LibRR1 It's a Winner

With much encouragement from my hubby, I entered a Quilt Show that was held yesterday.  The show was held in East Perry County in Southeast Missouri.  This is 30 miles north of Cape Girardeau where my hubby grew up and where we lived for 11 years.  Anyway, he liked "Dogs & Dots" from our First Round Robin.  So I entered not thinking anything would happen other than us spending a wonderful Saturday looking at quilts in the various venues of this historic area and attending a Bed Turning by Ann Hazelwood  What a surprise.
"Dogs & Dots"  won 2nd place in the Art Innovative Wall Quilt Category. 

Thanks everyone who participated in creating LibRR1 and I know we have some winners developing in LibRR2, too.

Crumbled cropped Blocks

Aw Stripes and mixes, the middle was already made up into a large block just waiting for a reason to be

The Chequered centre and liberated surround just 'happened', no inspiration what so ever apart from finding loads of bits in my celebrations tin that I had 'filed' away for a rainy day - and thus totally forgot I had them :-)

The next round is eagerly awaited and fingers crossed I won't get all cuffuffled and muddled when it comes to posting the pictures and text onto the blog.... oh well its late here and my daughter celebrates her 12th birthday today too... early morning and late night for me then - plus the mid night feeds from bubba boy.... ahh at least my blocks keep me going (blocks not blokes)

Step 2 - Where are the Crumbs?

To be honest, I don't have much in the way of crumbs.  I have alot of strips of various widths and some odds and ends, but little pieces of fabric don't stay in my sewing room.  I donate them to be stuffing for cat beds.  I'm serious.  I'm not making it up!  One of the members of the Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild is a volunteer at a no-kill shelter for stray cats.  Each new owner of a cat gets a bed.  My crumbs go to her initially and then ultimately to a new cat owner.

So, as I contemplated what I would do for Step 2, I went to strips.  I started out with a bunch of strips and left over cuts from other projects and made this:

 I cut the new fabric up into 4 strips to add to my center block.

 After I added the borders, I noticed how the red pick-up sticks shifted the focus of the center block to the right.  Which caused me to want to continue that concept in the new border, so I retro-fit a grey pick-up stick into the new border.  I wish I would have known I was going to do this before I sewed on the borders - it would have been so much easier to do at that stage.

 I may add a grey pick-up stick in the top border, but I'm going to study this for awhile.  At least it won't involve another corner retro-fit!

I don't think my strips have resulted in a very liberated step 2 as compared to what others are doing, but I am satisfied with my composition and most importantly, I'm enjoying the process. 

I look forward to seeing all the other step 2 posts.

Step two progress

Thank goodness for a four-day weekend!  Sewed like crazy for two evenings creating green fabric - all to show is 7 x 4.5" squares and smaller pieces of made fabric, interest waning a bit... because I can't think what I will do with them, and surely will need lots more....

Saturday, thought that maybe I should not make fabric from such small pieces, start with longer strips, pull all the lilac strings and ...  yay! in 15 minutes flat had stitched and cut these 3.5" pieces.  A border later?

Monday morning, so enthused with that turn around, I wanted to do something with red, and found in the red box all the left over string pieces from Orca Bay (mostly the triangles I cut the wrong way, because not paying attention!), Ok... seeing I'd added the turquoise slash, picked some 4.5" squares with turquoise and made these half-square triangles (hmm... more scraps for later!)  Various sizes... but at this point no idea how they'll get used!

Maybe should try again with the greens, using strings, and ended up making this, thanks to Anna's blog.  Again perhaps should have had wider pieces, as it took all evening.  It's about 14" x 16".  It looks better in the photo than in real.  But I could cut it up later!

So tonight, what to do, what to do?... then saw what Margaret had said about containing her orange... think I know what, add a border...

... and I think (see, not stitched yet..) this might work...

 Or go off on a complete tangent!

Step II: Mary's Gone Dotty!

In the bottom drawer of my sewing desk, I found some plastic templates. I bought them at least 15 years ago, thought they looked like a handy trick. Never used them even once. I had just pieced together a bunch of crumbs, was pondering what they might become, and next thing you know, I've put stabilizer on the back of this new fabric and cut out a few dozen dots, ready for applique.

What are they? Bubbles? Balloons, maybe? What will they be appliqued to? I dunno!!! I'm just waiting wait for directions for Step III and maybe something will happen to connect my dots! Hmmmmmm....
Mary in Panama

First Two Steps - Margaret

Hi there!  I'm a bit late getting started, but jumping in anyway.  Dug up some strips I'd made as part of a Shop Hop quilt in 2001!  Each of the 10 shops had designed a strip. After 3 strips I got bored and didn't want to waste any more time on it. Here are the three strips.

I decided to use the middle strip to begin with. Parts of the others might join in eventually.  We'll see.  So here's how those blocks went together after they were liberated from the strip, chopped up, and stitched back together freestyle.

Stuck with purple for the Round 2 crumbs. Since the middle was already pretty crumb-ly, 

I tried to contain it with a small orange strip but added a few orange teeth in the border just for fun.  

Waiting on Round 3 to trim it up.  Can't wait to see what's next!

  

Janet's Round Two

This was the way the block stood at the end of round 1. I liked it well enough.

For round two, I started to make scrap fabric.  I really love to do that.  I use that techniques as leaders/enders sometimes.  Anyway, I thought I would use the pink, black and yellow, which came originally from the Block Lotto stray flower, as accent colors.  I thought for this round I would use the yellow.  So I started about 6 little scrap fabrics with small pieces of yellow.  Then I grabbed scraps in blues and blue-greens mostly. After a while, I sewed my 6 pieces together and cut a nice strip and experimented with adding the strip to the sides of this block.  What I found was the pink was too strong and the "medallion" look was not doing anything for me.  So......I cut the pink border in half, grabbed two more of my liberated stars and added the borders to three sides of the original block and this is what I came up with.

I think I like it.  This process is so interesting as it is always evolving and nothing is set in stone. I still have two more stars, some more made fabric, and scraps of pink and black, if I need them.  Can't wait to see what round 3 brings.

A Change in Direction

I knew it! I did tell you didn't I.

They have taken on a mind of their own!

Another quilt in the making!

So on to Plan B

Scrappy Sawtooth borders.

My second round

 Round 0ne wasn't looking liberated enough so I cut it into 4 parts then sewed it back together. Then I had some old blocks that I cut into 3 inch strips for my next round.

My Second Round

I'm having fun and I have a horrible feeling these crumb blocks are going to turn in to a quilt by themselves.

I'm not too sure where they are going at the moment.

I'm leaning towards slashing the first block diagonally (top right to bottom left), doing black borders round each half and inserting crumbs between the diagonals and round the outside.

What do you think?

Clare

Cyndi's Step 2

Remember this step 1?

I hung it up on my design wall, and every time I looked at it, I liked it less and less.  I know that putting slashes through blocks was what we were supposed to try, but this just looked like a pansy with a slash through it. I really liked what Janet did with her pansy - she cut it in four pieces, and stuck a different block in the middle, so the pansy almost disappeared.

So today I decided to separate the pansy a little.

So this is my re-do of step 1.

Next, I tackled step 2.  I had lots of already-made crumb fabric.  I added a little more of the black/dots fabric, and cut strips of the made fabric for borders around it all.

LibRR2 Step Two

Hola, y'all great Liberated Quilters around the world!

Mary here, in Panama, but North Carolinian to the bone! And I am honored to offer you the next step in your Liberated Round Robin II quilt project. It’s just wonderful seeing all your creativity shining in Step 1 and promises to be even more fascinating as we watch each Liberated piece evolve.

You got crumbs, right? I got crumbs, for sure! It's a safe bet that all quilters the world over got crumbs! We're talking about those little bitty pieces that pile up in boxes and baggies and in the floor under your sewing table because you simply can't bear to throw them away. But they just aren't big enough to make a single flying goose or even a log for a cabin. Do you recall how much you paid for the yard of material that little scrap came from? Well, we're gonna put those crumbs to work; we're gonna make brand new fabric out of them and it will be worth even more than what you paid for the original yard!

To get you started, you'll find below some great links below to easy ways to put those crumbs together. Be sure to look at Bonnie Hunter's link as she is the Queen of Crumbs!

Now, here's the fun part: once you have your crumb fabric made, you can make it into anything your little heart desires. Cut your new fabric into squares and triangles and circles and then piece the pieces into something else. Square blocks are lovely, but you can do lots more: borders, flying geese (either the center triangle or the outer triangles -- or take turns!), churn dashes, wonky stars or trees, baskets, words, spikes, appliqued chickens or cats or chipmunks -- really, anything at all!

Here's a photo of a crumb border and small "Liberated Quilt" that I made:

Example showing one way of using crumbs in a quilt

Once you get your fabric made and then make a few blocks or border strips and post photos for all of us to see, you can take a break until April 27th since, for this Liberated Round Robin II, we're going to wait until then for further instructions.

Hmmm, what can be next?? Of course, rather than taking a break, you might just find that you are hooked on making new fabric from your crumbs:)

Go for it! Have fun! And as Clare reminds us:

If it's not big enough, add something (a crumb?) 

If it's too big, whack something off (voila, a crumb for another block!)

Mary in Panama

Links to Help You with LibRR2 Step Two:
Bonnie Hunter:
http://quiltville.com/crumbs.shtml
Sunnie at Patchwork Pie who calls it Mile- a-Minute:
http://patchworkpie.blogspot.com/2008/06/mile-minute-quilt.html
Patti at Quilting is Still My Passion offers a great photo tutorial:
http://quiltingisstillmypassion.blogspot.com/2007/07/mile-minute-blocks-photo-tutorial.html

Round one LibRR2

I decided to use this block for my first round and liberate it. I made this block at a workshop last summer which I attended with my daughter and a good friend. I was testing color options. I like the brights with the black background, but only had enough of the focus fabric for two blocks.



First I added some solid inserts



Decided it needed something else so added the black and white inserts. I have to admit that I have been looking at every one's posts as I originally had no idea how to go about "liberating" my block!

Looking forward to seeing what is next as this is my very first Liberated Round Robin.

Eddie

LibRR2 Step One by Jody B

LibRR2 Step One by Jody B

i was going to slash a couple of pineapple blocks but where do you slash a pineapple block --- too many seams. so i made a large simple black and white block and slashed it, inserting primary colors. i'm happy with it.

Jody B

Link: with LibRR2 Step One Inspiration

Nann from Lib-Quilters shared a link today that goes right along with Step One of LibRR2 - http://waynekollingersquiltblog.blogspot.com/

Very interesting ideas!

If you haven't posted your step one for LibRR2, hope you will have time to do it before step two is posted this Friday!

Break thru the feeling it has to be perfect and join in!