Author: Laura Loewen

Read about my quilts at QuiltCon HERE

I decided that the I Heart You quilt pattern would be a perfect way to remember our dog who passed in the fall. She always wanted a blanket on while she lay in her bed, she wasn’t allowed on the furniture. The majority of her blankets were fleece from Target I found on sale after Valentine’s Day many years ago. Most of them were probably more holes than blanket so I wanted to make a Valentine’s quilt in memory of her.

The fleece holes got tossed pretty much right away and I started collecting pink fabrics from my stash, and some new, to make this quilt. I used an Art Gallery fabric, white with paw prints, for the talk bubble background. True to my heart (and partly because I mostly stash partial fat quarters) I made the rest of the pieces scrappy and random.

This was a quick sew. And if you can handle about a billion stitch and flip corners, it’s a pattern worth sewing.

Read about The Making of Tar & Cinders HERE.

I started this quilt back in 2017. It was a challenge to myself to sew improv, which I had not ever really done before. I had made one baby quilt with wonky log cabins, sort of improv, but that’s the closest I had come.

I wanted to make several classic blocks in an improv style. I chose simple quilt shapes like HSTs and squares to form stars, churndash, and other common quilt block shapes. I limited my fabrics to low volume backgrounds and bright, high contrast colors.

Making the blocks was fun and quick. It was a nice project to test out a new to me skill. I even enjoyed piecing the quilt top together. But then I had the genius idea to hand quilt the entire (throw size) thing! What I realized in the process is that I love hand quilting, but I don’t love hand quilting an entire large quilt with a bold cogs and gears design. So I put it away for nearly 2 years.

I knew I needed to dig it back out and finish the quilting. Lucky for me we live in a super dry climate so most of my water soluble marking were still present. I chose to finish out a couple more gears to balance the pattern and then I switched over to 2″ horizontal straight lines. This was the best decision I made. The quilting is done, it’s extra crinkly from the big stitches, and best of all I no longer have it on my UFO list!

Check out more of my progress from the very beginning by searching my hashtag #loewenimprovquilt on Instagram.

Read more about how I made Moon Phases HERE

I made this quilt as a gift for my husband who is training as a candidate in the National Ski Patrol. He always comments how hand quilting is superior so of course I had to hand quilt this!

The design is based on the NSP logo that patrollers wear while on patrol; white cross in a field of red. I needed to make it more complicated than that so my white cross is made up of dozens of postage stamp sized white crosses. I also added in a few red on red crosses within the field of red. Nothing about those tiny crosses was simple. I had to line up every last piece before sewing it together to make sure each cross was completed in the correct fabric. Because I just had to make it scrappy. There’s really no other way.

I hope he enjoys it because it was certainly a labor of love!

After I arrived home from QuiltCon 2019 it took me several days to process what I saw. You can read about my evaluations in my QuiltCon Nashville Recap post. The one thing I did know was that I was going to make a quilt because I was so inspired by all the wonderful quilts at the show. First, I put down into words my evaluation of the best qualities of the show.

What stood out to me was this: dark, bright, bold, contrast, unexpected, texture, and depth. After I figured out what actually stuck with me from seeing all the quilts at QuiltCon 2019, I decided I must make a quilt featuring all the wonderful things. And thus, More Is More was born.

After spending a few days sketching, I started out knowing certain techniques I wanted to use, and the basic shape, colors, and values that I wanted to create. I pulled fabric from stash, ordered from the web in late night ordering sessions, and made the rounds to all my LQSs.

My first step was to tape out the shape on my design wall. I had to set up a second table for my fabric pull. Then, I started cutting circles and layering background fabrics.

I actually had to pin up a second design wall so that I could work with the layers better. One thing that draws me to applique is the ability to layer fabrics and designs to create depth. I also took advantage of my sewing room floor to cut and square my backgound sections. Then, I “quilt as you go’ed” by machine the top background section. The main factor in this decision was that I did not want to bury threads. After the first segment of quilting was done I added the bottom background section and quilted that by machine.

I then arranged the applique circles on top of the quilted background. I attached them all with a safety pin before stitching them down by hand.

My initial plan was to quilt again by machine over the top of the circles, between the existing quilting lines. Instead, I listened to the quilt that was just begging for some big stitch hand quilting. I stitched a color coordinated X over the top of each circle. I chose to echo the diagonals in the binding and finished it off in time to submit to the MQG Exhibition at Houston Quilt Festival.

I was honored to be asked by Riane to have my quilt #theglaciertwo included in her article about representational quilts for Curated Quilts magazine. This is the first publication I have had a quilt featured in and I’m so glad she thought to include my quilt.

Here is the statement that goes with my quilt:

This quilt is pieced with 14 cuts of fabric; representing the 14 named glaciers of Colorado. Linen, quilter’s cotton, and repurposed men’s dress shirts were used in specific quantities to depict the over 50% receding of Arapaho Glacier during the 20th century. The quilting design is the topography of the Arapaho Glacier area. The hand quilting was done using perle cotton 8. A metallic thread was used to machine quilt a grid inside the boundaries of the glacier, along with a white line of hand stitching around the glacier’s border.

Read about QuiltCon 2019 HERE

Did you know the best way to have a quilt hang in a show is to plan and host your own show? I volunteered to coordinate the first show for my guild, BoulderMQG, and our theme was sustainable modern quilting. Participants were encouraged to enter quilts that fell within these five categories: repurposed, rescued fabrics; renewable, sustainable new fabrics; scraps, waste, and otherwise trashed pieces of fabric; repaired, restored, and reworked ‘old’ quilts into new quilts; unusual materials.

I had two quilts accepted to the show, #theglaciertwo, and The Thaw.

This show hung at the Albert A. Bartlet Science and Communication Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado in the fall of 2018. This turned out to be such a nice show and I’m so happy that I put in all the work to make it happen. Thanks to everyone for all the support during this process.