STEM Theme Quilt

The Proper Bostonian Quilters Guild has a number of charity projects.  One involves making quilts for specific kids, using a theme of their choice. I recently took a look at the list. One teenage boy had requested a quilt which was essentially a STEM theme. (STEM=Science, Technology, Engineering, Math).  It had been on the list for a quite a long time.  Who has STEM themed fabrics?

I do!  The guys in my family are all engineers. So when I see a great technology fabric, I add it to my stash. I have used a number of fabrics designed by Carolyn Friedlander in this quilt.  She was trained as an architect before she started her quilting business and many of her fabrics fit nicely into the theme. There is also an Art Gallery fabric, "Manhattan's Dawn" by Leah Duncan, which is a street layout. 

I used Cheryl Arkison's pattern, "Stripes" from her book, A Month of Sundays. Her quilt was a mix of blue stripe fabrics.  I borrowed the idea of quieter fabrics in the center of the quilt and darker fabrics on each lateral strip of blocks from Score #5, "Rhythmic Grid" in Sherri Lynn Wood's book The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters. It was fun mixing and matching the designs!

Here's a detail of some of the fabrics and the quilting.

Detail of the blocks and quilting

I used a mix of free motion quilting and straight line quilting with the walking foot for this quilt. I let each block in the quilt dictate which to use.  That definitely kept the project interesting!

Most of my quilts are lap size. This is a twin bed size. It really helped to have the folding table to the left of the machine to hold the weight of the quilt. 

STEM is a great theme!  A challenge, but so much fun!

Modern Improv Quilting, project #2

I've been working on my second modern Improv quilt using Sherri Lynn Wood's book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters--A Guide for Creating, Quilting and Living Courageously. 

This quilt is based on Score #9 in the book.  Working on a quilt based on Score #9 is "living courageously!"  Especially when I went from making "Woodland Friends" based on "Score 1" to this one!  These curves definitely require advancing piecing skills!  But Sherri has great "how to" advice in the Techniques section in the book which is really helpful.

Cutting and sewing the wedges was really fun. The challenges began when it was time to sew the curved wedges together.  I initially decided to hand appliqué the curved sections to a  whole cloth background. In fact, I did appliqué the whole long outer curve.  Here's a pre-applique snap of my initial layout plan.  Sorry, it's a bit out of focus...

But then I went back and looked at the book.  While Sherri states that it is fine to appliqué the curved sections, the examples of "Score #9" quilts in her book are all pieced. The pieced quilts are beautiful. So I decided I was going to rise to the challenge!  I ripped out all my hand sewing and started piecing.

The photo at the top shows the quilt in a fairly early stage of piecing.  The process of turning this from a collection of curved wedges into a rectangular quilt was much like working on a jig saw puzzle. Every evening I would look at the quilt, audition another color. cut one new piece and then sew on to the quilt.  It was mentally challenging. One new piece an evening was about all I could manage!   I was working on my "Dog Pals" quilt at the same time--doing those fast, raw edge appliqués provided the comic relief I needed to stick with all this complicated curved piecing!

Sherri writes in her book that as you start to piece these curved wedges together, the quilt form changes. So true!  You can see how different my final layout is from the one I started to appliqué. 

Here's it is sandwiched, ready for quilting.  The quilt is an approximation of a rectangle! That's improvII  A slightly lop-sided "organic look" is just fine! 

This was a great learning experience.  Now that I've pieced this quilt and understand the mechanics better, I think I'd like to try it again...but probably not this week!