50 Quilts from 50 States - New York

 

Its interesting that I am writing this post while I'm in New York, but
the inspiration for this quilt came from my previous visit in 2014 (OMG was it that long ago?). Saul and I made a driving tour of New England that included visits to family in Brooklyn and Ithaca, a drive up the Hudson River valley to the Finger Lakes district and then through the southern part of the state back to Brooklyn.

As I was pondering which of the many interesting sites should be my inspiration, I of course thought about the New York City sky line, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the hustle of Manhattan, and architectural points of interest. But the thing that struck me most of all were the various water courses and how they reflected the sky and surrounding buildings and foliage.

The water ways that caught my attention were the East River - its color reflecting the grey of the clouds overhead and the buildings surrounding it.

 As we drove north through the Hudson Rive Valley, we followed the Hudson, swollen and muddy from recent rains.

Then we stopped in Syracuse for a visit to the Erie Canal Museum.  The canal was completed in 1825 and was the first navigable water that connection the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.

Next stop was wine tasting at one (or 2) of the many wineries along the banks of the Finger Lakes - Cayuga Lake to be specific. The lake was a beautiful blue and the sweet wine slushie I had was refreshing.

Niagara Falls was the highlight of a different trip back in 1996 and in fact I'll be going again tomorrow. The mist got everything damp - a nice cool down during the hot weather.

So here were my five water ways. I like to design in odd numbers of motifs - surely I heard that in an art design class at one time. Now, how to represent them? French Braids. A technique I hadn't used before, French Braids would be great to represent the dynamic, ever - changing water ways. 

I just happened to have a batik jelly roll in the muddy browns and green colors of the Hudson. A couple off trips to quilt shops added some grey, blue, and sea foam colored jelly rolls and some yardage that I wanted for the constant squares down the middle of the braid. 

I started work on  this quilt while visiting my Mom near Phoenix Arizona. Although not my standard work area, it served me well for the week that I was there. I'm not sure how Mom felt about the mess though.

Here is  pic of the almost-finished quilt top. Water ways are from left to right - Erie Canal, East River, Niagara Falls, Hudson River, and Finger Lakes. This was a lot of fun to do - picking out colors, deciding how wide to make the braid sections, and how to bring the sections together. 

The pattern (when finished) will be available to download or by mail from my Etsy Shop

Get Curious about New York! It's a great place!

Confessions of a Sassy Stripper

 I love doing trunk shows for guilds. It was so sad last year that so many trunk shows and workshops were cancelled due to Covid-19. I've done a couple of virtual trunk shows but I love being back in person with guild members (all masked-up).

This week I got to do an in-person trunk show with the Silver Needles Quilt Guild in Salina, Kansas. It was so good to be back in the guild environment. Upcoming activities, community outreach, show and tell. It was all so familiar and wonderful.

My trunk show was called Confessions of a Sassy Stripper and was all about Jelly Rolls and projects with other strips.

While I was working at Mea Bernina, the owner came to me and asked me about hosting a jelly roll club - we decided to call it the Sassy Strippers. My mission was to come up with project and techniques that used jelly rolls and other types of strips.

Best place to start? The Jelly Roll Race, of course!

Years ago, the jelly roll race was really the thing. Its still a thing! within an hour (more or less), you have a cute quilt top ready for quilting for a baby, charity quilt, or lap quilt.  There is really a lot you can do with the Jelly Race quilt - leave it as is, insert a vertical strip, add appliques, and much more. The one I did was in black and white and I added a vertical strip with some red accents. I love it. It was simple, the colors are striking, and I could make it again and again.

So, we were off - now to dig deeper into Jelly Rolls and JR patterns. 

It used to be the Jelly Rolls were made from a single collection.
Collections tended to be larger and could more easily include 40 unique fabrics. Today, there are usually 2 or 3 of each fabric in a Jelly Roll because collections are smaller. My favorite Jelly Rolls are the ones curated by individual or shops - 40 fabrics that coordinate well, even if they are from different collections. I had the fun task of curating several Jelly Rolls while working at Mea Bernina.  

There are several (ok, millions maybe) patterns that feature Jelly Rolls. My mission was to develop original or locate free patterns that challenged the Stripper Club members. 

One of the early challenges I took on was a bargello quilt. I loved bargellos but never quite got the idea of sewing strips together, cuttings them into substrips, and then UNSEWING. It was the unsewing that really confused me. But after I did it, it was crystal clear. After experimenting with the size of the substrips and whether they go "up" or "down", I developed a pattern that used 3 exactly the same Jelly Rolls in rainbow solids. The resulting quilt I named Iz's Rainbow to pay tribute to Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and his version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I teach this technique in one of my workshops - its one of my favorites.

Continuing to look for challenges, I found a block and redrafted it to work with 2.5 inch strips. I call it Stop and Go because it requires the technique of partial seams. For this quilt I used a half Jelly Roll curated from a collection we carried at the time with the addition of some coordinating solids (don't ask, I forget the name of the collection, and its not available any more anyway. So sorry). The addition of a plus sign sashing really makes this quilt unique. 

These are just three of the quilts I've made with Jelly Rolls. I'm still experimenting with different techniques and projects - not just quilts, but bags, baskets, rugs, table runners, and art wall hangings. So many fabrics and projects to do! If you are intrigued by these patterns, you can download them from my Etsy Shop.

Curious about Jelly Rolls? Get one and get to work! It took me 98 minutes to sew and press my Jelly Roll race. 

On Your Mark, Get Set, GO!

 

That's Just the Way I Roll . . .Jelly Roll, That Is

I would guess that most quilters who have been at it for longer than 2 minutes have at least one Jelly Roll in their stash. For my non-quilting family and friends (Mom), a Jelly Roll is not a tasty, fattening treat, nor is it a rapper from Nashville, but rather a collection of about 40 2.5 inch wide strips, sometimes rolled up and presented as a roll. Fabric company Moda coined the term, so other companies have other cute names - treats, buns, pops, roll ups.

As most of you know, I work at Mea Bernina, a sewing machine and quilting store, teaching machine  and quilting classes. What could be more fun, right? So at the beginning of 2016 I started teaching/hosting a club we called the Sassy Strippers - its all about fabric strips and Jelly Rolls.

This was a terrific challenge for me - to come up with different and interesting monthly projects that showcase various techniques, using our own curated jelly rolls, and then teaching the technique to anywhere from 12 to 20 sassy gals.  It was soooo much fun!

So we started where every self-respecting quilter would start - with the Jelly Roll Race. Did you know there is more than one? Jenny Doan of Missouri Star Quilt Company made a video tutorial that really popularized the JR Race.

Our Jelly Roll was a specially curated black and white roll, with fabrics from various collections that we had at Mea Bernina. So there is no other Jelly Roll like this available anywhere. We gave each Sassy Stripper a cut of a bright solid so that they could add in squares (JR Race 2) or triangles (JR Race 3) in between the strips.  We didn't really race, but some say they have completed it in less that an hour. I should time myself sometime and see - although I'm really not a very speedy sewist.

My intention for Sassy Strippers was to do different projects - not just quilts. So for our second project we featured a wonderfully creative string market bag. Bias strips were double folded and stitched together using the Bernina Binding Attachment. Then the resulting strong, double fold strips were then sewn together at intervals to make a string bag. Terrific! Mea Bernina has kits available to make this cool bag.
 


But wait, there's more! I really enjoyed coming up with interesting (hopefully) projects every month. I'll write more about the other projects in later posts. If you are interested in joining the Sassy Stripper adventure with me, we will continue it next year (2018) with a bit of a twist. After 20 projects with strips, we are branching out a bit. That's at much as I'll say here, but I promise it'll be fun! So, if you are curious about different techniques, want to get creative ideas with fellow sassy sewists, check out the Mea Bernina Class and Club listing and join us in January.

Keeping Curious!