Strange Magic H2H Quilt and a Brief Book Update

The very first quilting book I ever purchased was Paula Nadelstern's Kaleidoscopes and Quilts.  I wasn't even a quilter back then, but her work and her techniques are fascinating!  Fifteen years later, in 2011, I made my first quilt.  It was a One Block Wonder, which is like a simplified kaleidoscope quilt now that I think about it.  Someday I hope to make a complex kaleidoscope quilt, but in the meantime I am happy making designs with easy construction and fun effects.  Like this one, which I made for the Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge.  I take no credit for the design.  This quilt is outright inspired by and a derivative of Paula Nadelstern's "Lines" quilt. 

For those of you who would like to do a quilt for the Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge, there is still time to join in!  I especially want to thank Sarah for all the work she does to make this event a lot of fun for all the participants!  

Here is "Strange Magic" (The quilt isn't really skewed like my photo is):

"Strange Magic" is created when using 
Paula Nadelstern's Palindrome fabrics.

Have you ever bought fabric online and then been a bit dismayed when you saw it in person?  That's what happened to me, when I first opened the package with these Palindrome fabrics. They have a LOT of energy and are practically an electric light orchestra.  But, I put my faith in Paula's great design sense and made the quilt anyway.  I learned that these fabrics play together in ways that are almost magical.  (If you are a child of the seventies, then you can guess where I got the name for this quilt.)  This is the simplest of quilts, with strips of fabric sewn together, but I love how it turned out.  It's the fabric that made it look like something much more complex.  The whole key is to work in symmetry.  

That first photo was taken indoors on the design wall.  Here is another photo, taken outdoors.  The colors, in real life, are somewhere between the two photos. 

Jim, hiding behind Strange Magic

For the backing, I had to cobble together leftovers.  The main fabric (shown on the left, in the picture below) wasn't my cup of tea, so I turned it over and used the underside (shown at the bottom).  

Flipping over the backing fabric to tone it down

Behind the scenes

One of the classes that I am taking on Craftsy is called Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot - taught by Jacquie Gering.  It is a fun class and Jacquie is a great teacher!  I've learned some clever and easy ways to quilt with my walking foot, so I tested out one technique with this quilt: concentric diamonds.

I folded the quilt top in quarters and marked off a diamond on each quarter, using blue painter's tape:

Marking the first lines with tape.

You only need to mark off the first sewing lines.  They are shown in the mock up below.  After that, just use your walking foot as a guide to fill in smaller and smaller concentric diamonds.  You spiral around, so there are no cut thread ends to bury until you hit the center of each diamond.  My lines were roughly 3/4" apart.  I started by gradually filling in the diamond in the middle, then moved on to the four outer diamonds and then filled in the half and quarter diamonds.   I sew slowly, but the whole thing took me about 3 hours for this 40" x 60" quilt. 

The first quilting lines to set up the diamond grid.

You can see some of the quilting in this photo of the back.  My lines were a little wobbly sometimes, but the overall effect is still pretty cool:

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Now for a complete Change of Subject: Publishing News

Many of you have kindly been inquiring about the progress on The Book that I wrote for the American Quilter's Society.  So I thought it was time to put an update here on BuzzinBumble.  My deadline was last November 15th.   

Here is what has been going on since then:

Other author friends tell me that this is normal in publishing.  That there are long periods of silence and waiting (and anxiety!), followed by periods with frenzied activity. Back in February, I did get two wonderful letters from Elaine Brelsford, my original editor.  She was still very enthusiastic about my projects, but also let me know that the AQS had restructured its publications division.  (Elaine will now be heading up the online class initiative.)   There is a new Executive Editor and Director of Publications now, named Kim Tetrev.  I am very much looking forward to working with her when it is finally my book's turn with the AQS editorial team.  

But meanwhile, back at the ranch... 

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