A little quilt improvisation in Photoshop on a section sampled from the fractured quilt.

 

Here is the finished fractured quilt. I didn't get the binding on until this afternoon, hence the fractured shadows across the photograph. Below is a closeup of the machine quilting. I nixed the idea of a loopy line because it didn't seem to match the quilt, so I used an erratic straight line zig and zag instead. Thank you Vicki W. for hosting this fractured quilt-a-long, it was terrific fun!

 

 

Today we're revisiting a 8.5X11 inch quilt I made back in 2011 using fused batiks. Tommy says that if you want to see a real turkey, you'll have to visit his blog: http://tripodtommy.tumblr.com/

Embedded boxes.

A new pattern that combines circles and numbers. Broken down it looks like this...with the number pattern filling in the black sections below.

The fall yellow quilt is finished! Pieced, quilted and bound. I finished it last night. I thought my original inspiration was the fall colors where the maple leaves transitioned through bright green to yellow. But before I completed this quilt, I saw this painting by Cassandra Tondro and realized that must be the original inspiration.

But I'm sure that Cassie's painting doesn't have kittens on the back!

  

Piedmont Virginia Community College Art department is releasing this year's t-shirt. A cicada wreath--so festive for the holiday season! Now that it's getting colder, it's hard to remember the cicada invasion and I kind of miss them. I would gladly trade 10 stink bugs for a cicada.

 

And never out of season...here's the presentation case for the Placid Curves QOV. I found this specialty stripe hand-dyed by Vicki W. hiding in my stash.

I am not a free hand quilter. I will sometimes do it on a quilt if it really requires it, but I usually figure out something else instead. So I never put in enough time to improve. My plan for the fractured quilt is to lay a bit of random and some squiggle on it so that by the time I am done, I will either be better at free hand machine quilting or I will be done. Above is my test of three different threads to squiggle over the fractured quilt. Guess which one I chose? And thank you Vicki for hosting this challenge. Its been a lot of fun trying new techniques and meeting new people.

The Placid Curves QOV is quilted and bound. I'm off to make the presentation case so I can send it to Alycia next week.

How about some orderly bright cats on black for the second fractured quilt that I made from the leftover fractured blocks? I definitely don't have enough of this particular fabric, but I suspect I can find it some friends.

Meanwhile, I have a bit of a quilt round robin going. I am binding the Placid Curves QOV and quilting the yellow scrappy trips around the world. Then as I was pulling pins out of those quilts, I was putting them into the Fractured quilt, so it is now layered and ready for quilting. This is so unlike me. Not the working on many quilts at the same time...but the finishing quilts part.

So maybe I didn't have enough of the bright cats on black after all. Apparently I had to lay everything out to figure that out. However, another excavation into the stash found the bright cats on black fabric on the left. In the spirit of the fractured quilt, I slit the "too small" backing along the diagonal and inserted a panel of the new fabric to create a fractured back. That sounds much worse than it is.

Meanwhile, the Placid Curves QOV is quilted and waiting for binding. The yellow and green scrappy trips is layered and ready for machine quilting.

The fractured quilt top is back to waiting and wondering how I miscalculated its backing needs and questioning whether I should be allowed to tutor math after all, especially with all that check your work nonsense. For more fractured fun, jump back to Vicki W.'s blog.

Unbelievably, I'm on the home stretch for finishing up the machine quilting on the Placid Curves quilt, QOV-style.

Another maple leaf pattern. Recolored. Meanwhile I am machine quilting the Placid Curves quilt. Nothing someone should see close up!

Puzzled.

Sunflowers.

Look who I caught sleeping on the job.

I've decided to enter the NYC Metro Mod Quilt Guild Double Wedding Ring challenge in the traditional category. I used the template from Mary Ellen Hopkin's Double Wedding Ring Book. And, of course, this gives me another chance to show off the custom dyed backing by Vicki W.

Okay, count me back into the fractured quilt challenge that Vicki W. is sponsoring. It pushed me into finishing two quilt tops, so let's see if it can help me complete the quilt. So I investigated the stash and found this cat fabric. And heaven help me, because I have no idea why I have enough of this fabric for a backing.

 The quilt top is finished. And here's my selection for the back.  :)

Yesterday's comment suggested a quilt...so here it is...as requested. Well, in process. I pinned the blocks to the design wall without much consideration...just happy to have finished the 16 blocks. And okay, I may have had a quilt in mind before yesterday's post, but that doesn't make as good of a story. Green and yellow are not my go to colors, but I'm quite happy with this little blast of sunshine.

Fall leaves are now past peak. As some of the maple leaves transition from their summer green to bright yellow, they pass through a wonderful spring green. I am trying to capture enough of it to hold me through winter.

Fall colors maple tree kaleidoscope pattern.

Tommy decided that he should be today's object of design...a modern cat.

 

A maple tree behind the house is having a party of one. 

And here's a diagonal pattern sampled from maple leaves that blew free during a windy day.

Here's a full view of the quilt top I constructed out of the remnants of a failed project. I like that I would never have planned this design and that it came from strangely asymmetric blocks.

Here are the individual blocks. And no, I have no earthly clue what the original pattern was. I just remember laying them out, realizing the quilt wasn't working and packing it up because I still liked the fabric.