North Cities Quilt Guild of Orange County

Last month I was pleased to do a program and a workshop on Tile Quilts at the North Cities guild in Placentia in southern California.  What a great group!  I was also happy that I had my advance copy of our new book to show them as well as some of the quilts from the book.
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Books should be in your quilt shops soon!  More on the book next time. This is about North Cities and the wonderful blocks from their workshop.

This first block was designed and drawn in class.  It's a snake, all in Australian fabrics.

And here is another block designed as a variation on the All in a Dream quilt in our Tile Quilt Revival book.

And here are the Lotus blocks.

 And the Starry Orange Peel blocks.

 As usual, all very different and all fabulous!  I know they will all be wonderful when the "grout" is revealed and the stitching is complete.

Thanks for a great day!

Not a Tile Quilt

 Mystic Koi Pond

But it does have a tile quilt connection.

When our book, Tile Quilt Revival, was published in 2010, all the new quilts from the book were on exhibit at the Road to California quilt show in Ontario, California, thanks to our friend, Stevii.  (Thanks again, Stevii!)  Carol and I had a great time sitting in the middle of the exhibit talking to people and autographing books.  Our first Meet the Authors experience!  Here are some pictures of that exhibit.

But, back to Mystic Koi Pond, while there and shopping around a bit we spotted a gorgeous fabric with big beautiful Koi fish from Japan.  We were really drooling when the fabric was spread out on the cutting table.  It was a little pricey, but we finished off the bolt, which was only about a yard, and split it up between us.  So, that is the tile quilt connection!

This year at our annual quilt retreat in January, I decided that it was finally time to do something with the fish.  I was pretty nervous about it all but I designed an 8-inch block and took along a collection of batiks.  I was amazed when my plan actually seemed to work!  I did have some excellent guidance from the other participants in our sewing room (named "Fat Quarters") and I moved the blocks around so that the light ran across the quilt on the diagonal rather than in the center as I originally planned.  I liked the quilt so far.  If the fish didn't work, I'd still have a quilt I liked.  But, now to see if the fish would actually work on top of this pond I had made for them.  I was even more nervous when I cut out the first fish and placed it on the background.  Miraculously, it worked!  So, I cut out the rest of the fish and hand appliqued them in place, swimming around in their own mystic pond.  There were three single fish and two pairs.

 I didn't actually finish the applique until later and then I sent it to Shirley G. for her machine quilting expertise.  She quilted concentric circles all over the quilt, as if someone had just tossed a handful of pebbles (or fish food!) in the water.  And now I finally got the binding on and it is finished.  It's about 48'' square.

Here's a couple closeups.

 Carol's fish are still looking for a place to swim.  ( No pressure, my friend!)

Mount Tam Quilt Guild

On Saturday, 6/16,  I was on top of a hill in San Rafael at the Mt. Tam Quilt Guild.  The views were lovely which can't be said for the 100 degree temperature!  But we persevered to have some fun and produce some great tile quilt blocks.

I didn't get photos for all the blocks for various reasons but here are a few.  The first two are fantastic Starry Orange Peel blocks.

 And here are some equally fantastic Lotus blocks.

The following two blocks, one Lotus and one Starry Orange Peel were made by two students who sat next to each other and just happened to bring the same focus fabric to work with.  Notice the big red and blue flower in each block.

 

 This student finished her block because she brought her machine and used machine applique technique rather than the needle-turn hand applique that I teach.  She, as did the student above, chose not to include the four corner pieces of the block which allows the circles to "float" on the background fabric. I love the Kaffe Fassett stripes.

And this student went to town and designed four blocks which will become place mats.  She used a different pattern from the Lotus quilt.  A table runner is in the plans also.

And this student designed her own block.  Between the center and the corner pieces, she plans to use the antique method of making tile quilts by appliqueing randomly-shaped pieces of fabric and leaving "grout" around each piece.  This is not the method that Carol and I use to make Tile Quilt blocks so it will be interesting to see how this works.  She was inspired by my lecture on antique Tile Quilts on Monday evening and the antique tile quilt that I showed.

 

 

There was another student who designed her own block after a watercolor painting she had done of Iris.  It was not far enough along to photograph but I'm sure will be fantastic when finished.  

 All in all a great day but some time in the afternoon when the heat was getting pretty oppressive (the church hall where we were was not air conditioned) and someone announced that they were leaving to go swimming, it must have sounded like a good idea as the class started to dwindle!

Fun at Moonlight Quilters

Last week I was in Santa Rosa at the Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County.

Before my lecture, I was so excited to see some antique tile quilt blocks.  Laura Bernstein is the lucky owner of this batch of blocks which also includes borders.  The blocks and borders are not finished blocks but all of the "tiles" have been selected and have been thread basted in place, waiting to be appliqued and turned into a quilt.  It was fascinating to see these blocks.  For the record, we have only been able to document about 25 actual antique tile quilts so to see these blocks was amazing.  Laura purchased the blocks from a dealer so unfortunately not much information is available as to their origin.  The fabrics in the "tiles" are obviously from the late 19th century which ties in to the timeframe for this style of quilt which is last third of the 19th century.

Laura was kind enough to allow me to take these quilts with me overnight so that I could photograph them.  I was staying with Judy Matheson and the next day we put them up on Judy's design wall.

 The blocks are mostly random shapes.  I didn't try to put them up in any sort of order, just to get an idea of what was there.  Some have a circle or square at the center.  And this isn't all of the blocks -- there are more.  I love the dabs of cheddar in the borders.

Here's a few of the blocks including a close up of the basting on the first one.

 

Judy, thanks for asking Laura to bring her blocks for me to see!

And then on Saturday came the Workshop with some of the Moonlight Quilters with all the wonderful fabric selections and designs.

This block is was drawn in class from the Macintosh Rose quilt in the gallery of Tile Quilt Revival.

 Great work everyone!

Nite Owl Quilters

I had a great time in Rancho Cucamonga last week at the Nite Owl Quilters Guild.

 Before I gave my lecture on Tile Quilts, Jan Raymond came up to show me her fabulous version of the Lotus quilt from our book. Here is the quilt and a picture of Jan looking proud -- as she should!

 

 

And, at the workshop on Saturday, Kerri showed me a beautiful Crazy Quilt she made.  There is a theory that the original antique tile quilts from the late 19th century were a precursor of the Crazy Quilt style.  Kerri thinks this is the case.  I say could be, could not be.  We'll never really know but it's fun to think about.   Here is Kerri and her beautiful quilt.  She incorporated some antique ribbons, images of some antique cards she had transferred to cloth, her own hand-dyed fabrics and her fancy decorative stitching, which was amazing.

 

And in the workshop we had a wonderful array of fabrics and choice of blocks including an original design.  I always love to see stars!  Again, you have to imagine the "grout" between the pieces with the exception of the second block.

Here are blocks from Lotus.

This block was fused and will be machine buttonhole stitched around the edges of the pieces so you get to see how it looks with the "grout" spaces.

And, finally, some Orange Peel blocks from Starry Orange Peel.