Paper Piecing WIP - Great Balls of Fire!

This paper pieced quilt top isn't finished, but I wanted to share it.  I haven't done paper piecing in a while, and really enjoy it, even though it's "messy" -- lots of little pieces of paper and fabric!

The Great Balls of Fire quilt pattern was featured in Quiltmaker Magazine issue #129 way back in 2009, but I found the free block patterns online, and then ended up getting the old issue to get all of the instructions. The design has a subtle circular pattern that I really liked.  Can you see it in the blue?

The quit in the pattern is green red, tan and orange, but I wanted to do more "beach" colors, so I used shades of green, blue and tan.  OOPS!  I didn't realize that the blues and greens were too much the same value until I had made several blocks, and didn't want to stop and start over!

So I got creative!  I used fabric paint to shade some of the blue pieces darker (I may add some more dark blue like the center).  To bring out the circular blue design, I plan to use thread painting and quilting. The green border was pieced, don't know why that wasn't paper pieced also, but worked out..

The quilt is about 50" x 50", and I'm thinking of adding a border to make it larger.  I thought maybe it would help the blue design show up more.

What do you think of the blue fabric on the left as a border?  Too blue?

I'll definitely post more when I get this one done!

Mary

Wedding Quilt Designed from Wedding Invitation

A lovely lady in Canada, Megan Seiler,  asked me to make a wedding quilt for her friends, using their wedding invitation design in the quilt.  This was a great design opportunity, and was a lot of fun!

Using the EQ5 software, I designed the quilt, then printed it out and got out the pencil!!  Lots of hearts and feathers, and the bride and groom's names and the wedding date.

After customer approval, I got started.  The central panel was painted with acrylic paints mixed with textile medium.  Then I thread painted over those areas.

The rest of the top was sewn together, loaded onto my frame, and I started quilting!  I used coordinating thread for each section.

Most of the quilting was some form of hearts and feathers, but the grey borders were done in a spiral fill, with some pebbles in the outer border.  I felt this changed up the design from just feathers, and made it a little more contemporary/modern..

Top 2/3 of quilt

The blue borders were a design similar to the motif in the center panel, and in the outer blue border, I painted and thread painted again.  

Bottom 2/3 of quilt

Did you notice that there are more borders than there were in my original design?  I realized as I started making the quilt that the center panel was too big, and I made it smaller and added a couple of borders.  I like it much better now, it seems more in proportion.  The finished quilt is 83 x 93 - queen sized. Because it was a large quilt, it was hard to get a good picture of the entire quilt hanging straight!  Here's one that was only cropped a little :)

Feel free to take a look at the wedding gift quilts and wedding dress quilts in the Custom/Wedding page of my web site  MaryMansonQuilts.com (if you need further information, there is a contact page on my web site, or leave a comment here).

Mary

Paisley Flowers - My Favorite Quilts

It occurred to me today that I've talked a lot about my studio, and have a gallery of quilts, and I've blogged about my quilts for 2012, but I haven't talked about my individual quilts.

Paisley Flowers was an fun quilt for me, because I was able to do some thread painting and fabric painting on it as well as applique and patchwork. The queen size quilt was a gift for my father.

The center and corner motifs were needle turn applique, adapted from a pattern in the book Art Noveau Quilts by Bea Oglesby.  I followed the pattern for the center, but adapted it to fit two of the corners.

For the borders, I used some pretty floral material in my stash.  The inside borders aren't all the same shape and color, which I found interesting and different.

Then, I thread painted the other two corners with colored thread. Just to add some contrast, I also did a little fabric painting on the flowers.  The quilt was machine quilted with a looping design..

I hope you enjoy seeing my quilt and hearing about it, hopefully it will give you some ideas you can use!

Mary