Author Archives: Shirley at Mystery Bay Quilt Design

About Shirley at Mystery Bay Quilt Design

A quilt designer, author, and teacher located in Washington State on the Olympic Peninsula.

Drafting Japanese Kamon or Mon (Family Crest) patterns

I love many things about Japanese design. One of the aspects of Japanese design that has always intrigued me are the many variations of Japanese family crests, and I have been intending to make a quilt using the designs for at least a couple of decades. Now I am finally doing it. This is a progress report of the pattern drafting process.

On a trip to Japan at least 30 years ago, I purchased a book entitled “”The Elements of Japanese Design – A Handbook of Family Crests, Heraldry & Symbolism” by John W. Dower. My copy of the book was published in 1971, but I also see a 1990 edition for sale on Amazon now. I have made a few failed attempts to use the designs in the past, but was stopped by the difficulty of the drafting process. Here is how I have finally solved that problem – and now I wonder why I didn’t do this many years ago. I think it was mostly because I lacked the confidence to enlarge the designs. I am pleased with the results so I am going to describe the simple process I used.

The source of my problem was that the pictures in the book are so tiny. Each kamon drawing is about 15/16 inch in diameter. How to turn that into a 9 inch design for a quilt block? The first photo below shows a page from the book with 25 different kamon, and the enlarged drawings that increased the size to about 3 1/2 inches. I had to enlarge it twice using my copier, since my copier is limited to a maximum enlargement of 200 % at a time.

Using a copier to enlarge the drawing

Next I put tracing paper over the top of the design and traced the shapes, as shown in the next photo. I did the tracing at this step primarily to switch the design from white on black to black on white, so I wouldn’t waste so much ink. This tracing was done with pencil (a good mechanical pencil is best). No point in getting very precise at this stage, so I did the drawing freehand. Be sure you have a good eraser on hand – I like the white ones because they don’t seem to leave a residue and they don’t get hard over time. The three different kinds of curves in the upper right of the photo can be used to get smoother curved lines; I used them later on the final drawing.

Tools needed for tracing the pattern.

The traced design is shown below.

The traced design, 3 1/2 inch size

Once the tracing was complete, I put it back into the copier and enlarged it another 200%. A few of the lines were faint and had to be darkened. The design was now 7 1/2 inches across. The final enlargement was at 120%, to get a 9 inch diameter design. Since I only have 8 1/2 inch wide paper, I had to copy the design in two pieces and tape them together as shown in the photo.

The full sized free hand design

Now I am ready to produce a finished design. I placed vellum on top of the copied design. Vellum is a higher quality drafting paper. It is still transparent but can stand up to more drawing and erasing than tracing paper. I actually taped the copied design to the back of a sheet of 11 x 17 inch vellum, using blue painter’s tape. The reason I did this is because it is much easier to draw a smooth curved line if you can rest part of your palm on the table while you draw the curve. This requires moving the paper frequently to get the curve oriented right relative to your hand, so taping the vellum and drawing to the drawing board doesn’t work very well. The photo below shows the vellum with the design underneath.

vellum taped on top of the full sized free hand drawing

Using a mechanical pencil and a curved template where necessary, I traced the design carefully. At this stage I modified the design slightly to get large enough pieces for applique, to get the spacing between pieces consistent, and to simplify the design where I could. Not much was required for this particular design – some of the others I have done needed more modification. So the photo below shows the completed pencil drawing.

the finished pencil drawing

Although I could proceed using only a pencil drawing, I wanted a sharper (and permanent) design that would show through the vellum (since the fusible web I am using requires me to draw the pattern pieces in reverse). So I used a .05 black Sakura pigma pen to draw the lines again. The resulting ink drawing is shown below. I numbered the pattern and also labeled the reverse side so I wouldn’t get confused.

the inked drawing

Each pattern piece should be labeled with the pattern and the fabric to be used. For this design, the pieces are labeled “B12” because this is the 12th bamboo pattern I have drawn. I chose which pieces would be made from one fabric, and then labeled them 2a, 2b, etc where the number is the fabric number and each piece using that fabric is separately identified with a letter. As shown below for this pattern, I wrote these labels on the original pattern copy before the final drafting and used that as a reference as I traced the applique pieces.

the drawing with pieces labelled

Then I placed the design right side down on my light table (which is a piece of plexiglass held up by some wood 2×4 scraps). I slide an Ott light underneath, which has to be moved around a bit to light up the part of the design I am working on. Then I placed some Steam A Seam 2 on top, making sure the adhesive was fastened to the paper side that I am tracing on. I drew all the pieces that will be made from the same fabric together and transferred the pattern, fabric, and piece numbers to each piece. The pieces for this block pattern are shown below.

pattern pieces transferred to the fusible web

I cut the fusible web in sections to keep all the pieces using one fabric together.

The unmarked paper is then peeled off and the tacky side placed on the wrong side of the chosen fabric. The Steam A Seam and the fabric are cut on the outside lines of each pattern piece, using very sharp fine scissors.

The overall block pattern is replaced back on the light table with the right side up this time. The background fabric for the block is placed on top and centered. The paper is peeled off a each applique piece just before it is put into position on the background. Once all the pieces are in place, the block is carried to the ironing board and fused in place following the manufacturer’s directions. The photos below show a couple of my fused blocks.

Fused bamboo kamon block

second fused bamboo kamon block

Still lots to be done, but I like the look of these blocks. I have fused the six light background blocks. The remaining blocks for this quilt will have a dark background. The fabric is backordered so I am hoping it will arrive shortly and I can complete the remaining blocks. In the meantime I can stitch down the edges of the applique on the first six.

Completion of “Negative Space” quilts

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Last spring I took an online art quilt class at Quilt University from Marilyn Belford (www.marilynbelford.com) . I posted photos of some of my class homework at the time. I have finally completed several of these class projects and am including photos here. All of these projects were done on fusible web. As a reminder, each project started with a large shape such as a circle, triangle, or rectangle being cut out of one fabric (with fusible web attached). Then that large shape was fractured into a bunch of smaller shapes, which were then “stretched out” on top of a second fabric and fused down. For the later exercises, shapes were cut from more than one fabric.

I did a lot of these exercises in the class and I still have three more to finish. In all cases, the little quilts were completely finished from my fabric stash. For the finished projects shown here, most of the pieces were machine appliqued using a fine thread and a small blanket stitch.

And now the quilts. This first one has “fractured” triangles and other assorted shapes:

Multicolor geometric shapes

And the next one has a fractured circle and fractured triangles:

Circles and Triangles

And now one where the assignment was to think of a feeling and express it using simple shapes. The feeling I used was feeling “unbalanced”:

Unbalanced

And the last one was an experiment (I don’t think this was actually a class assignment, but I could be wrong) where I decided to try simplifying an animal shape while retaining the “essence” of the animal so that it would be recognizable. I used bald eagles because they are so recognizable and also because they roost in our trees here and we often see them performing acrobatics in the sky.

Acrobatic eagles

I used a gold metallic Shiva Paintstik to add some dimension and shading to the tree. It worked fairly well considering my lack of painting experience. The one negative is I can still smell the paint on the quilt — but then it has only been two days, so perhaps it will go away with time.

I really like these little abstract quilts. The question is, what do I do with them now? I don’t believe they are very marketable. My cousin, who is an abstract painter, tells me that abstract art is a tough sell: 90 % of all people aren’t much interested in art; of the remaining 10 % who do like art, 90 % aren’t interested in abstract art. So selling a good landscape painting (or quilt) is going to be a lot easier than selling abstract art quilts. Good thing I don’t have to make a living with my quilts!

Free Motion Quilting Patterns for Modern Quilts

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Often students in my quilting classes ask about how to decide what quilting patterns to use for a particular quilt. I have been thinking about how I decide to use particular patterns and how I can better answer the question. I don’t have any great answers yet, but I’m still working on it!

Recently I visited Pacific Fabrics in East Bremerton. It happened that my visit coincided with their (free) monthly craft presentation presented by Chris Groce. I have seen a couple of her presentations before – they are always fast paced and packed with ideas using the latest products and patterns Pacific Fabrics has in their stores. I decided to stay and listen. A number of the products and patterns she featured were related to “Modern Quilting”. The presentation made me think of the need for free motion quilting patterns that fit well with modern quilts. I quickly sketched a few ideas on one of the handouts. I can’t remember if these ideas came from actual quilting on some of the projects she showed, or if they came from the prints on the fabrics. I just remember wanting to draw the basic forms so I wouldn’t forget. Here are my initial sketches:

Jotting down ideas so i wouldn’t forget!

I sketched bigger versions of these in my sketchbook and then stitched some of them out this morning. I think I will be able to make these even better with more practice, but they aren’t bad for first tries.

Here is a double loop pattern, as sketched out and then stitched out.

Double Loops

Double loops stitched out

And now the rounded squares.

rounded squares

Rounded squares stitched out

And finally, triangles. I sketched several versions of these before I finally stitched out the large double triangles.

Single triangles

Open double triangles

Larger double triangles – fills the space better

Larger double triangles stitched out

These patterns were pretty quick to stitch and add nicely to my “library” of free motion patterns. Do try them out!

Making Quilting Templates

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I am making some quilting templates out of template plastic so thought I would explain the process. First, there are several different kinds of template plastic. For applique templates where you will want to press the fabric around the template, be sure to get the heat resistant template plastic. For marking your quilting patterns, the heat resistant plastic is not necessary although it certainly can be used. The regular plastic comes as a clear sheet. a gridded sheet, or occasionally in color (quilt shops usually stock the 12 by 18 inch size, although other sizes are available). I purchased some recently at Pacific Fabrics in Bremerton; here are the two types I purchased.

Gridded and colored template plastic

Both the colored and the gridded plastic have the advantage that you can find them when they get buried in your studio. Clear templates can be hard to locate, especially once they are cut up into small pieces. The gridded ones are also convenient for drawing shapes. Below I am going to show how to make a couple of patterns that I like and use in my walking foot quilting class.

First, a “wavy line” template. I like this wavy line quilting as a background for contemporary quilts. It can be easily sewn using a walking foot. Here is the 8 inch square pattern we use in the class sampler:

Wavy line quilting pattern

The tools needed are a Sharpie or other non-smearing pen, template plastic, and some sort of circle. In the photo I show a drafting circle template that I often use, but cans, plates, CDs – anything round can be used. For this wavy line, you could even draw it free hand, just using the grid lines on the plastic as a reference.

Wave template

Once the pattern is drawn, cut it out with scissors as shown below. Feel the edge and if necessary smooth it out with sandpaper or an emery board.

Wave template

Use the template to draw a wavy line. Space the lines as you wish. I like to make two lines about a half inch apart, then move down about 1 1/2 inches and make two more lines. Repeat until the space is filled. The waves also look great when placed on the diagonal.

The second template is for clamshell quilting. Basically clamshells are just staggered half circles. I used a different circle template for this, but otherwise the tools are the same. The pattern is shown here:

Clamshell quilting pattern

And the tools and marked template are shown below:

template marked for clamshells

Select the right size circle to divide your space evenly – for example a 9 inch block would work well with 3 inch circles. Cut out the half circles, making your template one half circle longer than the space you need to fill so you can stagger the patterns as shown on the drawing. Trim enough of a gap between half circles so you can fit your marking pen into the notch.

Clamshell template

If possible, mark your quilt top before you sandwich it with the batting and backing. Use a marking pen and trace along the top of the template. A water soluble or iron-away marker can be used; check with your local quilt shop for recommended brands.

Many other shapes can also be made from template plastic – circles, flowers, butterflies, etc. Marking your quilt will be quick and easy once you have a template!

Quilting with Decorative Stitches and Echo Quilting

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I was teaching my Beginning Quilting with a walking foot class last weekend. I have reorganized the class to include a sampler, much like the way I reorganized my free motion quilting class. A couple of types of quilting that the students seemed to enjoy the most were the use of decorative stitches and echo quilting.

Most of your sewing machine’s decorative stitches, and some of the utility stitches, can be used for quilting. Some times you will need to increase the stitch length to get an attractive look. The photo below shows some of the decorative stitches I like for machine quilting.

Use your sewing machine’s decorative stitches for quilting

And the next photo shows an example of echo quilting around a fairly complicated pattern. Echo quilting is very attractive on a light colored background where the texture of the quilting can show (on the Classes page of this blog, see my photo in the class description of the Beginning Quilting with a Walking Foot class for an even better example). The initial center pattern is marked on the fabric and then the presser foot width is used as a guide to ensure even spacing of the echos.

Echo quilting can be done around a center design or can fill in from a simple pattern on the edges of a block, or both as shown here

When planning the quilting of your next quilt, don’t forget how effective these kinds of quilting with a walking foot can be, especially if you still get stressed out by free motion quilting.

Quilt Shops in Bend, Oregon

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I was in Central Oregon this past weekend for a high school reunion and visited a couple of quilt shops in Bend. They are great shops and well worth visiting if you are in the area. The first shop I saw was Quiltworks (www.quiltworks.com), a lovely shop with a great mezzanine where they have changing quilt exhibits. The photo below was taken looking down at the shop from the mezzanine.

Quiltworks in Bend Oregon

The other shop I visited was BJ’s Quilt Basket (www.bjsquiltbasket.com) , another wonderful shop. BJ’s shares their space with a sewing machine dealer – a nice resource when students have machine problems during a class. The photo below shows some of their space.

BJ’s Quilt Basket Bend Oregon

Both shops have a great selection of fabrics. There are several other quilt shops in Bend and the neighboring towns, but I didn’t have time to visit them. Maybe I will get back there sometime soon.

Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry

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We local quilters up here on the Olympic Peninsula are very pleased that Caryl Bryer Fallert (now Gentry) is joining us at least part time due to having married a local man. She treated us to a reception and exhibition of some of her quilts last week at the Port Townsend Yacht Club. She has a special exhibit in Houston next month, celebrating 30 years of quilting, and these quilts will be part of that exhibit. She used her line of Benertex fabrics for the quilts, and the use of ombre or gradated fabrics is great and I plan to purchase some of them and see what I can do with them. Of course her use of color was, as always, outstanding. And the only word for her free motion quilting, all done with a home sewing machine, is exquisite. She really sets the standard for quality and gives the rest of us motivation to improve our own skills. You can find out more about her art at her website, www.bryerpatch.com .

Ink-li-que project

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Last week I experimented with Ink-li-que, which is a technique where the quilt is first quilted and then colored with ink. There are a number of quilt artists who have carried this technique further and are using all kinds of paints to paint their quilts rather than use piecing or applique techniques. At the end of this post I will give you a couple of references where you can get further information if it is of interest to you.

At least one major quilt show (Road to California) has recognized the need for a new competition category, and has added a category called “Painted Surface” to reflect this type of work and yet keep it separate from traditional quilting techniques. In my opinion this is an important distinction and I hope all quilt shows will adopt this new category.

Now back to my modest attempt at Ink-li-que. As you can see in my gallery, I recently started experimenting with Zentangle drawings and enjoyed that process. Susan, a member of my guild, pointed out an article by Sherry Rogers-Harrison on Ink-li-que in American Quilter magazine from a couple of years ago. She commented that it looked like my zentangle work. I decided she was right and I should explore Ink-li-que a little to see if there were some different techniques I could apply to future zentangle quilts.

I designed a small quilt in black and white (the central chinese characters came from a book on Chinese calligraphy and are supposed to represent “Shirley”) . Following Sherry’s directions, I used a high thread count fabric (Pimatex) and pre treated it by spraying with Scotchgard and an art fixative. After letting the fabric dry – it was quite stiff – I drew the design on the fabric with a pencil. I sandwiched the quilt and stitched on the drawn lines with a fine white thread. I did some free motion but a lot of the stitching was done with a walking foot, since I knew the straight lines would come out straighter that way. Then I used a Gelly Roll pen to draw on top of the quilting threads, and used Pigma pens to fill in the large black areas. You can see the quilted but not inked version below with the inked version underneath.

My Chinese name, not yet inked

My Chinese name inked

Although this came out OK, I think I would prefer it done more traditionally – using a heavy black thread and/or satin stitching for the lines, and with the characters done in regular applique. There is a flatness to the ink that doesn’t appeal to me for this formal a design. Interesting, since I don’t have the same reaction to the zentangle form, which I like a lot.

There are many quilt artists who have carried this form to astonishing lengths and achieved beautiful results. Sherry Rogers-Harrison has some beautiful quilts at her website, www.sewfarsewgood.org . She also has made some you tube videos showing the techniques. Leah Day, another talented quilter, also has videos showing similar techniques. You can see these through her website, www.DayStyleDesigns.com . Or just do a search for either Sherry or Leah on youtube or with your favorite search engine. With use of rich metallic paints and clever highlighting, they can really make a quilt glow.

New Free Motion Quilting Design

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Last week I taught two sessions of my free motion quilting class at the Silverdale Quality Sewing and Vacuum store. Both sessions were full and the students were great, so enthusiastic and all made great progress with their free motion work. We have scheduled another session in October for anyone closeby who missed these two.

One of my students came up with a great modification for one of the designs I was teaching. The pattern I was teaching is called “Headbands” and I learned it and many other designs from Diane Gaudynski’s Machine Quilting Guidebook. As an aside, Diane’s book is excellent and well worth the small investment. The close-up photos really show you how the patterns look when done properly, and the text is excellent. If you get inspired and want to buy the book, here is a link to the book at Amazon where it can be purchased: Quilt Savvy: Gaudynski’s Machine Quilting Guidebook

And now on to the new design. First, let’s look at “Headbands”:

Quilting pattern “headbands”

The new design is very similar but ends up with leaf shapes instead of headbands! Here I have sketched out the two different basic patterns to show the comparison. They are both made the same way, and the overall space is filled up the same way, but the leaf shape has a point at the top of the curve.

Drawing of headband and leaves pattern

And here is the stitched out result of what I am going to call “Kathy’s Leaves” in honor of my student Kathy who invented it:

Kathy’s Leaves

Isn’t it a great design? It would be a wonderful background filler pattern on many quilts, and I expect to use it in the future. It could be modified by changing the shape of the leaves, making them larger or smaller, and could probably also be opened up somewhat (leaving some gaps between the leaves) although I haven’t tried that yet.

Pacific West Quilt Show 2013

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Last week I volunteered at the Pacific West Quilt Show for the first time. I would encourage all of you to volunteer at a major quilt show at least once. I certainly appreciated the show more for having seen the effort involved. Many of our well known local quilt instructors and authors were in attendance. I was impressed that these ladies, so busy teaching classes, writing books, etc., would contribute so much time to the show.

I helped hang the quilts in the main exhibition hall on Thursday. Heidi Lund was in charge of the quilt hanging and maintained amazing calm considering the chaos. I took a wonderful class from Heidi a few years ago. She is a real master with thread, and some of you may have seen her spectacular garments in wearable art shows. In the morning I worked with Maggie Ball (www.dragonflyquilts.com ) and another quilter named Val whose last name I didn’t learn. They were a pleasure to work with and had hung the quilts before, so we made lots of progress. Seeing the quilts up close and personal during the hanging (especially the backs of the quilts, mostly not visible during the actual show) helped us appreciate the incredible skills of the quilt makers.

On Friday morning I was at the volunteer desk, checking in the many volunteers working the show. Susan Purney-Mark was in charge and did a great job directing the volunteers and solving the many small problems that came up. Susan had taught a class the day before and said she volunteers for the duration of the show every year. In the few quiet moments, she graciously offered advice about book publishing, blogs, etc. I really enjoyed our conversation. Check out Susan’s website, ( http://www.susanpm.com ) and her blog (www.susanpm.blogspot.com ) for some really interesting info on fabric painting, stenciling, coming up with original quilt designs, etc.

I am not sure if there are restrictions about publishing photos of other quilters work here, so I will include a couple of photos of my quilts hanging in the show and no others. There were as usual many spectacular quilts. I am always astounded by the amazing skill and patience shown by the makers of the winning quilts. I expect there will be photos of the winning quilts available online fairly soon.

Fireballs Quilt at the Pacific West Quilt Show 2013


Leaves In The Wind at the Pacific West Quilt Show 2013

My quilts from the show arrived back at my house on Tuesday about noon, so the quilt return process was conducted with the same efficiency as the rest of the show. The judge’s comments on my quilts were included with the returned quilts and were both encouraging and helpful. Congratulations to show director Elizabeth Spannring (www.plaidcat.com) and the rest of the team for all their great work!