Quilt Care | Surface Designs

August 11, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Freebie alert!

Now you can give them to the people who get your quilts. Download the freebie below by clicking on the button.

Quilt Washing Instructions 4x Download

This is what it looks like: four to page. Print it out on cardstock, cut it apart and pass them out with your quilts.

I did have an old Quilt Care Card, but when my sister Susan needed one for the quilt she was making, I rustled up a new one. Much better.

As a person who often wishes she’d studied graphic design (our as they sometimes reference it: surface design) in college, I’ve been amazed by all the graphics I saw on our nightly broadcasts of the Olympics. I want to do something with them all, like making a heart block seen above. Or that very cool half-circle in segments. Another color way is below:

Here’s some links to gaze at, if you’d like seeing some of the graphics in motion:

The cool pictograms denoting the different sports
You know that box the Olympians receive with their medals? Here’s what’s inside.
I liked the little video on this post.
And the connection between the pictograms and a few sports.

Oh. Okay. (Need to update my thinking.)

*Dreams Between the Earth and Sky, 2018* by Judithe Hernández from here

We went over to The Cheech [museum] last week, on the last day of Judith Hernández’s exhibit, most done in pastel chalks. So many intrigued me, but the two ladies on either side of this triptych were “clad” in the embroidered designs from huipils, a typical dress.

Here’s a snapshot of the huipil I brought back from Guatemala in 2019, when I visited my sister Cynthia (she has since returned from her church mission), and she took me to so many interesting places that involved needles, thread, looms, cloth. I could have stayed a week, but we only had a weekend.

Here we are, clowning around in a woven shawl. Don’t worry; I bought a couple.)

Three women, one of them just crowned Queen of her Village, all wearing huipils (woven and embroidered tops).

Patchwork quilt made of woven scraps, with some embroideries here and there. Somewhere I have about 10 of these parches, tucked away (of course). This entire post has more information if you are interested.

But back to the tryptich, above.

In the linked video, Hernández explains the iconography of the red ram in the center image. It’s that thing that seems to come around and interrupt the smooth flow of whatever you are doing. Of course, I’m paraphrasing. I’m all too aware of red rams in my life, in the life of friends far away, in our families. I loved that this idea was put into a visual image.

My husband and I walked on the beach this last week, as we had a mini-celebration for our anniversary. The waves drawing out the different grains of sand into patterns fascinated me.

Celebrate the bits and pieces of surface design you run across in your lives–

Post Script:

One can never have too much paper or too many pencils. The pencil above is a quilt clapper made by Modern American Vintage, with the loot from the Field Notes most recent sale: I’m a sucker for small notebooks. The pencil below is a Blackwing, purchased last year. It glows 🙂 in the dark!

300 Quilts · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Something to Think About

Coquelicot (Poppy) • quilt finish

August 3, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

“What’s odd about commencement is that so many people think of it as the end of something, the end of high school or college—but that’s not what the word means at all. It means the beginning, the start of something new.” Will Schwalbe, (from The End of Your Life Book Club: A Memoir)

So is there a commencement for quilts? We celebrate their ending, their finishing, the last stitch. But are we really celebrating the ritual of folding away of a set of squares (or in this case) poppies, and moving it out of the way? Those unique blues that I collected all one year, that particular dye lot and color which was found everywhere, and now, nowhere — so I hoard and treasure and measure the pieces of it I am using. For when it is gone, it is gone. Is this the same as the ending of a high school education? The finishing of a quilt? The end of a season?

And from the same book:

“David K. Reynolds, who had, in the early 1980s, come up with a system he called Constructive Living, a Western combination of two different kinds of Japanese psychotherapies, one based on getting people to stop using feelings as an excuse for their actions and the other based on getting people to practice gratitude. The latter therapy has its roots in a philosophy called Naikan, developed by Ishin Yoshimoto. Naikan reminds people to be grateful for everything. If you are sitting in a chair, you need to realize that someone made that chair, and someone sold it, and someone delivered it—and you are the beneficiary of all that. Just because they didn’t do it especially for you doesn’t mean you aren’t blessed to be using it and enjoying it. The idea is that if you practice the Naikan part of Constructive Living, life becomes a series of small miracles, and you may start to notice everything that goes right in a typical life and not the few things that go wrong” (ibid, 211-212).

So as my husband (chief Quilt Holder) and I took the quilt down to be photographed at what we call the Butterfly Alley, we repeated a few rituals: get the quilt-holding sticks with the clamps, determine if the light is right, find a parking place and watch people’s faces as we unfurl a hand-made quilt in an urban setting, wait for the wind to die down, and take the photos (with lots of “up on the left — the other left!”).

So maybe the commencement of a quilt is a beginning of sorts. We have our rituals for this process: labels, photos, blog post. We fold up the extra blocks and tuck them away. We clean up the cutting area, and perhaps, as Yoshimoto intimates (above) that we find stray moments of gratitude. We are grateful for our tools. We are grateful for the colorful cloth. We are grateful that we have a wonderful community of quilters, of friends, of people who understand the need for quilt stores, quilt shows, and quilts. My quilting life has been a series of small miracles, full of so many things that have gone right.

Like a quilt of poppies in a field of French blue–

Quilt Number 290 • 77″ high x 61″ wide • Started May 2024 and Finished July 2024
Setting Inspired by Anne Deister of SpringLeaf Studios

A Butterfly Alley butterfly, made from scraps of tin cans from a local restaurant.

The painting at the top of the post is Robert Vonnoh’s Coquelicots, from 1890.

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish · This-and-That

Quilt Finish: (dreaming in color)

July 28, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

I have a 2-D Brain.

Yesterday we went to our town’s Maker Space which was filled with all kinds of machines from sublimation to a movie studio to laser cutters to several 3D printers, and it was on this last enterprise that they decided to train us. We filed into the computer room, filled with all kinds of computers (nice ones!) and opened up the program and started to design. I mean, I tried to design. The plane on which I was creating was wobbling all around, and then it would leave my screen, floating around.

Many of the design tools were like my Affinity Designer at home, but not really. I just couldn’t figure this thing out, even though I was madly clicking and trying. It was then I realized: I have a 2D brain. My final project in my Digital Art class many years ago was titled, Leaving Flatland. I won’t bore you with the details, but that exhibit came back into my mind as I sat at the fancy computer, desperately trying to leave flatland. At the end, I deleted my file of 3D doodles, and we went on a tour of the building. The very next room was a room filled with sewing machines.

Now we’re talking.

(dreaming in color) • Quilt number 289 • 24″ square

I’d been thinking about flat quilts this week, as I kept calling this “the flat houses quilt” while I was working on it. I wanted it to be a smooth 2D plane, where color would be the focus through repeated shapes. Simple. Flat. Repeated. Colorful.

In the 3D world, they did have this concept of printing something to help you print, a circular idea which still is rolling around in my mind. But that’s sort of how my patterns evolve: I am making the quilt as I’m writing the pattern, each process a support and discovery for the other. I originally imagined this as a large wall quilt. And then maybe I wanted it a bit smaller. And smaller yet, to fit a particular corner of my sewing room. And I wanted to try some reverse appliqué. I wanted it to be made in grunge fabrics. And I wanted to be able to make it with the windows >inset< rather than >applied.< By the time I was finished with the quilt, I was finished writing the pattern.

I spent time on three patterns this week:

This one, because it was old and needed a make-over. How old? It didn’t even have the one-inch key on the templates, as I didn’t know how to make that item when I first started out.

This one, because although it was mostly finished when I posted about the quilt last week, I needed to finish it up for someone who asked about it. This has three different sizes and looks.

This one, because it was finished, and I was ready to post about the quilt.

Like many of you, I watched the Paris Olympics opening ceremonies, and like some pundits, declare Mongolia’s outfits far and away more beautiful and interesting than some larger nations’ costumes (like why does the USA always seem to have the same ones, over and over?) I got a kick out of the boats on the Seine, and the various parts that sort of held together with luck and a prayer, but that last song by Celine Dion was incredible, as was the lighting of the cauldron. I loved it all.

The athletes have been featured in many different ads (Sara Blazer for Dior).

I knew it would happen: Christmas prints are finally back to Christmas green and Christmas red, after veering through pink and turquoise and whatever. While it was fun for a while, I’m happy to see these colors come back.

And this kept us on edge this week, too. This roaring fire was too close to my neighborhood and too big, and too fast and frightening. Our city’s firefighters tamed the beast, started by three teens with fireworks. As one boy was running away (as caught by a security camera), he turned and asked “Do you have a fire extinguisher?” The man of the house answered, “You are way beyond that now,” as the kid jumped into a silver pickup with his friends and roared off.

I signed up for a class at our local-yet-national quilt show, Road to California, one where I wouldn’t have to think too much, nor buy too much, nor cart insane amounts of gear: blackwork embroidery.

A friend advertised on Instagram that she was So Done With This Quilt and did anyone want it? I was second in line, and this week it showed up. Absolutely gorgeous work, with every point pristine and every flower in place. I hope I don’t ruin it, but did order pattern and fabric to try and finish it. That will be my winter project.

This is my summer project, with my friend Leisa: a Halloween quilt. We are both suckers for Halloween quilts.

Quilting, while listening to PBS Newshour, which discussed Biden’s stepping away from the race, and Kamala Harris’ ascension to presidential candidate.

(This has turned into a This and That Post, sort of unintentionally.)

Happy [Olympic] Stitching!

The back of (dreaming in color) in the afternoon sunlight.

300 Quilts

Build Me a Cabin • Quilt Finish

July 19, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.22 Comments

I hate cautionary tales, but this quilt is certainly one of them. I mean, it wasn’t meant to be — I just wanted a clean-lined easy-to-stitch quilt, with a bit of impact, but then I decided to quilt it with the new Insight Table on my Handiquilter Sweet Sixteen.

That new mechanism — two sensors embedded in the table determine the stitch length — really helped in some places. My stitches in long runs were nice and even.

But in one area where I was trying a close serpentine pattern, the machine’s stitching would be perfect on the straight runs, but when I needed to slow down to make the turn to the next run, the sensors thought I wasn’t quilting, so I’d get big globby stitches on the ends. (No, I am not showing you.)

I called the Tech people (one company where you can still reach a human — hooray!) but then they switched me to some rando “education person” who then drilled me on the basics of a machine I’ve been using for several years. It made me wonder: do I sound like an idiot? Hmmmm.

I should have just stiched-in-the ditch on all the parts, but noooooo, I wanted a fancy design of budding leaves on this log cabin block. I like the design enough but where I would have been able to travel atop stitching lines before, and because I picked a high-contrast thread that showed every mistake (maybe I am an idiot), I ended up burying about a zillion threads. Waaaah. I like how the back looks (below) and I generally like the quilt, but I ended up unpicking the entire center section and redoing it in a thread that settled into the color that was there.

For those who don’t know, this quilt is a riff on the Log Cabin block (and is quilt number 288).

Often I remember to take a photo of the date I started cutting. And…often I don’t, but here’s this quilt’s date marker. I’d spend many hours on the designing of this, so it’s not the most *accurate* start date, but close-enough.

Trying out designs. Christine Perrigo opened up my eyes to breaking out of the obvious quilting routines; she passed away this year, and it’s incredibly sad the world has lost a quilting pioneer. Two, actually, for Ruth McDowell also passed away. As the regular readers know, for me — this past two years — death has been “inescapable,” as my sister described it. I am trying to learn how to fold it into the fabric of my life, instead of confronting it as it flattens me like a ribbon in its wake. I certainly miss the baby shower stage of life, and the bridal shower stage of life. Another friend died recently, and I was able to sit through the entire funeral this time. (Progress?)

Back to the machine: maybe that’s why I picked out all those stitches, because getting a better stitch path was certainly the most do-able thing I could focus on, but in the end, I won’t be entering this in any quilt shows.

Truths:
Not every quilt hits the mark.
Not every quilter has a great day.

It’s still a great quilt, and after the complicated New York Beauties, it feels like a sort of palate cleanser, readying me for what’s up next: more quilting.

Joy Harjo gave me something to think about in her poem, “For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet:”

“Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and
leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the
thieves of time.

“Do not hold regrets.”