I need a vacation! Project quilting challenge #7

So this week’s quilting challenge is, “I need a vacation”.

  The title reminds me of the old commercials, “Calgon Take me Away!!!”  In the series of commercials with the same general theme,  women are shown having frustrating, terrible days and in exasperation call out , “Calgon Take me Away!” In response the women are immediately taken to a warm bathtub filled with loads of bubbles and appear to be relaxed and carefree.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVf1lClfBng   Here's the link if you want to see the old commercial! I digress....

    The title of this challenge reminds me of those commercials. I picture a place which is warm, where there is no sense of time, a place that is carefree. To capture this place in a quilt, now that is a challenge!

   I wanted to try to recreate the feeling I had on a recent vacation to Hawaii with a good girlfriend of mine. The beach, sunset, all the amazing colors in the sunset, that’s my vacation! Now I had to make it different a slight twist, so I made my quilt to resemble a postcard,    “Wish you were here!”. I invite you to visit my vacation in this quilted postcard!



These are my fabrics! I found this really beautiful tie dyed fabric that reminded me of a beautiful sunset.

I began building the background by cutting a simple landscape shapes

I cut templates from cardboard to make the outline of palm trees on a beach. After cutting the tree shape and repositioning them till I liked how they looked, I decided to add a moon in the corner. I appliqued all the trees down and applique the landscape lines.
 
I added a border and corner pieces to attempt to create the appearance of a postcard. I layered the front, batting and a back panel. I quilted the entire piece. I used a version of echo quilting for the moon and the water, and free motion stippling for the remainder of the quilt.

The back of my “postcard” with my Flip-flop postage stamp.


Wish You Were Here! Embroidered by machine.


I hope you enjoyed my vacation postcard. Till next time!
Irene



calgon commercial

Project Quilting Challenge #7, Threads!

 
Off to DC for a superbowl get together so this has to be quick! Ill try to add more details later.

Edited and add ons! 2/8/16

Back home after a fantastic weekend with my daughter and son -in-law. Went down to DC to go "Mother of the groom"  dress shopping. Being from a very small town, with 1stoplight, we have limited shopping.
   Good news! With the help of my daughter and the great sales associate, Kristen, at Rent the Runway, I found my dress! Yay!! after dress shopping we settled down with our guys and ate some wonderful food and watched the game. It was a very nice time.

This weeks challenge was title “Threads”. As I look at my thread collection I see color, color, color.  I love color. So I was up for the challenge. I ended up with a finished runner 51x23 inches. 

I have just moved into my new quilt room after taking over my daughters old bedroom, (She is now a young adult and working woman) thanks Lara! I'm excited to hang this in my new quilt room!

This is my very basic scribbled design when I was planning. I wanted fun, lots of color. My thread collection is very colorful , so I thought that I wanted to portray that.





So here is my colorful fabric, mostly fat quarters except the yellow stripe.
Fabrics:













So I found this new technique for cutting half square triangle. Its a free pattern on craftsy.com  You can adjust for the size triangle you wish. These are 3inch squares.
You are able to get 8 squares from 2 pieces of fabric magically cut.

here's the link: http://www.craftsy.com/blog/2014/01/how-to-make-half-square-triangles/




So I used 3 fabrics in the color group cut in thin strips and stacked those to get the look of a true thread spool. Put these all together for my spool block.



Now to get the look of thread coming off the spool..... I attempted using very colorful matching thread, but it looked so small next to my spool. I wanted that "fun, bold feel".
So I decided to applique strips on using a modified "Landscape quilting technique". Funny because "Quilting with Nancy" was on public television and she was talking about her landscape quilting. Got some great tips from her!


I free handed curly strips, a very slow process, but I was happy with how they turned out. Then I designed the "needle". That sounds easy, but I couldn't get the look I wanted. Finally googled "cartoon needle and thread images" which gave me some good ideas.

Cutting a blue strip, see all the various curly strips above.



Put all my blocks together than applique the curly threads on with monofilament thread.

I added warm and natural batting, and a backing made of left over fat quarter strips.

Backing

  I stippled the yellow and curly threads portions of each block. I stitched in the ditch over the spools.

Stippling

Finished Runner!

Thanks to my hubby for holding it for pic!

Thanks for looking at my project and thanks to Kim at Persimmons Dreams for our Project Quilting Challenges!

Till next time!! <3    Irene