The Hills Are Alive and Quilts of 2023

It’s that odd time of year between Christmas and New Year when time seems to be more elastic and when I traditionally post a review of all the quilts I’ve made in the last 12 months.

Every year my quilt total gets less and less! In many ways I think this is a good thing. A few years back I made a conscious decision to make less quilts, to make quilts more sustainably and to slow down my crafting with much more hand work.  I’ve definitely achieved that this year with only 6 finished quilts.

3 of these quilts were made to use up class samples (Poplars, Fruit Salad and Eye Catcher) and one was made from orphan blocks. 2 quilts were made with all new fabrics, Gathering Blooms which was a BOM quilt for Today’s Quilter and a new art quilt ‘The Hills are Alive’. I do like a 9 square mosaic so added 3 of my favourite finished cushions from 2023 to the mix above.

I started The Hills are Alive a couple of months back. I wasn’t making it for any reason in particular it was just an idea that I wanted to explore. The name was suggested by my friend Pam after I first posted it on social media. As a big Sound of Music fan I thought it was perfect.

Most of you will be familiar with my Freehand Foundation Piecing techniques from many previous Modern Quilts shared here. You can see this technique being used in both Fruit Salad and Eye Catcher above. I wanted to see if I could stretch the curves beyond a quarter square block and create a kind of landscape with them.

I worked on this in two separate sessions as there was no deadline involved and I could take my time. The top ended up at about 44″ square. So more of an art quilt wall hanging than a modern quilt for the bed.

It was very challenging to get all those improv curves to play nice and I’m not sure I will ever try this again! I got the top as flat as possible and planned to quilt it as heavily as possible to flatten it further. But I didn’t want to just do a matchstick quilting as I thought this one needed more movement.

So I came up with something new and it’s now my favourite ever way to quilt!

I’m calling this Modern Improv Doodle (until I come up with something better) and for this first experiment I started off by using a square interlocking rainbow mixed with a square spiral and infilling areas with tight lines (no rulers used). I then brought in a sort of square meander. Lastly I started adding curves to the mix, quarter curves to fill a right angle and then half circle curves on a straight line.

This was all done on my Handi Quilter Moxie which is still an absolute delight to use, 3 years on.

I was so in love with the texture this created that I used the same idea for a secret quilt that I can only show you the back of. This is again a small quilt (around 50″) and involved some outlining (which will make more sense once I can show you the front). For all of these I’ve used Aurifil 40/3wt on the top and Aurifil 50wt in the bobbin. Until now I’ve only used this in an off-white shade but for this one (and the Temperature Quilt below) I’ve switched to a grey top and bottom Aurifil thread.

I’m now quilting my Sea Urchin Temperature Quilt and have added to the repertoire of patterns with some spikes and hoops and also the regular interlocking rainbows (I’ve dropped the square spirals). This seems to be making the design look more and more like my improv piecing and I really love the symbiosis this is creating. I’m now planning to use this way of quilting for everything!! It’s super fun and creative and is pressing all my buttons!

Meanwhile the Hills quilt still wasn’t completely flat so I blocked it before binding which has really helped. Once happy with it I used a faced binding to finish.

I had hoped to finish the Temperature Quilt in time to include it in my 2023 tally but I am determined to take my time and not rush the quilting. It’s also incredibly hard to take photos of finished quilts in mid winter as it is either too dark or raining *sigh*.

So that’s something to look forward to in 2024! I’ll leave you with a larger photo of Fruit Salad which got juried in to QuiltCon and will hang at Raleigh in February. As I will be attending (as part of the faculty this year) this is especially good news.

Happy Hogmanay  everyone!