Pieceful Tigers

This is on my design wall today:

The newest tiger quilt and a piece I painted in a class with Judy Coates Perez last year at Festival in Chicago. One doesn't have anything to do with the other, they both just happen to be up there.

The tiger quilt is one I'm doing with a group that meets once a month -- I have been meeting with these ladies for several years, since back when all I did was traditional quilts. One year, we did feathered star quilts from Really Hard Blocks That Take a Long Time to Make by Marsha McCloskey. I think that feathered stars are the most beautiful of the traditional blocks and I love the challenge of trying to piece all those feathers.

If you look at the pattern, Pieceful Nights, by Lori Smith, you will notice that there is no feathered star. This is because I don't like to follow directions. Also, I like the feathered star better than the block in the pattern. This quilt, assuming I finish it in time, will be part of a special exhibit in a couple of shows this year. I'll post about that when I have more information.

This bamboo fabric was going to be the inner border on the tiger quilt. I couldn't find exactly what I wanted, so I dyed this to go with the project.

The reason I started dyeing and painting on fabric was because when I started quilting, I could never find exactly what I wanted. Then it became more than just a means to the end -- I found that I loved putting colors on fabrics so much that I forgot about actually using the fabric. It's more fun to "make" it.

I didn't like this fabric in the inner border -- too busy -- so I will probably use it for the outer border. Or maybe something else...

This is what happens when you fussy-cut using templates for thirteen blocks.

Fabric in a state of "holeyness." As Paula Nadelstern wrote in Kaleidoscope Quilts, "Fussy-cutting lots of identical patches means you'll end up with a holey fabric. Do yourself a favor and don't show it to those nonquilters you live with. It's not to your advantage."

My DH had entered my lair to assist in shelf-building and saw this fabric, "You're going to throw that away, aren't you?

"No!" I said. "There's lots of good fabric here." And there was (is). I cut pieces for several blocks after he left.