MQX Quilt Festival - New England 2013

I had the opportunity to teach at the MQX Quilt Festival - New England 2013 in Manchester, NH.  There was a lot of great energy at the conference and the students in all of my classes were great.  

As a faculty member I was asked to award a "Faculty Ribbon" to one of the quilts in the show.  There were a lot of wonderful quilts that were entered but one of them popped out of the crowd.  That one is Roy G. Biv's Dresden by Maddie Kertay of Chattanooga, TN.   

This is what she said about the quilt on the card that accompanied the quilt in the show:

• Roy G. Biv is a love story ... one created from whole cloth, colored thread and inktense pencil work. A freehand flight of fancy straight from the fanciful core of my brain 100% hand-guided machine quilting. 

It is a whole cloth quilt (white fabric on the front, black on the back).  Various colored threads were used to create the complex design.  

Everywhere you looked there seemed to be something else to draw you into the design. 

I asked Maddie a few questions about her the quilt.  It is always interesting to see how other people create.   Check out more of Maddie's work at Bad Ass Quilters Society.

How did you come up with the idea for this quilt?

• Roy started as a doodle in my design note book.  I have always been an ADD girl so doodling helps me concentrate when listening.

Did you sketch out all of the quilting designs before you started - or did it evolve as you went along?

• I marked the center and bisecting lines on the fabric before putting it on the machine but after that I was flying by the seat of my pants. The more I doodled with thread the more I thought of my life .... my luck in having an amazing husband .... Out of there grew the tree with the initials and the hearts for each of our six kids.  The dove has to do with the loss of our son Gabriel and a story that goes with that. But over all this a quilt of joy and a celebration of thread on fabric and what it can do

How did (if you did) mark the design on the quilt.

• I used blue pen for the few bisecting lines...nothing more ... thus the "was she dropping acid when she quilted that"  comment I once heard!

How long did it take to quilt the quilt?

• There are about 30 hours of quilting in the top.

What type(s) of thread did you use?

• The top was a celebration of thread. I used Glide and Magna Glide bobbins.

What kind of longarm machine did you quilt it on?

• HQ Avante 18.

How long have you been longarm quilting?

• I got my machine knowing nothing 3 years ago and had no lessons. I was a lucky girl to by an HQ Story girl just weeks after getting my machine.

      (Here is Maddie's - MY HQ STORY)

Is there anything else you want to say about the quilt or your approach to quilting in general?

• My quilting is about expression not perfection. I think that there is room for many different ways to think about quilting. Mind you some of these do not gel all that well with the quilt-show establishment!

I hope you have enjoyed this little journey into the creation of Roy G. Biv's Dresden.

Where does the idea come from?

People ask me about where do I get my ideas for quilts.  Most of the time they just seem to grow out of the process of working with the fabric or playing around with a particular block.  But, there are those occasions where a trip to an art gallery, or something I see in architecture, or in a magazine trips a switch in my brain and it starts percolating - unfortunately, that happens when I am asleep.  A good night means I wake up in the morning and while drinking my coffee I get some ideas and a sketch them out or jot down ideas, on a bad night it means I wake up in the middle of the night (3 or 4 am)with a great idea and need to put it down on paper before I loose it.

Well, one of those middle of the night "wake up and jot it down" experiences happened during the Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts that took place in New York City in March of 2011. The American Folk Art Museum presented 650 Red and White quilts from the collection of Joanna Rose.  I was there when the doors opened and spent most (if not all of the first day) staring at the quilts in amazement. It was like coming downstairs on Christmas and finding more presents than you ever imagined possible!

What the room looked like when they opened the doors for the opening of the show

A shot looking through the quilts as they were hung in the room.

In looking at the quilts I was struck by their complexity, yet simplicity.  Sometimes the simplicity of a single block repeated in only red and white made a very complex design. I went back several days in a row for several hours each day.

I was drawn to some quilts that were made with Drunkard Path blocks - and was asking myself what else could you do to a Drunkard Path block - what could be added, or changed, or ????? that would create some variation.

Well I woke up at 3 am one night and sketched out this block and quilt pattern - I called it "Infinite Possibilities" because of all the wonderful options that exist for fun designs.  My original design and quilt now graces the pages of the 2013 March/April issue of McCall's Quilting.

The quilt is approximately 90" x 90" - McCall's is offering a free downloadable lap size version of the quilt. I used Michael Miller Cotton Couture Cranberry and Bright White for the fabric.

The Red and White show IS still a Christmas Gift that keeps on giving!

So, where do you get your design ideas?  And do you also wake up in the middle of the night with an idea?  Keep looking around and keep asking,

"What would happen if I ........."

Appliqué - Hand or Machine????

So, do you do appliqué??  If you do - great - if not why not?  I have always like what you could do with appliqué but always thought - too much work. Takes too long.

Well, hand appliqué can take a bit of time - but I made this quilt and it was done with hand appliqué
It was featured in the July/August 2012 McCall's Quilting magazine (and even made the cover!).

While it did take a bit of time - some careful preparation of the pieces made it a breeze - and you know I actually enjoyed doing the hand work.  Yes, it made me slow down (that can be a good thing for all of us) - I also found it very relaxing.  So, if you haven't tried it - why not give it a try.

OK - so - not convinced yet -  try machine appliqué.  Yes there is some preparation involved here also (cutting out the fusible web, fusing the pieces to the background, etc.... but then you can have loads of fun playing around with all those fun stitches that are on your sewing machine (and you most likely never use) and also delving into all those fun threads you bought because you thought you might need them sometime or that they would just look nice added to your thread collection.

Here is a version of the block done by machine appliqué

Here are a few close-ups of the block. Yes - the stitching around the center circle is really a stitch on my machine!

And another reason to try appliqué  - you have all that fun empty background space to play around with doing some fun free motion quilting. I did this quilting on my HQ 16.

A great resource book for machine appliqué is this book by Sue Nickels

If you are in the New York City area - stop by The City Quilter to see the finished small wall hanging.  I will be teaching a class in machine appliqué there in October. (October 8, 11, and November 5 from either 12-2pm or 6-8pm.) We will be using Sue's book for the class.  Hope you get a chance to see the quilt - and hope to see you in class!