Blogger's Quilt Festival, Spring 2014

 This is my quilt, "The Black Box." It's 55" x 81" and it is completely original, designed by me, Lynne Tyler. It is completely "free pieced," which means it was made without patterns, templates and it is NOT paper-pieced.

I wanted the brightest areas of the quilt to emanate from the box, so the only pure white in the quilt is the opening in the box and, the white and silver rays and the fallouts of the letters O, E, and B. The words OUT OF THE BOX are presented in a rainbow of colors, to emphasize the concept of creative potential.

 The idea was the box was magical, so I wanted the box to make you think of a magician's hat, but still look like an open box.

 BEFORE ideas came out of the box, the world was bland and boring, so BEFORE is dull and gray.

 Magical explosions are always accompanied by confetti, so just beyond the cloud of "OUT OF THE BOX" there is confetti blasting around. The wavy line quilting coming from the center of the quilt also gives the effect of shock waves.

I had to find a way to make the black box show up against the brown background, and tell you it was a magical box at the same time, so the box is surrounded by rays of white and metallic gold.
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 Explosions, even magical ones, produce chaos and shock waves. My way of communicating that was to make "made fabric" from the background striped batik fabric.

 

 The narrow parts of the letters are 5/8" finished and the lower case letters are 4-1/4" tall. They are NOT paper-pieced. I kept the background fabric of these letters running vertical to emphasize the staid, traditional world "before" out of the box thinking.

I work for a living, and hear this phrase "think out of the box" often, and I can't stand it. I made this quilt to thumb my nose at those who are always asking for "out of the box" ideas. Ideas don't come out of the blue, they come from somewhere, usually when things get juxtaposed against something unexpected.

You can see more quilts from the online festival here:
Quilt Blogger's Festival: http://amyscreativeside.com/2014/05/16/bloggers-quilt-festival-spring-2014/

The Black Box is in the Original Design category, which can be found here:
http://amyscreativeside.com/2014/05/16/bloggers-quilt-festival-original-design-quilts/

Don't forget to vote for your favorite.

Blogger's Quilt Festival 2012

Here is my quilt for the Blogger's Quilt Festival 2012 

It's my free pieced Four Seasons quilt. I wanted a quilt that showed the four seasons as I see them throughout the year.

Blogger's Spring Quilt Festival 2011

This is my quilt, The Quick Brown Fox, that I made in 2010. It started as just something to while away a few empty days, but grew and developed into a special quilt I love very much.

The phrase is an example of a pangram, a sentence that uses every letter in the alphabet at least once. It started as a way to use "orphan" letters I had made for another project, but grew when a blog reader wondered if I would add a jumping fox and a dog. To fill in the empty space, I added the flowers and the little bird.

I started the quilt in January of 2010, and finished the top in May. It went to the longarm quilter, Chris, in July, got back home in October and I finished it up in time for Thanksgiving. I love all my quilts, but this one is extra special. It's currently on display at Quilted Threads in Henniker NH.

It is completely original, designed by me. There were no patterns, I used no templates, and it is not paper pieced. The free pieced letters are inspired by Tonya Ricucci's Word Play Quilts. The quilt is 57" tall by 48.5" wide (145 x 123 cm).

See more quilts in the Spring 2011 Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2010

"The Rules" Quilt for Helen

This quilt was made for my friend Helen. We became friends as Swap Mamas of the Doll Quilt Swap and decided to do a private swap. Helen lives in Australia, and I am over ten thousand miles away in the northeastern USA.

Helen had said she liked my wonky letters, so I chose this quote from Katharine Hepburn. The letters are based on Tonya's free-pieced alphabet. Helen asked for red and orange and yellow, so I went through my stash and had a lot of fun. If you look closely at the dot of the exclamation point, you can see Helen herself!
The letters are about 4" tall. The entire quilt is about 30" x 33". Helen loves her quilt!

You can see more about making this quilt here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

See more quilts at Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2010 here!

Blogger's Fall Quilt Festival

I made this Exquisite Star Quilt for my godson, who was born last month.

It's a version of the Shooting Star, inspired by Gwen Marston.

The finished block size is 3", and I made it from my scraps. There are 14 rows of 12 blocks each.

You can click the photos to enlarge.

Blogging Quilt Festival - 2009

Thanks to Amy for organizing an online Quilt Festival!

It was easy for me to figure out which is my favorite quilt. It's my Alphabet Sampler Quilt. I had been making Tonya's free pieced letters so much, I decided I needed to make an alphabet for myself as a reference, so wouldn't have to keep looking at the instructions whenever I wanted to make a letter.

I knew I wanted both upper and lower case letters. Somewhere along the line I decided to add numbers. I wasn't sure how I wanted to arrange them, so I stared looking at early American cross-stitch samplers. Then I decided to add my house, and sign the quilt along with the date.

I needed some elements to fill empty spaces, so I added hearts, flowers, butterflies, the spools of thread and finally, my own hand.

I'm really thrilled with the way it turned out.

Check out the other quiltmakers who are participating in this Blogging Quilt Festival here.