Morris Hexathon Block 6

In a desperate attempt to get caught up on the blog posts before block 7 comes out tomorrow, the star for this past week was a block titled "South Kensington Star".

Now if you are a quilter you will know that this block has a very challenging center wherein twelve points have to come together nicely. My strategy was to use a boldly patterned fabric for each of the star points so as to disguise any mishaps.

Both of those fabrics are from a Barbara Brackman fabric collection within her Morris designs. The brown is from the Best of Morris collection. The same design appears in different colorways in the Morris Jewels collection which is also where the brighter green and brown fabric is from. And, as previously, the outer background is from the Moda Grunge collection.

In just a few hours the block for week 7 will be revealed. Will this be the week I have to resort to english paper piecing?

Stay tuned because I need to get block 8 done smartly so I can go on vacation on Tuesday (and take my sewing machine in for service on Monday so it can be worked on while I'm away and not needing it).

Morris Hexathon Block 5

There has been a delay in getting my blog posts up but here I am with week 5 in the  Morris Hexathon, a block titled "Upton".

This was a relatively easy block to piece - altho I freely admit I attached the central hexagon at the end using hand applique. The block was done all in a hurry before I went out the door to day two of our quilt guild show. The center hexagon used a fabric I had found the day before but really what I hoped to find was a piece that had an image of an older English house to go with the story for the week. William Morris built his "Red House" from red brick, an unfashionable building material at the time and gave it a distinctive "half hip" roof line. The house was located very nearby the town of Upton.

We were also provided with an alternate way to put this block together; the suggestion was that we might want to use it in an upcoming week when we deem that weeks block too difficult to do.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Exhibiting at Art Shows

In addition to my regular quilt groups I also belong to an art group. In that group we have opportunities to exhibit our work a few times a year in all-member all-media shows. After a few years I have found that there is a difference to what I show when it is with the art group than the quiltworks I exhibit in a quilt show.

I had taken this photograph last year but it got held up in the framing process and I was too late to exhibit it. When the annual all-member show rolled round again I was ready with my entry. Since each member could submit a maximum of two entries I thought it might be fun to try making a fabric interpretation of this photo.

Working quickly I was able to make this...

You'll see I moved the bottle slightly to the right, added in many more viburnum flowers and somewhat rearranged the phlox flowers. Then I had some fun with my bead collection. Trying to keep the interpretation close in spirit I "double matted" it and gave it a brown binding to imitate the (wider) frame.

This is what the photo looks like framed:

(Do pardon my reflection in the glass!)

This was a fun project to try and maybe I will attempt it again sometime with a different photograph.