Friday Finishing School–This and That

May 4, 2012 Elizabeth E.3 Comments

I’m almost done with the quilt blocks I’m not yet revealing, keeping it under wraps for a variety of reasons. Soon, soon. I have this tiny little window of quilting before the research papers hit (I know I keep talking about them–all English teachers dread this particular paper because they are so time-consuming to grade). So count this for my Friday Finishing School, a project I take up now and again.

American cover on the left; British cover on the right

While I cut and sewed, I listened to The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, a British author who has written twelve previous novels. This is another gift from my mother–she decided to start listening to audiobooks, and I signed us up for an Audible account. She chooses the books, and when I was there last weekend, we downloaded four new ones, The Sense of an Ending being one of them. I liked this book because it’s written from the viewpoint of an older man, reviewing his life. While I listened, I could see some of myself in the portrayal, then some of my father, who is 86 and still painting up a storm. But at the end, I only saw the character and the sense of his ending–the life he is left with after decades of choosing to be “peaceable.” Note: the younger self of the main character in the novel seems obsessed with sex when he’s at college, if that sort of thing makes you squirm. But it does all fit into the picture expertly drawn by Julian Barnes, who won the Man Booker Prize for this novel last year–equivalent to our National Book Award.

My mother and I have also listened to Penelope Lively’s novel, How It All Began, about an older woman (do you see a theme here?) who is injured in a mugging (that occurs offstage and is not violent–a purse-snatching). The novel examines how many lives are affected by this act, and Lively draws an entertaining group that react to the “Butterfly Effect” of the main character’s injury and recovery. I remember in grad school how I read umpteen books about young people’s coming of age, that shifting tectonic plate between leaving home and settling into a life. I got soooo tired of all the sexual angst–not that it wasn’t real, but a steady diet of one facet of life’s prism can be wearying. As an older student I often wondered where the novel was that spoke to my life, the novel that I could emulate? I seem to have found the mature, nuanced view in several British novels, and I’ve enjoyed them immensely.

A quilt cartoon for you. I smiled when I saw the cartoonist’s version of a quilt.

More This and That: This is the shot of a bolt end of Thermolam Plus–the stuff I have up on my pin wall. It looks like quilt batting, but it’s not. A friend was asking me about how I built my pin wall: 2 sheets of 1/2″ foam core art board taped side by side, covered with gridded flannel (I wrapped this to the back and stapled in place using really short staples, then covered that with tape. I then affixed it to my wall by using door jamb covers–long rounded metallic bars, each about six feet in length. I used four: two for each side, top and bottom). Over that, I layered this Thermolam Plus, using straight pins to anchor it into place. The fabric really sticks to it–like magic, and when it gets all thready, use one of those sticky roller things that is used to clean off clothes.

Anyone interested in my scraps from Scrappy Stars? They are not really big pieces–mostly 8″ or less in odd shapes, but they are a range of reds, with some coordinating accents. They’ll fit neatly into an envelope and I can mail them off to you. Let me know in the comments.

And if you are interested in making the Scrappy Stars, I have about twelve of the vellum sheets with the diamond paper-piecing pattern on it. I can mail those to you, too. I was going to just file away the sheets, but I noticed that a couple of you are going to try making this quilt, and I thought you might like these. Again, leave a comment and I’ll be in touch. You’ll need six sheets for every star, so this stack will make two stars. I guess you could just make the front and back of a pillow; the star finishes at about 16-20,” depending on which way you orient it. They are Big and Bold–lots of fun to make. And use a fabric that reads “solid” for the setting diamonds–save yourself some quilting angst!

Today I’m going to finish up the quilt top mentioned at the beginning, because I want to get it over to my quilter. Since I don’t want to start another book (which will leave me wondering what’s happening and I have to grade *those* papers), I’ll listen to This American Life or RadioLab podcasts, brushing up on either quirky stories about people, or interesting science-based tales. If I get bored with that, there’s always the NPR on the radio.

What do you like to listen to when you create?

The Done Manifesto–FSF

March 16, 2012March 15, 2012 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

Since, during summer, Friday is my FSF–Finishing School Friday, I thought I’d mention this idea of the Done Manifesto, created when “Bre Pettis, an inventor, and collaborator Kio Stark gave themselves exactly 20 minutes to create a manifesto encapsulating everything they knew about bring a creative vision to life.” (from Infographic of the Day: 13 Rules)

I read about this some time ago, but parts of their manifesto haunt me, as I read your blogs and hear you talk about the struggle to craft a balance between your time blogging/interneting and quilting. Here’s the full list; focus in on number 12:

Some of my “done” quilting is ghostly, existing on pinboards, and websites and floating around on the internet, and on this blog. You have to take my word for it–my quilts exist in real time, with the soft hand of cloth, quilting, and batting, sewn together with the whir of a finely tuned machine. I love reading your comments, interacting and forming online friendships with you (one of the good things about blogs!), but look at Number Nine.

This one notes that to dig in and get the work done is what’s right about things (“People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.”) All of these can be applied to quilting. One of my friends completed a quilt top, hated the borders, unpicked, resewed. Another friend had begun quilting her son’s wedding quilt, hated it, unpicked, resewed. Both of these quilters embodied Number Eleven.

Number Seven? Throw it away is sometimes good. And so is to give it away–to a charity, a quiltless friend. Some quilts are made to go out into the world and not hang around in your closet. And Number Six? Will I ever finish the list of quilts I’ve dreamed of? We all know the answer to that one. But that brilliant Number Thirteen nails down the reason why doing the *real* quilting and sewing and creating is so much more satisfying: “Done is the engine of more.”

I loved all last summer when I could easily post something “done” every Friday. It’s a different satisfaction that I get from quilting than from most anything else I do in my life. My quilting stays done. I can touch it, be warm underneath it, point to it when I hang it up on a wall. It defines me. It’s my favorite work, for when I enter my quilting zone, time just flies.

This week’s finish: Doll Quilts. I heard from Kim, my daughter-in-law and they have arrived!

100 Quilts · Finishing School Friday

Be My Valentine

February 24, 2012February 12, 2017 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Okay, I know I’m late. Late for Valentine’s Day. But better late than never, right? Another entry into Friday Finishing School. In fact, today I have two!

I finished sewing down the binding on my LOVE mini quilt–here it is! Okay, on to the red and white.

Be My Valentine, Quilt #94

I threw a color catcher into the washer to catch the red dye–obviously I needed two, judging by the fact that the little ladies now have a light pink background instead of a white background. It’s interesting how some of the whites were tinted pink and others were not. Go figure.

The back.

I wanted something fun for the label, so I cut out a piece of fabric from the front, and printed onto that. It really is squared up. Ignore the photo.

Beauty shot of the quilting on the front. I used a thicker thread–King Tut, because I wanted those circles to stand out. I have to say I really like quilting with Superior Thread’s King Tut. And I buy my thread from them, just like everyone else does. No, they are not a sponsor. Yes, we are having a giveaway but only because I like their product. I also use the Guterman that I get on a 50% off coupon at the big box fabric store, but I’ve only really been happy with that for piecing, not for quilting the top. (And no, I don’t buy into that myth about polyester thread “cutting” the cloth.) I have also used Sulky on occasion, but sometimes I don’t like the shiny look of the polyester, and head back to the cottons. Some quilts call for one kind of thread, other quilts call for other threads.

And on the back I used Superior’s Bottom Line thread in white. How did I ever start using this? It was when I was sewing my Empty Nest, Full Life quilt, and I just couldn’t get the threads to balance properly with their locking of the stitch in between the front and the back. I think I had purchased a spool of Bottom Line at the last quilt show I’d gone to and in desperation, wound it onto the bobbin to try. It’s a lighter weight thread, and I think Heather (Mother Superior, as she is known on the website) told me that a lot of show quilters used it because they could more densely quilt their quilts. That fact didn’t sway me at all (you know how much I hate densely quilted quilts), but the fact that I didn’t have loopy loops or pulled threads to the front did convince me it was something to have around. I loosen the tension on the top a little, sometimes a lot. Then I write that on a post-it note and keep it near the machine for when I have to come back to it. Generally, with a thicker thread on top, I lower it by one full point–from a 4.0 to a 3.0.

So I tend to use it always in the bobbin. I’ve always wanted to try it in hand piecing, as it is as fine as silk. Some day. There you go–two Friday Finishes!

Finishing School Friday

Valentine Quilt–Getting Unstuck

January 27, 2012October 2, 2019 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Tomorrow it will be one month since my surgery. In my dream last night I was clothed in a heavy coat, trying to get up into a tall vehicle, and unable to lift my leg to get in. Over and over I tried, like we get sometimes with our pajamas or nightgowns caught up in sheets and too sleepy to figure out how to untangle ourselves. So that’s how it felt in my dream–like I couldn’t go forward, couldn’t get up in that car that was going to take me somewhere. I was stuck. I woke up, trying to get oriented. The house was quiet, as I had slept in really late and my husband had gone. I stumbled into the shower and began to cry. Why is it that tears come so easily these days? The doctor said it will take six to eight weeks to recover from surgery and I’m only at week four. So I guess I can expect some of this. It just drives me crazy, that’s all. I just want to be me again, an impossible wish.

But as I dressed, still teary, I asked myself that question I do sometimes when I’m in a stuck space: What do you want to have accomplished by the end of this day? What do you want to have done?

I don’t ever need to write it down, because it’s only one thing I have to identify. And today, I wanted to have the Valentine Quilt sewn together.

And just knowing that pulled me into my studio, got me sewing the little white squares on the end of red strips, cutting, ironing, and what you see is up on the pin wall at 2:00 p.m.–leaving me the rest of the afternoon to sew it together.

The original is 64″ square–and 8 by 8 square quilt. I just need mine to hang up in the hallway, so I went with six by six. That will leave me some extra squares to make some pillows to throw on beds.

UPDATE: I drew up some loose instructions and have it for you at its new home: Revisiting the Red & White Pinwheel.

So, the bottom line is I made it through my funk. I climbed up into that imaginary car today — bum leg and all — and got going. I dried my tears, straightened my shoulders and began sewing the cloth together. Like I imagine hundred of other quilters have done before me, in good times and bad.