S is for Strings (or Stripes)

Goodness this has been difficult.

I started off with the star quilt on the opposite page to Gwenny's Variable Stars in LQI.  I think it's called Matthew's Stars (sorry I got the names switched in my last post).

Then I had another look at the web site and started leaning towards the Roman Stripes.  Then I saw Joseph's Coat which I like because of its simplicity.  The colours didn't grab me, but the quilt did.

Ok - decision time.  I threw the vote open to the family and the only other person in this house with an eye for colour (DD), decided on No.60 on one condition that she gets tohave it either on her wall or on her bed.

Colours yet to be decided, but that's the easy bit!

On that note I'm off to bed!

Trying To Make Up My Mind

Hey, Rene' here from central Florida where, at the moment, it is cold and dreary.  I am excited about this Amish Get Together.  My book has not arrived yet, but I've been looking at the pictures on the website. There are so many beautiful quilts.   I really, really love this one:

#91 Original pattern

I also love the simplicity of this center square quilt from the 1930s:

#31 Center Square

However, I also love the broken dishes, 36 patch with stripes, Roman Stripes and Ocean Waves quilts.

I wonder which if any of these are in the book?

While I wait for my book to arrive, I will be looking through my solid fabrics, ordering more solids and deciding whether I can do justice to the #91 pattern.  I may change my mind and use the #104 36 patch with stripes as the inspiration for my project.

Kim is trying to narrow down the choices

                               I love little log cabins, this scrappy one I made is still unquilted ,but this is my favorite
                               setting.  I still haven't picked my inspiration quilt......they are all so wonderful.......
                               but if we are gonna go Gwen I have to say the Liberated Wedding Ring in her book
                               "Liberated String Quilts" really makes my heart sing.  I have a bad cold so I am gonna
                                keep looking  while I wait for my cold to go away  before I decide. 
                                25 degrees F and sunny today!

Design-time....

Time to start pulling the Amish books off the shelf again...may be a bit of dust to blow off too! Then again if I just order the new Amish book then there is no dusting to do and I can get right to piecing! Brilliant!My name is Siobhan and I currently live in Augusta, Georgia. I've quilted for over 20 years and during that time have made several Amish style quilts and even a couple "liberated" though no "Amish liberated." (does that phrase make anyone else just grin and shake their head?...sounds like some underground movement that entices teenage Amish to wear plaid and play video-games...)

I did dream about this project last night...I do some of my best quilting in my dreams...but I haven't selected the design yet. My goal for this week is to finalize my design and to dig out my solid fabrics again (duh, I just packed them away at Christmas when I finished up my waverunner....)

Hello from England!

Hello, my name is Janet and I live in Yorkshire, England. I have been following Tonya's blog for ages and through her have developed a love of liberated quilts.
I have Gwen Marston's books on String Quilts and Liberated Quilts 2. I have always admired Amish Quilts so this is an ideal challenge for me.
I have not made any quilts in solids but I do a lot of hand dyeing so will probably use hand dyed fabrics if I can get the colours deep enough.
I have included a photo of the quilt I am working on at the moment. As you can see it is made of striped fabrics not solids but I think the piecing is quite liberated. I made it to use up all the scraps I had left over from another quilt and have even made a pieced back for it. The striped fabric has been overdyed in the different colours. I am just working on a four patch border to finish it.

I am really looking forward to this challenge - I haven't decided which quilt I am going to base my design on yet but will report back soon.
Thank you Tonya for starting this blog and challenge - I look forward to getting to know everyone.

Decision Made

Hi everyone from a very very cold and white SW France!  Ton - you definitely wouldn't like France this winter.  It's been the worst winter ever!

Anyway, on to more important things.

I've looked through the Amish web site and there is nothing there that grabs my attention.  I suppose some of the Roman Stripes do and perhaps some of the bars, but there is nothing that I'd want to put on my wall.

So I got out all my Gwen books again and there, in LQI, was my inspiration.  Gwenny's Variable Stars.  I've only ever made one star quilt and that was for my niece.  It will be nice to have one in this house.

I'm pulling fabric at the moment and hope to get started sometime next week.

Just realised - I've got the selection process the wrong way round.  Has the quilt GOT to come from the Amish Collection?

cant decide on a setting..

So, this is the quilt I made the night after seeing the Amish Abstractions exhibit at the De Young. I was actually surprised at how many solids i owned, once i had pulled them from The Great Wall of Fabric. I've been playing with this on the Design Floor, and have been struggling with the setting. I now have 16 blocks, so i can put it 4 by 4. I also might put it in strea of lightening. Dunno. Glad to be part of the blog!

Inspired by Midwestern 9-patches

I'm Sophie from a lot of places, but currently living in Dallas, Texas 

I don't have the Amish Abstractions book, but looking through the photos from the Brown's collection online, I was initially drawn to two of the 9-patch quilts, one from the 20's, the other from the 40's.

005:Nine Patch-Midwest c.1920 74"x62"
026:Nine Patch-midwest c. 1940 50"x42"


I may well change my mind after I pull out my fabrics–I will be making this quilt from stash, but I'm thinking I'd like to play with a quilt constructed of 9-patches like these which don't make you immediately see the 9-patch blocks.

My choice, I think

Hello everyone! This is Erin in Nevada. Thank you, Tonya, for putting this all together. I'm excited to be able to participate! I think I've made a final decision on the quilt that will be my inspiration. I have to share that I was intrigued by this quilt on the Brown's website. [Edit: Well, I linked directly to the photos and now they've disappeared. So instead I've linked to the pages.]

#111: Unnamed

It's a little bland for my tastes but I love the swirl effect. [Is this quilt pictured in the book?] But I'm wondering if the swirl effect would still be evident if you used more colors in the strips between the red and the blue? I just may have to play around with this one to see what happens.

This quilt is my inspiration except I'll be using a more "liberated" color palette.

#70: Unnamed

Also not what you'd think of as your typical Amish quilt but I tend to be drawn to unique and unusual quilt blocks. Oh, who knows? I may end up doing a Roman Stripe because I really like all those too!

~Erin

Solid fun!

A week or so before Tonya began this project I began a quilt.

I pulled a bunch of solids that I'd been collecting

and made some blocks.
The question now is...

"will this fit in with the liberated amish theme?"

I think it will.

roman stripes?

We'll see.
I'm sure going to have fun thinking about

WHAT to do with the blocks that i've begun making!

OR.....

I just may have to begin another quilt!

:)

I finally picked it...

Well... after a lot of deliberating. I finally opened LQ II for inspiration and there was the answer staring me in the face. GM's version of the Shoo Fly is one of my favorites in the book and that is the reason I chose this (Hole In The Barn Door) quilt which is similar. It will be so fun to Liberatedly (is that a word) piece this quilt. I chose a lot of the same colors (on their way to me as we speak) and a few that are a little, hmmm, more liberal shall we say. Tonight after dinner and after my husband comes home from his business trip (he was supposed to be home Thursday but... have you heard about the ice storm in OKC?) I am going to make a "Practice" block with some of my batik fabric. I have a feeling I might be making it twice one in Amish colors and one in batik... weeee.

Hi This is Natima from Australia

Hi I'm Natima from Australia. I'm so excited to be part of Liberated Amish challenge with you. I have made a few Amish quilts including the Amish style picnic rug in the picture below. I also visited Lancaster in PA many years ago. I bought my first pack of solids from there. I want to try my hand at liberated quilts and this challenge will give me a real chance to do that.

This is DH waiting for his picnic lunch on my very own Amish style picnic rug. Every time I use it I noticed people admiring it. It was also my first machine quilting. I must say I'm proud of it.

I think for this challenge I will choose Bars for my liberated quilt. Looking forward to it. Thanks Tonya for hosting it!

Enjoy

Natima

Roamin' Stripes

027:Roman Stripes crib Holmes County, OH c.1930 46"x38"

Laura here- A few years ago, wait a minute-ouch 20 years ago, I fell in love with antique Amish quilts. Never able to afford them, I had to be satisfied with collecting books depicting their glory. One of the things that amazed me about these wonderful quilts were their color and in particular the blues that seemed to vibrate, (remember 20 years ago we were knee deep in "colonial" blue) especially when set against a black background. This quilt reminded me of those blues I loved.

My Inspiration and Choosing Fabric

This is Tonya and this is the quilt I've chosen as my inspiration. It's an Ocean Waves circa 1920, made in Holmes County, Ohio.  Click on the pic and you can see it BIG.

Image from Amish Abstractions: Quilts from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown (www.pomegranate.com). plate 51 (page 100). Big thank you to Pomegranate for letting me have an excellent copy of the photo so that I could use it as a teaching example. 


I love the tiny sparkly look of this quilt. When I look at it in the thumbnail version on the Browns' webpage it shimmers (it's number 065).


So what I want to capture from this quilt -- my inspiration -- is the interplay of the colors in small triangles. I may end up doing an Ocean Waves design or it could go a completely different direction. 


On another day I'll talk about the pattern, but for this post I wanted to focus on the color. I think this is my favorite part of making a quilt. I spent several hours sorting (and fondling) my fabric. I want to use a similar color scheme to the quilt, so I'm using reds, pinks, blues, purples, grays, beiges, creams, rusts, and blacks. I'm leaving out turquoise although I may add it in later if the quilt needs it. Here's what I've pulled:

I'm almost embarrassed at how much fabric I have here. But hey, I've been collecting solids since 1987! I have no idea if these are the actual colors in the quilt but they have the right feel to me. 


Okay, yes, there is a lot of duplication. I don't know how many of you have read Roberta Horton's book An Amish Adventure but it was one of my early quilting books. Roberta explained how if you looked at Amish quilts you'd often find that there was never just one blue fabric or black. There might be several, all slightly different: lighter, darker, grayer, brighter. That's a lesson I haven't forgotten.

So there is some of that going on, plus I'm trying to minimize using my expensive hand-dyes - when I have almost the exact same color in a solid I'll use more of that. Did that make sense?

I'm going to cut strips of these and then individual triangles using the Easy Angle ruler. I know that goes against the whole make quilts fast with strip piecing but I LOVE choosing each individual pair. And sure there are Thangles too and other ways to improve your precision making triangles, but I don't care about that a bit. 

I got some cutting to do. I think it's pretty clear this is not going to be a fast quilt for me to make.

Oh, I've put a link in the sidebar to the online store Fabric Shack. I've had good luck with them - the solids are really inexpensive AND they let you buy small amounts AND just charge what it costs to ship. Your experience may vary. (Isn't that what they always say in the commercials? Lose 50 pounds! Results not typical.)


Once you've picked out a quilt, I'd love to hear WHY you've chosen it. Please indicate the title/pattern of the quilt plate/page number or link to it on the website. Of course you can always change your mind after you've started or pull inspiration from more than one quilt...  I'm a big believer in starting a quilt and letting it go where it leads you.


p.s. eeek, Blogger lets you pick an extra-large option for posting pics and then cuts it in half when you actually post it. Do a PREVIEW and if the photo is chopped up, then you need to pick a smaller size. 

Kathy from Baltimore

Hi, it's 18 degrees out in Baltimore Maryland today and snowing. Course the weather man was saying yesterday that the storm was going to miss us but he was wrong.....gee there's a surprise!

I'm looking forward to doing this challenge as have been wanting to do some quilts using solids and I love Tonya's letters. I have not looked at any of the pixs from the collection yet but have been wanting to do a wonky churn dash with solids for a while hoping this will be my chance......or maybe a flying geese block. Guess I will have to wait and see!

Have a great day!

Favorite online shopping place for solids?

So since I am new at buying solid colored fabrics could
you all share your favorite site to shop for them?

I did make this little quilt in 1989 completely by hand.....at the time I thought it was a masterpiece :0).

Happy sewing,
Kim

 

Hello from frozen Michigan

This will be my first try at a liberated piece, but I am game. I think it will be loads of fun and a great challenge. Have always liked Amish quilts and this is a great chance to reinterpret them. Have quilted "forever" and knew it was time to grow and expand (quiltingwise only that is) my quilting universe. Bonnie Bus

choices

Hi all! Thanks Tonya for inspiring us all once again!!
V here from Bumble Beans... So many beauties it's hard to pick what floats my boat the most!
I recall being a teenager, and first seeing Amish Quilts on a poster I had from The Quilts of Lancaster County... They took my breath away! Their simple use of color sucked me in...
I just love the above quilt.. It does a little dance...
But I also love the simplicity of the one below...

Have fun choosing your inspiration!
I can't wait to see what fabulous things come from this class!
I've already started playing... I couldn't wait or stop myself! yipppee!

Kathy in FL

Hello to everyone from southern Florida, where it's warm but cloudy today. This is going to be a challenge to me not only from a quilting perspective (Amish, solids, liberated quiltmaking), but also from a technology perspective, since I've never blogged before! I'm looking forward to getting started, as soon as I get the book.

Buy the Book?

Maybe we don't need to buy the book. I clicked on the sidebar for "Faith and Stephen Brown collection", and there were tons of photos there to look at for FREE. Is it OK to save some money by doing that?

----------

So I'm Sara, in Grand Rapids, MI. I have a year long Goal of finishing two UFOs a month, and ALSO finishing everything new I start this year, except three [That's the fudge factor, and because of Bonnie Hunter's mysteries, which don't always finish before the end of the year]. So this will give me a BREAK from the old stuff and thinking in a more liberated fashion. Many of my UFOs are not liberated, at least not yet. Here's a photo of part of one that is liberated.

Like others, I also like the Roman Stripe quilts. But maybe I'll go for a Nine-Patch. Or maybe I'll do something like the Crazy Star. Or maybe. . .I haven't made up my mind yet.

Thanks for offering this challenge, Tonya!

Sara

Fixing No-Reply and a Request for Blogger Deputy

Hi, this is Tonya.


So wonderful to see you in this class, including some new faces. Welcome to all of you.
First off, instructions for getting an email address added so that you don't come up as "no-reply"


Log into blogger on your dashboard page, click where it says "edit profile" on the left side of the page. Then check "SHOW EMAIL ADDRESS" in the 3rd line down, and at the bottom of the page click SAVE CHANGES.


It's a much better way to interact with other bloggers because when you leave a comment on their blog, they can email back to you. Except not on this group blog - I'll be the only one to get those emails.


I know that Diane in NY (still haven't gotten your email), Kathy in FL (I did get yours) and Heidi (I know who you are and will be mailing shortly) are all no-reply.


Second thing, I'm hoping someone is willing to be my deputy in this class, with a specific focus on helping students with blogger. I'll add you as an admin so you can list links with helpful information and you can even pretty up the place if you want.


By the way, I updated this to the newest Blogger posting set-up so it looks different than what I'm used to. But look we can do the crossing out thingie.


I am going to be a baaad girl today and play. I  have so many things I should be doing -- to say my house is a disaster zone would not be an overstatement -- but I am feeling a real need to just sew and play. So that's what I'm going to do! Hope to show you what I'm working on soon.

Kim from "PokeytownKim"

I live in upstate NY where this morning at 10am its 13 degrees (F)!
I'm really excited about this challenge!  I'm a huge Tonya fan and have
been slowly learning how to make letters from Tonya's tutorials and have included them
in a few of my projects. 

Now solids.....this is new for me....its gonna take me some
time to decide on a pattern and gather  my fabrics......and the
book too.......this gonna be fun :0).

thanks for including me in the group......

Happy Sewing

Greetings from France

Hi everyone,

It's Dordogne Quilter Clare here.

I'm really looking forward to this challenge.  I've been building up my solid stash for sometime now and can't wait to start using it!

Got LQII and am waiting for Amish Abstractions to come through the post.  In the meantime I'm going to drool over the quilts on the website and see which one catches my eye.

Hi from Jewel

Hi it is Jewel from California,

I looked through the quilts and I can't decide... it will be one of these: 1, 54, 57, 81 or 82... I love them all. First thing I have to do is buy fabric, darn ;) I have batiks but I really want to get some solids so here is my chance. I mean, it is a hardship having to buy fabric, not. Other than a Wonky Log Cabin quilt I haven't done much liberated quilting. So I am hoping I am not too boring for you all. Hehe

Roman Stripes!

Hi! It's Knit One Quilt Too Kristin here. I am really taken with the Roman Stripes quilts. There are several versions on the website and I love the varied effect you get with randomly pieced strings. Lots of inspiration there. Thanks for hosting again, Tonya!

Greetings

from a little cabin in the N. Georgia woods. I'm Laura, and a great fan of all things wonky. I started my liberated adventure after seeing Tonya's work in a magazine. Her BLOG was included in the article and after virtually dropping by, I started my first "wonky" quilt, a neighborhood of houses entitled "As For Me And My House". Eventually it was raffled off with the proceeds going to help purchase blankets for orphans in Afghanistan. I have a well season box of solids, recently discovered after 15 years in storage due to a labeling mistake. So, let the fun begin! Can't wait to see what everyone creates... leaning (a very accurate word for this project) towards the Roman Stripes.

Hi

I'm Wendy.  I've made a couple Amish quilts, including a somewhat liberated one.  That was my first time stippling, so please don't look too closely at it.  I'm excited about this project that Tonya has planned for us.  I hope to do something I've always wanted to do: a truly random quilt. Just let the colors fall where they may, even if it means a few big clumps of one color.  I also have some large blocks left over from the previous projects that I'll try to fit in somewhere.  I'll probably use Ocean Waves or Railroad as my jump off point. I've never done letters before so that'll be interesting!

-Wendy

Welcome

Tonya here. Welcome to the Lazy Gal Liberated Amish 2010 Get Together Blog.

The theme is Liberated Amish. What is that you ask? Well, we're taking our inspiration from Liberated Quiltmaking (including letters) and from Amish quilts.

To be more specific, in this class (or should I call it a challenge?) we will:

1. Each pick an Amish quilt from the Faith and Stephen Brown collection to be our starting point. You can pick one from their website or get ahold of the book Amish Abstractions (buy, borrow, or get it from your library - interlibrary loan is a wonderful thing). Whichever quilt you want - it's okay if everybody picks the same thing or nobody does.

2. Use solid fabrics (generously interpreted - hand-dyes, mottled batiks, blenders, marbles....)

3. Make the quilt liberated.

You can use any of the methods Gwen Marston showed in her Liberated Quiltmaking books (Liberated Quiltmaking, Liberated Quiltmaking II, and/or Liberated String Quilts) or come up with your own method of liberation. (You know how I feel about these books - they make my heart sing. Read them if you haven't, please)

Just as a note, some of the quilts in Amish Abstractions are already liberated to begin with - you don't have to make them even crazier.

4. Throw in some liberated letters or numbers somewhere on the front of the quilt. You can do this however you choose, for instance incorporating letters into the blocks themselves (or the center of a medallion) or put your name and date in the border.

The goal is to complete the top by the end of June. It can be any size you want.

Helpful links are in the sidebar.

There will be no set instruction. I'm not going to tell you what to make. But you will hopefully get lots of encouragement and any needed assistance from me or any of the other participants. I love figuring out different ways to make a quilt, that's part of the fun. So if you get stuck at any point, just ask.

You don't have to have a blog but you will need a Blogger account to make posts on this blog. To participate, leave a comment on this post if you have your address set up to show OR send me an email (tartbr47 at hotmail dot com) if you are a no-reply or don't have a Blogger account.

I need the email address to send you your invitation to join. (If you don't already have a Blogger account, you will be prompted to create one. I repeat, you don't have to have a blog, or a blog on Blogger, just the account).

Once you've gotten the invitation to join, hop on in and write a post introducing yourself. Please put a label on your post with your name. See how this one says Tonya? It also helps if you indicate who's writing the post at the very beginning of it.

Any questions? Just ask.