design wall – Page 2 – tierneycreates

This post is really the “Part II” of the previous post: “Creative Inspiration: Where I Started…” in which I discuss my inspiration to create series of small recycled clothing quilts based on the first quilt book I owned: Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!! (McClun & Nownes, 1998).

The “Big Magic” of Creativity

I am currently listening to a wonderful audiobook by Elizabeth Gilbert, read by the author – Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (2015). In the inspirational book Gilbert proposes that Ideas are entities unto themselves that move among us searching for a home/host to bring them fully into existence.

If an idea visits you and you do not grab onto it, it will move to someone else. She also discusses the concept “multiple discovery” (simultaneous inventions by different individuals not aware of what the other is working on). She proposes that when an Idea is ready to “be born”, it will visit numerous people to find someone who is going to bring it into existence. This is all part of the “Big Magic” and mystery of creativity and the creative process.

The Ohio Star Idea (magical “multiple discoveries”?)

In the previous post, “Creative Inspiration: Where I Started…“, I share my recent experience of being in a thrift store with friends and having the idea to do some traditional pattern small quilts using recycled clothing for The Wardrobe Meets the Wall collection.

The traditional quilt pattern “Ohio Star” popped into my head. I mentioned to my creative partner on The Wardrobe Meets the Wall my idea of making some recycled clothing/garment manufacturing samples quilts based on the Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!! book. I did not mention that the traditional pattern, “Ohio Star” had popped into my head.

At first she hesitated on the concept and then remarked: “An Ohio Star done with the recycled silks would be interesting”.

The Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!! book does not contain the Ohio Star pattern. It was like we both just came up with the same idea at the same time! I was completely overwhelmed that she randomly mentioned “Ohio Star” when I was thinking it at the same time. There are so many traditional quilt block patterns – why did “Ohio Star” pop into both of our minds.

The Ohio Star Silk Experiment

Of course, I had to try and make a small recycled clothing quilt with the Ohio Star quilt block pattern! I found an image of an “Ohio Star” on the web and reverse engineered it.

My challenge: The quilts I have made so far from recycled clothing materials, such as silk garment manufacturing samples, have been using free form, intuitive piecing techniques. In order to create a traditional Ohio Star block, I had to use more accurate piecing techniques.

Using a special interfacing, I backed on the thinner silk pieces to stabilize them for cutting into specific small shapes (such as triangles). Silk is not as forgiving as cotton when piecing a block and it was a new experience to try and make a traditional block with silks!

On the design wall photo below, you will see I have completed the basic Ohio Star block. I am working on an inner border and outer border for this piece. I will post the completed small quilt top in the future.

Ohio Star, recycled silks (in progress) — Ohio Star, recycled silks (in progress on the Design Wall)

I consider this experiment a warm up for the project to make a series of small quilts from recycled clothing inspired by traditional quilt patterns from Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!!

Studio, What's on the Design Wall

What’s On the Design Wall: A Homecoming

October 12, 2015September 16, 2018 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Yesterday the long-arm quilter, Guadalupe Designs, unveiled the quilting done on my piece Abandoned Structure, which is based on an abandoned power plant in Central Oregon that I photographed many years ago.

For more on the development of this piece, the story behind it, and the original photo that inspired it, please see the post What’s On the Design Wall: Working Through a New Art Quilt Piece.

Once I got it home I stuck it up on the Design Wall (a sort of homecoming from where it originally was born). I have not yet trimmed the batting from the edges or put the finish on the edges, but I am enjoying just looking at the piece as it came off the long-arm quilting machine.

I am excited to add it to my collection of art quilts made from recycled clothing and garment manufacturing scraps.

Abandoned Structure (2015, in progress). Designed and pieced by Tierney Davis Hogan, Quilted by Betty Anne Guadalupe. — Abandoned Structure (2015, in progress). Designed and pieced by Tierney Davis Hogan, Quilted by Guadalupe Designs

Studio, What's on the Design Wall

What’s no longer on the Design Wall: The Tree Outside My Window

September 21, 2015July 13, 2016 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

This is a follow up to the post: What’s on the Design Wall: The Tree Outside My Window.

I found an organic branch-like/wood grain-like tone on tone fabric from my collection of Marcia Derse fabrics and placed it between the columns and then as the border.

So now the quilt top is done!

I am looking forward to seeing what it looks like once the machine quilter works her magic!

Some photos below…

NOTE: In the last photo, the quilt top looks a little askew, that is just because The Quilting Husband is trying to hold it still for the photo while the wind is blowing.

A close up of one of the blocks with the setting fabric

The Tree Outside My Window under a tree outside my window!

Quilt Top completed on The Tree Outside My Window

Fabric Scraps Obsession, Studio, What's on the Design Wall

What’s on the Design Wall: The Tree Outside My Window

September 15, 2015October 22, 2018 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Continuing my series “What’s On The Design Wall” with an update on where I am in my design and piecing of a new piece that I first introduced in the post: “What’s on the Design Wall: Rescued Blocks II“.

I provided an update on my progress in the post “What’s on the Design Wall: Making Progress?“.

Recently, the name for this piece came to me – “The Tree Outside My Window” as I completed 15 blocks to create this art quilt.

As you will see in the photos below, this piece has FIVE images of trees in it (the post “What’s on the Design Wall: Fabric Surface Design Experimentation” discusses how these trees were created) but “The Trees Outside My Window” did not sound right on my tongue. I believe when naming a piece, it has to sound right to you when you say the name aloud.

After creating fifteen 12.5 inch by 12.5 inch blocks from: 1) 4 inch – 10 inch blocks originally pieced by a friend (“Rescued Blocks”): 2) scraps from my friend; and 3) five printed trees from a surface design workshop, I decided to piece the blocks into 3 columns of 5 blocks each.

Now I am deciding what I want to do next with my design. I am leaning towards putting a strip of solid (or solid like) fabric in between each row and then floating it in the same color as a border. Originally I was going to use a cream batik but it did not look right. Next I thought: “Ah a brown batik with texture would work”, but alas, I only had brown batik scraps in my stash.

Then my fabric stash spoke to me (which is good because I did not want to go out and buy more fabric as I am trying to use my stash)! I spotted the perfect fabric – mono color textured design yardage from my collection of Marcia Derse Riverwoods Collection from Troy Corporation. (At one point I was addicted to this amazing collection and tried to be a sample of all fabrics in this line from The Stitchin’ Post in Central Oregon.)

I am going to leave it a mystery for now which fabric from this beautiful collection I selected for the strips between the three rows and the border. You have to wait until the next post on this piece!

Here are photos from my design wall to include some close-ups:

The Tree Outside My Window (in progress)

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What’s on the Design Wall: Rescued Blocks II

June 20, 2015July 13, 2016 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Update: If you would like to see the completed quilt top for the abstract art quilt piece I discussed in What’s on the Design Wall: Working Through a New Art Quilt Piece, check out the post on The Wardrobe Meets the Wall blog In Progress: Abandoned Structure. It is awaiting quilting mastery by Betty Anne Guadalupe my collaborator in the The Wardrobe Meets the Wall.

If you don’t want them, I will take them…

In a previous post What’s Was On the Design Wall: Rescued Blocks I discussed the pleasures of working with “abandoned blocks“. Abandoned quilt blocks are blocks that another quilter does not want and gives to you or you find at a thrift shop or garage sale and decide to adopt!

Recently a quilter friend gave me a cool stack of batik freely pieced abstract blocks that she no longer wanted to work on in addition to a pile of coordinating scraps of fabric. I love batiks and I love her combination of colors so I was very excited to adopt these blocks! As a bonus I discovered that the trees that I printed on batik fabric during a fabric surface design workshop I took in April (see post What’s On the Design Wall: Fabric Surface Design Experimentation), appear to work well with the newly adopted blocks!

Below is the piece in it’s very early stages (I threw all the adopted blocks and my tree printed blocks up on the Design Wall in a random manner) and we’ll see how the piece progresses. You know I will post updates.

My friend who also likes working with abandoned blocks (she collects them from thrift stores, garage sales and guild meetings) and I joke about someday having an exhibit of our collection of pieces made from other’s discards!

Studio, What's on the Design Wall

What’s On the Design Wall: Not What Should Be There…

May 23, 2015July 13, 2016 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Check out Sassy the highly opinionated miniature schnauzer’s blog on the page Schnauzer Snips for her latest thoughts and adventures.

This is the last of my series of posts on the 4-day quilting retreat I attended last weekend. In my post Getting Ready to “Retreat” I shared photos of the projects I was bringing to the quilting retreat to work on during the retreat.

So one would expect that they would see on my Design Wall a work in progress (or near completion) that I worked on during the retreat – right?

Nope.

What is on my Design Wall is what should not be on my design wall: a quilt I started at the retreat because someone else was working on it and I liked it! This is how new UFOs (unfinished objects) are born!

My Quilt Sister Barb was working on a pattern called Right on Target by A Quilter’s Dream (2013) at the retreat. It involved taking 2 1/2 inch strips from say a pre-cut jelly roll and making a quilt by essentially making one giant log cabin square-in-a-square block. I happened to have a Hoffman Bali Pop on me (a set of 40 pre-cut 2 1/2 inch coordinated batik fabric strips) which was perfect for this pattern. Next thing you know, I had abandoned what I was working on for the afternoon at the retreat and borrowed her pattern and started making the same quilt!

“Right on Target” quilt made by my Quilt Sister Barb at the Retreat

What is on my Design Wall now

Bali Pop of 2 1/2 inch strips pulled apart for quilt

Of course this only reinforces what I discussed in my post Creative Inspiration: What Others are Working On! I know I am not the only quilter to do this – there is something so engaging when you see a quilt in progress that is very appealing and the pattern is very easy!

What became of the projects that I brought to the retreat? Well the two UFOs in boxes (in the photos in the Getting Ready to “Retreat” post) I did not even touch (I guess I brought them as decoration for my assigned work table). Instead I worked on a log jam project (refer to my numerous posts on Log Jamming), started a new project as mentioned above, went on a quilt store shop hop, ate way too much naughty food, and in general goofed off and visited with quilt friends. My kind of retreat weekend!

Studio, What's on the Design Wall

What’s on the Design Wall: Flannel Shirt Log Jamming

May 4, 2015July 13, 2016 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Check out Sassy’s related post on her blog Schnauzer Snips about her time napping in flannel shirt material Okay, I promise – no more posts about log jamming for a while after this post…maybe. The log jamming continues and now I have a new recruit: If you read the post This is the Story of a Quilting Husband, you read that my husband Terry recently learned to quilt. This past weekend I taught him to log jam (see posts What’s on the Design Wall: “Log Jamming” and “Log Jamming”: The Sequel). On the Design Wall are his first batch of log jamming blocks, made from Flannel Shirt Flannels!*

First set of shirt flannel log jam blocks by Terry, the Quilting Husband

*The shirt flannels were rediscovered during part two of my purge of fabric (see post The Fabric Purge!). This time I worked through my flannels and weeded out those no I no longer needed and rediscovered my tucked away collection of shirt flannels.

Studio, What's on the Design Wall

What Was On the Design Wall: Rescued Blocks

April 20, 2015February 25, 2019 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Usually I post about what’s on the design wall – what I am currently working on. I was looking through some digital photos and came across photos from when I was working on the 1930’s Block Quilt, made from rescued blocks. So this is sort of a “design wall retrospective” post!

I am fascinated with recycling fabric, especially fabric intended for other purposes (clothing, blankets, upholstery, etc.). I also enjoy finding abandoned blocks and rescuing them!

What are “abandoned blocks”? They are quilt blocks leftover from making a quilt (when too many blocks were made than needed), or when a quilt was started but not finished and the quilter just gave up on the blocks. You can rescue sets of abandoned blocks from thrift stores, friends, and even inside your own stash! Betty Anne had a friend who found a set of block from the 1930s in her attic and did not want them. Betty Anne rescued them and then let me adopt them!

Originally these rescued blocks did not fit together and were in a strange pattern (so strange that no matter what I did I could not make them fit together). So I redesigned the blocks, cutting off the left and right corners (which I recycled into the quilt’s border). After trimming down the blocks they fit well together into a small lap size quilt (41″ x 44 1/2″).

The abandon blocks are now rescued and part of a quilt (I bet they are a lot happier than they would be just sitting around an attic all alone!)

1930’s Block Quilt – pieced by Tierney Davis Hogan, quilted by Betty Anne Guadalupe

On the Design Wall!

Redesigning the rescued blocks

Close up

Studio, What's on the Design Wall

What’s on the Design Wall: Rediscovering My “Charms”

March 1, 2015July 13, 2016 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

If you would like to see what is on my design wall in regards to new pieces for The Wardrobe Meets the Wall Collection, check out the post In Progress on The Wardrobe Meets the Wall blog. To stay up to date on Sassy the highly opinionated miniature schnauzer’s check out her page Schnauzer Snips.

CHARM PACKS

If you are quilter you know exactly what I am talking about – those addicting little charm packs. If you are not a quilter – charm packs are collections of precut 5 x 5 in. squares in coordinating fabrics. They are a great way to sample a new fabric collection – they usually come in packs of 40 squares and have at least one of each fabric in a collection. They can also come in solid fabric collections.

I fortunately or unfortunately have acquired quite a stash of charm packs over the years.

You go into a quilt shop and see a new fabric collection and daydream of a yard of each of the new 20 fabrics. Then you remember you need to eat and keep a roof over your head so you don’t give into the temptation of such a glorious shopping spree. Walking away from the collection you were coveting, you spy over in the corner the charm packs sets for the new fabric collection! You now think – “Yes! I can have a taste of the new collection (and still be able to pay my mortgage)!”

You bring them home, with no particular plans in mind for them and put them with the rest of your impulse buy charm packs…

A year ago I decided to stop hoarding charm packs and to actually use them. There are many wonderful books with charm pack specific patterns – patterns designed to start with 5 in. squares and go from there. I made a couple quilts from these pattern books, but quickly burned out of this structured traditional quilt making. So I put the rest of the charm packs back in their display (gather dust) area and forgot them.

I was reorganizing my fabric a week ago and came across my stash of charm packs again and thought: Why do I have to use a pattern? Why can’t I just do something initiative and “modern quilting” style? So I took two charm packs of collections of various solid color batik fabrics and randomly sliced each 5 x 5 in. square into three sections. Then I reassembled this huge pile of charm pack sections into random columns. I experimented and sliced up one of the columns to make thinner columns and alternated the columns.

I am still experimenting and plan to create table runners out of these columns. Below are photos of “playtime” on my my design wall.