Boulder Field

Boulder Field
69" x 68.5"

This quilt is a response to a new fabric line, Urban Artifacts, by Leslie Jenison.  If you don't know Leslie yet, hop over to her website and have a look around.  She is simply an amazing, kind, and multi-faceted woman and very engaging and interesting artist.  She is also a curator (along with Jamie Fingal) for the exhibit, Dinner @ Eight, which premiers in Houston  at IQF every year for the last 8 years.  Leslie has been doing surface design for a long time and has quite a talent for it!  This is her first venture into designing a fabric line that the rest of us will get to play with.  It is produced by RJR Fabrics and will be available for stores to purchase at Quilt Market in Houston in a few weeks, and then it will be in quilt stores, available to you, in Feb, 2017.   I was happy to volunteer to play with it!

Urban Artifacts, a selected few

When I saw the patterns and colors, I just new I wanted to make some boulders, and yes, these boulders are just a bit abstracted, but I like the way they appear to be looking in different directions!  I also think the little squares and rectangles add to the modern appeal of this design. I can also tell you that this pattern has been kid approved, as my son strolled through my studio one morning (in the early design stages), and told me to make some of the boulders bigger.  I think he was right about that! The boulder on the lower right corner is 2 feet by 2 feet!

Some lovely closeups for you to both admire the fabric and see the quilting!

These were all made with the magic of the log cabin block and freezer paper templates.  I started with a central square or rectangle and then sewed strips on all four sides of a contrasting color to make the block bigger.  Then I ironed freezer paper to the front side, drew some free handed curves on the corners.  Then by gently peeling back the paper at the corners, I was able to cut the pattern for the corners.  And, by re-pressing the rest of the boulder back onto the block, I cut out the boulder, leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.  The whole quilt started looking something like this:

(Note: for someone more skilled than I, this could have been done more easily by using a technique of improvisational curves.  And, I just don't have a firm command of that technique yet, though I have tried many times.  sigh....  )
Next, I took all of those little scraps of corners (all properly labeled), and pressed them to a neutral background, a solid off white, and began cutting them out.

The illusion of boulders was completed by quilting around the boulder in organic circles right off the edge if necessary.

I really enjoyed sewing with these fabrics.  The patterns and textures were food for my imagination!  The hand of the fabric was very soft and wonderful to touch. And the colors were rich and vibrant! And, one of the things I loved about this line so much was the inclusion of different values of each colorway and a really nice palette of neutrals to help the colors pop! Look how awesome this goes on my deck (though I would NEVER leave it there!)

This has been my project for the month of September, and I am so happy to finally be able to share it with you!  Thanks for stopping by!