Modern mini challenge: Yoshiko Jinzenji inspired mini-quilt

Yoshiko Jinzenji is one of my favorite modern quilters.  Her book "Quilt Artistry" is one of my go-to sources of inspiration.  I have always wanted to make a quilt inspired by her work, but all those teeny pieces of patchwork and tightly-spaced lines of quilting were intimidating to attempt on a large scale.  So when Jennifer announced that she was hosting a mini-quilt challenge, it was the perfect opportunity to experiment with some of Jinzenji's techniques on a smaller scale.

The design was inspired by the view of the ocean from the patio of my parents' ocean house, where my husband and I spent a quiet, solo, winter weekend in February.  The shoreline is rocky, and (though not in this photo), you nearly always see lines of elegant black cormorants flying past in formation, skimming the surface of the water for a fish to catch.

I had a lot of fun making this little quilt, which measures 27 x 21."   The teeniest squares of patchwork are about 1/8" x 1/2," and the quilting lines are 1/4" apart.

Thanks to Jennifer for giving me the incentive to experiment with some new techniques that I may not have otherwise been brave enough to attempt.

Check out all the other modern mini-quilts that are entered so far.  So many beautiful and inspiring entries!

penguins

From Purl Bee's excellent free tutorial.    Fabric scraps from my stash.  This is a great, simple pattern and tutorial.  The only thing I changed was to omit the button eyes because one of these is a baby gift.  The other one was claimed by my son but after he shoved it in a bin with the rest of his stuffed animals, I am thinking of sneaking him back to my desk.  Yeah, I'm a mean mom like that.

work in progress...

a little work in progress...

And a valentine from my sweetest guy.  It's still mostly rocketships, but I'm told everyone knows it's a valentine because of the flower on the upper right.

Swoon complete

My first finish of 2012 is the "Exploding Stars" quilt I made from my son.  Of course, this is actually Swoon, but I took the liberty of renaming it to make it a little more palatable to a 4-year-old Star Wars fanatic who actually wanted a "space-battleship" quilt.

I used some of the leftover half-square triangles to piece a zigzag for the back, and used the rest in a pillow-cover that I have every intention of completing.  Someday.

This was the first bed-sized quilt (albeit only a twin) that I have ever attempted, and quilting it on my home machine was a bit of a struggle, involving much swearing and sending my husband to the local bike store for these.  (They work quite nicely, by the way).  I chose to use a pattern of straight lines about 2 inches apart in a pattern similar to the one I used on this quilt.   Each of the four corner blocks is quilted with straight lines in an outward-oriented L-shape, while the middle two blocks are quilted in a rectangular "U."  This makes a sort of a plus-shape at the intersection of each block.  

The binding is made from a large-scale zig-zag from Half Moon Modern for Moda.  I don't really like working with bias binding, so  I thought using the zig-zag print would be a good way to get the diagonal orientation while still cutting the binding on the grain.  It probably definitely wasn't the easiest way to achieve this result, but it worked out in the end.

The recipient was pleased, and even cooperated (marginally) for a photo shoot.

This measures about 59 by 88" -- a narrow twin.  I increased the width of the sashing by 1/2" on the interiors and by 1" on the outer border to achieve a slightly wider quilt.  The white is Kona, the grey on the back is Heath, and the blocks are a huge variety of fabrics including Kei Honeycomb, Alexander Henry Pirate Grid, Lecian Stripe, and some others I've forgotten.

bee block for Carly

Carly at Citric Sugar asked for bee blocks.  Her only instructions: 1) use scraps 2) a white or off-white background.

Here's what I came up with.  It was such a gift to have the freedom to make a block like this -- no real restrictions, no rules, and no need to think about making a commitment to a whole quilt.   I had a wonderful time making it, and it's off to Canada this week.  I hope you like it, Carly!

rails and bars

Despite a seemingly endless bout of bronchitis, I managed to complete this top at long last.  I first started the blocks for this quilt in October; I completed all the blocks in December, but set them aside for a while to work on Christmas gifts and let some ideas for layouts swirl around in my head.  The blocks were inspired by the work of the artist Sean Scully as well as these and similar Gee's Bend quilts.  

In the end, I decided to sash the blocks in the ecru shot cotton.  The layout was tricky since the blocks were all of slightly different sizes, but in the end it was amazing to see them come together.  The addition of the ecru sashing changed the entire nature of the visual relationship between the black/grey bars and the ecru bars in the blocks.

The back, which uses leftover pieces from the front, is still in progress on my design wall.

equilateral triangle-hexagons

A new English paper piecing project in progress.    The triangles are 3" to a side, making the hexies 6" on their longest axis.