.   I pondered doing a landscape quilt, but thought that this was a great excuse to try an applique technique just focusing on the blooms.   

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So, looking at the traditional block, the bloom was 4 diamonds and a triangle.   I added some fusible web to the back of a number of my hand-dyed fabrics and ran them through my Accuquilt GO on the 2.5 inch strip cutter, then turned them and sent them through again to get the diamonds.  I laid them out and determined how big the triangles needed to be and cut those out.  

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I was limited by the green hand-dyed fabric - out of the fat quarter that I had I was only able to get 20 triangles, so that was how many flowers I put on the quilt.  I auditioned different layouts and enjoyed the motion of this spiral. 

IMG_1242I fused them into place and then used a 2.5 mm blanket stitch with yellow thread around all 100 of the applique pieces.  It got to 10 pm on Sunday and I was just over half-way through them, but I decided to take a break to sleep.    Here's a photo of my cat Richard Parker inspecting the applique from the back of the top on Tuesday Morning. IMG_2200

I used just over one large spool of Aurifil 2892 Pine to stipple the background around the blocks, ghosting in one block in each corner of the quilt the quilting took about 5 hours.    Following this, I used the scraps of the 108" Kona Cotton Black fabric that was the top of the quilt to bind with small accents of the yellow and orange hand-dyed fabric to set off the binding.   It finished at 88" x 90."   I created it in Madison, WI  USA.

--Jen

~~~

Accuquilt

15 comments:

  1. Richard Parker! A favorite book....
    Your quilt is gorgeous!

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    1. Thanks, Sue! Glad you caught the reference ;)

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  2. Fantastic! And it's done! Seeing the picture with the cat added scale, before that i thought it was a mini quilt!

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    1. I'm glad my fuzzy friend could help out :) I generally don't like to cut my hand dyed fabric too small, it looses the impact.

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  3. Great quilt! And I just have to say that your cat is absolutely gorgeous!

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    1. Thanks Linda - He's an F2 Savannah - they are like little dogs in temperament which is really fun I had to play fetch with him the whole time I was fusing those down, as he just wanted to help.

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  4. Gorgeous! Love the layout and the colors of your hand dyed fabrics! I too, originally thought your quilt was much smaller!

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  5. I love the colours and layout of geese like lilies. Black background is nice too!

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  6. The movement and color of your quilt is very pleasing. I'm glad you took the challenge. I've been thinking about an Accuquil so enjoyed seeing how you used it.

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  7. Great quilt! I love how you've set your lilies. And the pops of color in your binding are lovely.

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  8. Great fabrics/colors and design...it just glows!

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  9. I love it! And of course I love your cat. What a funny name :)

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  10. Your spiral is fabulous!! Love the movement it gives the quilt and your hand-dyed fabrics just take it right over the top!!! Adding the color scraps to the binding is the cherry on top of a totally awesome quilt!

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