Category: Creating

Creating

Spring Quilt

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

So I was just minding my business when my car turned into the local quilt shop’s parking lot on the way home from school (Calico Horse, in Redlands, California).  It had been a bad day, and all I needed was a small fat quarter.  However, this fabric group, right by the door (of course) seemed so fresh, so lovely, and their quilt sample–a cute modern pattern with lots of light colors–seemed so spring, that the next thing I knew I had hauled all the bolts in this line to the cutting table.

They are all from Sunkissed by Sweetwater for Moda.  It’s less pink that this shows–more of beiges, soft mossy green and a toned pink.  I was also drawn to it because of all the text.  I’m a sucker for text on textiles.  Plus–isn’t that name a reference to a famous citrus distributor?  How nice that I was buying citrus-referenced quilt fabric in the heart of Redlands, California–where they’ve grown citrus from their earliest history.

Twice a year our church hosts a General Conference, which is available via the internet.  I like to keep my hands busy while I listen to the talks, and I usually put together a quilt top while I listen.  Spring Conference=Spring Quilt.

But the first thing I like to do is pull from the stash–adding and augmenting the line.  If you’re like me, you can’t do enough of this.  (We all know that stashes multiply in wild, secret quilting bees while we are sleeping or surfing the internet.)  Besides that, if your stash is like mine, it adds a vintage touch as I still have scraps from my first quilt made some years ago.

My stash scraps are on top and on the right side; the Sunkissed line is on the lower row.  This quilt has another purpose.  We have a thin matelisse coverlet on our bed, and since I get colder in the night than does my husband, I lay a smaller quilt on my side of the bed. In spring and fall, I throw on a regular cotton quilt, which always fall off during the night.  But during the winter I have a cozy double-flannel quilt, which never falls off.  The flannel “sticks” to the coverlet.

This past week I took Leisa to Michael Levine’s fabric shop in Los Angeles (we were celebrating her birthday).  Levine’s has a huge quilt section, and I picked up some lovely green and white flannel for the back of this quilt, so it won’t fall off in the night.

More on the design in the next post.  And an observation or two about design.

Creating

Looky! Part II

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

Yep, it’s Looky! Part II.  Applique is all done (obviously by the gap between posts, it’s evident that I’m not a quick appliquer), and I’m ready to attach the two side borders.  One of the difficulties of this quilt–with all due respect to its fabulous designers–is that the instructions are majorly confusing.  REALLY confusing.  And I don’t think I’m that dim of a bulb, either.

So while you may cut the borders according to the dimensions listed, that won’t be the finished width.  No, you now have to cut them down.  This is a problem if you have leaves and flowers that go near the edge.  I had puzzled over these directions before, and decided I would cut the borders closer to their finished width inititially, leaving a little extra.  So, I fudged on the instructions, not cutting the inner border as narrow as they called for (I was NOT keen about unpicking leaves and flowers).  In the photo above, I’ve folded back the leaves.

I’ve drawn the line and am trimming down the border.

The two side borders, attached, and the extra blossoms and portions of leaves stitched down.  Thank you, Netflix and Downton Abbey, for keeping my brain engaged while I did more applique.

I had already determined that my pin wall wasn’t big enough to accommodate the next task: putting on the top and bottom borders.  So I “pleated” the quilt in half, and pinned it up.

Borders being tried out.  I’ve run out of the chrysanthemum fabric, but now know that there’s no need to obsess over those outer borders.  Just get the fabric up there, and get it sewn on.  So I tried to match the fabric in terms of value (light-to-dark) and hue (color).  I think I did okay.  Another reason why it’s taken me a while was because I was interrupted here and there by having to go to work (imagine!) and grade papers.  I should be doing that right now, but I wanted to get these photos up. It’ll be a late night.

Ta Da!!  Flowers pinned up and placed.

Tomorrow after teaching, I’ll pin them on with my teensy applique pins and start stitching again.

It’s nice to be at this point (reprise).

100 Quilts · Creating · Quilts

Deep in the Trenches & Twined Thread

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

Or rows of flowers, as the case may be.

It’s winter, so that means some sort of flu bug or sickness will find its way to me.  So, I sat on the sofa and appliqued my flowers while I watched The Social Network.  Twice.  Once straight through and once with the actors all talking about what they did/thoughtabout while they did their scenes.  My husband fixed dinner, cleaned it up (I know–I’m not trading him for anything) and I went upstairs to do lesson prep for today’s teaching–like I had a cotton head or something. Luckily appliqueing doesn’t take much brain power or we’d be in trouble.

I took down the other row this afternoon after class, with all the pins skitty-wampus through the pieces.

I lay them on my table, and trade out the monster, regular pins for tiny applique pins (see the comparison, above).  This is a trick I learned from the quilters when I we lived in Virginia for a year.  They are accomplished appliquers, all.  They also told me to use silk thread, which I do, for the thread just disappears when the piece is stitched on.

I traded out the Wintery Branches quilt in my hallway a few weeks ago for the Valentine Quilt I’d made out of turkey red and cream.  I’d always wanted a turkey red-white quilt, and was at a little teensy-tinsy quilt show, where one booth had some turkey red yardage.  I didn’t prewash the red fabric, so I guess I’ll never throw it in the laundry.  It would probably end up a turkey red-and-pink quilt then.

It’s a fairly simple quilt, with intertwined stripes, but I like it not only for its coloration, but that lean, linear quality.  This is also the first quilt I machine quilted.  Ever.  I started out with cream-colored thread, but hated how it looked when I stippled over the red.  (Everyone did a stippling pattern in those days!) I switched out to monofilament thread after unpicking yards and yards of stitching.

Here’s the label on the backside (sorry, I know it’s a little blurry).

The verse reads:

No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread.–Burton.

The name of this quilt is Twined Thread, and it was completed July 1997.  Of course, you all know it’s in honor of that man who will cook me dinner and do the dishes when I am laying sick on the sofa.  Love holds us fast together.

 

Creating

Looky!

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

One side pinned down. Sort of.  There’s always changes. (I can already see a couple I want to make.)

This after I complained to my mother that I hadn’t had any time to work on the quilt–but I hurried through lesson prep and writing an assignment and did the dishes early and rushed upstairs after dinner.

Those tiny circles are tedious, but the forward motion of the quilt is pulling me to completion.  Will I last for the next few weeks?  I’ve got a commitment to Rhonda to start our Lollypop blocks in March, but Rhonda, please–can I have a little more time?