Category: 100 Quilts

100 Quilts

Blooming Quilt

Elizabeth E.3 Comments

After ignoring the quilt for a day or two, I reluctantly headed into my study to try and make sense of the mess I’ve made. First? Browse through quilt books. This is Balkan Puzzle from one such book, mocked up in my quilt program. Meh. Then I thought I should look at photos from some of my trips to France, specifically southern France. This idea of a block surrounded by a grid seemed to be common:

Both of these photos are from a Carolingian church in Lyon.

So I monkey around with ideas from the photos, ideas from my files and come up with this one, which is basically the first photo’s design turned on its side. If I focus in on the yellow blocks surrounded by the red “petals,” then it also reminds me of the fields of sunflowers we saw as we traveled in the south of France.

I cut out a bunch of golden yellow squares, and had to piece one of them back together from the previous quilt. Red squares distributed–thanks to the gift of fabric from my friend Tracy, I had just the right kind and color.

I’d found another similar quilt online, and freaked out that mine might be considered a derivative of that one, so I reworked the borders to make it really mine. I probably shouldn’t freak out, as I long ago realized that ofttimes there is a certain zeitgeist in the universe and creative and intellectual projects often overlap. My friend Tracy told me about an experience her sister had about someone apparently trying to claim a Dresden Plate idea as her own. It’s about as silly as Pioneer Woman claiming Texas Sheet Cake for her own (in a post on my cooking blog). So what is new? What qualifies as something truly different and profoundly unique? Once I heard that if an idea was 10% new it was pretty “out there,” and may not even be accepted by the public. Perhaps that’s why retro designs appeal to us–they are new without being new.

Sewing is a slow process, as there is a lot of figuring out of which red square/black square goes where, and the drawing of the line, sewing, cutting, pressing, up-and-down, up-and-down. Another challenge for this quilt was that I was bound by my desire to only use the French fabrics, and there was just no running out to the little shop in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France to pick up something that would work better. Scarcity can make a quilter more resourceful.

But the fun thing is “opening up” the reds around the yellow square. I think the quilt looks like it’s blooming, like a huge sunflower.

100 Quilts

Quilt at the Cellular Level

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

The quilt is now at the cellular level, meaning that not only I have ripped the quilt into many blocks, I’ve now taken the blocks apart into their pieces. Daunting? Oh, yeah. Am I discouraged? Pretty much–but mostly because I can’t figure out how to make a quilt out of this fabric that I think I will be happy with.

Traditional French “Indienne” fabric is printed with little designs in an ordered fashion: polka dots, if you will. And if you’re going to make a quilt out of polka dots, usually it’s the broad strokes of color that will be seen, as in the photo below, where you notice the red squares against the yellow squares.

I was despairing that I didn’t have enough red fabric to complete my current idea. Lo-and-Behold my friend Tracy brought me a fat quarter of some “real French fabric” today from her trip to Spring Quilt Market. What serendipity!

I still like the idea of the zig-zaggy borders being incorporated into the quilt, so that it contains its own border. So I’m kind of hanging onto that idea for now, knowing that whatever I put in the middle with have that as its outer edges. I decided that the color combination of the blue-gray against the yellow (which I personally love) is part of the problem, so in the quilt above, I’ve covered up some of that blue gray with a deeper contrasting blue, helping the little squares to march across the quilt in a diagonal pattern. I wonder if I should bring in a solid, to help balance the “dottiness.”

Frankly, I’m feeling a little dotty. Time to let it rest.
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So here’s a change of subject. In our arbor out back, where some of the vines have looped down underneath, a hummingbird has built her nest. She’s about 8 feet from our family room window and we brought down the binoculars to watch her up close. My grandchildren Riley and Keagan had a fun time seeing her on the nest (although the functional use of the binoculars was a bit out of reach for them). That bird just stayed there and stayed there and stayed there.

Once when she finally flew off (to get some food, we assume) Barbara made the comment that she understood perfectly: even the most diligent mothers need a break now and again.

Well now we think the eggs have hatched for the bird flies away far more often, then dips her beak down into her nest when she returns. No sign of the baby birds, though.

We’ll keep watching.

100 Quilts · Christmas Quilts

Two Quilts (Well, maybe three)

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I finished the green quilt top, stitched together the pieces for the back and it’s now at the quilter’s.

I began this one–Christmas Star–last fall (November? October?) in a clear space in my schedule, but it’s taken me until now to finish the top.

Today’s goal is to get the back pieced and get that off to the quilter as well.

I’ve even begun thinking about the other quilts marooned in my quilting closet, those quilts that I bought the fabric for, dreamed up and abandoned for work or family fun. Maybe I can even tackle one or two of those? Don’t want to get too giddy, now.

For those of you who asked about the Daisy quilt in the background, it was last summer’s project.

I only know how to stipple!
100 Quilts · Journal Entry · Quilt Finish

Visitors. . . and a Story

Elizabeth E.

We had some visitors from out of town last week. It was my daughter Barbara and her three kids: Cute, Cute and Cute. And Cute. Did I mention that they were cute? All my grandchildren are cute. I’m so very lucky.

And now, a story.
Some time ago, I’d made a quilt with pinks and blues and cherries and flowers and was so frugal with my fabric I had enough for another quilt leftover. I starting piecing the pinwheels and put them up on the pin wall, and then was stuck. I tried this combo and that combo and nothing would come together.

Then one horrid horrid day, our friend Heather wrote to say that she had Stage IV metastatic breast cancer, and it had spread to her liver, and maybe her brain but they were doing CT scans checking, checking. We waited. Good news! No brain mets, as she said.

I began to work again on the stuck quilt. Only I knew now it was for Heather so it flew together in a glorious explosion of work and love and tears and care for our friend. I thought long and hard about what to name it.

I arranged a visit to see her shortly before she would begin her first of six rounds of chemotherapy, a grueling process. I wanted her to have the quilt. I had in my mind what I wanted to call it, carrying along my pen to sign and write the name on the back, just in case I was right.

We had one of those happy-sad-teary-laughing conversations about what lay before her. I knew then what I planned to call it was correct, Earth’s Crammed with Heaven, from E. B. Browning’s verse:

 

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

And only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

 

I told her that it meant to me that because of her suffering she would see and understand so much more about heaven and earth than she ever would before. She would see that indeed, earth is crammed with heaven.

I tracked her chemo treatments on my calendar, trying to visit when possible, emailing whenever as I waited for her to come up out of the vortex of chemo and bendy bones and pain.

Last week she had another CT scan, and because of her treatments, and her faith, and the doctors and good karma and prayers and heaven and hugs and everything-we-could-throw-at-it on earth, her tumors have been eradicated. As she put it: “lots of high fives and tears in the doctor’s office.”

Oh, yeah. You go, Heather! Happy Valentine’s Day. Happy Chinese New Year.

Happy Life.