Time Let Me Play

June 1, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.18 Comments

I was struck by the idea that: “…all thinking is an act of memory in some form. That includes imagination, creativity, innovation and other variations of ‘new’ thoughts. That means the components of the thought are not new. Only the combination is new.” I read this in an article in the New York Times by Peter Coy titled “If There Are No New Ideas, How Do We Keep Innovating?“

This quote came from Sheena Iyengar who just wrote a new book called Think Bigger: How to Innovate. In the case of this newest quilt top, which I’m calling Time Let Me Play (more on that in a minute), I went smaller in size, but bigger in the idea of it, which is what I think she is referring to. The idea that there is nothing new under the sun is an old one, but I wonder if she’s trying to get at a new way of thinking about creativity, an “act of memory in some form.”

Coy also notes that Mark Twain believed that there was nothing that is truly original when he wrote to Helen Keller:

“It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone, or any other important thing–and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite–that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.”

In this case, the memory came from a photo my friend Lisa had given me, and I went on to make a large quilt in cream and black:

How many times have we quilters seen a new “original” quilt, and recognized a well-loved quilt block? How often has a traditional block been seen in a recent quilt, and the maker claiming it an original creation? I am always trying to spot new patterns, new shapes, new ways of thinking about things, but I do like Iyengar’s thinking that it’s memory driven. This motivates me to fill up that memory: to keep reading and adding new things to the mind’s hallways and closets. Museums, anyone? Books? A moderated dose of social media? Quilt shows? A visit to the mountains?

Iyengar writes that thinking bigger is about assembling old ideas in a new way… [S]he writes that all successful innovators are “strategic copiers,” who “learned from examples of success, extracted the parts that worked well, imagined new ways of using those pieces, and combined them to create something new and meaningful.”
Peter Coy, New York Times

So as I was working on the pattern (coming soon), I first called the cream/black quilt SunShadow. <Bleh.> Then, Starfriends, which is what I called it when I sent it up to my quilter. I’m still not there yet. But the colorful version? Here’s the deal: It’s been a long, long winter over here, with a significant death, the remodel of a kitchen, gobs of rainstorms (which I loved, but the grey skies are not a usual thing), too many small things which added up to bigger things. When we were able to get back into the kitchen, and everything was put away (and the glass lampshade I had accidentally clocked with a pan was fixed), I found a tiny bit of extra energy that no one had claimed. I started playing around with color and put the shape of this quilt into a drawing…

…it was like Time had opened the window a little bit and found time for me to play. Of course, that phrase could also be read as a plea: Time! Let me play! but I prefer the idea of all the tumblers falling into place to let a person find a memory, a space, an interval not yet filled up in order to play.

Last thought from her book: “Henri Poincaré, the great mathematician and physicist. ‘Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless combinations and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority,’ he wrote in 1913. “To invent is to discern, to choose.” So keep trying. That quilt you want to make is almost here.

Our initial run at this photographing this quilt against the mural wall brought the lady out of the office next to us, with the scold “What is that? Some kind of flag?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m a quilter. This is my quilt.”
She went on to say we were on private property and generally wanted us gone. A flag. A flag? I puzzled about that long and hard until Dave made the connection that June had PRIDE connections, and rainbow flags were being washed over every advertiser’s website.
“Oh,” I said. “She thought my quilt was a flag???”

In her forming memory, seeing this quilt meant rainbows meant Pride Month. In my beginning memory, I was standing in a field of flowers, with pine trees ringing the valley with my quilt in the midst of it all.

But after seeing it, I did think it needed a different border, so added one. And we went back for another round, but asked her permission first. The woman is somewhere behind those mirrored windows. I’m sure she thought we were nuts.

More play time that night, pinning the quilt in my new blue kitchen.

In the deepest parts of this hard winter, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t answer emails, I.just.couldn’t. But Time is working its eternal magic on me, helping me heal and recover and find myself again. I think my Mom would like this quilt, with its bright colors, and I hope — if heaven has a window that can be opened — that she could peer down and catch a glimpse of me letting this quilt top wave to her. Thank you to all who have reached out and understood, thank you to all who have had patience with me.

Now, let’s go play!

Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt

Poppies!

March 26, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

Anne of Springleaf Studios recently wrote to me, including a photo of her poppy quilt:

Anne is an amazing colorist; seeing her quilts is always a treat, as they are rich in color and perfect in value. She wrote that she enlarged my Poppies pattern a bit, and added circles for the centers. I love her version, and it made me think of the first version of this quilt (pattern is downloadable; see below).

From ages ago, this was the first iteration. My distantly related niece knew I was a quilter and wanted to make a quilt for her mother who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer; they wanted poppies. I drew it up, heard that she finished it, but it wasn’t until much later that I was able to get a photo of it for my archive. (I wrote about the process earlier on this blog.)

This is a more traditional poppy block, with the red petals and the black center, but I’m in totally in love with Anne’s version. Hmmmm, I think I’ll have to add that to the list. I also have a lot of Kaffe prints and need to use them up.

The first Poppies pattern was written in 2017; I recently re-wrote the pattern, and included the more traditional setting which is over in my PayHip shop. I’m happy to share with you.

(Fabric companies picked up my pattern for Remembrance Day, 11 November)

Another way I share is by not having advertising on this blog. As some of your know, we’ve been re-doing our kitchen, We thought about it about a decade ago, then more earnestly in 2020 (haha!) and this year the time had finally arrived for us to update. The other night I was trying to figure out how to use our new Breville Smart Oven to cook some potatoes and I jumped online. It was like jumping into a pool of advertising, swimming upstream looking for the content/recipe/can I use the convection? So the only money that comes to me now is through the patterns; this is just a choice I made. Maybe I’m crazy (possibly–to do a kitchen remodel might be proof), but I very much like writing and visiting with those who find this blog.

Here are some more poppies — this time in California Poppy orange — a welcome visitor in March.

I mentioned that my friend Judy passed away mid-February and her memorial open house was March 17th. While cleaning out, her daughter found a completed batik quilt and backing and wondered if I could help her get it finished for her father? I contacted Jen of Sew-Mazing Quilting and she turned it around in no time flat. I got it bound (we took off the last border and used that for the binding — no one will ever miss it), and delivered it to them on March 16th.

I’m sure all the guys in the kitchen tearing out my kitchen cabinets wondered what in heavens name we were doing.

Hmmmm…the usual. Quilting!

The Poppies Pattern is found in my Pattern Shop.

300 Quilts · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilt Finish

Quilt Finish: Aerial Beacon

February 12, 2023May 29, 2026 Elizabeth E.25 Comments

To get across great distances, way back in the day, early airplane pilots would focus on visual landmarks, or sometimes lit bonfires if they needed to find their way in the dark: “In February 1921, an airmail pilot named Jack Knight put this to the test with his all-night flight to Chicago from North Platte, Nebraska. Knight found his way across the black prairie with the help of bonfires lit by Post Office staff, farmers, and the public” (from here). When I found this Aerial Beacon block, it sent me gathering information about this idea: that there were physical beacons to guide those airmail pilots before we had modern navigation. Really? I’d never even thought about this.

An early map showing one of the routes across the United States.

Many aerial beacons were atop tall city buildings. This is from a vintage postcard of Chicago.

Some aerial beacon were little huts with a number painted on the roof. They were next to the tall beacon, with a concrete arrow pointing on to the next one. These are still found in the United States on hilltops, beside cities, although there are very few extant arrows.

This quilt began with these French Bee fabrics by Renee Nanneman. I kept trying to think of names for the bees, and thought up “sky pilots.” Nope. That’s an established term for clergymen/women, which I also didn’t know. So I kept looking, and then found this:

A traditional block, which would let the bees show off nicely, as well as the coordinating fabrics. I loved those four big triangles; sort of like propeller blades (another reference to flight). So I made my first block, wondering if could I even do this? I chose to make this a foundation paper-pieced block, so as to get those snappy points and to keep everything in place (pattern coming next year some time).

UPDATE: The patterns (both Santa’s Ride, and Aerial Beacon) are now up online in my pattern shop on PayHip.

*ultra-high radio frequency waves (RFID, or radio frequency identification)*

Then, thinking about the idea of RFID waves, and the communications that replaced the aerial beacon huts, I referenced them with a waved border made with bias binding. It was a good exercise to figure it out, and I love how it looks.

Jen of Sew-Mazing Quilting went the extra mile in the quilting. I had many strong colors in the blocks and a very light border and backgrounds and I asked her to use Superior’s MicroQuilter thread in silver (7007). Bob Purcell (who founded Superior) told me it was their best blender, and he was right.

I did begin making the blocks way back in October, first thinking about a design with nine blocks. But there was so much fabric left from each French bee color, that I made more. And took trips to Utah. And tried to sew. And took trips to Utah. And I kept trying to write the pattern, because it was such a fun block. And took a final trip to Utah. Then unlike those early pilots ferrying mail, in the next few weeks I felt more than once like I had lost my way. This quilt spent a lot of time wadded up in the corner, as I just didn’t have the moxie to work on it.

I even had the backing ready to go as I dithered and dithered about whether I should quilt it myself or not. I finally realized that given my current state, you-know-what would freeze over before I got around it it. When Jen returned the quilt, it sat some more time. Finally this past week, I found my way to binding it. (Binding is a lot less stressful since learning this trick.) And then I indexed it: Quilt #273.

*the back of the quilt, held by the best Quilt-Holding Husband, at a local park*

Since I often write about my own life on this blog, I will share that I have often wondered how I would react when my mother died. I thought about it off and on in my life, sometimes thinking I’d be perfectly fine and then other times thinking I’d be a total wreck. My mother lived to be 94, so she had been with me my entire life and really, truly, I liked her a lot. Yes, we had our differences, and no, she was not perfect, but in her later years (before it got really hard for her), we had an easy camaraderie. The truth is many days I am perfectly fine, and at other moments, in other days, I’m quite tender around the edges, breaking into tears. You probably know how it goes. When I was a teenager, Dad got all the credit, but I came to realize — and even more now that she is gone — that she did all the heavy lifting of relationships, of sending me little gifts, of checking in with me. I always knew she was my best cheerleader.

I had a chance a couple of years ago, after a presentation with the Utah Valley Quilt Guild, to go up to her condo and give her and Dad and one of her friends a mini Guild Presentation. Her eyesight was failing then, but we passed around the quilts so she could look at them up close and feel them; she enjoyed it all. She apologized that she didn’t have more of her friends there, but that wasn’t who the show was for.

It was for her, my mother, now my very own aerial beacon.

Continuously Hung up In Bias (aka Failing Forward)

December 18, 2022August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.19 Comments

Not that kind of bias. I had to teach that subject when I was an English teacher, and it was a struggle getting the ideas of Preferences vs. Bias into college Freshmen Heads, as well as why they should avoid bias if they can help it.

So you know I’m working on this new pattern, and in one section it calls for a lot of self-made bias, kind of like a self-made woman, but less flashy. I knew I needed about 1044 inches, so I thought–sure, I’ll do it all in one swoop.

Wrong.

If I put this into the pattern like this you would all get out your seam rippers and come after me. Thinking about this, I wound it on a large envelope (above), winding and winding and winding.

So the basic drill is cut a giant piece of fabric after doing math that involves square roots (!), then slice off a chunk on a 45-degree angle and sew it to the other side. NOT like the arrangement in the first photo, but more like the arrangement in the second photo. Two bias edges on either side and cross-grainy bits on the top and bottom.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)

Usually, then you draw lines parallel to the bias edges the width you want your continuous bias. I looked at several websites, but Ann of Obsessive Quilter had the best explanations I’ve seen. Thank you! I was swimming in a sea of geometry and square root equations. She has three versions of the next steps, and I liked (and tested out more than once) her method of cutting strips:

Using rotary cutter was the selling point. None of that 1000 inches of using scissors for me!

So lovely, I hung it on the wall <cough>. Then proceeded to get it all tangled.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill

Untangled and getting ready for the next steps, which are a hybrid of Ann’s. I tried this two more times to make sure I could do this and write it up so you can do this. Instructions will be in the pattern. Which is coming. [Because of recent events, November was obliterated.]

One fails forward toward success. ~ C. S. Lewis

*This Quilt Is A Mess*, from ages and ages ago — a real genuine failure

Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward, a quote attributed to John Maxwell, was ringing in my head as I cut and cut and tried and tried to master continuous bias. I only seemed to get stuck — not really a failure — but I tried to learn from each of my stuck places. Trying to make all the quilt’s continuous bias all at once? Not a good idea. Figuring out how long the bias needed to be? Thank heavens for scientific calculators (an iPhone tipped on its side while in Calculator mode).

But over and over it’s the user of this pattern I think about. I love the design, although it didn’t come easily. I try to write detailed patterns with clear directions and probably too many illustrations, some drawn in Affinity Designer, and when my skills fail (there’s that word again), I turn to photography. I keep trying to fail forward.

*A circle made of my bias tape, then machine appliquéd*

Sara Blakely, the woman who invented Spanx, had a question asked of her (and her brother) every night when she was growing up: “What did you fail at today?” When there was no failure to report, Blakely’s father would express disappointment. “What he did was redefine failure for my brother and me,” Blakely said. “And instead of failure being the outcome, failure became not trying. And it forced me at a young age to want to push myself so much further out of my comfort zone.” However, Ron Friedman notes that “Failure, per se, is not enough. The important thing is to analyze the failure for insight that can improve your next attempt.”

I fail a lot in regular life, but after hanging around a sewing machine for the better part of my teenage and adult life, the sewing failures are fewer. However they do arrive in new ways.

Like continuous bias.

~~P.S. If you want my 1044 inches of 1-1/8″ bias tape (using high quality quilting fabric), please leave a comment. If there are more than one of you who want this, I’ll draw a name from a hat.~~ Bias tape has been distributed.

P.P.S. There is a sneak peek of the quilt in my PayHip shop; the quilt is currently at the quilter and will be revealed soon. It went up because the people at PayHip offered some new designs and I jumped, redesigning my site.
Above is one of the photos. (And no, we didn’t carry the quilts to Italy, Berlin and Spain. I inserted them with my Affinity Photo software…but it is kind of fun to see them like this!)