Starting The Journey From Wearable Art To A Qullt

 I spent about 6 hours today taking apart this jacket.

All I removed is this one small section of quilt blocks,

When I make something it is never going to fall apart and that is why it took so long.

The journey has just begun but I am anxious to see the result.

The Vest Became a Quilt

 

One of my current quilting projects is making quilts from some of my wearable art.

This quilt used to be a vest. This is the first of the 12 pieces of wearable art I am repurposing as a quilt.

I no longer do style shows so I selected these pieces that would make interesting quilts.

Stay tuned to future blog posts as there will be more.

Another Garment Will Become a Quilt

 This garment is a perfect choice to become a quilt. Stay tuned as it could take a while.

I have a lot of pieces of my wearable art that are becoming quilts.

Great To See My Friend Eileen

It was great to see my friend Eileen Mirr today. It's the first chance we have had to see each other since I returned to Florida. We are long time friends from Wisconsin and our lives have overlapped in so many ways and still are.
She also recognized the quilt as it hung in my husbands office and they both worked at the same school.
I took 4 pictures of her and they all were great. It was hard to decide which one to use. I chose this one because it really shows off her gorgeous hair, her vibrant outgoing personality and her shirt looks great with the quilt.
We each settled in Florida almost accidentally. And add to that we only live about 10 miles from each other. 

Size Matters When You View A Quilt

When I look at this quilt I made years ago in a reduced size and the landscape orientation I see a secondary pattern I didn't see when looking at the actual quilt.

When I look at the actual quilt this is what I see.  I call this a blankie size quilt which is perfect for taking a nap. This has been used a lot over the years and the batting is now thin and flat. It is hand quilted.

Why Am I Giving Kevin And Jessica This Quilt?

It's a baby shower gift! 

It is a quilt made for the baby to use and cuddle, not to hang on the wall. They are waiting for the baby to be born to know if it is a girl or boy so this should be loved by either one.

It is hand quilted and I hope it will be used and eventually worn to shreds out of love for it.

Long Time Friends We Followed To Florida

Lynn and John stopped over today to help me with something.
This quilt hung in my husbands office and Lynn was his amazing assistant. It was actually completed in 1995 for the schools open house and his new office.
I am glad to have a wall large enough to display it again.

Boys Wil Be Boys

So many little boys act up when it is time to have their picture taken. Most of them grow out of it.
I am still waiting for my middle child to grow out of it.

One of his goals in life is to either not have his picture taken or have a bad one. He was being difficult this day.

I only had to take 25 pictures to get this one which shows how handsome he is and the quilting on the quilt.

Another Vistor

Two trim men...who is the oldest or are they the same age?

Denise returns with Jamie. 
Lots of fun seeing people I've missed all summer.

First Visitor With Newest Quilt

I remembered to take a photo of my friend Denise with the new quilt when she visited. (Lynn visited yesterday but we were so busy talking I forgot to take a picture)
You get to see more of the quilt than on the last blog post that showed it.

Fantastic Fan Quilt Is Finished

I am so excited as my fan quilt is completed. Robin Koehler hand quilted it for me. She designed the quilting to perfectly complement each block and the borders. I hope you can click on the photo on your computer and see it enlarged to really appreciate the quilting. 

She delivered it to me yesterday and we had lunch and a wonderful visit.

I am so happy to have found her to hand quilt for me.

Christmas Quilt

This is one of my favorite Christmas quilts I have made. It is in a private collection.
I designed a vest that used these blocks and made enough extras to make this quilt.
If really made a striking quilt with a lot of sparkle in the fabrics and the threads.
It was a lot of fun to make.

Throw Back Thursday–Way Back To The 50’s

I recently shared a page from my 4H booklet I made with records of  my sewing projects in the late 50’s.
I mentioned I had used many of the scraps in the first two quilts I made.
I am pleased to share with you some close-ups from those quilts.

They were made for my mother and father in law. They were patchwork on both sides as I had more scraps than money. I used old fashioned Mountain Mist cotton batting. I tied them with wool worsted yarn on the floor.

Fortunately they never used them. Had they been washed there would have been one big wad of stuffing inside.

When my my mother in law passed away I  got the quilts. I took them apart with the intentions of making each one into a single quilt and backing it with a solid piece of fabric to make a usable size quilt.

I expected the thread to be weak, but it was as strong as the day I  made them and very difficult to take out the stitching. At this time I have still not turned them into new quilts. But oh, the memories as I look at the fabrics!

I hope by sharing this post it will help collectors date their quilts by seeing pre 1960 fabrics which all of these are. Some are much older but most are 1950s.

Quilt Design Created With Corel Draw

                                                                                                                © 2018 Kay Sorensen

For the most part I just use Corel to play and possibly come up with ideas for quilts.
I have never made a quilt with this design I created quite some time ago.
As I look at it now I can see it has great possibilities to become a quilt with a strong graphic design.
The size could be varied from a wall quilt up to a king size quilt.
I think I did this with Pantone colors but I can't access that anymore.

A Beautiful Day Today

Today my friend Carol came over to visit.
We could talk quilts and lots of other stuff for hours.
We grew up 1.8 miles from each other in Wisconsin.

My middle child was on his way over to bring me something so we waited quite a while to go to lunch until he got here. It was something he made for me and it was perfect. I am not showing it yet.
So Carol and I went to the clubhouse for lunch and they went riding around in the golf cart. When they were done with the first part of their ride they joined us in the club house for desert. After dessert Carol left for home and I went home.
The “kids” went for another golf cart ride as it was a perfect day. They brought the golf cart back and picked up some things I was sending back with them and found a space in the already full cargo area of our truck.
Love friends and family days.

Olympic Quilt Number 1

I hope you can see the quilting on this photo. If you click on the photo you can see a larger version.
I am thrilled it is finished. I love how the fabrics worked and also that I was able to come up with a quilting design to compliment the quilt.
The machine quilting emphasizes the strong graphic image in this quilt.

Inspirations For Creativity & Finding Your Ugly Fabric!

For me inspirations comes from the fabric and color.
I may have a very very vague idea of what I will create.
Once I start I let the fabric tell me what to do.
This is nothing new for me as I have worked this way since I started sewing clothing way back when. For clothing the hand of the fabric was another very important consideration.
At first my quilts were traditional designs but even then the fabric had to speak to me.
Currently the fabric has to carry on a conversation with the other ones in the project. This has been extremely evident in “And So It Begins” where I had a glimmer of an idea and spent a lot of time playing with the fabrics in my collection of hand dyed fabric, yet nothing gelled until I added a large piece of printed fabric.


I always told my students every quilt needs an ugly....in other words it has to be different enough to add interest to the work. This is my ugly in this quilt.

That was all it took and this ugly fabric was right at hand in my hand dyed options.
Of course this means I go through a lot of fabrics I own and take a lot out of their respective storage places.
The fact that I have a large collection of fabrics is very important to me as it gives me possibilities I could not have with a meager amount of fabrics.
Even the backing fabric has to past muster for me to use it. My recent quilts have facings and casings, rather than bindings, which mean I need a lot more of that backing fabric.
In the few instances where I am binding a quilt the binding fabric also is an important choice.
When I finish creating it means there are a lot of fabrics to put away that didn’t make the cut….unless they are in the running for the next one!

Quilting: Sneak Peak

I’m moving right along with this newest quilt.
This is a section that shows part of the border and a little of the main quilt.
I hope to finish the quilting today and then maybe get the facings and casings ready for the hand sewing.
I could do the handwork as I watch the Olympics this evening.
Wish me luck!

Finished Work By My Students

I have mentioned the fact that I taught for many years and had some students take classes from me for over 30 years. I guess you could call them my groupies,
Nothing gives a teacher greater satisfaction than seeing their students create work when she has given them instructions and then turns them loose to use that information.

This 8 pointed Star for One Armed Quilter is a bed quilt made by Suzie McCormack.


This was part of a two piece exercise when two backgrounds were created and then shapes were added to each one. I love the way she used the spiral or similar design in all these  different shapes. This was also by Suzie.


I taught my own technique for constructing a tessellated quilt and each student designed their own tessellation.

Char Burns made this outstanding quilt for her son. It includes a machine embroidered wolf head in the center and she stenciled all the leaves after I gave her a quick lesson on stenciling on fabric.
These are just a few pieces my students created over the years. I am so proud of them and was so happy to have so many talented students.
Often I did not get to see/and or photograph finished work by my students. My classes in my studio and for the technical college were lecture/demo and the students created their work at home with their own machines, etc. This made the best use of their time and mine as I could share a lot more information in the least amount of time and they could work in their own familiar surroundings with all their supplies at tools available to them.

How I Fell Down The Rabbit Hole Of WIPs

When I became a serious quilter I thought every quilt had to be KING size because our bed was king size.
If not king size, then at least bed size.

This one actually got finished and resides in the Master bedroom.

I have finished many of that size including the 8 Millennium quilts I made for my 8 grandchildren.
There are at least 8 of those king or almost king size quilts that are WIP.
Fortunately I woke up before too many years.

Paisley Star mandala was an early quilt that is now owned by a collector of my work. Lots and lots of very close hand quilting.

Evolution spoke to someone who never thought he wanted a quilt and it found a home as art for his office.



And then I veered off in the opposite direction creating miniature quilts and the worlds smallest quilt.

Somewhere along the way I settled on making quilts for the wall, art quilts and quilted clothing.

I made quilts from fabric dyed by others but said I would never dye my own fabric as it was too much work. NEVER say NEVER.

And that is what I am currently doing….dyeing white fabric and making ART from it to add pleasure to my life and the life of others.
I hope you have enjoyed following this brief journey from where, what and why I started until today.