Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Scrap Leather

I approached February's Mighty Lucky Quilting Club challenge with some trepidation, and I'm not really sure why. The topic, Minimalist Improvisation, actually kind of excited me. I'd glanced at the handout by guild-mate Season Evans, and it seemed full of good info, and definitely an overall handy resource.



Bonus! At our SeaMQG meeting last week, Season herself shared about minimalist improv, her own work, and her participation in the club. Talk about a treat! She shared quite a few of her small quilts, which was really inspiring, and made me anxious to get going on mine.


When I cleared some time to attack the project at hand, I found the assignment in a format that really worked for me - very specific steps with photos along the way. Before I knew it, I had my fabrics selected. In the upper left hand corner is my focus fabric, a bronze-brown shot cotton. The rest of the fabrics in the top row are my coordinating solids - Osnaburg, a scrap of leather, and Kona Parchment. In the bottom row are my contrasting solids - some off-white scraps, and Kona White. It was all pretty neutral, but at the same time, it felt just right.


Following Season's assignment step by step, I finally settled on this layout on the design wall.


I was surprised how smoothly I was able to piece the elements together - kind of like a puzzle, trimming bits as I went along, as needed to make things fit.


My original plan (thus the piece's name) was to make the strip of leather my focus. But after reading through the challenge, I decided to make it a supporting fabric choice. Thus somehow it got edited down to just a small portion of the original. I was actually kind of disappointed, but I like how it supports the focal, so all is good.



What I wanted to do when it came to quilting, was to go very dense. I did want to avoid quilting the leather, so an all-over design wouldn't quite cut it. And I was a little concerned that over-quilting might conflict with the minimalist theme. But spurred on by my Instagram audience, I embraced the dense quilting idea, and did it in sections, using the shapes as rough guidelines. I used three threads - Aurifil 50wt #2021 (natural white), #2310 (light beige), and #2372 (dark antique gold) - and several quilting patterns. The straight line triangles on the left edge were something new for me, a design by The Inbox Jaunt.



All I can say, for bettor or worse, is that I enjoyed every inch of that quilting, and it seems to me to enhance the work rather than detract from it. For January's assignment, my finished quilt was 17" square, as is this new piece. A loose plan is to go with this size each month - large enough to give a technique a good try without overtaking my whole month of sewing. We'll see how that goes. Whatever, I really enjoyed this assignment and will definitely be exploring minimalist improv again.


Linking up with Finish It Up Friday.

14 comments:

  1. this I love. the quilting enhances it for sure. love that you are doing them all the same size (at least for now!) I'm wishing I had jumped in on the Mighty Lucky club but I was feeling overloaded when it was announced. Looks like fun.

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  2. I love how the quilting makes different shadow effects on the quilt and contributes to the whole minimalist look. 17" is a great size to experiment with and be able to have a result fairly quickly.

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  3. Ver nice. Love the shade choices and the quilting is great.

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  4. My favorite kind of improv- puzzle piece style. Your minimal take is just lovely! The dense quilting really makes you give it a closer once over (it's beautiful!).

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  5. Your composition is beautiful and your quilting makes it even more so. I love this quilt!

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  6. I love the design, but the quilting is really outstanding! You rock the straight lines!

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  7. Debbie, this is really lovely! Your quilt and quilting is gorgeous! I think dense is certainly a good way to go (I *always* avoid quilting over leather). I do a lot of my small pieces with dense quilting and it adds a lot of texture without detracting from the minimalism. Thank you for the lovely write up about my challenge. It was a lot of fun to write and I am glad that you were able to get something out of it and make something beautiful.

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  8. You achieved a very good balance, the quilting fits perfectly and the leather...great idea!

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  9. color so simple and so beautiful!

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  10. Oh wow! Beautiful and definitely minimalist. I've pieced scraps before but never with a full plan in mind. I just sew scraps together willy-nilly till I have something large enough to work with. I like the idea of laying it all out and seeing the project before starting. Your quilting is gorgeous!

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  11. I really like this piece Debbie! I love the calm neutral colour palette and the dense quilting is just perfect. Especially those triangles! LOVE!!! I'm not usually good with sew alongs or clubs of any kind because I typically get behind or bored, but this Mightly Lucky Club is so much fun so far. I'm excited about the March challenge already! :-)

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  12. I love all the different fabrics used and then texture of the quilting.

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  13. This is lovely! When I saw the quilting in your focus fabric, the entire piece started to remind me of a zen sand garden! @naomirgies

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