Quilts

Amish With a Twist 2–progress

July 31, 2013April 27, 2014 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Today I’m all caught up with my Amish With A Twist-2 Block of the Month program with the completion of these four, plus the components shown below.

I think these will eventually become part of the center star.

I’d be lost without my color sample cards–I snip off a bit of selvage and write the name on it (and underneath) along with the color number. It REALLY helps.

I also cut each block’s pieces all at once, then store them inside the pattern, all folded up for when I can get to the sewing. Done in parts, this quilt will be manageable, I think.

4-in-art_3

Check back tomorrow for our Four-in-Art Challenge Art Quilt Reveal! I’m pretty excited about it, having seen bits and pieces of my fellow quilters’ works. In addition, if you are a Schnibbles fan, Sherri and Sinta will have our newest Schnibbles on display, plus let us know what the next quilt will be. (Here’s mine!)

But today, I’m linking up to Lee’s Freshly Pieced for Works In Progress Wednesday.

Citrus

July 21, 2013October 3, 2013 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

Citrus, 31-1/2″ square, finished July 2013

This is a simple Schnibbles quilt, with rail fence and sawtooth star blocks, in bright citrusy colors.

The back, with my sister’s gift of a tea towel as part of the backing.

As I was at our annual summer retreat, I chose a simple leafy pattern–one I could quilt while we talked about children, grandchildren, hymn-singing at church, marathons, and could-you-please-bring-me-a-piece-of-chocolate sort of conversations.

I was tired today, after nearly two days at our retreat, so no big fancy quilt labels for this one. Just handwritten in Micron pen, the title, my name, the place, date and dimensions. Truthfully, this is 31 and three-quarters-inch wide, but just couldn’t face all that, so I’m calling it 31-1/2″ inches square.

Here are the last two Schnibbles I’ve made. I’m thinking that whatever the next pattern is, it needs to be pink. Or aqua. Anything but yellow, orange and green.

The house was quiet this morning as I sewed on the binding. My husband had not yet returned from his scientific meeting. The weather was cool so I had the windows open, listening to the faraway sounds of traffic, the nearby sounds of insects, birds, a dog barking his good morning. I could have machine-stitched this binding down, the chunk-chunk of the needle going through so many layers of fabric, but instead, I picked up a needle and thread.

I thought about all the conversations I’d had in the past forty-eight hours at our annual summer retreat. The topics of conversation varied from books to quilt tops to sewing pillowcases to “how do you make bias binding?” to no conversation at all as we concentrated on our tasks, letting others carry the call and response around us. There is something so rich and rewarding about being in the thick of this, of feeling surrounded and accepted by all these creative, productive and interesting people. We have all brought our fabric, thread, and know how to borrow each other’s books for patterns, search Pinterest or the web, or locate what we want in a magazine or on a blog. We all seem to find the time to begin the quilt or table runner or creamy white blouse or Polaroid blocks and bring them to the communal sewing circle, so we can keep our hands busy while we solve what really is on our mind. The machines hum a nice alto line while our chorus of soprano voices slip in those concerns and cares that worry us at night, all of us telling a story of being unable to sleep because a friend moving away, or how to find the money to go to another state to meet an adult child’s sweetheart, or how to recover from a foot injury, or recover from a broken heart of a life called away too soon.

The stories are as varied as we are, from new mothers (am I doing this right?) to mothers of teenagers (can I send them to the moon?) to mothers of grown children (everything will work out). We are young, running marathons. We are older, with a litany of physical complaints. We are professionals, earning retirement and benefits, and we are under-employed, wondering how to find medical insurance. We are so different.

We are the same, with thread and scissors and stars and triangles and squares of cloth. After days of sewing together, we are tired and head back to our houses with our half-finished projects, our conversations, our new friends, our memories, all packed away until the next time.

All of this is on my mind, as I think about how this is being repeated at every retreat, every sewing circle, all of us being bound together like this quilt I am working on, a stitch at a time.

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This quilt is my first finish on my list of things to do in the Third Quarter of 2013’s Finish-A-Long (FAL).

It is #118 on my 200 Quilts List.

Quilts

Finish-A-Long, Quarter 3 Goals

July 12, 2013 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

It’s that time again, time to set out some goals for the next quarter. The rules state that they have to be projects that you need to finish, and since I’ve been laid up with a foot surgery this summer, I’m repeating some of the projects from last go-round, that still need to be finished.

The repeaters are the Hunter’s Star (really, it’s so close. . . yet so far), the Lollypop Tree quilt, and the Friendship Quilt. The Lollypop Tree will require me to be all the way healthy, so I’m not even sure I should put it on this quarter’s list, but I certainly don’t want it bumping into the next, where holiday fun things take time away from quilting. So here it is.

New to this list is my Four-in-Art quilt for August 1st’s reveal and while I’d like to add on November’s Art Quilt to this one, it’s not started yet. You know the rules. I am also making up a little quilt with citrus colored fabrics that Laurel brought to me post-op (to cheer me up), and I’ve had fun making the stars (it’s also a Schnibbles quilt).

I’m also making a quilt with Anne’s Design, from SpringLeaf Studios–the Facets quilt is so intriguing and so fun. She provides multiple ideas for you to create; this is just one of them.

For the first time, I’m including two handmades on the FAL list, as I see that this is a possibility in the FAL Universe. I’ve had the pieces cut out forever to make this Pleated Tote out of Keiko Goke fabric. Time to finish it up. Likewise Hot Mitts for Rhonda–fabric pinned early in June, but not yet completed. It’s awaiting quilting and construction. Time to get that out of the sewing room and off to Rhonda (it was her birthday present–which was last month–!).

And that’s the beauty of Finish-A-Long (FAL): to get things finished and done and out of the sewing room, as Leanne says. Join up with your goals *here* at She Can Quilt, and get some of your projects finished!

Creating · Four-in-Art · Quilts

Owls

July 10, 2013July 15, 2013 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Our Four-in-Art theme this round is Owls, under the year-long theme of Nature. When Betty chose it, I went blank. Then she wrote about it, I did a search on Flickr, and ideas starting percolating. Slowly.

This chick has owl rings and owl socks, but is not the same person that owns the collection up above. I found out my daughter liked owls, as does my niece, one of my husband’s colleagues and Suz, of Patchworknplay. I had no idea there were so many owl enthusiasts in my life.

This card was from my granddaughter when I had my surgery. More owls:

But how to move an owl idea into a quilt? What aspect to focus on? I looked up the meanings of owls, the folklore and those were all over the map, fragmented. Sometimes they are good, other times they portent evil or bad things, sometimes they bring luck, in other cultures they spell disaster. Just about anything can be pinned on an owl.

The only “experience” I’ve had with an owl was when we were traveling in Canada around the Sunshine Circle (Vancouver and above). We were standing waiting for the ferry to take us across one night. The sun was fading into pinks and golds and it was pretty quiet up there near Comox that evening. I was focused on the water and thinking about where we had to get to before we could stop traveling, when all of a sudden I heard a whoosh–a rush of air. I spun around and an owl was just moving away, its wings unfurled and climbing toward the sky. It was eerie, out of nowhere. No wonder these birds get pinned with all sorts of intents and purposes.

This was my computer desktop yesterday, with all sort of bits and pieces of my owl scattered over the screen. Whenever I approach these art quilt deadlines, I feel like a child being dragged kicking and screaming toward home. Deadline, I moan to no one in particular. I’d better get crackin’ because I know my Four-in-Art-mates will have theirs ready.

But one thing leads to another and to another and pretty soon I hear my husband arrive home and I’ve been working and veering through a creative journey for hours, absorbed in my task. And then I can’t wait to get back to where I’m headed–which of course, I have no real idea of where it will end. For now, I know only the next step, and that’s where I’ll go.

(from *here*)

We’ve decided to open our group up to four more quilters to participate in our art quilt adventure. You do not need to be an artist (hey–I’m not), but only want to stretch your creative wings. We have four art quilt deadlines a year: February, May, August and November. So far, the quilts are experimental in size: 12″ square. You’ll need to have a blog or a Flickr site, and a sense of adventure. We welcome beginners, but most of us have some years of experience either in handcrafting or sewing. I think we went this direction just because we wanted to try something new.

Leave a comment if you are interested, along with a comment as to why you might think taking a jump into this kind of creating is where you want to tread. Make sure I have a link to either your blog or your Flickr site, so I can get a feel for what type of quilter you are.