The Modern Quilt Guild

Next up during Week of Solids, we have Shea Henderson’s lovely lively log cabin block quilt.

The handful of charms that didn’t make the warm/cool color blocks on the front of the quilt were used in a tiny row of 1″ squares on the back of the quilt– it is one of my favorite parts of the quilt! Piecing improvisationally does not come naturally to me, so this quilt was a fun break from my usual piecing methods. This quilt was also my first attempt at quilting on a long arm machine. I LOVED that!

What do you love most about using all solids?
There are so many things I love about using solids! My shelves are primarily full of shot cottons, cross weaves and solids. I often have specific colors and shades in mind for a quilt and with the amazing options out there now, finding just the shade I’m imagining is easy. In addition to being easy on the fabric budget, solids (to me) are timeless. Last summer, my grandmother gave me the very first quilt she ever made. She made it when she was thirteen and it is entirely hand stitched. She used only white and a light pink and if someone were to look at it today, other than the slight wear of time, they could easily assume it was made last year.

Shea is the president of the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild and blogs at Empty Bobbin Sewing Studio.  You can also see more of her work in her flickr stream.

This wonderful vibrant quilt, called “Zitronenfalter” (the English translation is “Brimstone Butterfly”) was made by Ulrike Kittel who blogs at liebingsdecke Quilts.

Ulrike was kind enough to answer a couple of questions for us.

What inspired the quilt?

Yellow and grey is my favorite color combination and I also love simple designs. Actually, when I stumbled upon this design (I am using the Electric Quilt software and find the Symmetry function the most useful tool), I wanted to go for a flying geese pattern. But then I found the flying geese too straight, even for my liking of tidy patterns. So I played around with the same block and literally stumbled upon this design. It is the same block all over but every alternate block is turned 90 degrees. It actually gives the quilt a nice twist.

I think using solids gives a quilt such a clear design – the eye is not distracted by the pattern of the fabric, but follows the lines of the block pattern. Also, I like to quilt by hand and like to see those lines, too.

Along with her blog, you can see more of Ulrike’s work in her flickr stream.

Solids.  They often play second fiddle but this week we’ll take a look at some quilts in which they play the lead role!

Baby Harvatine Quilt by Alissa Haight Carlton, 2010

All quilts are designed with composition in mind, but when you work with all solids, there’s no busy or bold prints to distract your your eye or provide movement in the quilt.  The design, piecing,  and color choices become the tools that do that work.

Solid Squares by Alissa Haight Carlton, 2009

Subtle variations in shape are featured and highlighted, and contrast in color value shines through.

Embracing Gray by Alissa Haight Carlton, 2010

And when a quilt is mostly solids, one patterned fabric is suddenly framed and featured.

A word of warning though: the more you use solids, the more you find you can’t do without them!  We hope you enjoy this Week of Solids!

Dyeing and overdyeing fabrics is fun, but the time and materials involved can be overwhelming. Fortunately, there’s a fun and simple way to alter your favorite print fabrics using a product that’s probably already in your laundry closet (or at least readily-available at your local grocery store).

Bleach discharge is very simple. Fabric is soaked in a water and bleach bath for a period of time, during which the bleach in the water may discharge (remove or alter) some of the dye in the fabric.

All fabrics don’t discharge in the same way. In fact, some won’t discharge at all, which is why I thought of this project as an experiment – I went in to it not really knowing what was going to happen to my fabric!

A couple of notes before we get started:

This is a very basic run-through of how I altered fabric using only bleach and water. Although I didn’t worry about this during my experiment, fabric that has been exposed to high concentrations of bleach for long periods may become damaged. Serious dyers and fabric artists have a variety of methods for arresting the action of bleach on fabric. If you’re interested in reading more on this subject, I recommend Malka Dubrawsky’s excellent book, Color Your Cloth.

Bleach is toxic and it can ruin your clothing, carpet, etc. If you attempt this project at home, wear old clothes, keep a large towel in your work area, and don’t use any containers or measuring tools that you normally use for food.

Here’s what I did:

I wanted to see a “before and after” swatch of each of my fabrics, so I started by cutting 2 squares about 9” x 9” from of each of my fabrics. I chose quilting fabrics in a rainbow of colors, including some neutrals.

I then filled an empty storage tub and prepared a bath of 3 gallons lukewarm water and 3 cups bleach. One by one, I added the fabric squares, using a plastic spoon to make sure that each piece was completely wet and submerged.

I let the fabric soak in the bleach bath for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. At that point, some of the fabric had already discharged quite a bit, but some of it looked exactly the same. I removed the fabric that was already obviously different and rinsed it out in the sink.

This process was repeated over the next 10 minutes or so. I continued to stir occasionally and to remove fabric that appeared to be ready. After 15 minutes, several of the neutral fabrics still didn’t look different to me, but I didn’t want to leave them in the bath any longer.

I washed all of the fabric in a gentle machine cycle with hot water and machine dried them on low.

Two of the fabrics didn’t seem to have discharged at all. The “before” and “after” looked pretty much the same.

Several of the fabrics discharged a little bit, but the change was so subtle that I really had to look to see it.

Happily, most of the fabrics that had been in the dye bath looked significantly different. (Click on image to see a larger version.)

Here are some before and after shots. (Fabric that has not been discharged is on the left. Fabric that spent time in the bleach bath is on the right.)

Combining the “before” and “after” fabrics into patchwork blocks can also be a lot of fun. Here are some simple hourglass blocks that I made with some of my fabric.

All in all, I think the experiment was a success. It was fun to see the prints transform and to consider different ways that the discharged fabric could be used.

Thanks so much for joining us for the Week of Prints! Stay tuned for more of 100 Days of Modern Quilting.

-Elizabeth Hartman

Ashley Newcomb’s January Flowers quilt uses a fabulous large-scale print and some beautiful quilting to great effect.

Here’s what Ashley had to say about her quilt:

“This quilt is completely inspired by Denyse Schmidt, and is my recreation of this particular quilt of hers. It has been a favorite for a long time, but it took a while for me to find just the right focal print to use in my version of this quilt. As soon as I saw this floral print from Melody Miller’s latest line, Ruby Star Shining, I knew it was just what I had been looking for. I love the colors of this print and decided to play up the bits of pink and purple by adding in as many shades of those colors as I could find in my stash. I used one or two other printed fabrics for interest, but Melody’s floral print is definitely the star of this quilt!”

Read more about Ashley’s work on her blog, Film in the Fridge.