January’s Three Finishes–FAL

January 31, 2013March 31, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

I’ve always wanted to say that I’ve had three finishes in one month. Well, in my mind, I’ve had FIVE, but two of the tops (the wonky Christmas stars and the wonky Christmas log cabin) are at the quilter and won’t be back until next month, so technically the binding and label is all that remain (and I’ve already cut the bindings!).

The first (or third) is my art quilt for our Four-in-Art group, which has its reveal tomorrow. I have to say I don’t think of myself as an artist, but instead, a creative person. But like anything in life, when that deadline starts looming, all of a sudden I start getting ideas. Tons, this time, but I only made one of those ideas. See you tomorrow for that.

The second is Into the Woods, my autumn quilt (follow the link to see that). And the third finish this month is Summer Treat.

I started Summer Treat last summer. I finished up the top, and it sat–like all good UFOs–but this one was all backed and pinned and ready for quilting. When I saw that I had a few hours to myself yesterday, and realized I could say those magic words: “three finishes in one month,” I pulled it out and started quilting.

Then binding.

And so here it is: Summer Treat. This is #105 on my list of 200 quilts. (Yes, I know I need to get the list updated.)

Detail. I stitched on either side of some of the rows and then diagonally on the side of the white Xs.

The backing and binding are the same fabric: some wild dots.

So, yay! I’m putting this up on the Finish-A-Long Flickr photo-sharing site, hosted this year by Leanne. I had resisted joining this group, but it’s been very good motivation to get some of these quilts finished up.

Update: Original Post showing all planned finishes is *here.*

200 Quilts · FAL · Finishing School Friday · Quilts

Into the Woods!

January 18, 2013March 31, 2013 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

Into the Woods is finished–my first finish in the FAL hosted by Leanne. I blogged about how bogged down I was in my entry FAL, so it’s nice to be able to go out to the front porch, have my husband hold it up and declare it done. And yes, I know it’s January and we still have pumpkins out there. Okey-dokey, moving right along. . .

Here’s a closeup of the quilting, and the blocks.

And the requisite beauty shot, draping not-so-artfully by the pumpkins.

Back of the quilt. I had purchased this fabric about eight years ago, when I was shop-hopping up in the Pittsburg area with a good friend. Our husbands are both scientists and we’d see each other almost annually at conferences. This particular time I had a rental car, so we left the boys to their science and took off in search of ours. I love that certain fabrics have memories attached; whenever I see this I will think of Beth.

I had originally named this a different name, mocked up the label but just couldn’t make the name stick. Then one night, it came to me. Seeing this quilt was like walking into the woods, surrounded by golds, greens, crimsons and browns, and so that became the title, just like the Broadway play Into the Woods by Steven Sondheim. That play has always had special significance for me, as its allegory of going into the woods –the difficult trials of life — and making your way back out of the woods — into a different life than the one imagined — became a sort of map for me during a painful shape-shifting time of life. I still love that play, and as I worked on the label (with a scrap of lyric pulled from the title song), I played it on the computer and sang along. Nothing like a Broadway show tune to make the quilting go a little quicker.

My quilter, Cathy, did a lovely job on the quilting of pumpkins and vines (and if you know the play Into the Woods, there is a section of Jack and the Beanstock, which correlates nicely). So there it is–my first finish, and finally, a Friday Finish for myself.

Update: Original post for the Finish-A-Long is *here.*

200 Quilts · Quilts · Something to Think About

Autumn Quilt

November 19, 2012 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Autumn Quilt is just smoothed up on the wall (crookedly), but I’m happy to be at this place with this quilt. I started collecting fabrics for it about 8 or 9 years ago, gathering up reds and golds and earthy greens, browns and blacks with pattern. I was mimicking a quilt design from a friend of mine who had made a similar quilt and I loved the way it glowed.

I used the basic Square-in-a-Square pattern, adjusting it so that these are nine-inch blocks. I put the inner striped border on it and hung it in the closet last fall. And it stayed there while I ruminated on and pondered the border. My family has the Ruminating Gene in spades.

I showed some of the process in my last post, so I know this is a repeated tale. Sorry. But what was different was that I cut down the one-inch striped border to a half-inch sort of piping-effect border. I’m happy with it.

But when I put it all together, it was like there were doorways or gates on each side, letting the border go flabby. While I may have to deal with flabby everything else, I’m not at all about to settle for flabby borders. I unpicked and re-stitched to what is shown above. I like it a lot better, and many thanks to my husband for helping me talk through that little knot of a problem.

I had one backing all picked out–a vintage piece of fabric, bought at a yard sale next to my sister-in-law’s house in Utah. It just didn’t sing. But this eight-year-old piece from Alexander Henry did.

I added two other fabrics with a orangey-blue tonality, and we were good to go. So today, it did–off to the quilter’s.

I did other errands today made me glad to have a holiday that causes me to think about what I’m thankful for. I ran into Joan in the grocery store — an 80-year-old friend — and she was buying a disposable roaster and colorful napkins. The whole family, with grandchildren, boyfriends and everyone is at her house again, as they are every year. Everyone helps but she confided she has a hard time getting the gravy made because “They want me out in the backyard playing croquet with them!” And then as we were leaving, she gestured with her arm to the immaculate grocery store, perfection this morning at 8 a.m. before the hordes of Thanksgiving shoppers arrived, and said “When I look at this abundance, I feel like I need to give thanks to God all over again.” I’ll be taking a wee break from blogging while I cook and peel and crimp and serve and oh yeah, clean up (as well as do a bit of grading and maybe even shopping) so I’m posting this holiday wish a bit early.

Like my friend Joan, this Thursday, I’ll be giving thanks to God for friends I’ve found in writing this blog and in participating in the quilting world. You really do enrich my life with fabric chats, a little fun gossip now and again, and a sense that I belong to a vibrant community full of talent and enough quirkiness to make it interesting.

I’ll be giving thanks to God for his goodness in my life, for the gift of our children and grandchildren and in-laws and out-laws (hey, we all have a few). I’m grateful to my mother and father for giving me atta’boys when I need it, and correcting my grammar and spelling when called for. I’m happy to have sisters and brothers, and to have grown up in a family so large that we had to learn to share, yet small enough that when one of us is down, the others all know and want to help.

I have many ways to count the blessings in my life and will be doing just that on Thursday, feeling the Lord’s kindness rain down. And I wish this all for you.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

200 Quilts · Creating · Four-in-Art

English Elizabeth’s Technical Side

November 4, 2012October 26, 2017 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

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.