Spiky Stars

Spiky Stars at Marin Needlearts Guild Show
Spiky Stars at Marin Needlearts Guild Show

This quilt was pretty innovative for me at the time. I was inspired by a Doreen Speckman class. This is the second or third quilt I made from the idea. I have ideas for more of these and I even have fabrics selected, but haven’t ever gotten around to piecing more of them. Doreen Speckman, about whom, I am sure, most of you have forgotten or never heard, was a great teacher. She was also funny and made classes a joy to take. I also took a Nosegay class from her.

Spiky Stars at Marin Needlearts Guild Show winner
Spiky Stars at Marin Needlearts Guild Show winner

I remember walking around the aisle and seeing my quilt with two ribbons, including an especially large one for Judge’s Choice and being really thrilled. I called my friend right away – from the show!- and told her.

Later, I stood and listened to a lady try and figure out how I made the quilt. I have won ribbons since, but this large and impressive ribbon still means a lot to me.

Showing Off, pt.2

Yesterday, I wrote half a post for you as I got called away to do boring stuff.

Spiky Stars
Spiky Stars

For a long time, at least 4 years, Spiky Stars hung on my office wall. I love this quilt. It is one of my, if not my absolute, favorite(s). I made it using a technique I learned and modified in a Doreen Speckman class in the mid-nineties called Interlocking Triangles. She never did anything with this technique, probably because it is pretty labor intensive. I used templates to make this quilt and a lot of the patches are on the bias. I have a lot of designs to make additional quilts in this series. They just haven’t made it to the top of the list yet.

Seeing Red
Seeing Red

Seeing Red now graces my office wall. It is also a bullseye quilt. It started out as a round robin block exercise with Julie Zaccone Stiller and Adrienne Acoba. The exercise was inspired by a different bullseye project done by the Quilt Mavericks quilt group. We sent each other squares of red fabric and proceeded to add circles to them in the bullseye pattern. The interesting thing about this pattern is the way one can play with color. It is interesting to see the colors change as additional layers of fabric are added. When the blocks were complete, we cut the squares up and kept some of each block and sent other parts to the others, so the quilts are truly ‘sister’ quilts. The arrangement of the blocks is my own design. Julie and Adrienne arranged their blocks differently. Colleen Granger did a masterful job quilting Seeing Red. The project, as I mentioned yesterday, has expanded to the point where we are working on creating a bullseye quilt for each of the rainbow colors. Feelin’ Blue was the next in the series and, again, as I mentioned yesterday, Purple Passion is in process.

Seeing Red in context
Seeing Red in context

We actually hung the quilt twice. The first time, it was much higher up. We were outside my office (there is a glass wall in the front) looking at it when one of the name partners walked by. We must have looked odd, because he stopped and looked and told us it should be lower. He was right! We moved it down out of the shadow of the sofit (sp??) and I think it looks better.

One of the good things about putting up a new quilt is that I am actually seeing it. I had gotten to the point, I realized later, of not even seeing Spiky Stars anymore. I need to remember that and change the quilts out more often.

Seeing Red is a much smaller quilt than Spiky Stars, so it startles me a bit when I walk into my office. There is just a lot less fabric and a lot more wall. I don’t know if I will keep Seeing Red up, but it will be there for at least a week. Nobody has commented yet, but I will be interested to see who notices and what they say.