A Value Whirlwind

A few of my favorite co-workers have high school students going through the local school system.  The annual senior auction for the district happens soon and they put out a call at work for gifts for a basket.  Originally the plan was for a beach theme, and I figured that the values quilt could become a beach blanket for our basket.  The mad rush to finish the quilt ensued.

 Here is the finished quilt photographed this morning before I turned it for the auction.  Unfortunately finishing it last night at 9 pm and trying to turn it in this morning made for inside only pictures.

Earlier in the week I brought it in to get people's opinion on the binding for it.  There are so many colors and I was hoping to use something I already had instead of buying something new.  It was a toss up between a purple solid and the brown dots from Freebird.  I figured that the brown would be a bit more neutral.  It wasn't an easy choice because I have no idea who the recipient might be.  Trying to make it appeal to most is not an easy job.

It is quilted with loopy quilting all over because that's pretty fast and easy in my book.  The binding fairy and I worked on hand stitching the binding.  And I used a Dena Designs print for the backing. Other than signing the back, I decided not to attach my name to it at the auction and instead credit it to the whole staff.  Hopefully that helps us in our unofficial competition with the rival building.  It will be interesting to find out who ended up buying it, if anyone, and how much it was bought for.  I'm assuming that everything finds a home, perhaps with a district administrator.   

And this makes quilt number four that's been donated to or made for a charitable organization in the past four months.  I wish I could say that it was all from stash, but I did buy just a few fat quarters of light value fabric because it didn't seem as though I had enough to have the variety that I wanted.

I will try another values quilt soon, but with more favorite fabrics and fewer oranges.  

Title: Values Whirlwind

Size: 56.5 x 66.5" washed

Quilted in an all over loop design by me. 

Bound with brown eggs from Freebird by Momo

Made during and after the Values Workshop with Katie Pedersen of Sew Katie Did.
ETA: The quilt was bought by a staff member at work.  The price ended up being above the cost of materials so that made me happy.  And it went to someone who actually really loved it and that makes me very happy.  

For Stargirl

A co-worker's daughter is having her first child in the next few weeks.  Those of us that quilt decided to make a quilt for her.  She has at least one tattoo, an image of Stargirl.  We chose to each make a star of Seahawk colors (green, blue and gray) and figure out a way to put the whole quilt together later.

We decided to use the asterisk print from Constellations to sash and be the background fabric for the blocks.  Because we have some eclectic and different prints in our stashes, it seemed to do the best job of unifying the blocks.

I assembled the top and quilted it using stitch 19 on my machine.  I'm still not a huge fan of straight line/walking foot quilting.  On the stars, I quilted a meandering line with some occasional five point stars mixed in.  Lucky for me, I got to pass off the binding to one of the others.  We bound it in the same print as the front so there is not a huge change from these pictures to the finished product.

On the finished top, the wrinkles between the quilting lines are not so obvious thankfully.  So another successful collaboration with my fellow quilting co-workers.  And hopefully tomorrow I will get pictures of my finished values quilt.  It is currently going through the wash.

Values quilt top complete

     Today I finished up my Values quilt top.  The original layout from the previous post was nice, but was what most others seemed to do.  I tried a few different layouts using HST blocks, but found that I needed to have greater contrasts in values in my HST if I wanted the design to show up.  For example, I tried the mosaic layout from my Ruby Mosaic quilt, but the design was not clear.  I figured out that it looked better when I had at least three darks or lights together.

     Attempting to be different and to avoid sewing long rows, I chose a design using blocks.  My design wall is currently just a piece of cheap batting pinned to the wall.  The ability of the HST to stick to the wall varies based on the humidity I think.  When it was dry and cold, it worked well.  Now that we have enough rain for flood watches and we're nearly back to normal for the mountain snowpack, the batting just isn't quite as good at keeping everything in place.

     Taking pictures over dirt with 25 mph wind gusts wasn't the best idea in the world, but I had to  try to get the pictures taken before the rain came again.  And the black and white shot to see if I got my values correct.

     There are places in which there is more contrast than others, but I think it worked out quite well.  I actually found that since I did most of the square arrangement after work, I just turned the lights off in the room and could tell the contrast relatively well. Overall I'm quite happy with the quilt top.  I'll stare at it for awhile until I figure out what I'm going to do with it (gift, keep or donate).  Until I decide, I don't know what backing I'm going to use for it.  It is about 60 x 70 inches.  Hope you all are having a wonderful day.

Values in the snow

It has been a weird winter here.  Unlike the rest of the country, we've had reasonable temperatures and hardly any moisture.  Finally we got snow and I was happy.  Unfortunately it was the day before the scheduled Values Workshop by Katie Pedersen.

Before going, I read her values tutorial.  Since I couldn't just cut the minimum number of squares for the class, I started early.  Some day when I don't have 1.5 or 3 year olds running around the house every week, I might get a better design wall.  Instead, here are my 140 squares on my design floor.

This is not the final layout.  I may involve the 6 year old in the process of playing with the squares and deciding on a layout. It was a fun day.