Happy 50 Years!

February 23, 2025August 23, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

First, a continuation of a story. Remember this quilt? And how when I went to find the binding, I couldn’t…and then a friend wrote to say, “Oh, you sent me that fabric!”

Then that friend, Mary of Zippy Quilts, performed her usual magic and using that fabric and my Criss-Cross pattern, made this up in no time. Or at least it seems like that. And then, she didn’t have enough for an outside border, but went with what she had in her stash. She wrote it up on her blog, Zippy Quilts, which is always worth reading.

Oh Mary!! Look what I found!!

While clearing/cleaning out in another spot, I found this bag of –yes– cut binding for that quilt. But now all that fabric is really gone — to a good home in the guild grab bag. So that’s the end of that story.

Here’s my version of Criss-Cross Color, done all in richly colored solids. One of my children now has this quilt, and I hope it gets lots of use.

In keeping with my discovering more and more WIPs from Days Gone Past, I found seven selvage blocks (mentioned in an earlier post). And since I’m playing the News Avoidance-Call Your Congressman game, I figured it was as good a time as any to finish up this stray project.

Since the universe served me up this quote (which is unverified at this point) I knew what had to be done: write up a free tipsheet on how make these blocks, just in case you might want to sew some up. Keep reading for my final thoughts on this (at the end).

Click below to download the file:

Selvage Quilt Blocks_OPQuilt Download

(Don’t click on the illustration—>)

So I had seven, but made two more in the last few days, so here are all nine. I keep wondering about that white in the middle, but I’m in the business of rehoming my orphan blocks, not creating more. It will stay white.

What kept me going in ripping out all those papers:
I’m now going through the fourth book of Osman’s and have the fifth one in my wish list, but it’s not going to be released until September. I think you can also get them through public libraries, too.

Basic Tips for Selvage Blocks

(Tips are also in the free download, above, but here’s some different photos)

The triangles are cut and pinned, and now I’m ready to add my first round of selvages. I check to make sure I’m overlapping at least a 1/4″ and then sew it down, keeping my needle about 1/8″ from the edge.

Since I have a range of blues ready to go, I add more. On the upper left, I pieced the selvage so the pears would end up next to the words. It’s not the most perfect piecing job, but the bright side is that it allows you to see that I did piece it. I do try and arrange the markings (words and designs) when I’m cutting and arranging the strips, so they don’t get cut off. And in the last photo, I’m happy that the bright blue will run around the very center of the block (more on that in the Tip Sheet).

In the top left (I assume you are reading this on a desktop, but if you aren’t, it’s probably the first photo in this group if you are reading on a mobile), I noticed I was not as careful as I should have been in getting the strips on straight, and it was only going to get worse.

So I threw in a “half-length” of selvage on the right and stitched it down. Then the next strip would be more straight and level, and I could move forward. This process is pretty forgiving, so try not to sweat the small stuff. The rest of the photos show an early phase (half done), then a fully covered square. Notice that the “tip” has a rather large piece of selvage on there. I have been known to grab a length of fabric from my stash and cut a selvage to fit.

Flip over your completed piece, and trim to 10-1/2″ square.

Four of them, sewn together, yield this pretty thing.

One last tip: I did plan to keep the paper on until the very end, but hey — paper doesn’t move, stretch, or give. [Or if you’ve been watching all the Saturday Night Live (SNL) videos this week, it also doesn’t kick…stretch…or kick.] While some of these selvages are from 25 years ago, they aren’t as old as Sally O’Malley (she’s 50!).

Although, if you need a good laugh, let me stop you right now and remind you to watch the More Cowbell skit. We burst out laughing one early morning, and in spite of the News (shudder), had a smile on our faces for most of the morning.

The other night I couldn’t sleep so wandered into my sewing room. I typically don’t sew in the middle of the night (you know, sharp things) but I decided to piece together my big blocks. I had some repairing to do after taking all the papers off, so did that, then started –very carefully — pinning and sewing the blocks together. It was a wonderful time to think of the fabrics that I’d used, from baby fabrics to bright bolds, to textures. I found repeats in different color ways, backings (they give the longest lengths of selvage), and bits and pieces of other fabrics.

I realized this quilt is now kind of like a fabric journal, a history of my materials and where my quilting journey has taken me over the last fifty years. Just as SNL is celebrating their 50 years of doing comedy sketches, I guess I should celebrate my fifty years of quilting.

Happy 50 to me!

Guess I’ll go and sew something!

300 and Beyond · Quilt Finish · Quilts · Something to Think About

Duck Creek • Quilt Finish

February 17, 2025August 23, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Duck Creek • quilt #302

I know you are really here to see the info on this beautiful mural. It’s by Rosy Cortez, and was done under her guidance by a team of helpers. (Links point to her Instagram page as well as to the website for the mural.) I really love that it’s three different ages/stages of women, honoring our local native tribes. I’ve been two of these ages, and am now in the third (hint: I’m not pregnant).

Sometimes the title of this mural, We Are Still Here, reminds me of all my quilter friends. We cut and piece and hang out in our sewing rooms, studios, basements, garages, spare bedrooms. Every once in a while we pop up with another quilt top finished, the binding on another, and still another in stages of quilting. Dedicated, we follow in the way of artists everywhere: we have the vision. We have to see it through.

Recently an article titled “The Art of the Steal,” discussed the number of original book plots possible. In 330 B.C. Aristotle thought there might be just two: “simple (change of fortune) and complex (in which the change of fortune is accompanied by setbacks and reversals)” (by Emily Eakin, link above should allow you to read the entire article). By 1892, Rudyard Kipling thought there were 69 plots. Between Kipling and our current day, the number fluctuated, and by 2004, Christopher Booker proclaimed there were just seven: “the quest, vanquishing the monster, rags to riches, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy and rebirth” (Eakin, ibid). Not to let the number lay there, another group used a computer in 2016, and proclaimed that the “world’s stories boiled down to ‘six basic shapes‘ (Eakin, ibid.)

So how many original quilts are there in our quilting world? Like the novelists, do we have just six basic shapes?

Two of these are triangles, the rectangle is just a stretched-out square, and the curved wedge is just a segment of a circle. We have rectangle triangles, skinnier triangles, ray-shaped triangles. You’ve used them, I’ve used them. Are we like novelists then? Taking a few basic shapes (boy meets girl, etc.) to make our quilts? I have a child who really likes triangles. Another of mine just likes big quilts, bypassing design altogether. Another likes red quilts, and the last child just wants them all (bless her).

I can satisfy all their requests, for sure. And like my children, some of us are attracted to medallion quilts (my hand is the air), others like samplers, and still others would be happy making intricately pieced quilts for the rest of their lives in a blissful sort of who-cares-about-shapes-let’s-throw-them-all-in-at-once attitude, and come out with spectacular pieces of art. The reality is we take, we borrow, we steal, we adapt, we climb on top of, we turn it around, and then make it ours. Here’s one of my recent favorites, from Linda Hungerford, of Flourishing Palms.

*Feelin’ Groovy*, by Linda Hungerford (used with permission)

So the bottom line is for me, at least, I think there may be very few original quilt designs. No one gets to claim copyright on a triangle, or a circle; we all know that. But where our creativity comes in, and why we are still here, sewing machines humming, has to do with how we use those shapes, those fabrics, and how big we make it and how small we make it.

I have two copies of Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Shapes, and I also have her version of that for Appliqué. Sorry to say that I feel the same about appliqué: most of us are imitating the vines, swirls, flowers, stars and animals of the appliqué world that we’ve seen before. I have twice had famous quilters threaten me with a lawsuit because they believed I was making money off their designs (seriously?). One was well-known for pinching other people’s designs, too. I pulled that pattern, and have made it free for those who are interested, for who needs a lawsuit? The other quilt I never went far with, but I’ve seen variations of it. One last episode of being accused of plagiarism left me shaken, and I lost a good friend over it, even though the design was available freely online. I really hate run-ins with famous territorial quilters, as most of the time I’m just in my tiny world, doing my thing.

The Duck Creek quilt is made of Cat’s Cradle blocks, sashed with cornerstones and pieced rectangles, and it is the design of Lisa Alexander & Susan Ache, from their book Celebrate with Quilts. I saw this pattern at our Guild night, when Char brought her book to show a couple of us. I was hooked on this design, bought the book and went for it.

The subtitle of the Times’ article has the phrase “Copy that” as in, we get it. But sometimes we quilters seem to be the least able to “get it,” I think. I have seen some incredibly original and interesting quilts this last year, and yes, most all used the shapes above. But they are originals because of the way they used the shapes, colors, negative space and so on; maybe we don’t need to get so territorial about our shapes? We quilters can be “original” even when working with those basics, like Linda’s amazing Feelin’ Groovy.

Nobody can “copy that!”

Keep making, keep quilting, keep being here–and have fun at QuiltCon this week, everyone!

UPDATE: Some truly unique and original quilts were hanging this year at QuiltCon 2025. Here’s a post that will show them off. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here.

Quilts · Something to Think About · WIP

Incomplete

February 9, 2025February 10, 2025 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

I keep finding WIPs. Here’s one from eleven (!) years ago:

More about the process on this post, but this was discovered when I was looking for a February-ish theme for my Instagram Monthly Marker post, and found this.

I have this many finished. Even though I still like this group, I don’t even think selvage quilts are in fashion anymore, are they?

It wasn’t until I tried cutting out pieces for the Oh My Cacti Quilt pattern that I realized what a helpful thing are these little tags. I have digitally wiped all the dimensions off them so as not to give away her pattern, but yes — I’m in favor of little pieces of paper that tell you what to cut.

So this is one of those in-betweeners: technically still a WIP because it’s not yet quilted, bound, or labeled. But hey! The quilt top is finished! I met my goal of piecing a (complicated) quilt in one week’s time. And then I just laid about like a sleepy toddler the next week. Good news: it’s already been dropped off at the quilter.

BLOCK OF THE MONTH 2025 PROGRESS

I finished up Sherri’s February Block of the Month (BOM) and it has this cute little ribbon star in the middle. If you need calming down from the dumpster fire in your life (not naming names, here), put on one of Sherri’s videos and you will end up smiling and believing that you can Conquer All. She’s like that in real life, too.

Here they are together.

My Posh Penelope blocks are coming along fine. We are supposed to make four per month, Carol and I. I got in the groove and made more:

It’s tempting to just use all one color family in the blocks, but I finally busted out on that last one with the blue corners.

Here’s the family, so far. I could go green in March…but then there are also a TON of blues in my stash closet. One can never have too many blue blocks in my world, so we’ll see.

Farm Report

In spite of the signs on the front of the egg case, we seem to be doing fine in this department. At this point in our new presidency, I’d almost rather have the eggs scarce again and a calmer presence in the White House. When I saw the metal letters for USAID pulled off the building and on the ground, my heart cracked open a little. This agency was one of our best soft powers we had, which made me remember when my family lived in Lima, Peru for two years. My father had a dual appointment with Stanford University and USAID, working with the government of Peru, building bridges, making connections.

This was our family photo in 1966, just before we left our mountain home in Utah Valley and flung into the great wide world. There were many doing this at this time, for we believed in our global mission of making friends across the world, building bridges, and yes, maybe currying favor before the Communists in the Soviet Union got there first. Maybe that idealism just couldn’t be sustained once the enemy had dissipated (I do still have a Soviet Union guidebook), but oh, wow. The scenes and the stories from this week have broken my heart twice: once for the death of the ideals that USAID espoused and worked and accomplished, and once more for the way it was –and is — being done. Not in the open, where it can be debated and talked about, as is our usual approach here in the US, but in secret, with skullduggery and deception and anger, displacement and many many lives at home and abroad being harmed.

Whatever comes of this episode in our American History, our lives in the 1960s as a family were changed forever. We had lived outside our little enclave and safe enclosure and had been exposed to new ideas, and people who spoke a different language. We went to an American school, but the rest of our life was with the community in Lima. We traveled only a bit, for we were not rich, but enough so I have a picture of my little brother and I, standing in the town square in Huancayo, Peru:

I have very few photos from that time. (Wouldn’t I love to go back with an iPhone!) But the best gift from my father’s work at USAID and Stanford was the idea that people are people all over the world. This I hope to carry with me forever: the world is good and welcoming and we need to be a part of it.

Now, stay away from the news and get to quilting!

Quilts · This-and-That

Why do I do this? • February 2025 This and That

February 2, 2025August 23, 2025 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

BlueSky comment: “What a great hobby (and don’t be upset if it’s more than a hobby). These quilts are beautiful. Quilting is fascinating to me.”

Hobby. Hmmm. (This person obviously doesn’t know quilters.) I did hit a goal of mine on BlueSkySocial, but that’s not really what I’m looking for on there. (And if you are trying to learn this new space, the advice I got on Reddit was to skip the on-the-phone-app and go straight to the computer, as it’s easier. They were right.)

I’m looking for more of a retreat from Instagram/Meta/Facebook conglomerate, accelerated by logging into Facebook and checking the following:

Off-Facebook Activity, or in other words, all the info from OTHER businesses, not Meta. They funnel my data to Meta to build my profile; I had about 25 different entities who were sharing my info with Facebook. From following the instructions on Facebook, I learned I could download what Meta knew about me, etc. which was kind of interesting and scary all at once.

They believed I wanted to see posts about dogs, sports, cars, cars and trucks, types of sports, and I stopped reading there. A few of my friends have close relationships with *their* pets, so maybe that’s why on that one. But trucks?

Apparently I speak English, Spanish, French, Swiss (I assume that’s zh?), have no idea what “pt” is (Portuguese?), Italian, and Korean. One of my “Locations of Interest” is Melbourne, Australia. (Hi, Susan!)

This is my earliest Instagram profile. My first Instagram comment was in May 2012, to my friend Krista, as it was she who got me started on social media in the first place.

The real treasure was a huge file of all my Instagram posts (images and caption). I’ve been trying to build some Chatbooks, but apparently that company doesn’t talk to the Instagram code like they used to, so it’s been just me, filling the pages of my books slowly. This will help me go much faster to get them produced and printed. I saved that file on my photos drive, and have promised myself I will be checking that Meta setting again sooner, rather than later. Note: This above info is only the data from the Meta bunch. I wonder what I would have found if I’d downloaded everything from everyone (shudder).

A few photos from this week, beginning Monday, ending Saturday:

Final series of blocks, cornerstones and sashing. The center of the quilt is Cat’s Cradle blocks, sashed with cornerstones and pieced rectangles. Quilt design: Lisa Alexander & Susan Ache

I still have to do the borders. In the fourth photo, I am auditioning fabrics as I was running out and was determined not to buy more (can’t, really, because most of our fabric shops have closed down in our town, anyway). I went through everything, and found a few strips in my string-piecing bin, some other contenders deep in the stash stacks. So tonight while I listened to The Thursday Murders Club, Book Two, I finished piecing this section. I hope there are no mistakes.

Just in case you need this info.

Back to the quilt. I’m a person who generally averse to buying pre-cuts of any kind, but then had to ask myself as to why I hadn’t done something with what few bundles of fabrics I had? The collection of grey-green-cream was probably eight years old, with some fading along the folds (but it didn’t seem to affect how it looked, once cut up into all those wee triangles). I wanted to finish the bulk of the piecing in one week. Many reasons for this, mostly because I remembered when I used to crank out these heavily pieced quilt tops. Could I still do it? And then I ran across this quote:

I do not believe there is an artist in history who hasn’t asked themself — at least once — “Why do I do this?” The designation of “creator” may make for a glorious calling card, but as an occupation, it involves a disproportionate amount of spirit-crushing struggle and relatively few rewards.
–Mary Gabriel

Current Events (you know we talk about most everything on here)

A word or two about January’s Current Events: Many of us on Instagram & BlueSkySocial have been writing about our “spirit-crushing struggle” this week. My feeds have been filled with memes:

I knew there would be a transition between President Biden and President Trump, and I expected some chaos, given how things were the last time he was president. But I didn’t expect what we’ve had, and the plane crash after all the firings of the air safety personnel was really hard to take. But many people I know and love voted for him. I will do my best to give grace, because of them.

However, I will continue to monitor the situation where DOGE was given full access to the federal payment system (confession: my hair is on fire over this one). I can see the irony in my fretting about what Meta has on me (above), as compared with what the government has. I don’t think there is anywhere I can petition and download a file to see what personal information is being given to the owner of Twitter, a platform I quit because I didn’t trust their ability to keep my info safe and secure.

In a book I read this week, I found this: “Good work is a stay against despair” (Terry Tempest Williams). I need to work. I need to create. And even though it can make me wonder Why Do I Do This? once in a while, I still want to pull fabric from bins and stacks, cut it all up and put it back into a new order.