Category: Quilts

Creating · Quilts

Crop Circles

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

All day long, when I show up for meals, or to change the laundry, my husband would ask what I was doing.

“Making crop circles,” I would say.

Crop circles–you know, when the-aliens-have-landed-and-want-to-eat-your-brain kind of crop circles.

I’m going downstairs to make dinner, and change the laundry and try to escape the aliens that are eating my brain.

Now having finished the billions of pieces in the center circles, I’m adding the outer edges.  And thinking that in spite of yards and yards and yards of fabric in my house, I still don’t have the exact right piece.  But I think it’s coming along.  I’m hoping to finish this inner section before school starts on Tuesday.  Think I’ll make it?

And maybe it should be considered that that my brain was pretty far gone before the aliens landed with their crop circles, because there are only NINE circles I had to make.  In spite of what I’ve written earlier.  Off to the laundry.

Quilts

SIX!!

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

No, not six quilts.  That wouldn’t be normal, would it.

Six dotty circles!!

I was kind of commenting on how many pieces it takes to my quilty pal, Rhonda, who lives on the Other Coast.

Three arcs per 1/4 block.  Eleven pieces on the larger outside arc, eleven pieces (smaller) on the second arc, and 4 on the center quarter-circle arc. One hundred and four pieces per block.  I haven’t even put the four pieces on the outside of the circles to square it up.  And this is only the center section.

Well, the truth is I was kind of moaning a wee bit to Rhonda, as it seems to go sooo slowly.  But she noted that “It’s also theraputic, isn’t it?”  She’s right.  I can listen to the radio, to podcasts, to novels (my mother and I are listening to Things Fall Apart), and just let my mind wander and stitch.  She called me this morning to tell me she’d dragged her dotty circles quilt pieces out of the closet and had started to work on them again.  I loved the coincidence that I was working on something that she’d already started–great serendipity.

The repetitive motion allows me to think about Gabby Giffords, the tragedy there, the speeches, and how I fit into the equation of more civil conversation.  I don’t really traffic in the political sphere, so it doesn’t affect me directly, but I can practice not rolling my eyes when someone I’m not crazy about is speaking on the TV, or listen more carefully, expanding my “moral imaginations” as President Obama suggested.  I should do these things not just because it’s a good idea, but also because as these dotty circles suggest, what goes around, comes around.  And I want good things to come back around to me.

Happy Old Year Ending (Wrap-up) · Quilts

Happy Old Year Ending

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

In the old days of travel, we had a travel agent who was charming, helpful, knowledgeable and had a lovely saying passed down to her from her grandfather.  He’d never say Happy New Year–it was always Happy Old Year Ending.

I really wanted to finish up the old year by completing this quilt.  But I had a touch of the flu, and so ended up out of steam, out of the energy to push it to completion.  But the bright side is, I get to say I finished a quilt on the first day of the new year!

I added another interior border with small blocks, then a blocky outside border–mainly to use up the stack of cut fabrics.

P.S. If anyone wants this stack of 3 1/2″ squares–probably about 100 of the pinky-oranges and about 25 of the white (I haven’t counted)–leave me a comment and I’ll send them to you.  BTW, I put the rotary cutter in front for scale. (That’s not included!)

I’ll work on the backing on Monday (some Marimekko fabric from the Crate and Barrel outlet store), and take it to the quilter (Cathy Kreter of CJ Designs).  A  good way to start the new year.

Family Quilts · Quilts

Working in a Series

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

Here I am again, with a bunch of pink and orange and some orangey-red patches.  I’d started this when the boredom and pressure of constant grading began to get to me earlier in the fall, when cutting and stitching and feeling the fabric under my fingers was a tonic for what ailed me.  I finally got back to it this week–Dead Week (bliss!)–and have finished most of the top.  I still have another narrow white (with teeny blocks) then that long blocky-piano key-type border on the left.  Just a little something extra to differentiate it from the one I made for my daughter (•here•).

I began this because I “knew” it–knew how to do it and didn’t have to think about it when my brain was really somewhere else.  But it’s been interesting to stitch the same thing again.  This repeating of a quilt is not a process I do ever, and yet I’ve always heard that “working in a series” is the best way to go.  Of course those who offer that advice mean it in service of the creative process–not making the same exact thing over and over, but sticking with a technique, a style, mining a vein of creativity to see where it takes you.  Knowing myself, I wonder if that might not lead to boredom on my part?  It’s the constant change of promise that keeps me going forward.  I’m guessing I’m not alone here, judging from the explosion of fabrics this past two years, put out in limited edition, one-of-a-kind fabric lines that quickly sell out, leaving room for newer arrays to tempt us quilters.

I did finish another quilt this fall, but I couldn’t really write about it because it was a Christmas gift for my daughter-in-law, Kristen.  I did give a sneak peek *here* when I held it up at Quilt Night,  but here’s a lovely picture of lovely Kristen on Christmas morning with her quilt.

She says she loves it, and that makes me happy.  I guess when I look back, I have worked in type of series, but just not a creative-push-the-edge type series.  I made the green quilt, then the pinky-orange quilt, then this blue quilt.  I went for the modern-style pattern of lots of “empty ground” with the white, letting the fabrics come forward.

Whether working in a series or not, perhaps the bigger and more important issue is to keep on working?