Art Quilts by Kathy York

 No. 3, the quilting

I meant to show these photos in the blog post from last week, but I couldn't find them.  Meanwhile, above is the little quilt hanging in our front sitting room. (See, the cat is sitting there!). No, I did not make this to match the wallpaper. I am inextricably drawn to this aqua blue color. I used it to cover the chair seat (one of six).  I used it to paint the dots on the chair.  This room used to be white wallpaper, but I painted over it to make this lovely blue.  Yes, a darker version was used to stain the concrete floor....

Meanwhile, back to the quilting.  I wanted concentric half circles for the yellow parts, and I wanted them reasonable evenly spaced. I didn't think I had the skill to free motion that design.  So, I opted to draw some circles on freezer paper, and iron it to the quilt.  

Once I stitched the edge of the paper, I pulled the freezer paper off, and cut the outer most ring along the pencil line. Then I pressed it back on the quilt surface and stitched the next line.  Slowly, but surely, I made it to the innermost tiny circle.  Since my paper template was limited by the size of my compass, I then used 1/2" masking tape for the outermost circles. The tape does a good job on curves, but when the curves get small, it gets increasingly difficult to tape a smooth circle, hence the freezer paper first. 

The straight lines were very easy to stitch. But each one had a discreet stopping point for the beginning and the end, which leaves a LOT of thread tails to tuck in. It is not difficult, but it is more work. They are stitched every 1/4". 

Many, many quilters would solve this problem by stitching a continuous line that goes back and forth. I like the way the discreet lines look better, so I am creating my own problem here, and I know it. But, I really, really like the effect.

Thanks for popping by.  Next week I will have a post about No.4, which became a two-sided quilt with the top for No. 2.