Marsha Made a Kawandi Style Quilt!

Marsha here.  I was reviewing our quilt blog a couple weeks ago, and was reading Jane's January Tutorial from January 15, 2024.  I decided to give it a try.  C's friend, D-F, gave her a piece of fabric that she found at the ReUse Market in Garden City.  C gave it to me, so I decided to use it in a Kawandi style quilt.  

It is not humongous, however, I learned a lot from making it.  It is nicely bright and will look amazing on the wall in my room.  The oversized plaid sort of fabric, in all four corners, and here and there throughout, is the fabric from D-F.  It and the grunge yellow polka dot really make it Springy!

Kirsten's Adventure, Part 1

I went with C to Fort Walton Beach, Florida, to visit M.  She was retiring from the Air Force.  We helped M get some of her household stuff boxed up and helped clean the house after the movers came and took all her stuff away.  She kept back a few things that she packed in the back of her pick-up and in the trunk of her car.  On February 26 we left FWB and drove to Mobile, Alabama, where we stopped to see the USS United States of America.  

They are getting her ready to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to make a coral reef.  You can see her smokestacks have been removed. She is a sad sight, yet magnificent still.  

We headed from Mobile, C and I in the car, and M in her pick-up, up the highway to Laurel, Mississippi.  

There was a SAQA art exhibit on display at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.  The museum was really big.  You would not know it by looking at the front of it.  It has many large rooms with all kinds of art, including baskets and quilts.  The quilt exhibit was part of an exhibit called Art Evolved: Intertwined.

This photo is of my favorite art quilt in the exhibit.  It is by Valerie Maser-Flanagan, of Massachusetts, USA.  We lost track of time, and the museum people lost track of us!!  We had come back upstairs from the quilt exhibit and were heading down the main hall to the front of the museum, when we surprised the security man.  He was starting to lock up, and did not know we were still in the building.  I call that a close escape!

The weather was beautiful and so was the small town of Laurel.  

This house is my favorite.  It is located directly across the street from the Grandiflora Bed and Breakfast, where we stayed.  We had the most relaxing time, for our very first day on the road.

This is the staircase that leads down from our room (or up to our room!)  The people were so friendly.  It felt like you were staying with friends!  Amazing!

Here I am, relaxing at the end of the day, on an antique bed.  Smile.  This adventure is going to take several posts, I believe.

Collaborative Quilt Top

In January we posted about the mess on the design wall.  Astrid and Jane have collaborated to make a quilt top out of all those scraps.  Some were orphan blocks, such as square-in-a-square, nine-patch, and pin wheel.  We even have some left over.

This is Astrid and Jane's quilt top.  They are now working on cutting out the backing piece and then Jane will quilt it.  It will take a little while to get those tasks done.

Meanwhile, we have big news.  Kirsten went on a trip with C, to Fort Walton Beach, Florida.  Kirsten's very good friend, M, retired from the Air Force in February.  Kirsten and C drove M's car from FWB to Glendale, Arizona.  M drove her pick-up.  They had great adventures and now Kirsten is moving in with M, in Arizona.  She promised to tell us all about their road trip adventures, soon.

More About "Road"

 

We met a lot of people, including Ann, at Kismet.  This is me in front of Ann's beautiful Kantha quilts.  She has the same taste in fabrics that I do!

I ran out of space on my previous post, because there was just so much excitement and so many photos and so much to talk about!

The lighting on C's entry was way too bright, and it washed out the colors, so this photo is not doing it justice.  To see all the little details, click on the photo below.

Wouldn't it be fun if we could all come next year?

Edna Goes to Road to California!

Edna here.  As you may know, I live in Northern California.  I visit my quilt posse in Idaho a couple of times a year.  Our friend, C, is a mad quilter.  She has only attended local quilt shows and the one in Sisters, which is fairly close.  She submitted an art quilt piece to 'Road to California', and it was accepted.  This is a big show in Ontario, Calif.  She decided to go to the show, so I met her there and we had so much fun!

We were there for a few days and took a couple classes.   Following are photos we took at the show.

This is the huge corridor outside the gigantic rooms that have the vendors and the quilt show.  Vendors in one big room, quilt show in the other, plus more quilts hung everywhere.  Lots of local quilt groups have their own displays, which are amazing.

Examples are Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association, Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild, So Cal/So Nev Regional SAQA group, and Glendale Quilt Guild.  I have no idea whose quilts are hanging from the ceiling.

A favorite by someone in the Glendale Quilt Guild.

This is at the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Assoc, 50th Anniversary Challenge.  All the quilts were golden yellow.

This was my favorite golden yellow quilt.

This is a Round Robin quilt made by nine quilters, each adding a border around the previous quilter's creation.  It was a challenge by the Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild.

It is one of my favs, so C snapped a photo of me and this amazing quilt!

There was a marvelous display by the So Calif/So Nevada SAQA Region, of quilts they created as inspired by their favorite artists, such as Jackson Pollack, Georgia O'Keefe, Pablo Picasso, Kehende Wiley, Anne Bellas, and others.  A couple of my favs:  above Jackson Pollack; below: Anne Bellas

And so many other amazing pieces in the show:

This one looks amazing!

It looks more amazing with me posing in front of it!

Carlton Brown is one of my favorite abstract art quilters.  I was so pleased to see one of his creations up close and personal.

I really like this quilt of protest.  Things are so crazy in our country right now.  Even though the quilts in this exhibit were mostly done in 2017, it speaks extremely well to what is happening right now.

To enlarge, click on the photo.  Then you can read the words on this flag quilt. Or look at all the photos close-up!

Yes, this is a lengthy blog post.  SO MANY AMAZING QUILTS AND THINGS!!!      We also walked between the show and the hotel and to a restaurant or two.

Oh!  There were also exhibits in the section with the vendors, and they included a SAQA Display of Primal Forces: Wind        Over-the-top!  I will let C post all those on her quilting blog, but here is one:

Then, there was the Cherrywood Challenge:  The Abyss

There are 12 quilts in this photo.  There were probably over 100 on display.  

This was the last day of the show.  We were getting ready to walk back to the hotel.  It was so much fun!  We met so many friendly people like Cindy and Ann!

Jane's January Tutorial!

 

This is my annual quilting tutorial.  I hope you will take a little time, out of your day, and try to make some fabric units.  It is pretty simple.  This year I am teaching how to use solid colors in small units, which get joined together to make bigger units, and finally an entire quilt top!  It is so fun and amazing!

Someone just pointed out that this is another improvisational quilt method.  True!  I can't seem to get enough of that.

We start by piecing some scrap fabric pieces together:

Remember, to see the photos closer, just click on the photos and they will enlarge.

These are my starting pieces.  Just chain-piece some little pieces of fabric to each other. Do it until you grow each piece to a desired size.  I think 5" or 6" is good.  It is up to you and depends on how big your fabric scraps are (you can cut them smaller).  Let them be not exactly square for now.  Following is an example of how to add thin wavey/irregular strips to your creation.

And add all around to grow each "unit."  You can do this until you are satisfied with the size (and how cool it looks!).  

Place your completed units on a design wall or arrange them on a flat surface.  Move them around until you are happy with the composition.  Twist them and turn them.  Then decide what else you need to add.  Maybe add a couple more units or grow a couple that are already on there.

I thought I wanted all mine together, so I placed them with edges touching, and I decided I preferred it with white spaces in between.  I spread them out again and added a couple more units and started trimming them to go with each other.  It is like a mosaic!

I placed my units in rows, so had to add a little to a couple to make them longer.  I added a little wonky tree unit.  I started sewing white fabric to my units and then sewed them together into sections, then I sewed the sections to each other.

You will have to think strategically, if you have many angled pieces.  Go for it.

This is after all the white has been added, even on the edges.  This is my quilt top.  You could decide to add another border or just more white space around all those solids.  

Next you make a backing that is larger than the quilt top, and some batting, and do the quilting.  After that you have to decide on the binding color.  Below is a photo of my finished "Solid Magic" quilt.

The hard part was deciding which color of binding to put on.  I think the blue is great and I am happy with the results.  Thank-you for following along on Jane's January Tutorial.

To see another amazing quilt grown with solid-colored fabrics, check out the one MARSHA did last fall.