Updated List for 2013 Q4 Finish-A-Long at Leanne - she can quilt

At last I've managed to take some photos for my list for the Q4 Finish-A-Long at Leanne's She Can Quilt, between rainy days! As the last months of the year are always so hectic and I know there won't be much time for sewing, I'm concentrating on two quilts. I am planning on finishing some "ancient" unfinished projects:

1. Shantung Shanghai

I was taught this block during one of Roberta Sperandio's fantastic courses, went home and made loads more. They've been sitting in a pile looking at me for ages now. The time has come to put them together. Roberta calls the block Shanghai, like the game with sticks. Shantung comes from the fact that I've used beautiful shantung silk inside many blocks.

Here's some details:

2. Column Quilt

The Column Quilt is another dinosaur, started at a great course by Francesca Miglierina at her shop Tessilesa in Laveno, it's been folded inside a box for ages (hence all the folds you can see in the photo!). If Francesca's reading she'll tell me off next time she sees me for not finishing it. It's a really clever technique for making a quilt, very fast (unless you're like me taking ages to finish it off!). I even started quilting it but unstitched loads of it because I didn't like the decorative stitch I'd chosen.

A detail:

I'm updating my link to the 2013 Q4 Finish-A-Long at Leanne - she can quilt on my previous post.

A reminder: if you would like to vote for my entries in the Blogger's Quilt Festival, you can in the Quilt Photographer category here and in the Art Quilts category here starting from the 1st of November until the 7th of November over at Amy's Creative Side. To vote click on the heart in the corner of the photo when you scroll over my entry. Thank you!

Spring Quilt

Spring is coming and so I had to get out my bright springy quilt. I got it out yesterday actually and today is the first really warm day we've had (it worked!).

I made this quilt after following courses by Francesca Miglierina and Roberta Sperandio. They taught me the butterfly "crazy" cutting technique and I thought it was great, really clever. I wanted to add some flowers but as I hadn't got an example of a "crazy" flower, I asked Daniele Di Ciccio to draw one for me, a very schematic one, and then I transformed it into patchwork. Really fun. I've seen houses, trees, stars made with this technique and they all look good. A bit like a child's drawing transformed into patchwork. A way of drawing that will last in time and you won't grow out of. 

More news from Quilt Italia Lombardia meeting

Sunday afternoon at Francesca Miglierina's shop Tessilesa in Laveno Mombello the members of Quilt Italia Lombardia met for a chat, a demonstration and coffee with cakes...

Domenica pomeriggio presso il negozio Tessilesa di Francesca Miglierina a Laveno Mombello, le socie di Quilt Italia si sono incontrate per una chiaccherata, una dimostrazione e café con dolci...

We also followed a very interesting demonstration by Francesca during which she showed us how to make a special bag for carrying our work in progress! The shape reminded me a lot of the bags that are used now for putting cakes in when taking them to a friend's house. This bag is full of useful pockets for patchwork tools. The design is by Daniela Zamboni who is a Delegate for Quilt Italia in the Marche.

Abbiamo seguito anche una dimostrazione molto interessante di Francesca che ci ha mostrato come creare una speciale borsa porta-lavori in corso! Mi ricordava molto per la forma le borse che vanno in questo momento per portare in giro dagli amici le torte. Questa borsa è piena di tasche porta attrezzature patchwork. Il disegno è di Daniela Zamboni delegata Quilt Italia nelle Marche.

Lago Maggiore Quilt - Afghanistan Inspiration

In my 13.08.2012 post I said that I would show what I've been up to in the year I stopped writing this blog. Recently my Lago Maggiore Quilt has come into my hands again and now I'll explain to you why. Here are some photos of my quilt:

The quilt was originally made in occasion of an exhibition called  "Afghanistan Inspiration" in 2011, a touring exhibition that stopped on Lake Maggiore too, thanks to Francesca Miglierina from Tessilesa's hard work. She in fact not only organised everything to make it possible for "Afghanistan Inspiration" to be exhibited in the Museo Internazionale Design Ceramico in Cerro di Laveno Mombello, she also had quilts on show in all the town's shop windows and asked her students to make quilts dedicated to the theme of water and the lake (Progetto Acqua e Lago). The quilts had to be 150 cm long, 15 cm wide.

My Lago Maggiore quilt uses different techniques such as "Shanghai" for the beach part with covered buttons applied as stones and Raku stones too. The central part of the quilt uses a cut-out technique to represent the waves on the Lake. In the top part of the quilt the mountains are made using the "tagliatelle" technique and the sun is a crazy log cabin that expands into the sky. Using a lot of Shantung fabric reproduces the effect of the sun's light reflected on Lake Maggiore's landscape.

The "Shanghai", "Tagliatelle" and cut-out techniques were all learnt during Roberta Sperandio's fantastic courses. The crazy log cabin I learnt from Aneela Hoey's "Crazy Scrappy quilt a long" (see the button on the right!). The Raku buttons were made (one was made by Rossella!) during  a laboratory organised the day of the opening of the exhibition at the Museo Internazione Design Ceramico by the energetic Atelier Capricorno. It was a great experience making pieces to add to our quilts using this ancient technique.

Thanks to Sabrina Colonna, Delegate for Quilt Italia in Lombardia, some of the quilts from the project Water and Lake were on show at Quilt Italia's stand at Bergamo Creattiva from the 15th to the 17th of February. There's some photos of the stand on Sabrina's interesting blog, well worth reading! 

I will post some photos of the "Afghanistan Inspiration" exhibition soon with works from all over Europe. Visit oneearthtextiles for more information.