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Friday, December 16, 2016

Warp and Weft - American Patchwork & Quilting Nine-Patch Challenge Quilt

Today I would like to show my APQ Nine-Patch Challenge Quilt I have named Warp and Weft and take you through its design and production process.


I had heard about the Nine-Patch Challenge in mid summer and knew I wanted to take part but really did not have a good idea for the quilt.  The requirements were that you had to modernize the 9-patch somehow and could make any size quilt and use any fabrics.


In October, I was at work drafting a new patent application on a woven fabric (I write patents for a private industrial textile and chemical company).  The fabric was similar to a shot cotton where the warp yarns (that go along the machine direction) and the weft yarns (that go perpendicular to the machine direction) were different yarns and I noticed that it kind of looked like a 9 patch.  Thus my woven 9-patch idea was born.

I thought that it would be good to use some Essex Yarn Dyed Fabric in black as my background as it has great texture and also has different warp and weft yarns.  I made a quilt sandwich with it and started quilting straight lines.  I was using whites, grays, and blacks of Aurifil in 50wt but it was difficult to see the quilting and it was not giving me the effect I was looking for.  So I switched to 40 wt Aurifil in gentle organic lines which showed up much better against the Essex linen.

After quilting I blocked the quilt to make sure that it was nice and flat for the woven strips.  To make the woven strips, I sewed 2 1/2" x width of fabric pieces in half to make a slightly less than 1" strips (which happened to fit perfectly on my metal yard stick which made ironing the strips a lot easier).

I played around with many different layouts of the strips and have to thank Paige for giving me so much feedback (and for putting up with me texting different pics every few minutes).  I settled on the center strips forming a true 9-patch with the patches on the sides looking to be unraveling.

I used Heat and Bond Lite to attach the strips to the quilt and the plan was that I would hand stitch down the strips while on vacation over Thanksgiving.

Just to hold everything in place I basted the strips on using some turquoise thread at the max stitch length of my machine.  When I finished the basting stitches I really liked the look of the turquoise stitching on the strips so I added some more lines to each strip (which also had the added benefit of eliminating the need to hand stitch the strips down).


For a binding, I auditioned a bunch of options and had first picked a turquoise to match the quilting thread.  I decided that this quilt needed some more pop so I used an orange plaid fabric from Carolyn Friedlander that had some metallic printing.  I think that the binding is actually my favorite part of the quilt.


So Warp and Weft was finally complete and finished at about 41" x 42".  

🌟🌟 Happy News! I submitted Warp and Weft to QuiltCon's APQ 9-Patch Challenge and it got juried into QuiltCon East 2017 :)

47 comments:

  1. I saw this picture and thought "ooo, I hope this one got in" because it's very awesome. Congratulations!

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  2. It's great, really nice take on the nine-patch idea.

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  3. It is great! I love the optical movement it has. Congratulations!

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  4. This is lovely! I really like your vision and execution. The bit of non-orange in the binding seems serendipitous, and I like it! Congrats on getting it in to QuiltCon-yay!

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  5. I love your quilt! Great variation on the nine-patch. Congrats on being accepted for QuiltCon.

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  6. Love your idea and fabric choice ! Congratulations !

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  7. Ah--appliqued on! I was wondering how the heck it was pieced! Congratulations--I love your quilt and it's probably not that hard to put together. The orange binding is great!

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  8. This is gorgeous, Cheryl!!! Absolutely love it! :D And congratulations on being juried in!!!!

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  9. I just love your quilt, It's a winner! Perfect!!

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  10. I also thought the lines were pieced! This is amazing, Cheryl. I think it's my favorite quilt you've ever made!

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  11. Great piece and appreciated you sharing your design inspiration process -- we never know where the next good idea is coming from do we?

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  12. Well of course it was accepted! This is such a creative idea, beautifully executed.

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  13. This is a gorgeous and unique twist on a nine patch! Love how it converges! Beautiful design! And congrats!!

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  14. What a lovely quilt and great idea. Congratulations the AQS News. They have great judgment!!

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  15. Congratulations! I am slowly (well, maybe not so slowly) becoming a fan of modern quilts. I love this and that's all I can say!! Poifect!!!

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  16. Congratulations! This quilt is fabulous. I love your interpretation of nine-patch and it can not get more modern than this.

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  17. Wow!! So inspiring- thanks for sharing your process.
    I love it!

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  18. Brilliant on so many levels! Thanks for sharing the story of your inspiration. Congrats on getting into Quilt Con.

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  19. Really like what you came up with here - very impactful and fun reading about where the idea came from.

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  20. Great design and so innovative. Also the peach binding is perfect!

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  21. So cool! Greetings from Germany!

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  22. This is such a clever and gorgeous design!! What a fun interpretation of the challenge! :) Congratulations on both a super cool finish, and being juried in!

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  23. The turquoise lines are great, so glad that it worked out. Congrats on getting in.

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  24. This is one of the most beautiful and different quilts I have seen.

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  25. Congratulations on getting juried into the show. I do love the look of this quilt and the touch of turquoise thread. The starkness of the black and white is complimented by the orange binding.

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  26. I had totally screenshot this on IG, but now I can just pin it from your blog! Yeay!

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  27. This is fabulous! I love the long turquoise stitches and the orange binding. What a great interpretation of a 9 patch. NAILED IT!

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  28. This really is fabulous. Thanks for sharing your process. When I saw it on instagram I thought it was pieced and I couldn't figure out how on earth you did it! I never applique so it doesn't even cross my mind.

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  29. Great design. Love the quilting. Really enhances the design.

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  30. This is beautiful!! Thank you for sharing your inspiration and design process!!

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  31. What a beautiful design! It's so original, no wonder it got accepted, but congratulations!

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  32. This is so awesome! When I saw the picture of it on Instagram, I wondered how you had sewn the strips in. This is such a cool design and yay for getting in to QuiltCon! :-)

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  33. Love this. Thanks for sharing your process!

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  34. What great news Cheryl and thanks for talking us through your process.

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  35. Great design! Congrats on the good news as well!

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  36. Amazing! And congratulations. Thanks for sharing the process. Good luck with the show.

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  37. Congrats on having this fun quilt accepted into Quilt Con. It's a fun design, I love the pops of color here and there.

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  38. What a cool design Cheryl! And it's even more fun to know what your inspiration was.

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  39. Fabulous, clever idea and so well executed! I love love love your quilt:)

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  40. Oh wow, how awesome that the quilt was accepted to QuiltCon - congratulations! I also really love the story behind the design.

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  41. This is a fantastic take on the theme! Congratulations on being accepted into Quiltcon on all your quilts!

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  42. Love love this post! Love this quilt and so intriguing to read about your process. AND best of all, (well besides the fact that the idea was born as you were writing a patent on a particular weave of fabric) is that you totally had me fooled: I thought holy Dinah, how did she draft those pieces to make the 9-patch and the wonky 9-patches? And then brilliant, you appliquéd. Congrats on having it juried in. :-)

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  43. This is a really neat concept and I love the subtle contrasting thread colors. Congrats on it getting accepted into QuiltCon East!

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  44. What a beauty! Thanks so much for sharing it and the process you designed to make it.

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  45. Striking!!! Thanks so much for sharing! ❤️

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  46. I love it and look forward to seeing it in person at QuiltCon!! Congrats

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Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment!