Quilting onward....

After finishing up two quilts and sending them off to their new owners, I found myself with nothing really ready to keep me busy. 

So I started laying out a new house block....

And then as I dug through my stash and happened across a charm pack I decided to try out the pattern "Crazy for Plaid" by Allison Aller's in her book Quilting...Just a Little Bit Crazy. 

The pre-cut fabric in the charm pack is 5" squares, the pattern calls for a bit larger, so first thing I had to draft a smaller version of the black scallop applique.

And with a few rainy days I had the whole charm pack appliqued up....

ready for some embellishment.  I stared with a feather stitch on the main seams.

With the main seams progressing, I tried to find something to put in the center of the circles.  Did I mention I challenged myself to use only what is in my stash.  I dug through my laces, but nothing spoke to me, I look through my beads, nope nothing.  I found some buttons that could have been a good choice, but did not have nearly enough that the quilt required.  So I started thinking about creating an applique flower or something and came up with this....

I like where this is headed.

Playing Favorites - 2016 Quilt Alliance Contest

The 10th annual Quilt Alliance contest theme is "Playing Favorites" and all quilters, regardless of their style (traditional, modern, art) or technique (longarm, hand quilting, applique, pieced...) are encouraged to enter a 16" x 16" quilt celebrating their favorite technique, style, pattern or whatever you most love about quilting. All concepts are fair game -- let your imagination run wild!  Read guidelines here and enter your quilt here.

American Foursquare, 16"x16"

What do I love most about quilting?  I love creating my own patterns and unique designs. Mixing traditional and contemporary techniques. I love a quilt that is an organized mess, with raw edges and ripped fabric.  I love crazy quilting with a mixture of fabrics, embroidery and embellishment.  I love beads.  I love applique.   I love playing with color. I have a career in historic preservation and am drawn to old house, dilapidated barns and historic architecture.
 

Fabric and color play....

I play with my fabric all of the time,  auditioning various prints and colors to find a combination  that just sings. I use my phone to snap photos of the process to remember what I have tried and pull back and take in the whole work.

This process was perfectly illustrated when I was working on the background of my most recent quilt, the American Foursquare....

Which do you think works better?

    

That lime green strip in the foreground brought everything to life. 

Making a mark...

Do you mark you quilts?

I am in the home stretch of getting this Bike quilt finished up.  Good thing as it was commissioned as a gift for an early April birthday.  

Over the years I have tried the water soluble markers, but they always seem to be dried out when I am ready to use them.  I have used pencil, but found it is not all that easy to remove.  This soapstone pen in my stash for years and it works great and just rubs away.

I just mark the center spine on my feathers and do the petals free form. Doodling pages upon pages of quilting feather really helped my improve in getting a nice flow to the feathers and to quilt with confidence. 

  

   

I am in the home stretch of getting this baby done, wait, what......how did I forget to put that on the bike......now to figure out how to add it with all the quilting completed. 

Can you tell what I forgot? 

Stutsman County Courthouse Quilt

I finished up  my latest architectural quilt......

Stutsman County Courthouse, located at 504 Third Avenue SE in Jamestown, ND is the oldest surviving courthouse in North Dakota and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. During the days of the Dakota Territory, meetings were held in the courthouse in preparation for statehood. The building is considered a superb but rare example in the Upper Midwest of the Gothic-Revival style of architecture. The interior is outstanding for its stamped metal ornamentation that dates to 1905.

Designed by Henry C. Koch, a Wisconsin architect who worked as General Philip H. Sheridan’s topographic engineer during the Civil War, the courthouse construction was completed in 1883. An addition designed by Gilbert R. Horton, a Jamestown architect, was added on the rear of the courthouse in 1926 to handle the growing needs of Stutsman County. The building served as the center of county government until the early 1980s when a new courthouse was built, adjoining and incorporating the earlier addition.

Historic Stutsman County Courthouse

by 

Amy Munson

2015

29.5" x 38"

On my Design Wall: Stutsman County Courthouse quilt

The final fabric details have been added to the quilt and a good pressing to fuse everything down and then to start the stitching....just love how this is coming together. 

On my design wall....

I have shifted gears from knitting to working on my next quilt.  If you follow me on Instagram you have already seen a few photos of the work in progress.  It is a  commission from a colleague and it is of the historic Stutsman County Courthouse.  I blogged about and shared a few photos from a visit to the building a few years ago on a freezing day in January.
It is a grand glorious building.  Constructed in 1883 it is the oldest surviving courthouse in North Dakota.

I a just thrilled how everything is coming together.  All of the pieces are cut raw edge and fused down with wonder under.  Once all the fabric is placed and fused then I will stitch over all the edges with either a dark or light thread.  The stitching is like a scribble line and does cause frayed edges,  but I just go with it.  I like the softness and bit of messiness that the loose threads create.
The blue you seen here will be mostly cut away and the whole building stitched down to the sky fabric (once I figure out what that is going to be) 

Out to Pasture

 My latest barn quilt is complete......

Out to Pasture

It was in a local quilt show over the weekend and...

won a first place ribbon. 

The Old Barn

The Old Barn

by

Amy Munson

19" x 31"

2014

I think this is my favorite quilt I have created to date,  so many elements came together to blend into a great image.  I am particularly happy with the quilting and the sense of wind that it added to the piece. 

Teaching on National Quilt Day

I will be teaching a class at the National Quilt Day celebration here in Bismarck.  It will be at the Frances Leach High Prairie Arts & Science Complex on March 9, 2013.  

I knew what I wanted to do and proposed the class with out a sample. Well they needed a few pictures of what I planned to teach by this past Monday so I spent most of the weekend free time designing and sewing.  I call it Cut Away Applique using fleece.  I came up with the idea about a year ago when I was making all of the Angry Birds for the kids.  Quick and easy technique with some really stunning results.  Class participants with be able to create either a spring or a winter wall hanging. 

Quilting Class Fun

This past weekend was the biannual Bismarck Quilt Show.  I had one piece in the show, my landscape,  no awards and from the judges critique I could tell it was not her cup of tea.  Oh well, to each their own.  

The best part of the weekend is the class my mom and I took from my friend Terri Stegmiller.  It was a super fun day and my project is nearly finished,  just needs a small touches and a binding and it will be finished. 

Here is the front,  I used Terri's pattern as a jumping off point and changed the flowers,  I think I need to add a table so the vase does not look like it is floating. 

 A view of the back with just the outline stitches. 

 I am especially pleased with the quilting.  I have never really quilted any feathers before,  but I have been drawing and doodling them for ages. 

Random....

I have two projects on the needles......

The Cordova Cardigan a great easy fit cardigan with a touch of patterning.  I started it on Thanksgiving and it is moving along fast.  I am using Cascade Quatro in a green blue shade.



The second is another Like Sleeves for Kids tunic for Abby is a beauiful shade of aqua blue. 

Pondering doing some christmas gift knitting,  December is here and I better get a moving.

I have also been ponding entering a quilt in the catch the American Spirit Calender contest with Fairfield Poly-fil batting.   I have a design in mind now just to get working to finish it up by the April 15, 2012 deadline. 

Dug out this UFO to keep working on it.  I decided to finish up the floral border and to scale back or completly remove the beaded seam treatments and just go with a simple single stitch embroidered seam treatment in a gold pearl cotton.  over most of the quilt. 

The weatherman said to expect the first snow this evening.  Ugg,  I am not ready for the deep freeze of winter.  We have had the most glorious fall since I have lived in North Dakota. 

My husband suggested we move someplace warm and tropical,  I said not too warm becasue I like knitting with wool follow by his sinister laugh. 

The sky is spitting snow.  I need a cup of tea. 

Latest Quilt

With my studio packed up for the better part of the summer, I had several projects in limbo waiting to be finished. And this was the first I needed to put the finishing touches on.  Not quite an exact copy of the Alliance for American Quilts entry this year,  but a co worker saw my entry quilt and did not want to wait to bid on it and then hope to win the bid and I was more than happy to revisit the design.  There are a few details I still need to do (a few beads on the flowers, finish sewing the binding and attach a label) but with it nearly finished I just had to post a photo.  And my blog has been seriously lacking in the quilt related posts.

Prairie Sunflowers

20"x20"

With my studio back up and running, look for some more quilt related content to come. 

Happy September everyone!

Progress

I have most of the sky placed and now I am working on placement of the flowers and the leaves.

Work in Progress

I have been asked to make a quilt similar to my piece that I sent off to the Alliance for American Quilts this year. And since I loved the first one, I could not resist.

I also just picked up Judith Baker Montano's Fiberart Montage book and as always am blown away with her crazy quilt landscapes. I want to take this version of the quilt a step further and add more stitching and embellishment to the landscape area of the composition.

National Quilting Day Event

Each year the Capital Quilters Guild in Bismarck holds a National Quilt Day event at the Heritage Center. The hallway is filled with quilts and the class rooms filled with fiber and fun. Since I work at the Heritage Center I get to help get things set up. As always there are some pretty amazing quilts on display.

I have used the folded flowers on several of my quilts and just love the texture and dimension they add..

Did not get the info on this one, but I really like the flowers...

I work with Jenny and she is a great creative quilter, she gets and ideas and just runs with it. this is a HUGE quilt and I believe she quilted it on her home machine.

I brought in two quilts to share. Since the one quilt I did make this year was already sent off to the Alliance for American Quilts, I chose two of my antique quilts.

The 1930s Grandmothers Flower Garden is believed to be made by my great grandmother (on my mother's side). It is an unfinished top I love how the blue and the pink rows dance across the quilt.

The second has been dated to the 1880s (by my fellow quilter and curator of collections Jenny) It shows quite a bit of wear and at one time was made smaller probably due to the edges wearing thin. The turkey red is such a great shade and blended with the navy blue and creams it is a quilt that I treasure.

First Love

Did I tell you have now have (nearly) wall to wall carpet in my art studio. This past fall we remodeled the main floor of our home and put in beautiful Brazilian cherry wood floors. We relocated one of the larger remnants of carpet to the basement to use in my studio/unfinished basement. At first I was not too sure, but now that I nearly have everything back into place, I love it. No more icy feet on the cement floor, and it could almost be called a room.

I love working in my space and I even got back to working on a quilt. Just this little bit of quilt creativity has made me realize, quilting is my first craft love and I have missed it so.

It is a small wall hanging using a vintage image from my mom's collection. The quilt will be for my mom to use in her quilt booth to showcase how to use the photo blocks in a quilt. Elly Sienkiewicz will be the featured teacher, and I hear applique is quilt popular with the guild in the area. I was inspired by a couple of designs from her Baltimore Album books and I modified the leafy tendrils to frame the rectangle block.

Since I am not very good at needle turn applique (quite crappy actually) I am using felted wool and ultra suede.

Fiddling

I have been working on this quilt on an off for years and would really love to see it completed. I have been messing around with photoshop to refine the foreground fabric placement and then I will add some fiber embellishment and finish it.