Community • Quilt Finish: North Country Patchwork

June 11, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

This is a quilter’s visual paradise: triangles, circles, squares, bits-and-pieces; it’s the Cosmati pavement in Westminster Cathedral, which got a lot of press recently with the coronation of King Charles.

And this is an entirely different view of pieces and fragments and color. These two images remind me of something I’ve been thinking about for a while: the concept and idea of Community. Obviously these two art pieces present different depictions of together, of belonging, of interacting: ordered or overlaid; yet as a whole, the colors and shapes are part of a whole.

The idea of community has many parts, but “first is the territorial and geographical notion of community—neighborhood, town, city. The second is ‘relational,” concerned with “quality of character of human relationship, without reference to location”….[T]he two usages are not mutually exclusive, although….[and often] modern society develops community around interests and skills more than around locality” (from here).

I always imagined community as being a local sort of thing. Quilt Village de Provence, an original quilt made by Frédérique, is a lovely and perfect depiction of that: a beautiful central sun lighting all the town. Her circular quilting reinforces this idea: we are all together in a great, broad and enveloping circle. (She granted me permission to share this.)

Some of this thinking was triggered by the recent events in my own life: of the passing away of my mother, a breaking of one of my most central relationships. I found myself deep in mourning and all its attendant ills and challenges, yet found a community of women who had gone through something similar, and they buoyed me up. I loved the comment by Tina on the last post, who recommended patience with the process, reminding me that “It takes as long as it takes.” So community, in this sense, was like the second definition, above: “interests and skills more than around locality.”

Recently, I volunteered to serve as a website admin/blog poster for one of our local quilt guilds. In diving in to this, I discovered many tightly bound communities in this larger whole, some accepting of a newbie, yet other groups resistant, with the gates shuttered and the drawbridge up. It was an interesting experience and I was surprised by how fiercely some guarded their particular little fiefdom. Community is not new to me; I’ve been a classroom teacher. I’ve been a Guild teacher. I’ve taught in quilt shops. I’ve been a part of a worldwide church community my whole life, and worked locally within that, coming to love friends and neighbors — thankful for those who accepted me with a large measure of grace and patience — yet I also figured out who was prickly and deserved a wide margin. This guild experience was no exception.

I have also loved having a larger quilting community due to social media, making many friendships even though we lived far away from each other. This is not a new concept to any of you. But the final thoughts about people and connections are because of this quilt. It’s my version of an antique quilt from another community, far far away:

Found on Instagram, I loved the red patches floating on the creamy background of this quilt from the North Country of England, perhaps where my great-grandmother was from? I don’t know, but I like thinking that she may have made something like this, so many many miles and years ago.

In 2019, my young granddaughter Dani played with it in her living room, helping me lay out the center. I have carried this with me on trips, and have taken this quilt to my local quilt guild meetings, ready for it to come to its completion, bridging my connection with this young girl to the older British/American quilter sitting next to me, telling me about her connection to King Charles via her church parish from when she was a girl the same age as my Dani.

At the heart of it is this: I cannot live without my community. It’s been a hard slog to feel easy again in a crowd post-Covid, their faces close to mine as I listen to them, share their joys, carry their sorrows. Loneliness has dogged a lot of us, and we are rebuilding. I am admittedly less patient with those who willfully bar the gates to friendship, but I try to offer them a measure of grace and move on, looking for others who want to form connections.

In a paper by McMillan and Chavis, they define a “Sense of community [as] a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (from here). This idea keeps me going, keeps me making friends (and quilts), and helps me find acceptance, no matter whether we are from the North Country or South Country. No matter what slice of life we are from — old or young, happy or cranky, hesitant or willing — I hope we find community.

Other posts about North Country Patchwork Quilt:

EPPing again with French General (and the printouts for the papers to make this)
Do You Tweet?
First Monday Quilt (where I thought it would only take me two years to finish. Haha.)

Yes, it plays nicely in the kitchen. Quilting by Jen of Sew-Mazing Quilting. I love any version of Baptist Fan!

All but the final border was sewn by hand.

The reverse, a combination of two lengths of fabric. The right side is the same that’s on my sister’s quilt, New Journeys, made from French General fabrics, some years ago. Thank you goes to my wonderful quilt-holding husband.
This is Quilt #277 on my Quilt Index • 66″ x 86.”

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish

Quilt Finishes, Kitchen Re-do, Watching a Plant Bloom

April 27, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

These strange looking almost-flowering buds belong to the Mother of Pearl plant. It’s also known as the Ghost plant, or Graptopetalum paraguayense.

This is the mother ship of that spindly, tentative arm that is reaching out to flower. This part is sturdy, well-rooted, thick and healthy. The flowering branch looks delicate, pale, and like you want to set up a succulent hospital to take care of it. I think the base plant could climb mountains, leap tall buildings in a single bound. I would think that the flowering branch is one of those caricatures of a fainting Victorian woman.

Both of these are us. Are you. Are me.

It’s on the sturdy plant days that we reply to every email, answer every comment on Instagram, hand-write overdue notes to far away friends, cook homemade meals, weed the garden, quilt for hours — our minds clear and powerful, our physical bodies cooperating and healthy. We eschew sugary snacks. We sleep well. We read interesting books. Each minute has a purpose.

Sadly, frail flowering stem days can sometimes prevail. On those days, while we might look well to the world, inside we can hardly step over doorway thresholds. We doom-scroll social media, but don’t have energy for even a “like.” Thinking of what to say to comments is herculean, and dinner consists of whatever is in the fridge, or at the closest fast-food place. Creativity is still treasured, but we can’t find our sew-jo, our mo-jo, our motivation or energy. Sleep is interrupted, and we worry/ruminate way too much. Our physical bodies are busy plotting against us and it’s generally Not Good (think something along the order of January 6th).

You get the picture.

And then two holy men step into the fray (thinking of their names: Angel and Ezequiel). We are in the midst of a kitchen re-do, as some of you have seen on other social media. Maybe to continue the metaphor from the Mother of Pearl plant, we are being re-potted? This week Angel and Ezequiel, and then Leo (on the right with all the cans, etc) came to paint the kitchen three different colors. (In case you don’t feel old enough, Ezequiel — a sturdy, jovial man — is 72 and has been a painter for nearly a half-century.) It has been nice to have many thoughtful, kind and cheerful people help us.

On another day this week as we ate lunch, I looked at my Dave and said, “Today we don’t have to pick a paint color. We don’t have to go to five tile stores to choose backsplash. We don’t have to go to four stores to evaluate countertops, or talk about drawer handles or garbage disposals. We don’t have to buy sinks, or microwaves or a refrigerator.”
“I know,” he said. “Would you like to take a nap?”
“Maybe.”

It was a spindly flowering branch day.

And then this happened. It was the arc scraps from Primula Ballerina’s Drunkard’s Path blocks, filled in with low-volume fabrics. I blocked all out that was happening below me in the kitchen and kept going because I was listening to this:

Baby Hurren’s Quilt #275 in the Quilt Index

Each Drunkard’s Path block is 5″ finished, so I guess the quilt is 40″ x 35″, about right for a friend’s baby who hasn’t yet arrived.

And that Target Special round mirror is for the half-bath downstairs, because ohgoshwhynot, we decided to replace the vanity/sink while we were at it and the old square mirror won’t fit when the new vanity comes in. The painters painted it “White Flour” today (our white for the kitchen). What a gift.

And then when the construction drapes were cleared from the family room for a weekend, we took the chance to binge-watch the last season of Sanditon. The ending(s) reminded me of Lord of the Rings, when we had wrap-up ending, after wrap-up ending, after wrap-up ending. Which allowed me to do a wrap-up ending on this EPP quilt (North Country Quilt) which was started in April 2019. (Free pattern for the pieces at the link.)

I decided to sew on a border as the edges were as unstable as my current state; on the right is my mock-up of the quilting for Jen, my long armer.

At this point, I just want this quilt to be done, even if I’m not so sure about it now. I am also hoping that soon the kitchen will be done, that we’ll move back out of the dining room, unpack the stacks of boxes in the garage and family room, and find our sturdy plant lives once more.

*Lilacs in bloom remind me of my mother*

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish

Primula Ballerina • Quilt Finish

April 16, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

A hymn sung in our church begins with “Earth, with her ten-thousand flowers” and ends with the sentiment that all these things of nature “Have one chorus: God is love.” This was reinforced to me when I went hunting for a title for this quilt (not wanting to borrow from the original pattern — more info here), and fell down into a fun rabbit hole of internet blossoms.

In the end a ruffled primrose caught my eye, with a trademarked name of Prima Belarina. Not wanting to run afoul of the trademark police, I decided to call this Primula Ballerina, primula being the botanical name for Primrose, and the ruffles on that new flower resembling the tutu of a dancing ballerina.

I quilted it on my Sweet Sixteen Handiquilter; this size is a fun amount of quilting for one SoCal quilter (me). Label mock-up:

And…that’s about all for today. I did have a profound post on the similarities/differences between our tools as quilters and the tools I see everyday in my under-construction kitchen, but that will have to wait. So will the post about Distraction (inability to concentrate when there is fascinating stuff doing on the house), the post about Best Uses of Doom-scrolling Instagram (really, there are none except seeing all your pretty quilts), as well a potential post on Guilt About Falling Behind in Most Areas of My Life.

Likewise the post about Cooking with Cars, or the bit about Choosing a Particular color of Blue Paint in the changing seasonal light have to wait, too. Something for you to look forward to, I guess. But I will leave you with photos.

(That center sure is a flashy little thing, isn’t it?)

Go smell 10,000 spring flowers!

300 Quilts

Garden Flower • Quilt Top Finish

April 9, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Floods! Snow! Storms! Rain! More Rain! That old saying about April Showers really doesn’t apply to California, because for us it’s March showers bring April flowers, so yes, my garden is overflowing with flowers which is where my latest quilt started.

This pattern is also where the quilt started, with Yvonne’s wonderful Garden Peony quilt pattern. Yvonne is a master of shape and space (her handle is Quilting Jet Girl), and love how the inner path of this quilt mimics the ruffling of a peony blossom.

I’ve highlighted it here.

But I’ve always wanted to make this in Kaffe prints, just knowing it would make a wonderful big blossom. Luckily for me, Yvonne put out a new edition of her pattern, so I was in business.

I busily cut out all the green I wanted to use (an old Kaffe geranium print) and then started mocking up the center. I remembered that our peonies had that brilliant yellow center, so that’s what I cut next. However, there wasn’t a blossom big enough for the solid circle Yvonne had in her pattern, so I ended up with four smaller blocks. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was already in trouble with this quilt:

Can we say Color Mush? Can we say Pieces Turned Awry?

Admittedly, this was taken at night, but I couldn’t see any delineation between the outer three colors. I went to bed, dejected, as I just knew her design would be beautiful in Kaffes but couldn’t see my way there.

Thank you, Committee of Sleep. Out with the treasured geranium fabric. In with dots.

I tried three different pinks around that center yellow, and have a shopping receipt and the cut-out shapes to prove it (some fabrics were already in the stash). I had to make another hard decision about the 2nd ring: I inverted it, largely because the shape of the blossoms in the Kaffe were fighting the natural flow of soft scallopy petal shapes. It was a hard call, as I loved how Yvonne had the ruffle effect (see above). But now I was in new territory, and I was determined to make it work.

But apparently the quilt wasn’t done with me yet.

This just didn’t work. So I re-made a new one, with a better match of pink blossom and a stronger background, and pieced it in. I even rotated it a quarter turn for better balance.

Admittedly the two outer rings are still very similar in value, even though one is Kale and the other Geraniums. I’m hoping the quilting will help fix that.

Yvonne has great directions. I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough big blooms to make full-blocks in one section, and I shouldn’t have. It’s one of my favorite parts. I wish I’d been braver on the other sections (this is a “before I switched it out” photo).

There are many good tips on construction in the pattern, so you shouldn’t have any troubles.

I printed out the pattern onto card stock, and put two loops of blue painter’s tape on the back to keep it in place when I was cutting. I set a ruler on top of the straight edges to help with cutting (large rotary cutter). I followed her directions for cutting multiple shapes, using my smaller rotary cutter on the curved edges.

Put your sewing machine speed on slow, whether it’s you that’s on slow, or the machine. Pin the center of the arc. Then one more at each end. I always tried to use a scrap to start the seam before stitching that beginning edge, and used the natural flex and give of the bias to help align the edges.

I pressed nearly every edge to slide under the larger arc piece, with the exception of the center circle. Then trim it up and put it on the design wall.

Sew together, pressing well.

I had to do a last photo in our under-construction kitchen. This is the Day Six of Week Four, showing the floor all finished with its patching (sense a theme?). We’ve chosen our cupboard color (the Great Angst of the last two weeks), but you’ll have to wait to find out which one we chose. I woke up from a dream the other morning where I was being tiled: tiny pieces all over my face. Hmmmm, I thought, when I was fully awake. Better get on the tile stuff for our backsplash. And the stories! I’ve loved reading about painting, buying, kitchens, workers, counters, windows–your experiences have helped me be more sanguine about mine.

So just like making a quilt, from choosing a shape to material to color to size to revision, the kitchen is coming along. I had thought I’d just sit upstairs and sew merrily away for six weeks while they hammered and sawed downstairs. That was an illusion. The reality is we’ve spent nearly every day making some $ignificant deci$ion, or shopping to learn about that significant decision. But we think we’ve purchased just about everything, and now it’s just time and other people making in their workshops, sawing and planing and cutting wood.

I much prefer fabric.

Happy Easter!