Sick and some older stuff

Sinus infections are no fun, particularly when they interfere with quilting, & teaching quilting! The beginner quilting class start had to be pushed back one week & then had to reschedule the 2nd week of advanced machine quilting. This was not fun. I don’t get sick often but when I do I tend to get hit pretty hard. Thankfully the antibiotics have kicked in and my sinuses are clearing up.

The photo to the right is from a demonstration I did about a year ago for the Village Squares Quilters. Gina Perkes was on The Quilt Show demonstrating this background filler technique on her long arm. Gina used a grid with angled lines similar to the picture below where I used squared lines.

Mary Anne Ciccotelli pointed out that this technique can be done with triangles, diamonds, hexagons…anything that has straight lines. When I prepared the demonstration I had a grid with a feather in the center with a variety of angles so that the guild members could see how this technique can be used in a variety of ways.

One thing I really like about this technique is that it’s rather meditative and keeps the mind actively thinking while quilting. While this is done with a 1″ grid the technique can be used on any quilt that has straight lines – 9 patches, 4 patches etc with great effectiveness and the quilt would not need to be marked.

I can see this as a hand quilting technique as well, in the background of a great appliqué piece. The trick to this would be to think of the curved lines as straight lines and stitch each one individually.

To further enhance the quilting the grid can be stitched as well, perhaps in a different color. What brought this to mind this morning is the advanced machine quilting class. Looking at the forecast for this week it’s entirely possible we won’t have class due to a snow storm. I’ll keep an eye on this today & tomorrow to see what actually develops. If we don’t have class I’ll be assigning more home work.

Before getting sick I’d started playing with an idea for a new quilt – a New York Beauty. I’ve decided that eventually I’m giving this one away (this is before I quilted it) and want a new quilt that I can teach from. When I have a beginner class or teach paper piecing I bring this in.

There’s a new fabric line that I really like and am going to start pairing and piecing as soon as I can. I’ll use 2 of the fabrics as background and see what develops as I go along.

I posted last week that the Village Squares Quilters have quilts on display at Arts Westchester in White Plains, NY “It’s Bigger than I Thought” is on display there!

This is the quilt that Howdy pieced and I quilted as part of a challenge among a group of friends from the old Alex Anderson message board.