Spiromaniacs

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Exploding Spiral
Designed, pieced and hand-quilted by RaNae Merrill
45″ x 45″
(The pattern for this quilt is in Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts)

This is another quilt that I made as a sample for the first proposal of Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts.  It’s actually almost exactly the same as Holiday Whirl, except for the dots exploding all over it.

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Sails & Waves
Designed & pieced by RaNae Merrill
Quilted by Linda Taylor
84″ x 104″

I made the center medallion of this quilt for the first proposal of Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts.  When the proposal was rejected, I put it away.  When I pulled it out a year or so later, I realized that I had learned a lot since I had started it, and the original design looked boring to me.  So, I redid the design around the center.  When it came time to sew it, however, I ran into two problems: 1) I needed large pieces of fabric for the corner spirals, and the fabric had been discontinued, and 2) I had pre-cut into small pieces for the previous design all the fabric I had.  In the end, I had to piece together a lot of small strips to get large enough pieces to finish!

 Zowie! Powie!
Designed by RaNae Merrill
Pieced by Dottie Lankard, Independence, KS and
Susan Harmon, Cherryvale, KS
Quilted by Joan Gamble, Old Town, FL
48″ x 48″

Zowie! Powie! was inspired by a line of comic book fabric from Timeless Treasures.  It is made with 8-sided point-to-point spirals that change direction in each ring.  The change in direction turns the spoke into a lightning bolt. 

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Spiral Quilts by Spiromaniacs I

The original “Spiromaniacs” (and the people who invented the name) were a group of my quilting friends who answered a call for help when I was preparing the second proposal for Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts.  Not only did they make a group of stunning quilts that helped land me a publisher, they also, through their questions and trials-and-errors, taught me more than I ever imagined I could know about spirals.
Thank you!

Photo Op?!
Designed & pieced by Jamie McClenaghan, Fairfield, CA
Quilted by Gwen Baggett, Clinton, IN
48″ x 60″

Jamie lives about 15 minutes from my sister in California, so when I visited for the holidays I had a chance to work in person with Jamie.  Not that she neeed it — she’s a very accomplished quilter in her own right.  When I arrived at her house, she said “If I can do a spiral in any shape, can I do a really big egg-shaped spiral?”  Sure, I replied, and Jamie set about drawing this spiral.  A few days after I got home, Jamie called me in a panic saying “I can’t find the smooth spokes!  Mine are all jaggedy!”  Turns out she had colored the triangles in the “wrong” direction.  And that’s how we discovered feathered spokes.

SHOWS & AWARDS:
Pacific International Quilt Festival, October 2008 (Juried show)

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We’re Not in Kansas Anymore!
Designed & pieced by Dottie Lankard, Independence, KS
Quilted by Cozetta Campbell, Parsons, KS
50″ x 50″

Dottie is short for Dorothy, and she actually lives in Kansas, hence the Wizard of Oz reference.  She’s an art quilter, and whenever she does something like this, the ladies at her quilt shop and her guild — who are all very traditional quilters — give her a puzzled look and say “It’s lovely, dear, but what are you going to do with it?”  The central point-to-point spiral has 10 sides, and on each side is a 5-sided Nesting spiral to form the rays of the sun.  The “yellow brick road” is a secondary spiral that she discovered.

SHOWS & AWARDS:
Juried into the American Quilt Society show in Paducah, Kentucky, Summer 2008
First Prize, Art Quilts Division, Little Balkins Quilt Contest (a large quilt contest in South East Kansas), September 2008.

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Winged Water
Designed & pieced by Susan Harmon, Cherryvale, KS
Quilted by Cotie Campbell
42-1/2″ x 51″

Susan is a close friend of Dottie, and Dottie asked if Susan could make a spiral quilt too, so Dottie could have someone to “kibbitz” with.  Susan loves Native American baskets and they were the inspiration for this quilt.  The design is a 16-sided point-to-point spiral.  Which is actually a lot easier than it sounds!

SHOWS & AWARDS:
Second Prize, Art Quilts Division, Little Balkins Quilt Contest (a large quilt contest in South East Kansas), September 2008.

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Fourth of July
Designed, pieced & quilted by
Anita Mester, Austin, TX
51″ x 21″

Anita loves the Fourth of July, and made this table runner to go with all the other decorations that she puts up in her home for that holiday.  The spirals are 8-sided point-to-points, but she colored only two spokes red so that they connect like ribbons.  Then she colored the outer triangles blue to form rings.

SHOWS & AWARDS:
Honorable Mention, Austin Area Quilt Guild Show, September 2008

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We’ve Got Sisters!
Designed, pieced & quilted by
Mary Ann Olmstead, Beloit, WI
24″ x 36″

MaryAnn had this to say about her design: It does look complicated, doesn’t it?  Perhaps the new Spiros would appreciate knowing that the entire project is made up of only two foundation pieces: one kite shape that has its color placement just the same in every piece and one triangle with every piece also identical. That information might put things in perspective and make designing a spiral quilt seem potentially less intimidating.

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Oriental Fantasy
Designed, pieced, appliqued & quilted by
Katie Fields, Lenore, ID
36″ x 36″

Katie used square Pinwheel spirals placed in mirror-image to each other to made the frame around these appliqued oriental poppies.  Her careful color choices enable the black to blend smoothly into red (a color-to-color gradation).  The contrasting gold on the outer edges emphasizes the fan shape.

SHOWS & AWARDS:
Blue Ribbon, Clearwater County (Idaho) Fair, October 2008

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Spiral Pansies
Designed, pieced & quilted by
Rhona Triggs, New York, NY
24″ x 30″

Rhona’s quilt demonstrates what happens when you decide to color the rings instead of the spokes of a spiral. She used two different 7-sided irregularly-shaped point-to-point spirals and colored each of them to resemble different colors of pansies. To finish the wall hanging she appliqued them to a sky background and added applique stems and leaves.

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Opus Vino
Designed & pieced by
Laurie Nathan, New York, NY
36″ x 36″

Laurie’s design is done with 6-sided Baravelle spirals, from fabric that she dyed herself in gradations.  Since the hexagons join without any space in between them, the spirals interlock.  She felt the purple in the spirals turned out to be too similar to the blue background, but it was a great learning project, and she went on to do Hearts Form From Pieces below.

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Hearts Form From Pieces
Designed, pieced and machine quilted by
Laurie Nathan, New York, NY
60″ x 60″

The underlying structure of Laurie’s quilt is a very symmetrical, traditional-looking block made up of squares and diamonds. Laurie placed a square or diamond pinwheel spiral in each “patch” of the block, but placed the colors in a way that obscures the symmetrical structure. Hearts and ribbons dance across the design.  The color gradations (that she dyed herself) make it seem three-dimensional.