Christine’s Philadelphia

At the last post, we were in the bakery section of Bottega Louie and I had a big surprise for my sister Christine.

 It was  Christine’s Philadelphia, a quilt celebrating her life and her newly adopted city.  She moved to a Philadelphia row house this past year, after ten years in transition.  First, she raised all her children, then began a new section of her life as an artist, returning to school.  Settling in to this life was not for long, as her husband died of cancer in a quick and wild two years.  She went on a mission for our church to New York City, and resumed a friendship with Doug, who had also lost his wife.  They married after her mission and she moved from the West Coast, where she’d spent most of her adult life, to the East Coast (Delaware), then finally to a lovely home in Philadelphia, within walking distance of art museums.  She resumed her art, but one more mishap: while biking to her studio one evening, she was hit by a car, but has now mostly recovered from that accident.  She is taking on new challenges all the time.  So you can see why I wanted to make her a quilt.  I had lots to cram into one tiny creation of mine.

She was surprised.  And I think, delighted.

I’d been planning it and working on it for a few weeks, and when she came out for her son’s graduation, I knew I could give it to her then and see her face, and then mail it back later (which I’m doing).

This was the sketch I made in QuiltPro.  I knew that I wanted to alternate bold solids (for the roofs) with other patterns (for the houses).

This was the quilt, all sewn and smoothed up on the pin wall.  I think I was able to execute the vision I had fairly successfully.  I also wanted to emphasize the chevron effect, but didn’t want a steep 45-degree angle on the roofs, instead I went with something more sloping (drawing my own pattern to get this done). I often thought about making this just in solids, like the sketch, but I’m all about richness and texture in my quilts.

This was the first pulling of fabrics.  I was worried about mixing the moderns (used mostly for the houses and the row above, as well as the sky) with the densely colored, floral Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

I sent a photo of this around to some friends and asked them what they thought.  Cindy of LiveAColorfulLife said, “Oh, go for it.”  So I did.   (Like all my junk on the sides of my pinwall?  Sometimes I treat it like a giant cork board.)

Swapping out roofs on the right side to see if I like the orange down on top of the yellows any better.  I don’t.

But I tried the whole row and added in the doors and windows.  You’ll notice there’s a bold blue sky piece which disappeared in the final version.  I keep trying to refine my design as I go, snapping a digital picture, evaluating, moving things around, and repeating the process.

I am not a fan of when people say “Oh, I am working on this but I can’t show you.”  Then just don’t show me.  I hate keeping quilt secrets, but I had to keep it secret from my sister as it was a surprise, so I tried this sideways artsy shot on Instagram one day, hoping it would disguise the basic design.  I didn’t want to put it anywhere on my blog since she’s a faithful reader.

I formed the windows and doors over a piece of stiff paper (like what is in a calendar) so they would be all the same size, then topstitched them down.

I sewed the narrow roof/house sections row by row; here’s one row lined up for stitching.

Then I would add the house, then the sky. The “row” on the right is all done.  I’ll do another post on sewing those Y-seams, but later.

I like this shot.  It reminded me of the AMH feather block I’d done for my Mid-Century Modern Bee.

I pressed the seams open — a rarity for me.

I took it outside to photograph the top, and just by draping it over the fence, I could see how valuable that deep plum-colored roof was to the whole composition.  This partly influenced what color I chose for the binding.

Christine’s Philadelphia, front

I rigged up a clothesline on my back fence to take photos, as my husband wasn’t home and I wanted to get it ready to go with us to the graduation.  I used a Jane Sassaman for the backing (above), and my quilter was lickety-split on the quilting (thanks, Cathy!).

I didn’t want the quilt label to stand out too much on that background, so printed it on yellow.

Here we are again, in an uncropped photo.  You can see all the bakery goodies in the background.

When you sew on a quilt that is destined for someone, you spend a lot of time thinking about that person, in essence sending good vibes out into the universe for them, I think.  I remembered the time she had mononucleosis when she was going to Stanford, and moved home (my dad was a professor there so we lived in the area). I was in high school at the time, and we shared a room while she convalesced.  She hates it when I say this, but she has served as a great example for me and my other sisters, as all four of us are close together in age.  All of my sisters are amazing.  I am beyond lucky to be able to say this, and I know it.  I made a quilt with Cynthia, made one for Susan, and now, with this one, they all have one of my quilts.

And with each quilt, I send them my love.

****

This is Quilt #115 of 200 quilts, and I’m publishing this post on my mother’s 85th birthday.  Happy Birthday, Mom!!

(Don’t worry.  A long time ago, I made her a quilt too.)

QuiltPro Quilt Software

I’ve used QuiltPro software for about a decade now, choosing it first because it worked on a Mac as well as a PC (I’m a Mac user, and Electric Quilt has ignored people like me).  I’ve been reading about another quilt software program that you rent monthly, and thought I ought to talk about an alternative to that, especially since QuiltPro is having a sale right now of 30% off. 

What I like about this program is its simplicity.  It didn’t take me long to figure it out–click on the square icon and draw a square, click on the triangle (there are two kinds) and draw a triangle.  Click on the paint can and color in your shapes.  It does have a fabric library, but after a few times, I’ve skipped over that and just use the solids, coloring in what I want to show value and placement. (And sometimes I wonder if that’s not why we’ve had such a surge of popularity in using solids–we see them in our quilt software and then want to make those quilts? Who knows, but I’ve thought about it.)

And if I want to, I can change the colors by double-clicking on one of the little squares.

There’s a block library if you want it, but I use QuiltPro mostly to work up a design that’s in my head, like this one:

Which became this:

and this

Or this design, to make use of some lovely bits and pieces from a cherished set of fabrics, which became this:

A quilt for a friend who needed some quilty hugs.  And I’m now thinking about how to make this one, dreamed up recently:

Sometimes when I read quilty blogs, I get the feeling that whatever is being shown, or pitched, becomes an extension of that quilter.  That is to say, that if you buy this, or shop here, then that’s like a ‘vote’ for that quilter, and you say you like her better.  I don’t really care if you use QuiltPro or not.  I do use it and I’ve had great success with it as a tool to help me get done what I really do love: quilting, so I thought you might want to know about it.  I used to draft blocks using graph paper, pencils, rulers, drawing out the templates by hand.  This program does all that for me (yes, it prints the templates too, so I can measure them to use with my rotary cutter and rulers).  It’s my tool.  I’ve used this tool in my little quilt group, Good Heart Quilters, when we do our block swaps, or someone needs me to draft up how their chevron quilt will look.  It’s been very helpful in a lot of ways.

Here’s a photo of Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs in combat.  She was recently profiled in the New York Times–go read the article; it’s short and sweet and makes you want to cheer.  But I liked what she said here:

“Q: When you wake up do you feel a sense of loss when you realize what happened to your legs?
A: Of course. But I have a different perspective for what my legs are now. Now they’re just tools, you know? If I still had my legs, I would be in line for a battalion command, and instead I’m flying a desk.”

I want to fly my version of a desk–my sewing machine–making quilts and sewing and playing with cloth and squares and triangles and designs.  I love quilting and am happy to have my rotary cutters and rulers and yes, my QuiltPro software.  It’s just a tool, you know, to get the quilting done.

The Winners and Other Musings

Congratulations to Mary of Mary on Lake Pulaski who won the Hot Stuff bundle, and Nita of NitaDances won the boy fabric and the Power Tool button. I’ve had fun going around to people’s blogs and noticing what they are making and quilting and just plain old doing.  Some are bemoaning the long cold spring, others are finishing up other projects, some are buying fabric.

Like me.

I’m in love with that Italy fabric and plan to make a Schnibbles with it in Sherri and Sinta’s Another Year of Schnibbles.  The pattern they’ve chosen is Top Hat, and as soon as I finish up the prep for class today, I’m going to start cutting out my nine-patches.  If it’s not the Italy fabric then how about one or two of those others?  I’m saving the Lizzy House Constellations for another project, so it won’t be that fabric that gets rotary-bladed today.  This fine stack is from Fabricworm, who will give you a discount of 5 bucks on 50 dollars worth of fabric.  No problem!  There’s always one more piece I want to buy to get it up to that amount.

This past weekend I flew up to Utah to see my parents, and there is a fabulous quilt shop there: Gardiner’s.  I took my Dad in with me and in a few quick minutes, given how well they display everything, I had these cut, paid for and we were out the door.

I always enjoy visiting my parents, and Sunday afternoon we took a drive up Route 89, which winds all the way to Yellowstone, but we weren’t going that far.  We were headed to Brigham City, and as we passed through Willard, my mother mentioned that her great-grandmother was buried there.  At my request, we veered into this old pioneer cemetery, where we stopped and looked at her great-grandparents’ grave.

Most of this area was settled by immigrants like my great-great-grandparents: he was a tailor in Scotland, who, when he landed here in this sloping valley, became a farmer.  I was intrigued that he was a tailor first, given my love of sewing.  This Elizabeth Dickson, born in Needles, Scotland, was the mother of Elizabeth in my English Elizabeth quilt.

It’s interesting to hear these things at my age.  I’m sure I’ve heard all the stories more than once, but somehow they hit a touchstone now, and these grandparents are more real to me: a tailor, turned farmer, a Scotswoman who immigrated with her husband and gave birth to my great grandmother who I’m named for.  Next time I go up, I want to visit all the graves of my relatives, something my mother and father do every Memorial Day, so get ready, Mom and Dad.  It’s our next field trip.

Do we have a quilting heritage?  I think so.  I learned to sew from my mother, from my sixth-grade sewing class where I made a gingham apron, and quilting entered when I was pregnant with my first child and wanted a baby quilt.  I’ve lived through one solids phase, when it was the Amish quilts we hungered and thirsted after, stitching them up in bold modern shapes.  They are the mother to today’s Modern Quilts, I believe, but instead of black as the neutral, white or gray are preferred in this iteration.  I think many of us remember our first quilting experience, whether it be last year or decades ago.  While we don’t have markers of stone set in hillsides overlooking Willard Bay and the Great Salt Lake, we might have quilts tucked away in corners, or given to children and friends.  There is a rich lineage of quilting in our world, and I’m happy to be a part of it.

I think the associations we form amongst ourselves as quilters, are every bit as valuable as those folds of fabric sitting in our cupboards and closets, the pieced quilts hanging on walls and draped over beds. Thanks again to all those who visited the blog this past week, who leave comments of support and who are (or who became) followers.

********************

UPDATE:  Doing this Bloglovin’ thing after so many of you indicated you’d signed up that way.  Thanks.
Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Bostonian Bag and a Wrap-up

While this post has lots of pictures of my recent class, the Bostonian Bag (which they titled Bag Bostonian), it is NOT a tutorial nor are there any patterns.

For this you’ll need to take the excellent class from Kathy Ranabarger at Sewing Party in Orange County, California; our class was held last Friday, March 22nd.  And because it’s a wrap-up of some of the details of the class, the post itself may not make any sense to you at all.  (Hey, I have many days like that!)  In the photo above I’m on the right in the aqua sweater.

First off, here it is.  It’s a good-sized bag. . .

. . . and the ten-member class made excellent progress. But nearing the end, I was nervous about beating the traffic home, so I left a few minutes early but not before taking lots of photos of Kathy’s samples to jog my memory.  I told the class I’d post them in case they needed them too (so, this post is picture-heavy).

First, here’s some details, just for visual ideas: the bag bottom with decorative piece, the side trim piece wrapped to the inside and stitched down by hand, and the pockets I made in class: a double pocket (one on top of the other, and on the other side, a zipper-closed pocket.

So, after the fabric’s been quilted, the pockets made and the lining basted to the bag on the sides and top (wrong sides together), the decorative trim is attached to the zipper-opening edges (shown).  Kathy showed us how to install our zippers in class, and I’m pretty sure we were all successful in getting those in before we left for home.  Next was sew the side seams together, lining right sides together, so the seam allowances ended up on the outside of the bag, which is covered with a decorative trim piece.

(Click to enlarge so you can see detail.)

I did end up interfacing the side trim piece, as my 1/2″ seams were pretty bulky.  I pinned down the trim piece, then stitched it by machine as she showed us in class.  I kept going at the end: I stitched right off the edge of the bag on my trim piece, continuing along the pressed-under seam allowances, top-stitching them down.  I then folded the piece over as Kathy showed us, then trimmed and hand-sewed it down as I was using two colors of thread (one dark, one light) and it just wouldn’t have worked to machine-stitch. (See very top grouping of photos, illustration in upper right.)

“Boxing” the corner, with a five-inch measurement, centering the seam at 2 1/2″ inches.  Stitch along that line.  In that same top grouping of photos, you can see my bag corners in the lower pocket photo.  In the final bag, I wasn’t really keen about how the bottom trim piece stopped an inch short of the boxed corner, so in the future versions of this bag I’ll either 1) box the corner in deeper (maybe at 6″) or 2) make the bottom decorative piece longer.

Attach the bottom trim piece to the side, by sewing the point to the side trim piece. The ring moves freely, and is not sewn down.

Handles are next.  Flatten out the bag, take the handles out and let them relax, then place them near the top, centered on the bag.

I put a couple of pins to anchor mine, then did a backstitch all around the outside, starting about 4 holes down from the upper left holes, taking it up to the end, then backtracking all the way around the tab. I wasn’t really keen about how the inside looked and ended up cutting some more lining fabric to applique it over the stitching, so it will be unnoticeable.  I have to say that attaching the handles was one of the more frustrating parts of the bag and it took me some time.  Sit in really good light, use a heavier hand-sewing needle and thimble on your finger for pushing it through the hole (which is sometimes not easy to locate and yet other times it is), and work steadily.

Now here are a bunch of photos of the samples we saw that day in class.

When she attached this particular bag handle, she used a running stitch, which looks like this on the back.

Handle attached with a back-stitch.

And here’s a few more of mine:

Bag unhooked.  I think I could fit a small laptop in there, or at the very least, a tablet.  It’s quite roomy inside.

Our class.  This was a fun group of ladies to sew with.

And that’s it!

Another March finish for me.  Actually I took this class the last day of Spring Break.  I started Spring Break with tune-up visits to doctors, getting the have-to’s out of the way before I quilted all week. So in the spirit of a teacher giving a grade to things. . . I’m at an interesting place in my life right now, and so content and calm about what I’m doing that I’m sure the proverbial “other shoe” will drop from the sky at any minute.  I have a job I mostly enjoy, love my church and congregation as I’ve been going there for nearly a quarter-century and know their histories, and they, mine, and we have both endured each other’s quirks and habits. My husband and I have worked out a good balance between together time and “cave-time,” and really enjoy each other’s company when we are together. I could make a list of all the good things in my life, of which family and friends would occupy the top spots, and I’m sure that your list might echo mine in magnitude and depth. I also have this blog, and love to write and quilt and have the wherewithal to do both.

As I listened to others talk while our class was in session, I caught whiffs of the same sort of feeling: one woman expressed pride over her daughter’s achievements, another woman was having her sewing room re-made which I gathered was something she’d looked forward to for many years, and several of us found we had connections (via our children) to UC-Davis, of all places.  Perhaps it was the beautiful weather, or a relaxed and informative class or the fun of getting something done in a creative environment, but I could see that many of us were living in a “parallel contentment.”  Maybe we’ve just learned not to sweat the small stuff. . . and at our age have figured out which is the small stuff and which isn’t.

While the grading will pick up to a dull roar in the next few weeks of the semester, it’s really nice to feel this way — especially tonight, when some nice tunes are on the playlist and the fragrance of the wisteria blossoms is drifting in through my open window.

Happy Quilting.

Craft vs. Art

Ken Price: “Untitled Two Parts”

For a while now, I’ve been intrigued by a comment by Ken Price, a ceramic sculptor, an artist.  Since he sometimes did representational shapes like cups, saucers and covered jars, the “cultural prejudice against clay as a hobby-craft material unsuitable for major art” reared its head to often typecast him as a craftsman, not an artist  (quotes from an article in the LATimes).  Just like our quilts.  My art professor in college, when I asked him when he’d ever okay a show of quilts, said “Over my dead body.”  He was kidding (well, maybe not) and the answer stung.  I realized that even though there is now more recognition for the quilt as an art form, too often we are put in the craft category.  So I was intrigued by the following quote (also from the LATimes article):

Price did distinguish between craft and art, but it’s important to note that he respected them both.  ”A craftsman knows what he’s going to make and an artist doesn’t know what he’s going to make,” he once said, “or what the finished product is going to look like.”

These words did echo in my head as I worked on English Elizabeth.  Like Price, I took my fabrics and my technical skills and knew that somewhere I’d end up with a quilt.  But I didn’t know what I was going to make, or what the finished product was going to look like.  My quilts will never hang in a museum, but the journey for this quilt was so different than my usual, that Price’s words resonated.

There’s an interesting energy that comes from trying something new, or to use a cliché: “stepping out of your comfort zone.”  Usually, for me, a quilt begins at the computer, doodling around in my computer program or imitating something I’d seen before, but this process–to create out of whole cloth, literally, was an experience that I found seductive, scary and immensely satisfying.

English Elizabeth’s Technical Side

See the previous posts for the reveal of English Elizabeth (above), part of the Four-in-Art quilt group.

One of the Twelve-by-Twelve artists (after who we are patterning our group) said she likes commercial fabrics and always uses that as a starting point for her creations.  And even though I suggested this adventure of an art quilt, I was frankly a bit terrified of the whole idea, so starting with a commercial fabric seemed really appealing.

The commercial fabric I’d chosen for the background was from the Madrona Road line of fabrics by Violet Craft (from Michael Miller) and it had Queen Anne’s lace in a blue and an orange colorway.  I had a scrap of blue leftover from my Harvesting the Wind quilt, but it was only about 15″ square.  That was it.

I decided to be open to anything and while I was picking up some fusing supplies in our Jumbo Fabric Store, these black snaps jumped into my basket.  Okay then, great-grandma and I are doing something with black snaps.  I printed out a picture of English Elizabeth, put white papers around the edge to give a sense of the size of this thing, and arranged some black snaps marching up the sides.

Nyet.

Most of the Twelves used an art journal of some kind, so I dragged out a blank one and started writing–always my fall-back mode.  Then I used my (very) rudimentary art skills and sketched out some possibilities.

Things were starting to click in the old brain.  I have an EPSON inkjet printer with DuraBright inks, and I’d had good success with printing onto fabric for all my quilt labels, so I thought I would try printing English Elizabeth onto some lighter-colored fabrics.  I did some research on the DuraBright inks and apparently they are water-resistant.  I knew that I’d probably never wash this quilt, but I had, in the past, done a test sample and the ink stayed on through a run through the washer.  (However, if you really want permanence, Spoonflower for fabric design or Micron pens for labels might be the best way.)

Auditioning fabrics.  I initially thought I wanted to pick up that light mustardy hue in the fabric, but instead I was intrigued by the thought of printing Elizabeth onto some creamy floral fabric–making her into her own garden of flowers.

I auditioned several sizes, like the one that was 5″ across. I ironed freezer paper onto a square of two creamy floral fabrics and ran them through the printer, fingers crossed.  (I put tape on three sides of the stabilized fabric, leaving the bottom edge free.)  It was working well!  There was some trepidation every time I tried a new idea.  Would the artsy part of it work?  Would the technical side of it work?  It was lovely having my great-grandmother look at me all afternoon.

I chose the fabric sample with larger flowers, but when I laid English Elizabeth down, the blue showed through.  Before I cut around her head and shoulders, I ironed some featherweight fusible interfacing onto the back of the fabric, placing the printed side against a piece of white paper, just in case the printing would transfer.  It didn’t.

I wanted to print this phrase I’d come up with onto my fabric, but my printer isn’t wide enough.  I had a stamp set of alphabet letters, so it was back out to the Jumbo Fabric Store to buy some fabric/textile paint.  That is a whole other story (did you know how many kinds of puffy paint there is??) but let’s just say I finally selected a “fabric stamp pad” by the brand name of Scribbles, and had enough time to go by the embroidery floss aisle to pick up some variegated pearl cotton for attaching those snaps.  Somehow.

Worried about the “heft” of the fabric, I ironed a piece of featherweight interfacing to the back of the blue, and then started stitching.

Auditioning colors. I did do a couple of blossoms in the aqua-blue pearl cotton, but ended up cutting them off and going with the yellow-peach pearl cotton instead.  I wasn’t crazy about the spacing in the word LOVED–that “L” seemed to hang off the edge of the word, so I converted the O to a snap-flower to even out the spaces.  I trend to the pristine in my quilting.  You know: all those points sharp and crisp, those seams perfectly joined, so to let the messy and random into the quilting was interesting.  I might even say, beneficial.

Ready to go to quilting.

Usually all embellishment comes AFTER quilting, but I wanted those snap-flowers to be a part of the piece and to be able to quilt around them. I quilted with light gray thread in both top and bobbin.

English Elizabeth, detail.  I went in with gray and cream-colored thread to outline the contours of her face and to delineate her jacket.  My mother still has those beads of her grandmother’s and yes, she does wear them.  I wonder when this photo was taken.  It was obviously posed, and she had pulled back her hair into a tight bun.  But that allowed her large eyes to dominate, along with that Mona-Lisa-like smile.

English Elizabeth, detail.

The snap flowers.  There are only four holes, but five petals on the individual flower of the Queen Anne’s lace stalk. So I put two petals into one hole.  Sometimes they looked really funky.

I bound it with a narrow straight binding, using another piece of fabric from that line, the cross-hatches suggesting a fence to me.

Back of the piece, showing the quilting.  I used the folded corners method to hang this quilt: a dowel, cut to the length of the back of the quilt minus 1/4″ will slip into those corners, and hang on a push pin.

Was making this all roses and fairy dust?  No.  I procrastinated beginning on this piece because the whole idea was so different.  It’s like driving to the frozen yogurt shop, in a way.  If you go there often enough, like my husband and I did during this long hot summer, the way there is easy, smooth and oh-so-familiar.  But when we wanted to try a new shop, on a different side of the city, we had to figure out a way to get there.

I did finally arrive at a satisfying place, and although the road was different and strange, sometimes frustrating and scary, I have the sweet smile of my great-grandmother looking down on me as I work, confirming that, for me, that the new path was good.

First Four-in-Art Reveal Day

English Elizabeth

Made and quilted by Elizabeth Eastmond,
for the Four-in-Art Quilt Group

Elizabeth Frances Fellow Critchlow, a lass born in England in 1855, in the county of Staffordshire, surely did love her garden.  She is my great-grandmother and I am named for her.

When Rachel announced the theme of Queen Anne’s lace for our first Four-in-Art quilt, my mind immediately thought of my great-grandmother and her gardens.  I looked up the origin of the name of this flower, and most sources believed it had origins in British royalty references, which reinforced that I’d be working with my English Elizabeth, as I came to think of her.  A dedicated Anglophile, she listened to major speeches by the King on her wireless set, tuning in from her home in the mountains of Utah.  My mother tells me that she loved to garden, and her gardens were renowned, with even the local university coming over to study some of her plants and trees.  Although she lived most of her adult life here in the United States (she arrived here at age eleven), I often wonder if she spoke with a British accent here and there on some words.

I chose to work with this picture, because of her smile–just barely there—but a warm welcoming face.  My mother says she likes this picture, but also remembers her grandmother out in her gardens, her straw hat on her head.

And then I thought back to the most recent wedding in our house, that of my son Peter to his bride Megan, and they chose a rendition of Queen Anne’s lace for their announcements as well.  I love how you don’t “see” a flower, and then suddenly it’s everywhere.

~~And now, Two! for the Price of One!~~

Betty lives in Virginia, and unless you’ve been under a rock this week, you know about Frankenstorm, the combination of weather patterns that spelled disaster, weather-wise, for the East Coast.  Sunday night, before the storm was to hit, Betty emailed me her photos and artist’s statement, just in case her power and internet should go out.  I’m pleased as punch to present to you her Queen Anne’s Lace quilt.

Betty writes:

“This Four in Art challenge, our first, was an opportunity for me to stretch – to stop, for a moment, the churn of easy quilts and do something new.  When the theme – Nature:  Queen Anne’s Lace – was revealed, I sighed.  Love the flower, although it isn’t as highly regarded on the east coast as apparently it is on the west coast, but I drew a blank when coming up with a setting.  So, I took a practical approach:  just love the Union Jack and decided to use that as my backdrop.  I planned to paint my flag, but could not get the red and blue faded enough so decided to go the fabric route.  I was excited to use the crown and copying that onto Kona Ash was a first; one of my favorite details in this piece is the silver metallic stitched onto the crown (which did not come through in the photos).    I had hoped to actually stencil the lace to form the flower, but that didn’t work well so I opted for real lace with pearl cotton accents.  The flower is my least favorite feature of this little quilt, but it is holding its head up boldly and doing its part and I am, overall, pleased.

“The backing is, appropriately, a simple flower piece and I loved making the label.  It is bound in simple navy Kona – had tried to overcast the edges with silver metallic, but that did not work well.

“This was fun and without boundaries (except for the size) and provided we do it again, I will find other new methods to try and apply!”

Betty Ayers • Powhatan, VA, USA

Here are some more photos:

Label from Betty’s quilt. We hope that all will be okay on the East Coast soon.  Betty usually publishes on Flickr.

Check out Leanne, of She Can Quilt, and Rachel of The Life of Riley to see their Four-In-Art Quilts.

And tomorrow, a new theme is revealed!

Creativity and the Web

I’m thinking about all those affected by the horrific storm on the East Coast.  I have several quilty/blogger friends, as well as quite a few family members who have been affected and hope that they and their families are through the worst of it.  I’ve been on a blogging break this week from the computer (I wrote this post earlier) but I just wanted to jump in and send my thoughts to those who are dealing with this “Frankenstorm” and its aftermath.  Take care, everyone.

****************************************

In my class at school, we just completed a unit that was based on this book by Nicholas Carr, titled, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains.  We had our Discussion Panels last Wednesday, and it was fascinating that the students were fairly perceptive and able to discuss how the Internet has impacted their lives, for better or for worse.  One young man is fairly sanguine about the whole thing, saying, “Well, it’s here.  We just have to deal.”  Another pair of young women took opposite positions on the question of whether print was dead.  The internet’s main impact, that of re-wiring our brains due to neuroplasticity, was skirted around, but acknowledged when they all complained of the inability to finish a book before distractedly checking their phones for texts or messages.

And I think it’s rewired my brain as well.  Carr goes through the history of civilization’s adding of new technologies, from writing to moveable print to the typewriter and onward to clocks and the internet.  I was interested in his discussion on tools: ”The tight bonds we form with our tools go both ways.  Even as our technologies become extensions of ourselves, we become extensions of our technologies.”

 I thought about how quilting has changed from the time when I used to trace a pattern onto cardboard, carefully cut it out and tape the edges for stability.  Then I’d trace it about a bazillion times in order to make a quilt, following along the pencil line for the seam.  I did use a machine for piecing, but hand-quilting was the only way to finish a quilt.  That’s why my list of 100 Quilts took so long to grow: our tools were more primitive before the advent of rulers and rotary cutters.

He also references Frederick Taylor’s Time-Motion studies and how it has changed how workers do their jobs (above: a golfer takes a swing).  Before Taylor came along, “the individual laborer, drawaing on his training, knowledge and experience, would make his own decisions about how he did his work.  He would write his own script” (218).

I think of us at work.  Some of us spread all our fabric out into a lovely mess (like mine, above).  Others fold and organize continually throughout the day.  I like to doodle around with my computer when thinking up a new quilt. Some like to start cutting, throwing the cloth up on the pin wall to see what’s going on.  Carr notes that with Taylor’s regimentation of industry’s messiness, something was lost.  ”What was lost along with the messiness was personal initiative, creativity, and whim.  Conscious craft turned into unconscious routine.”

I hope I never become such a slave to a pattern or a ruler or a system of making a quilt that I can’t make  a creative and conscious detour into creativity.  But sometimes I wonder when I make a copy of another’s quilt, using one line of fabric if I’m not caught in a type of quilt-machine using Taylor’s demands for proscribed motion.   Is this creativity?  Am I being creative, or just following someone else’s script and benefitting from their decisions?

And like many of you, I’ve been following #quiltmarket on Instagram.  Carr said more than once, and I’m paraphrasing here, that trying to control the flow of information from the internet is like trying to take a drink from a fire hydrant at full blast.  The internet caters to the new! unique! amazing! as we all know.

I also have Pinterest boards full of ideas, most are quilts which I’ll never make, but pin them up there nonetheless.   Can we be creative 24/7, or is that too exhausting?  Has the Internet made better quilting possible?  More interesting quilting?  Given us an access to a wider range of styles and types?

I don’t know the answers to these questions.  I only know that sometimes the Internet affects us quilters, too.

So my question now, is how has the Internet affected you?  And has it been for better. . . or for worse?

September 2012 Quilt Night

The Good Heart Quilters got together the second week of September to teach & learn, catch up and eat, and to hang out.

Lisa showed us the completed Arabic Lattice quilt, everything finished up since our summer get-together.

This is one her daughter Leilani completed–with a horse theme.  Leilani has a horse that occupies a lot of her free time, so she made a quilt to go along with that love of hers.

Caitlin came tonight, showing off her Christmas stockings.  Perfection in a nutshell.  She’s one of our newbies.

Deneese is another quilter new to our group.  Both of these women have small toddlers and babies at home so they can’t always break away, but we’re glad to have them when they come.

Simone’s first night, too.  She likes to ham it up for the camera.  I don’t think I ever got one picture of her with her lovely smile.

Bridget shows off her first quilt.  I believe she participated in the Red and White Sample Swap, but then she made the double-nine-patch blocks to go in between her sampler blocks.

It was held at Carol’s house (in the yellow blouse).  She’s a newbie, too!  Here she is with Karen, and of course, our snack/munchie bar.

Laurel worked on this set of blocks.  Every photo I have of her, her eyes are closed, but she obviously has them open in order to pick such beautiful fabrics.

Karen’s bargello heart.  She is on the quilting now, doing it by hand.

Lisa (Bridget’s Mom) and Caitlyn look through quilt books.  Actually, I think Lisa is working on her half-square triangles, sorting them into colors.

Laying out Simone’s apple core quilt on the guest bedroom bed.  She sent me a snapshot this week, showing that she’d sewn the first row together!

Kelly is another one of our newest quilters.  Although an accomplished sewist, she’d never quilted before.  So she learned to cut with the rulers, stitch a quarter-inch seam, and got working on cranking out a set of blocks.  It’s the end of the night and we’re all tired and walking into walls, but we had a great time.

Because my photos that night were kind of bogus, I asked Lisa to bring her latest quilt top over so I could take a picture of it.  Here’s the close-up.

And here it is in all its glory.  This had genesis in the early days of our group, when four of us began to make “I Spy” quilts: Lisa, Laurel, Leisa and me.  Laurel’s had squares, instead of hexagons.  I don’t know if Leisa finished hers, but I gave all my pieces to Lisa.  She gave me a few back so I could cut them up for my Polaroid blocks, but then she borrowed my templates, cut some more and got it done.  Woo-hoo!

Portuguese Tile Quilt

I started with this picture of some tiles from Portugal.

Then I mocked up a quilt in my Quilt-Pro 5 program.  I mapped it out with 8″ squares, set 6 across in 6 rows, with a 4″ border, yielding a 56″ square quilt.

I’m using the Madrona Road fabric, as I’m always wading into my outdated stash to try a new quilt, and wanted to take this new line for a test drive.  Because of the barn and the truck, I thought back to my days of Amish quilting and went with black for that windmill blade, just like the tile in Portugal, shown above.  Besides every quilt needs some contrast and this line reads to me, for the most part, as in the middle-intensity value range, a favorite of mine and nearly every other quilter.  (I have to work to get the darks and the lights into my stash.)

To cut out the large pieces, I laid out my fabric RIGHT SIDES UP, and cut a rectangle that was 7″ by 4 1/2″, then lay the template on the rectangle (see picture below), and sliced it into two. Here’s the template: PortugueseTileWindmilltemplateSM.

Print it out so you’ll have the pieces to use as a guide for cutting.  (Okay, full disclosure.  I at first didn’t lay the fabric RIGHT SIDE UP, and have quite a few pieces that are backwards, ensuring that I’ll be making this again. So try not to screw up like I did.)

I could have either cut all the black pieces according to a template, or figured out a way to make it easier.  I went with the second.  Cut a rectangle 5 3/8″ by 2 3/4″ and then slice it from corner-to-corner, diagonally.  You will have dog ears you’ll have to cut off, if that’s a consideration for you.

Cut 72 pieces of the blue line, 72 pieces of the pink/orange fabrics and 144 black triangles (that’s 72 rectangles, cut in two).

Lay a triangle across the larger piece.  To get it lined up, put the black on top, with the left point sticking 1/4″ out over the edge.  Don’t worry about that right-hand side longer point.  Stitch.  Press towards the black.

Now lop off those points, by truing this block up to 4 1/2″ square (see below).

I’ve laid them out on my  pin wall.  I don’t have enough of them to do the REAL work of laying them out, because I’m headed downstairs to make some corn-shrimp-coconut soup for dinner, but I’m thinking I do want to mix up the different types of fabric within the pink/orange group and the blue group.

Thanks for you nice atta’ boy comments yesterday.  I took to catch up on the speeches from the Democratic Convention (remember, I’d assigned the watching of these to my students, so feel like I need to keep up), and cut and sewed my cloth.  It’s amazing the difference a day makes.  I liked what Betty said, that this exhaustion must be in the zeitgeist or something.  But after a break of a day, I may even feel like grading, knowing I have this little project to come back to throughout the day.