Merry Christmas, everyone!
Merry Christmas!
Category: Quilts
Christmas Gifts
Since all the recipients of my handmade Christmas gifts have received — and opened — their presents, I can now share what I made for my four children. Gifts for adult children and their families can be challenging. Sometimes we’ve given money so they can share an experience, sometimes we’ve purchased gifts for the whole family — spending hours in the toy aisle at Target — but sadly, most of the grandchildren want something from the toy aisle at Amazon these days. Other years we’ve given a beautiful Christmas picture book.
This year, we went this way.
I had leftover bits from my Criss-Cross Christmas quilt, but had to search to find more fabric to make what I wanted, then used an entirely different line for the backing and binding. When these lines sell out, they are gone gone gone.
I started these in April (in process photos, above) and finished, quilted, and bound them in November and mailed them before Thanksgiving so the families could use them in their decorating (if they wished). I unpicked the upside-down animals, righting them (as seen in the left photo).
We were at my daughter’s for Thanksgiving, and I snapped this quilt, casually tossed on her bed. I thought it looked great. I hope to get photos of what the other families are doing with their table toppers/bed accents/wall hangings/whatever.
We finished up our 2019 Gridster Bee by making these hot air balloon blocks, free from Woodbury Way. They are for Afton, who lives in an area known for their hot air balloon festivals, so it’s a fitting block for her (although she may just really like them, I haven’t asked). I was supposed to do Block 4, but things just kind of morphed into something else once I got going.
Finally, in other happy news, this is a photo of me dropping off three quilts that were accepted to the upcoming Road to California Quilt Show.
We have quite a group that will meet up there, with Lisa bringing friends from Utah, Carol coming all the way from Boston, Kelley from Palm Springs, and the locals (Simone, Leisa, Laurel and I). It will be a gathering, of sorts, for a few members of the Gridster Bee! We generally meet upstairs for lunch, overlooking the gallery of hanging quilts. This year I’ll have a quilt in that gallery as well, as our Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild has been selected to provide those quilts. I’ll have more news about all of this when it gets closer to Road, which will be held January 20-26, 2020.
I have one more Christmasy post on Christmas Day, so until then, keep your spirits Merry and Bright while finishing up the shopping, baking and gathering. And if you are having a solo holiday experience this year, I wish you lots of good music, great take-out, and quality sewing time.
My Small World Top • flimsy finish
It’s done! I decided to forge with ahead My Small World because basically, nothing else in my life was getting done with that mess in the sewing room, and I wanted to be finished with this project, the Third Hard Quilt of 2019. Here, in my backyard studio, I’m showing the finished flimsy of My Small World, a pattern by Jen Kingwell. I made some changes here and there, but it’s basically her pattern. Began in 2014, I was nudged to completion by a new Instagram Quilt-a-long #mysmallworldsewcial, where many others are still working. Let’s take each of the last two sections, one at a time:
One late night I was thrilled to discover an Eiffel Tower in one of my fabrics. I love the embroidery others had done, but it wasn’t for me.
I took the hexie bubble with me to Guatemala last week, and stitched it up while chatting with my sister/BIL (who we went to visit) and on the plane home. I brought home some illness, courtesey of the Chicken Bus airplane we flew home (kidding, it was a regular airplane but there were a lot of people sneezing, coughing, etc).
I made a teeny video of our visit to the bus depot in Antigua, where we saw a lot of Chicken Busses, so nicknamed because they can carry everything, including live chickens. If I could have figured out how to add a chicken bus to this quilt, I would have; I fell in love with them, as well as Guatemala.
I also fussy-cut a unicorn (just under the top rainbow, but everyone on IG called it a horse–his little white horn is hard to see).
Underneath the arches and hexie-bubble are bigger blocks of fabric, as I figured I was going to cut them out from behind the two structures at the end, and why waste all that piecing? I cut out the fabric from behind the rainbow (shown above) and the spikey arch and hexie-bubble:
Those arches were a grind, but I did them. I included other tips and tricks in this post.
Section six was a relief to get to, after those arches.
I liked the two blue silos, but they were a bit stark, so I added signs to them: a sewing chicken and the word Quilt.
I changed the order of the bottom row of patches around, and I just couldn’t face another eight teeny flying geese, so I did a square-in-a-square with fussy-cut horses, since this is the farm section.
I sewed those two sections together, then stitched it to the other part of the quilt I’d already completed.
Yes, I’m pretty happy to be at this point. My friend Laurel added a border to hers and I’m considering that, too.
My To-Do list of items is lengthy, all being held hostage by this quilt. Now I need to go and clean up my sewing room, vacuum, clean some bathrooms, and try to find the extra furnace filter in the garage, as well as maybe take a nap. But I’m done!!!
A Piece of Her Mind: DAR Exhibit 2019
When my husband and I traveled to Washington, D.C. recently, we took in an exhibit at the DAR Museum titled, A Piece of Her Mind. It had a focus on how technology — in an historical sense — affected quilters at an earlier time, just as much as it affects us today. I thought you’d like to see some of the quilts, so here we go.
I actually have to give a lecture in 2020 about the impact of technology, and all that was swirling around in my mind were topics such as social media, rotary cutters, our fancy high-speed sewing machines. But this showed me that technology’s impact is not just a recent phenomena.
An example of a table-top sewing machine with foot pedals was in front of a beautiful quilt of basket blocks.
The blocks were appliqued (interesting to note her use of black thread, no matter what color the fruit), and from the appearance of it, stuffed (trapunto?). It also looks like she quilted the “plain” blocks first, then sewed the basket blocks in between the quilted blocks — a really unusual way to construct a quilt.
The Red and Green Bethlehem Star Quilt (1840-1860) benefitted from the relatively new ‘Turkey red’ dyes. According the title card, previous to this invention, “dying cloth this color of red was a complicated dye process. [In addition] [g]reen had to be dyed in two steps (yellow, then blue) until late in the 1800s, but a more reliable option called ‘chrome green’ provided the leafy and emeral hues seen in mid-century quilts.” This cotton quilt was made by Sarah Hall Gwyer (1819-1882) in North Carolina, or Omaha, Nebraska.
I loved this broderie perse (or appliquéd chintz panel) quilt from the 1820s not only because of the design, but because of those stitches! Seeing evidence of another woman’s handwork always makes a quilt more personal for me.
This Baltimore Album Quilt is from about 1850, and is made by a member of the Hayden family from Baltimore, Marlyand. It’s cotton, with wool embroidery.
This appliqué quilt was made by Mary Swearingen King (1811-1902) in Findlay, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. I loved the applique birds:
They look almost pre-historic, here, feeding berries to their young.
Beyond the technology-oriented quilts, there was a section on quilts that were affected by the culture of the day. I was drawn to the red, white and blue quilts. That center block is the flag from Cuba, explained below:
I zoomed way in (the ropes around the quilts didn’t permit close inspection) so the picture is a bit globby, but you can see the Clay ribbon in the outside border.
The exhibit also had a series of crazy quilts, some quilts made with toile prints, and quilts inspired by popular fictional characters.
Afterwards we went to the library–quite stunning in a panoramic view.
There was also a quilt of another kind in the Renwick Gallery, just up the street, made out of snippets of movie film. The title of this is “Fibers and Civilization (1959)” and was made in 2009, using 16 mm film and polyamide thread. This piece of art is from Sabrina Gshwandtner, and I’d seen some of her work before at LACMA.
Then we hopped on the Metro and went over to the National Museum of American History. Can you tell I looked up on the internet where all the quilt exhibits were?
Unfortunately, this spectacular quilt was behind a piece of highly reflective glass, so the only way I could get a photo was to gently lean my photo lens on the glass to cut the glare. This means that I couldn’t get a photo of the complete quilt, but here are some segments.
In another small exhibit, they had a lot of crazy quilts.
I was quite interested in what this title card (above) said about the advent of patterns for crazy patchwork.
In between all this, we stopped for some lobster rolls at Luke’s Lobster shop, meandered around the Mall, and hung out together. We really like DC, as you probably know. More photos can be found on Instagram.
Later that week we had a gathering at the The National Press Club in D.C., where they host the White House Correspondent Dinners, and we had a spread of yummy desserts to choose from. I chose one of these (it’s the color, naturally!) after I’d had the requisite chocolate treat.
So, here’s your spot of fall color–happy quilting!
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 