Thursday, July 26, 2012

2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge for July-Hai Great Dragon Fly

Hai Great Dragonfly

Our teacher for July is Angela Walters and the lesson was tiles, or tiling as you can see behind my dragonfly. Our instructions were to make a tile shape, fill it up with a quilting filler design, and continue in this manner until the piece was filled up. This little quilt measures 23" X 23", much smaller than the quilt that I was going to do!!! So this quilt is my second try. The other one is still all pinned and ready to quilt!!

I had a ton of thread breakage with the first quilt. I am not sure if it was the thread or the needle or me or what but I soon realized that I probably would not be able to get it finished in time. So I thought up this quilt Sunday night and started cutting  and pinning Monday morning and finished it, other then the binding, last night!!! Whew!!

I chose a dragonfly in memory of my favorite teacher from Astoria High School, Bill Gunderson. He taught me Calligraphy and pottery and shared his passion with the arts with the entire school and community. What a joy it was to know him. I hadn't seen him for years until he moved into the assisted living where my mom lived. Wow!! I got to reconnect with him there and he was so pleased to know that I was still involved in the art world. Then when my mom took ill and had to spend two weeks in the rehab, guess who was there? Mr Gunderson!! I spent 8 days with my mom at the rehab from 9am until 9:30 pm, eating lunch and dinner with her, Mr. Gunderson, and the group on her floor. What a special time it was. My mom left this world just a month after that, and now a year later, my friend joined her.He will be greatly missed!!!

The Dragonfly is from a piece of calligraphy I had retrieved from the garbage can that Mr. Gunderson had written. I still have it with all my books from high school.

The calligraphy piece reads,
Hai Great Dragon Fly Comes
to take his place
for the swatter to bring you
to your death

So this quilt is in memory of Mr. Gunderson, a great teacher, the Great Dragon Fly :^)


Here is the series of photos on the quilting process I did. I decided to do the feathers because practice makes perfect and I would like to improve my feathers. So I will keep on making them!!!
working on the feather border


the tiling process





Thank-you Angela Walters for a great lesson!!! Enjoy the quilts everyone, take care and keep those needles sharp!!!

Martha

12 comments:

  1. Absolutely stunning Martha! I see you worked from the outside in. Did you have any problems with the fabric trying to pucker doing that? Looks like you used a satin fabric too? The quilting produced a beautiful shading effect. Gorgeous!!

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  2. Great story and a real blessing to have had those later in life encounters with people who inspired us. My feathers are jealous of your feathers. I love the illusion of motion in the variations. Nature doesn't do uniform very well.

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  3. Love your piece, loved your story. I find it interesting that you quilted from the outside in!

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  4. WOW! very impressing, love your work :-D

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  5. Martha, you are outstanding!!!!!

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  6. Absolutely gourgeous free-motion quilting!

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  7. I love this the colour and overall design make it just wonderful

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  8. I love everything about this quilt!!! The story behind it, the fabric, the feathers....just perfect!

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