Heather K Is A Quilter

I make quilts. Sometimes I ghost make them for others. Sometimes for gifts. Sometimes my heart makes them. Email me for custom work [email protected]

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"Shape Study No 1: Circular Logic" by Heather Kinion

cotton and linen fabrics, cotton thread, wool batting

The arguments go around and around and always end up in favor of those with power.

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"Line Study No 3: Power and Pressure" by Heather Kinion

cotton and linen fabrics, cotton thread, and wool batting

A meditation. Dense quilting lines create shape and dimension

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"Line Study No 2: Plaid Unravels" by Heather Kinion

Cotton and linen fabrics, cotton thread, wool batting

The rhythm of plaid falls apart.

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"Shape Study No 1 : The hat"

by Heather Kinion

2023 19"x24"

cotton fabric, cotton thread, wool batting

Inspired by the new tiling shape discovered in early 2023.

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Geese Study No 3: Homage to Las Manos 2022 37" x 56"

by Heather Kinion

In the improvisationally pieced background are quilted triangles in a variety of sizes quilted with white and off white thread.

cotton fabric, cotton thread, wool batting

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"Line Study No 1: Slopes" 2020 57" x 63"

by Heather Kinion

The sloping lines were drawn free hand and filled in with dense hand quilting.

Published in "Curated Quilts" Issue 24 in 2023.

Accepted into "Quilts=Art=Quilts" 2023 at the Schweinfurth Art Center

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"Small Crosses" 2020 12" square

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"Geese Study No 2" 2018 by Heather Kinion

All three of the stacked blue triangles are created with dense hand quilting stitches, but the middle triangle has a doubled layer of cotton batting, and the bottom triangle has a doubled layer of cotton batting with the additional layer being made of cotton that has been dyed black.

One photo shows both the front and some of the back of the quilt at the same time.

This quilt was exhibited at Quiltcon in 2019.

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"Candy Machine" 2018 an original patchwork quilt top by Heather Kinion with quilting by Nicole Maroon

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Geese Study #1 is the second of my almost whole cloth series, the first where I toyed with the idea of modernizing red work embroidery as dense quilting. I used three off white solids and three off white threads and nearly an entire big spool of aurifil 12 wt red thread. This quilt was accepted to hang at QuiltCon in Pasadena in February 2018 for exhibit only as I am on the Board of Directors of the Modern Quilt Guild

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Last year at this time, I was working away at finishing my second go at a mini quilt to be auctioned off for Quilts of Valor at a big quilt show in Iowa. The theme was America the Beautiful, and I settled on this traditional block done simply with little borders. I named it Brigadier for a very special General in my youth. (It was my second go because my first ended up way closer to plagiarism than homage).

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I completed a quilt in the fall for my sister and brother-in-law as a wedding gift. I'd intended it as a full color version of this showstopper quilt from Luke Haynes Log Cabin show that I'd worked on as a studio assistant. The 90" square quilt has only four blocks, and by flipping the center color, the look changes dramatically. In the show, LUKE kept the color placement the same but changed the strip widths in two different quilts. I ended up going with the bottom layout (not my original plan) because it seemed more like the happy couple.

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Last winter I took this nearly whole cloth quilt on our visit home at Christmas. It is about 52″ square, and I hand quilted it all in about 6 weeks. It has been very difficult to capture the warmth and texture of it in photos. 

It was my take on a drunkard’s path block, using very dense hand quilting with Auriful embroidery floss (and 50wt for the less dense hand quilting). The Aurifil floss has a lovely metallic sheen to it when used this densely (in a double strand). 

My goal with the hand quilting was inspired by kantha stitches and folk art where the lack of perfection shows the hand of the maker--although I was new to hand quilting, and I now kind of cringe at some of the mistakes I made in tying off threads and quilting that close together. I learned so much from this quilt, and it has since become the first in a series as I push this idea farther.

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So, this happened. Parenthood. Month 1 down, lifetime to go.

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I've been awol from blogging for a while because I've been busy because in expecting my first child at the beginning of July. This likely will not bring me back around to blogging regularly for a while.

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The block is an antique called a fool's square. Most of the blocks have a lighter background (like the right one) but a few of them have a darker background. I felt like these little prints needed something with a vintage feel. Although after I started on them, I discovered this same antique block was the root of Jen Kingwell's Gardenvale Stars quilt. Although you will soon see the end quilts are very different. This was my sneak peek of World Piece-the first Mary Fons fabric line with Springs Creative.

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When Springs Creative sent me the India collection from Mary Fons' new fabric line, I left it wrapped up for about a week because it was so prettily packaged! Then I left it in a lovely fat stack of half yards for most of another week while I came up with a plan. I'm usually a very scrappy quilter, so it took a while to deduce a plan for only 6 fabrics in half yard cuts, but I found inspiration in an antique block. Although, then I realized I needed a lot more of the background fabric for each one and I mixed and matched my plan more than I intended. But it sure was great to slice into this fabric!