Quilts

A Record of Quilts–Making A Quilt List

January 14, 2014January 11, 2014 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

I have two links up above, one titled “100 Quilts List” and the other “200 Quilts List.” It’s been interesting to be able to say with some accuracy how many quilts I’ve made over my lifetime, but I didn’t start those lists when I first started quilting.

Those lists began because of my father’s journal of his paintings (this is one volume of five), which are a record of how he created them, colors he chose, inspiration, sketches. My friend Lisa also had a quilt journal and when she showed it to me, some time ago, I was in an insanely busy time of life and thought I could never do such a thing. But life changes, from busy to not-so-busy, and as an experienced quilter, I began to want a record of my work in this life that didn’t vanish under dust or dirt, or disappear into a student’s backpack, never to be looked at again. I began quilting in my twenties, some four decades ago, so that was a lot of quilts to account for.

And once I started my journal, I wanted it to be accurate, a habit that has come about because I am married to a scientist, and we are all about accuracy in this house. I started making a list, pulling photos from albums, and bugging my children to let me come and photograph their quilts. That’s my oldest son, Chad, above. We met one day at his work and we laid out the quilts he had in the conference room, so we could photograph them.

At that time, we had wooden lift-up garage doors, and I stapled a white sheet to the front, set up a table and gathered every quilt from what I had in our house to photograph. I pinned the quilts as straight as I could to the sheet and waited until the sun had moved off the door, so I could get an even tone (adjusting for the shadow). It took me about three days, and the neighbors were quite entertained by all my going up and down the stepladder, photographing the front, turning the quilt over (you see a back up there), and then a few close-ups here and there.

Another time, I drove to Arizona, where two of my children lived, set up a borrowed frame and pinned and photographed, over and over, with grandchildren watching, finally being allowed to wrap up in their baby quilts.

I started going through all my digital photographs, looking for quilts. Above are Peter and Megan the night before their marriage, holding a quilt I gave them. And from all these sources, I started compiling my list in a simple spreadsheet. Where I had dimensions, I put them in. Dates were critical, but I decided to keep it just to the year. Was the quilt labeled? Photographed? I noted that too. A couple of quilts are gone forever, but I remembered them, and tried to put them in where I could, numbering and re-numbering.

I decided to only include finished & quilted tops, but I know Thelma, of Cupcakes and Daisies counts hers by pieced tops. However you decide to count yours, I would encourage you to start writing down what you have accomplished. I guess the biggest pay-off came from me when I came home from Arizona with those frames and was able to photograph some of the larger bed-sized quilts that I couldn’t accommodate on the garage door.

This is Clay’s Choice. The first big quilt I’ve ever made.

My husband helped me put it up on the frames and I stepped back a bit to photograph it, then looked up from the camera to really see it. This was the first time I had seen my quilt off of a bed, all arrayed in its beginner-quilter glory. I paused and studied it–the white floral sheets, the solid greens, the Clay’s Choice triangles in a dainty blue print spinning around, each in their own block. I remember tracing around cardboard to get those shapes, stitching the blocks, and hand-quilting it over several years on a small portable frame. I looked at it, all the memories of the making, here, visible in this fabric concoction, never needing to be dusted, or re-done, or rewritten. This quilt, nearly 35-years old, captured all of that in its pieces, waving back and forth in the late afternoon breeze.

“Everything okay?” my husband asked.

Oh, yes. Everything is just fine.

Amish Quilt, in progress

January 12, 2014April 27, 2014 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

Finished the inner top. Put on two borders and still have one border to go this gigantic quilt (finishing at 105″ square). What was I thinking?

I was thinking I loved the colors, the sparkle of the brights, and the use of solids.

This picture is titled Border Fail. They sent me 2 5/8 yards of Blue Coal (it’s a nighttime photo, so all the colors are wacky), and after dinner I was tired but wanted to push on to finish the quilt. So I came upstairs and whack, whack, whack started cutting crosswise strips to piece together for the outside border. After I’d cut about half the strips, I realized they sent me enough to do a lengthwise cut for that outside border, which would really stabilize the quilt. I slumped into my chair, and yes, got all teary about how dumb I was. I was tired. My husband said some “there, there, theres” and I ordered a new swath of Blue Coal from an online shop, which should be here by the end of next week.

Lessons learned: husband is a gem, mistakes can be made, especially if I’m tired, and beware of cutting after dinnertime. I’d already put on the first inner border, and the little squares border. Now that’s an exercise in frustration. Those squares NEVER fit, so you go back in and stitch another 1/16″ of a seam on a few squares, inching it down to fit. If you want to see what I’m working toward, here’s a photo of Amish With A Twist–II:

Here’s Amish with A Twist–Version I, and it’s really big, too.

Found this on the web when I went searching for ideas on how to quilt my quilt. Which won’t be done until NEXT week now.

So the center of my version, Amish With A Twist-2, is this lighter set of fabrics, so that would call out for beige or cream or light gray or something. But then the outer is darker, so that indicates black or dark gray. And I’m having this done by my long-armer, and to keep it affordable, I’ll probably do an edge to edge design.

This quilter had hers done in colorful variegated thread, which she showed on another page. That’s certainly an option, as it does melt into the light-colored fabrics. But I’m not too crazy about how it looks on the dark black. My version doesn’t have that dark black thing, so maybe it will be okay. What would you choose? Road to California is coming up in a couple of weeks and I can pick up some Superior Thread there. Any ideas?

And if you are going to Road to California, want to try for a meet up–say Friday, late afternoon? That will give the out-of-towners time enough to get there, and by then, I’ll be ready to call it done for the day. If you are going, leave a comment, and we’ll figure out a place. Possibly near the ice cream cones. Or cookies.

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Reminder: my blogging software will occasionally place an ad on this page. It’s the way I can keep blogging for free, so it you see one, it’s for them–not for me.

100 Quilts · Creating · Quilts

Cross-X Swap, January Update

January 10, 2014October 15, 2014 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Krista sent me these too close to Christmas to post (and besides, no one was reading any blogs that week anyway), so here they are on the New Year, now that we’ve all put away our decorations, celebrated, vacuumed and have actually resumed some sense of order in our lives. Or at least pretend we have.

We are in the (I can never get this right) the Plus and X Friendship Swap. Or the X and Plus Swap. I just call it the Cross-X swap, as noted in the title, and all our blocks — thus far swapped — are on my pinwall, above. Cool, huh?

As of this post, she is all caught up, but I’m now 4 blocks behind for January. I can just hear her saying “Neener, neener, neener!” I’ll catch up, Krista, I promise. I notice that usually we try to make the background all the same, but in her blocks sent for January, she’s varied the backgrounds. I’m trying to decide if I like her new twist, but she’s very creative and a really wonderful swap partner, so I need to be open to new ideas. We try to blog the last Fridays of each month and hey–it’s only the 10th, and I need to get out several blocks promised for a cooperative group quilt, two bee blocks, and I’m working really hard on my Amish With A Twist-2 quilt, too.

Quilt Frolic has a new home. During Christmastime, all our children and grandchildren came home, and my youngest, Peter, and his wife, Megan, stayed with us the entire week while waves of family moved in and out of the two other available rooms.

I had this quilt on their bed, and one morning Megan was relating a conversation she had with Peter about how much she like this quilt. “I mean, I really like it,” she said. And she asked my son if she thought she could, like, borrow it, or even have it.

Megan, that is music to a quilter’s ears! I gave it to her on the spot. I was thrilled that she liked it well enough to want it, and I think she was thrilled to take it home. Megan really liked the fabrics in it–a combo of Amy Butler and some Anna Maria Horner–a kind of fabric that suits Megan well. She did get it into her teensy little carryon for the trip across the United States, to their home on the East Coast.

I am glad that this quilt has gone to someone who loves it!

Quilts

2013 Finish-A-Long, Quarter Four

January 3, 2014January 2, 2014 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

This was my declaration of Things To Be Finished, for the 2013 Finish-A-Long, Quarter 4, hosted by Leanne, of She Can Quilt. I’d put only four things on my list: my signature quilt, the Schnibbles I was working on at the time (in blue and white), the Four-in-Art quilt (represented here by an early idea of a map), and the Santa’s Village quilt. I’m back, now, for the wrap-up.

Good thing I only had four on the list, because this fall illness hit me hard and I barely had enough energy to keep the papers graded and the laundry done. My round-up of medications included 4 trips to the doctor, 3 courses of oral steroids (asthma), 2 different asthma inhalers, 2 runs of antibiotics, 1 bag of cough drops with their perky “you can do it!” messages. . . and a partridge in an pear tree. Oh, and vats and vats of hot chocolate, which can be considered medicinal, right? So I consider the fact that I finished up this batch of quilts nothing short of remarkable.

1. The signature quilt was finished just before the close of 2013, and I’m still working on the labels. It’s now titled Silver and Gold, or The Toni Jones Quilt, and you can read about it *here.* As this was nearly nine years in the making, I consider it my most significant finish.

2. Childhood’s Wide Avenues was my quilt for our Four-in-Art group’s challenge of Urban: Maps. Our next challenge is due February 1st, and I’ve already done some preliminary sketches and gathered up photos. But I’ve had to get through Christmas, first.

3. Pacific Grove Blues was a part of the Schnibbles Challenge, and it reminded me of a week my husband and I spent in Northern California this fall. I’m happy to have finished it. (We had a name change from Sand and Sea.)

4. Jolly Old St. Nicholas has been up in our hallway all through the time of visits from our children, a 60th birthday party, and I consider it a real treasure. As soon as I finish this post, though, I’m taking it down. I can see some places I want to add some quilting, but then again, I may put it off until next December. We’ll see. I wouldn’t have finished this without the help of my bee mates in the Mid-Century Modern Bee, who all contributed the large green-and-white squares, and who were all on time in their contributions. They are an amazing group of people!

Leanne, of She Can Quilt, has hosted the 2013 Finish-A-Long and in 2014, Katy of the The Littlest Thistle will be taking over the reigns, if you want to join in. I haven’t yet decided if I will participate. Leanne was a blogging friend and I enjoyed the digging out of quilts and finishing them up, and even contributed a couple of tutorials to the efforts. While some may benefit from the prizes offered for finishing, and they are generous, Mr. Random Generator and I have never been on speaking terms (aka, I never win), so that’s not really a draw for me.

However, I feel like I want to “direct” my own blog and my own quilting, moving in some different directions. I don’t have a big stash of quilts I need to finish up and get out, and part of the rules (although I’ve noticed a bending of them lately) specifies that they need to be projects that are started and that the quilt needs to be completed (not just a quilt top). I have a list of quilts I want to work on, but none begun, and I don’t want to rush into that right now.

But if you are someone who has a lot of tops, and needs some motivation to get things done, I heartily endorse this! It’s been invaluable for me this year, as I’ve completed quite a few projects that may have languished in closets or in drawers. Thanks, Leanne, for all your work!!