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Clues in the Quilts

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Last year the small fiber art group I belong to, the Fiberistas, held a challenge based on a game. It was a lot of fun and I recently realized I never blogged about it. So here we go:

You probably have played the board game Clue™. Kay came up with the idea to challenge each of us to make a quilt based on clues from the game: a room, person, and weapon. Without peaking she chose three clues for each of us, put them into an envelope, and asked us to make a small quilt that would include the clues without giving the answer away too easily.

This is the quilt I made from the clues I recieved:

And here’s a detail image of the quilting:

As I’ve mentioned before, I love puzzles and mysteries, so I had a delightful time thinking about how to execute my 18″ square quilt. The stacked dishes were cut out of a fabric I purchased in Sweden on our Sew We Go to the Baltic Sea cruise in 2014. I fussy cut them out and machine appliquéd them onto a piece of hand-dyed fabric. Then I added clues in the quilting. I enjoyed every step of the process. Can you guess who did it, with what, and where???

Don’t peak until you think you have the answer.

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The answer is in my envelope:

Yes – it was Mr. Green in the Kitchen with the Candlestick!

To see all of the wonderful pieces made for this challenge please visit our Fiberista’s site by clicking here!

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And one more thing:

As many of you know, one of our favorite local “quilt shops” is going out of business. Ben Franklin Crafts in Oconomowoc has had a great fabric department as long as I’ve lived in this area.

The store and the people there have been a wonderful part of my quilting life. Well, they will be closing their doors forever on October 3rd. This was caused by a combination of things, but in the end the pandemic was the last straw. So many losses over the past months! The store announced recently that the mark down is now 50%.

When I first learned of the closing I was very disappointed. I couldn’t bring myself to even go in the doors for weeks. When I learned that they were selling all the fixtures, and Mike and I had been discussing that we needed another book shelf, we decided it was time. We actually bought two shelving units and I am thrilled to now have a little bit of one of my favorite places in my living room to remember them by.

I must admit I have a lot more of their fabric in my stash now too.

Thanks to Terrie, Mary, their staff and customers, for many, many sweet memories!

Fibonacci in Quilting

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I first heard the name Fibonacci years ago at a Milwaukee Art Quilters meeting. Having a degree in Dental Hygiene, art theories and terms were not typically in my vocabulary. But I loved geometry in high school, so this sequence of numbers grabbed me immediately. Let me share a bit of an explanation for those of you who have no idea what I’m writing about.

The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers in which the next number is attained by adding the previous two numbers:

1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 …

This series can be used to model or describe an amazing variety of phenomena in mathematics, science, art and nature.

I did a quick walk through my yard and saw Fibonacci numbers everywhere. For example: my coral bell leaves have 5 main veins – and 5 is in the series:

Impatien petals come in 5s too.

Each branch of leaves I counted on my marigolds had 13 leaves.

And all the little clovers had 3 leaves (no 4 leaf clovers to be found):

An ear of corn has 13 rows. I didn’t have one handy to share a photo so, since it’s still corn season (sadly nearing the end of corn season), feel free to count the rows the next time you enjoy one.

And the human body is filled with these numbers: 1 head, mouth and nose; 2 eyes and ears; 5 fingers on each hand, and toes on each foot.

The mathematical ideas the Fibonacci sequence leads to, such as the golden ratio and spirals, are often appreciated for their charm and beauty.

When the Fibonacci series is drafted on a grid a spiral results.

I was thinking it might be interesting to continue the grid above, and then make it into a quilt – using a different fabric for each area of the grid. It could be a fun “modern” crib quilt!?!

This spiral is found many places in nature. The example I’ve seen cited most often is the nautilus:

a pinecone is another example of a Fibonacci spiral:

I marked in the spirals on this image to make them more obvious (and the cool thing is – they actually spiral in both directions!):

And isn’t this vegetable I bought at the farmer’s market a beautiful example of the spiral?

When any two successive fibonacci numbers are taken as a ratio (ie. 34/55), it is very close to the “Golden Ratio” which is approximately 1.61803.

For a better explanation than I can give you of this concept click here 😊.

If you are intrigued by the Fibonacci series and would like to learn more click here. To watch a short, easy to understand video about this fascinating topic click here.

So, what does this have to do with quilting???

Well, these numbers are supposed to be visually pleasing and the Milwaukee Art Quilters often chose their challenge quilt size to fit the Golden Ratio. Both of these challenge quilts were made according to this ratio:

Portals challenge – the Narrow Gate by Chris Lynn Kirsch
Art Deco challenge – Forty Wonderful Years by Chris Lynn Kirsch

Wendy was inspired to begin our collaborative quilt “Welcoming the Son Into Our Garden” by a photograph she’d taken of sunflowers.

The center of sunflowers is always a fibonacci spiral, and her photo was so perfect she decided to simply photo transfer it onto fabric for the quilt.

When I was coming up with a quilting design for my Compass Craze quilt, I decided to use a Fibonacci spiral spinning out from the center of the quilt.

I marked it on the quilt, stitched on the lines, and filled in with tiny spirals.

Here’s a detail for a clearer view of the spiral:

Perhaps if I had free-hand drawn the spiral it would have been just as visually pleasing, but I am very happy with these results.

Have you ever used this series in any of your quilts? Do you think you might try it in the future?

Even if it’s not your thing – I hope you found it interesting. God has made His creation beautiful and orderly, just like we attempt to do with our quilting.

Time to Get Away

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Since I posted about traveling in my mind last week, I’m excited to share that I actually, physically went somewhere this past week!

Last year my friend Laura discovered a beautiful quilt retreat center in Poynette, WI. Early last Spring she planned a weekend retreat for this past weekend and, even though a few of our group had to cancel for various reasons, Laura, April and I are very glad we made the trip!

As I packed up the car my sweet husband made sure all was well for my hour long drive (I loved that it wasn’t very far from home).

I didn’t realize how ready I was for some new surroundings – and time with friends, and Cattail Retreat didn’t disappoint.

The accommodations were very comfortable, and the sewing room was perfect.

With only 3 of us we were able to spread out and get some serious (😁) sewing done.

We took turns making meals, but breakfasts were on our own. I especially loved spending some morning time in the second floor porch.

My first project got it’s start as blocks made by a dear lady in my guild. Carole was a very giving member who passed away last year. Her husband donated much of her quilting stuff to Patched Lives, saying the proceeds were to be used by our charity quilts committee. Many of us purchased fabric and UFOs from her collection, and are finishing them as charity quilts. I bought these beautiful star blocks and pieced them into a lap-sized quilt. A double donation! Once that top was together – on the left – I began a scrap quilt for myself (right):

This scrappy green quilt will eventually be king sized. I was inspired by one made by my friend Lori. The blocks are paper pieced rectangles, and I’m using green scraps, with a few surprises thrown in to add excitement.

I ended up using pages from an old phone book for the foundation, and cut strips of various widths from my scraps.

These blocks are fun, easy, and I’m actually using up some of my bin of scraps! Thanks Lori!

I highly recommend spending time with quilting friends – it is great for our mental health. Click here to learn more about Cattail Retreat.

If you’d rather stay closer to the Milwaukee area, I have two friends who have recently opened wonderful quilt retreat centers.

Mom’s Place

Lou has remade her mother’s home in New Berlin, WI, into a lovely place for quilters to relax, stitch, and spend time together.

Click here to learn more about Mom’s Place!

Tall Pines Retreat

Laure and Hans have renovated this beautiful home in Mukwonago, WI. They’ve made it into the perfect spot for quilters, or any crafters to spend time together doing what they love.

Click here to learn more about Tall Pines Retreat.

No matter where you are, I hope you are finding time to escape into our wonderful world of quilting with friends.

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This is a follow-up email I received from Carol after my post about barn blocks.

“WNCQG sub group did a program in January 2020.  These were very easy.  Precut plywood from Lowes that was primed on all sides and edges.
 (24” x 24”) Then we marked and painted with outdoor paint.  My husband made the frame and I will paint it the same red.
Hope this helps.“

She certainly did a great job! Thanks Carol!

Traveling in Our Minds

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During this time of limited travel, I’ve been thanking God for all of the wonderful trips I have been blessed to take throughout my life – and you’ve joined me on many of them, if only via my blog :-). I have had moments of being a bit stir crazy over the past six months, but am grateful for my family, my church, and quilting.

I finally reached a point where I admitted to myself I needed to use this time more wisely (my teaching engagements have almost vanished), and began to clean out my studio. As I went through the books on my shelf I came across two that brought back fun memories, and one of them wasn’t about quilting at all. Here’s the story:

My book, Repliqué Quilts was published in 2001 and went out of print in 2004. At that time I purchased the residual books and loaded all 967 of them into my basement (Over 18,000 had been sold – praise the LORD!). It took awhile, but eventually all of them sold and I now wish I had more – as many newer quilters have shown an interest in Repliqué. But I digress.

To continue the story: way back in 2010 I received an email from Ann in Kamloops, British Columbia. She wanted to purchase a copy of Repliqué. The problem was I had no way of accepting credit cards or foreign checks/currency at that time. Rather than over thinking it I sent her the book and asked her to send me a book from her area that she thought I might enjoy. It turned out to be a delightful exchange (click here to read the original post).

About a week later she sent me the second book about Laurie Swim; a very talented Canadian art quilter.

So, when I pulled out these books I opened them to read the story about our exchange, only to find I hadn’t recorded it on the inside cover – as I had hoped. I felt it needed to be there and thus the books have been written in and this post came to be 😊.

My studio cleaning came to a complete halt while I dove into revisiting Kamloops, and Laurie’s quilts.

Then I searched back through my emails and discovered that Ann had used my Repliqué technique to recreate a photograph in fabric, and I’d never shared it on my blog. So this is a bit late in coming, but here’s what Ann wrote to me way back in 2010:

“Hi Chris, I just finished the attached art quilt – wall hanging which I thought you might like to see. Your generous contribution of the book helped a lot. Thanks so much.”

Stunning!

Dear Ann, If you’re still reading my blog posts, I’d like to thank you again for the fun we had with our “Kamloops Kapers”. Please let me know how you’re doing. Have you made any more quilts using Repliqué?

Bending Threads II

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I actually have two topics to share this week. So before I delve into a follow up post to the bobbin work from last week, I really need to tell you about the upcoming fundraiser auction for the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts. It takes place this week and begins tomorrow – Monday, August 3rd!!!

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I’m excited to be on the auction block – or at least for my work to be 😁. Here are the details of what I’m offering:

“You and three friends can participate in a 6-hour workshop provided by Chris Lynn Kirsch and held at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts.  Enjoy the day learning a new technique, improving a skill, or having a fun and creative experience with friends, led by an award-winning quilter and teacher.  Select from Chris’s workshop offerings, found on her website: https://www.chrisquilts.net/classes/.”

I know there will be many other great items up for auction – and all the proceeds benefit our museum. So please join in on the fun! I apologize that the link in the image above doesn not work. Here’s the actual link to the site: https://www.wiquiltmuseum.com/calendar-of-events

Bending Threads and Bobbin Work

In response to last week’s post, my dear friend Evelyn sent me some wonderful photos and information about her experiences with bobbin work – and you’re gonna love it!

Evelyn has been featured in quite a few of my posts. She has been a blessing to me in so many ways. She was the friend who taught me how to make my Japanese jacket, inspired my “A View From My Window” challenge, she acted as my agent to get me teaching opportunities in Alaska and Arizona, she has used my “Crossing” technique in a variety of fascinating quilts, and is infamous for her part in our Quilt Sissie kidnapping adventure. If you have a little spare time, you may want to read some of those previous posts. Simply click on the subject of each one above to be linked to them.

This was her response to last week’s Bending Threads post:

Hi Chris, I’m sending photos of some of my bobbin embroidery quilts to use on your blog if you want to.  I’ve taken a close-up and a full quilt picture of each one.  I still have about 30 bobbins with the “thread” on them.


“I’ve tried lots of different threads.  It’s the only way to use decorative threads that won’t go through a machine needle.  The easiest to use is perle cotton, size 8, but I’ve also used sizes 5 and 3.  It’s great for metallics, too, or even multi-strand floss.  In most cases, I do the embroidery through a single layer before sandwiching, but it can be done as part of the quilting. 
I wanted the basket in this wallhanging to show up better, so I outlined the basket on the right side, then turned it over and stitched the lines to make it look woven.“

“One of the first pieces I used the bobbin embroidery on was this multi-technique vest.  I used size 3 perle cotton to make the spider webs. You can’t get much thread that size on a bobbin and you have to loosen the bobbin tension more than with most threads.”

“This cotton and metallic thread made a nice filler in the open spaces of this wall hanging.  I traced the design on paper, then pinned it to the back and sewed through the paper.”

“I made this quilt in a workshop on ways to make and use circles.  I used metallic cord to highlight parts of the circles, and a satin cord in the border as part of the quilting.”

“I used a top thread in the color of the background to make this one look more like hand sashako.”

“Bobbin embroidery can be used on bed quilts, too.  My quilter echoed the same motif in the border.”

Almost a week after Evelyn sent me these wonderful photos, I received this message:

“This quilt is hanging in my large living/sewing room staring at me and I forgot it.  It’s called “Cycles to Fit the Stages of Life.” Cycles, Fits and Stages was the name of the challenge for a show and I took it literally.   The spokes are bobbin embroidered.”

Delightful! All of these quilts make me want to go do more bobbin work. I hope they’ve inspired you too. Thanks Evelyn!!!

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And remember to go to the museum auction site: https://www.wiquiltmuseum.com/calendar-of-events, and support our wonderful fiber art museum!

Bending Threads

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I’ve played a bit with bobbin work over the years, and have even taught a few classes on this fun technique.

Recently we held a small challenge in our ThreadBenders group entitled “Thread Bending”. The idea was to make a small whole cloth quilt using stitching only – no piecing or appliqué.

A while back I’d begun a class sample to show the students in my Open Lab class how to stitch from the back of a layered quilt sandwich, directly on the motifs in a fabric with a large print. My back was covered with beautiful butterflies.

I decided this would be a great piece for the challenge. By placing a decorative thread in the bobbin, and changing it for each portion of the motif, lovely butterflies appeared on the front.

Once the decorative outlines of the butterflies were stitched, I turned the quilt to the front, filled in more of each butterfly with free-motion stitching in thinner, bright colored threads, added my own funky flower, and then quilted with echoing and spiraling.

I have learned over the years that red quilts are difficult to photograph – and this quilt was no exception. The colors are as bright and cheery as you can see in the detail photographs, but the intensity of the red background overpowers the background stitching, so I toned down the intensity to allow the quilting to show in the full view above. I hope you get the idea 😁.

If you decide you want to play around with bobbin work I highly recommend making a sample sandwich to experiment on, as getting the tension correct takes a bit of fiddling.

Purchasing a separate bobbin case for the non-drop-in bobbin machines can be very helpful. Mark it for bobbin work, and feel free to adjust the tension to get the right look on the quilt top. Sometimes I skip the tension spring on the bobbin altogether.

Drop-in bobbin machines are a little trickier. Begin by threading as usual and checking the top often. If the thicker threads don’t work, try not putting them through the spring and see what happens.

If you’ve done any bobbin work in the past, I’d love to see a photograph or two! Send them to me at:

A Very Different Puzzle Quilt

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The past few weeks I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to make a quilt for a very special little man. Remington was born to my cousin’s daughter Kate and her husband Ryan. You may remember a quilt I made for their first child, Jenny. I pieced it with Minky and did a post about it back in May of 2018. Click here to read that post.

I decided to make an I Spy quilt for Remington, using a pattern I’ve made quite a few times. The first quilt I made using this pattern was not an I Spy. It was back in 2010 when I used it to make a patriotic quilt. While searching my blog for this photo, I found it was part of a post I did on how to photograph quilts. I still use the same technique. If you’re interested in it click here.

So, on to the story of Remington’s quilt. I dug through my stash of conversation prints and picked out some fun ones.

I then chose an aqua fabric to use as border/sashing squares. Squares of each fabric were cut for the sashing and alternated between the blocks, along with the aqua fabric, to create the interlocking puzzle effect.

The sashing piecing takes a bit of concentration, but I think it’s worth it.

I quilted 1/4″ inside the outer edge of each puzzle piece, along with a simple rectangle at the center of each block.

The border is quilted with the words “Remington’s I Spy Quilt”, and “Made With Love by Aunt Chris”; filled in between with words for the items to look for in the quilt.

This border portion contains the words “Frogs”, “Cars”, and “Stars”

It’s all done in cursive (because that’s easier to quilt – and I think kids should learn it 🙂).

I backed it all with Minky (ultra plush fleece), which has been folded to the front to create the binding. The Minky I chose has a star design in it, and this is the quilting of the puzzle blocks from the back:

I wasn’t able to deliver it in person because of the pandemic, so I mailed it off to him and got a wonderful thank-you call from Kate a few days later. I hope to visit Remington and his family sometime soon.

What a joy to be able to make something special for someone special!

Puzzled No More

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The most recent “large” challenge for our ThreadBenders group was entitled “Colored by Emotion”, and these were the rules:

“Everyone randomly draws one color from a bag, which contains the 12 colors listed on the color wheel:  Yellow, yellow-orange, orange, orange-red, red, red-violet, violet, blue-violet, blue, blue-green, green, yellow-green.  (There will be two copies of each color in the bag since we have more than 12 members).  Then everyone draws three emotion slips out of another bag and chooses one emotion of those three.  Everyone makes a quilt based on these two pieces of information.  You may use black, white, and the color you draw as well as all the tints, tones, and shades of your color.  No gray. At least 50 percent of the quilt should be your color. Due at the February 2020 meeting.”

At the original meeting I drew the color violet, and the emotion I chose from the bag was puzzled. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I love all kinds of puzzles, so this was an easy choice. As I pondered what to do, a design didn’t come springing to my mind. So I surfed the internet and was intrigued by a number of pieces of clip art with swoops of jigsaw puzzle pieces… but, still, nothing was coming together in my head.

As I often mention, my faith is a huge part of my quilting inspiration, so I decided at this point to pray that this quilt would glorify God (I don’t know why I don’t do this first 😊). Shortly thereafter I realized that the swoop of pieces needed to be swooping towards something – and that something needed to be the cross.  

I backed a variety of violet fabrics with fusible web, and began cutting out jigsaw puzzle pieces and placing them on a background of white fabric, grading from larger and darker in the lower left, to smaller and lighter as they tumbled upward.

At this point I pinned a paper cross in place, and added purple and black tulle strips to emphasize the “swoop”.

More tulle strips were added, and I planned to leave plenty of white background for intense quilting to give the quilt a modern look. Fortunately at this point I read the rules and realized “at least 50% of the quilt had to be my color”! The solution? Cover the entire quilt with a layer of the purple tulle.

This would make my quilt “legal”, and yet still give it a modern look. Plus, wherever the tulle had multiple layers, it intensified the shading. I left the paper cross under the tulle, and layered the entire piece with backing and batting. It was now time to mark my quilting designs, but how does one mark on tulle???

I decided to free-motion quilt around the puzzle pieces and the cross while I thought about it, and as I did an idea began to form. Now that the major motifs were quilted through to the back – I could make my marks on the back and quilt from behind. I didn’t want to get the quilt wet to erase the marks, so I used a Frixion™ “heat erase” marker.

I’ve avoided this tool because of removal problems in the past, but I made an exception this time because I was using it on the back (to read my previous post on this topic click here). I designed feathered rays that would radiate from the cross; and the marker showed up well.

You’ll notice I had to move the basting pins from the front to the back to avoid broken needles while quilting.

I quilted from the back of the quilt with a very light violet colored thread in the bobbin, filling in with echoing around the feathers.

There was a large area of background that needed more than just echoing, so I quilted some jigsaw puzzle lines from the back too.

When the quilting was done I trimmed the tulle away from the cross, removed the paper pattern, and bound it all with more violet fabrics.

Thus the only pure white area was in the cross. I decided to call my quilt “Puzzled No More”. The label reads: “My life was a purposeless puzzle until I met Christ at the foot of His cross, and now I’m Puzzled No More”.

It was a fun adventure, I learned a lot, and whenever I look at it – I smile!

The ThreadBenders entered 8 of our quilts in the AQS Ultimate Guild Challenge contest this year, but the Grand Rapids show has been canceled 😔. So I’d like to invite you to do a virtual tour of this exciting group of quilts by going to our site. Please click here to view all the quilts!