Category: Quilts

Quilts

Spring Is Sprung

Elizabeth E.Leave a comment

Spring’s here, and in Southern California that means hot weather has arrived–like in the 80s and 90s.  So it’s  perfect day to get a call from my quilter. . .

. . . telling me that my Spring/Life’s Alive quilt is all done.  This is Cathy of CJ Designs and yes, she’s does mail order and best of all–she’s good and gets things done in a timely fashion. (Leave me a comment if you want her contact info.)  The pattern we chose was “Calm Water” for the quilting, and I thought it turned out really well.  Here’s some candids of Miss Quilt:

You can really see the quilting pattern there on the flannel backing.

Okay, that’s all until I get the binding on.  I may sleep under it tonight, binding or no binding, because even though the days are warm, the nights are still cool-ish and the window fan blows the cool air in from outside all night long. It’s how I’ve managed to enjoy living here, an hour east of Los Angeles.  While we still have really hot summers out here, the ocean air floods inland in the evening, cooling things down.  We rarely run our A/C at night, unlike the time I lived in Texas, where it ran clock-round for months of the year. My hat is off to you Texans.

Spring also means our Silk Oak Tree gets orangey-yellow new growth on it.  The little teeny tiny birds LOVE this stuff, and they snuggle deep into the strange-looking blossoms and wiggle around.  I wonder what they smell (I can’t smell anything, but the color is certainly neon-ish).

It also means I just spent a weekend grading research papers from my English Comp class.  For some sample lines from the papers that made me weep, I’ve put up a post *here*.

Happy Spring!

Quilts

Spring Quilt

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

After working on the bold colors and patterns of Come A-Round, I have to say that this was a big change, fabric-wise.  As I mentioned, I’m using the line Sunkissed, and it is predominantly soft soft soft in both coloration and value.  What pulled me in was all the text that revolves around gardens and planting and Spring Life.  (Ooh!  Is that a title edging its way into existence?  We’ll see.)  A bit of the green fabric, above.

Here’s the stack of blocks, ready to sew. This quilt goes together very quickly.  The center block is cut 4 1/2″ square to yield a 4″-center when sewn.  The first strip is cut 2″ by 4 1/2″ that sews down to 1 1/2″ finished width, and the second and third “logs” are the same size: cut 2″ by 6″.  The block finishes up at 7 1/2″ tall by 5 1/2″ wide, and when sewn into the quilt–7 by 5.  I used a 10 by 10 grid because I like my lap quilts a little on the long side so I can tuck them under my feet when I’m watching something like Downtown Abbey or Doc Martin (BBC-TV).

I threw them up on the pin wall, then fussed at them for a couple of days, moving a few here and a few there.  The centers of my blocks look the same, but in one fabric the writing is grey and in the other fabric, the writing is green–a little variation that I tried to spread throughout the quilt.

I still have my featherweight machine out.  I think it looks like a little toy.  I love it.

While I pieced the blocks together while listening to our church’s conference, I sewed the quilt together while listening to The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Obreht. I’m glad I have more sewing today, because this is one intriguing novel–can hardly wait to see how it all comes out.  My mother’s listening to it as well (although she’s ahead of me and almost done), and then we compare notes and talk about the novel.  This is our fifth novel to do this way.  Others we’ve listening to and enjoyed are What About The Daughter, The Help, All Things Fall Apart, and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.

It’s up on the pinwall–all done.  I like to drape my quilts over the stairwell and look at them there, as well:

And a close-up, for their starlet portfolio:

100 Quilts · Creating · Quilts

Deep in the Trenches & Twined Thread

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

Or rows of flowers, as the case may be.

It’s winter, so that means some sort of flu bug or sickness will find its way to me.  So, I sat on the sofa and appliqued my flowers while I watched The Social Network.  Twice.  Once straight through and once with the actors all talking about what they did/thoughtabout while they did their scenes.  My husband fixed dinner, cleaned it up (I know–I’m not trading him for anything) and I went upstairs to do lesson prep for today’s teaching–like I had a cotton head or something. Luckily appliqueing doesn’t take much brain power or we’d be in trouble.

I took down the other row this afternoon after class, with all the pins skitty-wampus through the pieces.

I lay them on my table, and trade out the monster, regular pins for tiny applique pins (see the comparison, above).  This is a trick I learned from the quilters when I we lived in Virginia for a year.  They are accomplished appliquers, all.  They also told me to use silk thread, which I do, for the thread just disappears when the piece is stitched on.

I traded out the Wintery Branches quilt in my hallway a few weeks ago for the Valentine Quilt I’d made out of turkey red and cream.  I’d always wanted a turkey red-white quilt, and was at a little teensy-tinsy quilt show, where one booth had some turkey red yardage.  I didn’t prewash the red fabric, so I guess I’ll never throw it in the laundry.  It would probably end up a turkey red-and-pink quilt then.

It’s a fairly simple quilt, with intertwined stripes, but I like it not only for its coloration, but that lean, linear quality.  This is also the first quilt I machine quilted.  Ever.  I started out with cream-colored thread, but hated how it looked when I stippled over the red.  (Everyone did a stippling pattern in those days!) I switched out to monofilament thread after unpicking yards and yards of stitching.

Here’s the label on the backside (sorry, I know it’s a little blurry).

The verse reads:

No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread.–Burton.

The name of this quilt is Twined Thread, and it was completed July 1997.  Of course, you all know it’s in honor of that man who will cook me dinner and do the dishes when I am laying sick on the sofa.  Love holds us fast together.