The Winners and Other Musings

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

Congratulations to Mary of Mary on Lake Pulaski who won the Hot Stuff bundle, and Nita of NitaDances won the boy fabric and the Power Tool button. I’ve had fun going around to people’s blogs and noticing what they are making and quilting and just plain old doing. Some are bemoaning the long cold spring, others are finishing up other projects, some are buying fabric.

Like me.

I’m in love with that Italy fabric and plan to make a Schnibbles with it in Sherri and Sinta’s Another Year of Schnibbles. The pattern they’ve chosen is Top Hat, and as soon as I finish up the prep for class today, I’m going to start cutting out my nine-patches. If it’s not the Italy fabric then how about one or two of those others? I’m saving the Lizzy House Constellations for another project, so it won’t be that fabric that gets rotary-bladed today. This fine stack is from Fabricworm, who will give you a discount of 5 bucks on 50 dollars worth of fabric. No problem! There’s always one more piece I want to buy to get it up to that amount.

This past weekend I flew up to Utah to see my parents, and there is a fabulous quilt shop there: Gardiner’s. I took my Dad in with me and in a few quick minutes, given how well they display everything, I had these cut, paid for and we were out the door.

I always enjoy visiting my parents, and Sunday afternoon we took a drive up Route 89, which winds all the way to Yellowstone, but we weren’t going that far. We were headed to Brigham City, and as we passed through Willard, my mother mentioned that her great-grandmother was buried there. At my request, we veered into this old pioneer cemetery, where we stopped and looked at her great-grandparents’ grave.

Willard Cemetary

Most of this area was settled by immigrants like my great-great-grandparents: he was a tailor in Scotland, who, when he landed here in this sloping valley, became a farmer. I was intrigued that he was a tailor first, given my love of sewing. This Elizabeth Dickson, born in Needles, Scotland, was the mother of Elizabeth in my English Elizabeth quilt.

It’s interesting to hear these things at my age. I’m sure I’ve heard all the stories more than once, but somehow they hit a touchstone now, and these grandparents are more real to me: a tailor, turned farmer, a Scotswoman who immigrated with her husband and gave birth to my great grandmother who I’m named for. Next time I go up, I want to visit all the graves of my relatives, something my mother and father do every Memorial Day, so get ready, Mom and Dad. It’s our next field trip.

Do we have a quilting heritage? I think so. I learned to sew from my mother, from my sixth-grade sewing class where I made a gingham apron, and quilting entered when I was pregnant with my first child and wanted a baby quilt. I’ve lived through one solids phase, when it was the Amish quilts we hungered and thirsted after, stitching them up in bold modern shapes. They are the mother to today’s Modern Quilts, I believe, but instead of black as the neutral, white or gray are preferred in this iteration. I think many of us remember our first quilting experience, whether it be last year or decades ago. While we don’t have markers of stone set in hillsides overlooking Willard Bay and the Great Salt Lake, we might have quilts tucked away in corners, or given to children and friends. There is a rich lineage of quilting in our world, and I’m happy to be a part of it.

I think the associations we form amongst ourselves as quilters, are every bit as valuable as those folds of fabric sitting in our cupboards and closets, the pieced quilts hanging on walls and draped over beds. Thanks again to all those who visited the blog this past week, who leave comments of support and who are (or who became) followers.

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Bostonian Bag and a Wrap-up

March 25, 2013March 25, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

While this post has lots of pictures of my recent class, the Bostonian Bag (which they titled Bag Bostonian), it is NOT a tutorial nor are there any patterns.

For this you’ll need to take the excellent class from Kathy Ranabarger at Sewing Party in Orange County, California; our class was held last Friday, March 22nd. And because it’s a wrap-up of some of the details of the class, the post itself may not make any sense to you at all. (Hey, I have many days like that!) In the photo above I’m on the right in the aqua sweater.

First off, here it is. It’s a good-sized bag. . .

. . . and the ten-member class made excellent progress. But nearing the end, I was nervous about beating the traffic home, so I left a few minutes early but not before taking lots of photos of Kathy’s samples to jog my memory. I told the class I’d post them in case they needed them too (so, this post is picture-heavy).

First, here’s some details, just for visual ideas: the bag bottom with decorative piece, the side trim piece wrapped to the inside and stitched down by hand, and the pockets I made in class: a double pocket (one on top of the other, and on the other side, a zipper-closed pocket.

So, after the fabric’s been quilted, the pockets made and the lining basted to the bag on the sides and top (wrong sides together), the decorative trim is attached to the zipper-opening edges (shown). Kathy showed us how to install our zippers in class, and I’m pretty sure we were all successful in getting those in before we left for home. Next was sew the side seams together, lining right sides together, so the seam allowances ended up on the outside of the bag, which is covered with a decorative trim piece.

(Click to enlarge so you can see detail.)

I did end up interfacing the side trim piece, as my 1/2″ seams were pretty bulky. I pinned down the trim piece, then stitched it by machine as she showed us in class. I kept going at the end: I stitched right off the edge of the bag on my trim piece, continuing along the pressed-under seam allowances, top-stitching them down. I then folded the piece over as Kathy showed us, then trimmed and hand-sewed it down as I was using two colors of thread (one dark, one light) and it just wouldn’t have worked to machine-stitch. (See very top grouping of photos, illustration in upper right.)

“Boxing” the corner, with a five-inch measurement, centering the seam at 2 1/2″ inches. Stitch along that line. In that same top grouping of photos, you can see my bag corners in the lower pocket photo. In the final bag, I wasn’t really keen about how the bottom trim piece stopped an inch short of the boxed corner, so in the future versions of this bag I’ll either 1) box the corner in deeper (maybe at 6″) or 2) make the bottom decorative piece longer.

Attach the bottom trim piece to the side, by sewing the point to the side trim piece. The ring moves freely, and is not sewn down.

Handles are next. Flatten out the bag, take the handles out and let them relax, then place them near the top, centered on the bag.

I put a couple of pins to anchor mine, then did a backstitch all around the outside, starting about 4 holes down from the upper left holes, taking it up to the end, then backtracking all the way around the tab. I wasn’t really keen about how the inside looked and ended up cutting some more lining fabric to applique it over the stitching, so it will be unnoticeable. I have to say that attaching the handles was one of the more frustrating parts of the bag and it took me some time. Sit in really good light, use a heavier hand-sewing needle and thimble on your finger for pushing it through the hole (which is sometimes not easy to locate and yet other times it is), and work steadily.

Now here are a bunch of photos of the samples we saw that day in class.

When she attached this particular bag handle, she used a running stitch, which looks like this on the back.

Handle attached with a back-stitch.

And here’s a few more of mine:

Bag unhooked. I think I could fit a small laptop in there, or at the very least, a tablet. It’s quite roomy inside.

Our class. This was a fun group of ladies to sew with.

And that’s it!

Another March finish for me. Actually I took this class the last day of Spring Break. I started Spring Break with tune-up visits to doctors, getting the have-to’s out of the way before I quilted all week. So in the spirit of a teacher giving a grade to things. . . I’m at an interesting place in my life right now, and so content and calm about what I’m doing that I’m sure the proverbial “other shoe” will drop from the sky at any minute. I have a job I mostly enjoy, love my church and congregation as I’ve been going there for nearly a quarter-century and know their histories, and they, mine, and we have both endured each other’s quirks and habits. My husband and I have worked out a good balance between together time and “cave-time,” and really enjoy each other’s company when we are together. I could make a list of all the good things in my life, of which family and friends would occupy the top spots, and I’m sure that your list might echo mine in magnitude and depth. I also have this blog, and love to write and quilt and have the wherewithal to do both.

As I listened to others talk while our class was in session, I caught whiffs of the same sort of feeling: one woman expressed pride over her daughter’s achievements, another woman was having her sewing room re-made which I gathered was something she’d looked forward to for many years, and several of us found we had connections (via our children) to UC-Davis, of all places. Perhaps it was the beautiful weather, or a relaxed and informative class or the fun of getting something done in a creative environment, but I could see that many of us were living in a “parallel contentment.” Maybe we’ve just learned not to sweat the small stuff. . . and at our age have figured out which is the small stuff and which isn’t.

While the grading will pick up to a dull roar in the next few weeks of the semester, it’s really nice to feel this way — especially tonight, when some nice tunes are on the playlist and the fragrance of the wisteria blossoms is drifting in through my open window.

Happy Quilting.

Creating

Craft vs. Art

November 6, 2012November 6, 2012 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

Ken Price: “Untitled Two Parts”

For a while now, I’ve been intrigued by a comment by Ken Price, a ceramic sculptor, an artist. Since he sometimes did representational shapes like cups, saucers and covered jars, the “cultural prejudice against clay as a hobby-craft material unsuitable for major art” reared its head to often typecast him as a craftsman, not an artist (quotes from an article in the LATimes). Just like our quilts. My art professor in college, when I asked him when he’d ever okay a show of quilts, said “Over my dead body.” He was kidding (well, maybe not) and the answer stung. I realized that even though there is now more recognition for the quilt as an art form, too often we are put in the craft category. So I was intrigued by the following quote (also from the LATimes article):

Price did distinguish between craft and art, but it’s important to note that he respected them both. “A craftsman knows what he’s going to make and an artist doesn’t know what he’s going to make,” he once said, “or what the finished product is going to look like.”

These words did echo in my head as I worked on English Elizabeth. Like Price, I took my fabrics and my technical skills and knew that somewhere I’d end up with a quilt. But I didn’t know what I was going to make, or what the finished product was going to look like. My quilts will never hang in a museum, but the journey for this quilt was so different than my usual, that Price’s words resonated.

There’s an interesting energy that comes from trying something new, or to use a cliché: “stepping out of your comfort zone.” Usually, for me, a quilt begins at the computer, doodling around in my computer program or imitating something I’d seen before, but this process–to create out of whole cloth, literally, was an experience that I found seductive, scary and immensely satisfying.

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.