Quilts

Ted and Maurice at Lorinc Pap Ter, a Four-in-Art Quilt, August 2014

August 1, 2014July 22, 2014 Elizabeth E.20 Comments

Ted and Maurice at Lorinc Pap Ter

No. 4 in the Urban Series

It all started here, in a small square in Budapest right outside our hotel, on a recent overseas trip. We walked through it several times a day, enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Matryoshka Bistro in the background, sat and ate ice cream on a bench the night before we left. “Why don’t we have small squares like this?” I wondered outloud to my husband. “A place where you can get an ice cream and enjoy the evening, and see your neighbors?” for several people had greeted each other as they walked through. Another group gathered at the pub (just out of sight) for an end-of-the-day gab session.

Then the next week, trying to recover from an extended case of jet lag, I went walking at our local park — part walking path, part baseball fields, part tennis courts, with lots of benches.

I chatted with Ted and Maurice, two regulars that we see walking in the morning.

And these three men who walk together, who do have names, but who I refer to as The Retired Guys.

And on Saturday mornings I see the Little Leaguers warming up to play their early morning games. It was after talking to Ted and Maurice one morning (both retired) that I realized that while my “square” is a contrast to that sweet little Lorinc Pap Ter in Budapest (“ter” means “square” in Hungarian), it is also fundamentally the same. Of course, I want to go back to Budapest yesterday, but I’m content to notice the contrasts and take what I have.

Some of the obvious contrasts are the commercial enterprises: we work really hard to separate them in the United States, but interestingly more and more shopping centers are trying to recreate that “square” feel, setting out benches, have shaded trees to sit by, and playgrounds for tired children and their shopping parents. Another obvious contrast is the size, and the purpose. I think that Lorinc Pap Ter was meant to pay homage to Count Zichy (who is atop the statue, being honored by The Common Man, and The Neighborhood Priest, for the church is right behind me in the photo) and while the park where I walk in the morning is named for a local land donor, there isn’t a bit of statuary in sight.

I first thought of contrasting the differences felt in times of day, how many people were there, and certainly the colors do provide some visual interest, but I felt it was really a cliche, and didn’t point up the contrast like I wanted to. So I got the idea to merge the two parks and some of the people, overlaying the backstop and adding Ted and Maurice. It’s a jolt to see a Little League backstop in a Budapest city square, and certainly most ballparks don’t have statues holding laurel wreaths. By mashing them together it pointed out the contrasts in a quick sort of shorthand.

I felt like I’d lucked out to get a photo with the tricolor bunting on the backstop (it’s gone now). I now was much happier with the outcome, and didn’t let the colorful square of squares go to waste: I shrunk them down and used them for the border.

And to end it off, here’s Ted and Maurice, holding my quilt. They were thrilled to be honored that way, and told me about more regulars (they get there earlier than I do). Ted took photos of my creation having never seen something like this, and we all laughed and joked around, especially as The Retired Guys came loping around to join us. All we needed was some ice cream.

Please take time to visit the other Four-in-Arters, who have also put up their Challenge Quilts today:

Amanda at whatthebobbin.com

Anne at springleafstudios.com

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Carla at lollyquiltz.blogspot.com

Elizabeth at opquilt.com (you are here)

Leanne at shecanquilt.ca

Nancy at patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com

Rachel at rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com

And come back for the next post, with instructions on how you can make your own little art quilt, including the use of Bubble Jet Set!

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Quilts

Creative Housekeeping

July 24, 2014 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

I read Grant Snider faithfully, as he is an artist who often captures the frustrations I feel in my creative world (while trying to juggle that OTHER world of job, laundry, etc.). I thought his Creative Housekeeping a perfect illustration of some of the frustration I feel as I look around my house (and garden) and sigh, then immediately get back to the sewing machine.

I wrote to him and he gave me permission to post this here for all of you. For more inspiration, visit his blog Incidental Comics, or head over to his poster shop and buy a poster to hang on your wall. I especially love the Treehouse of Adulthood.

Yeah, okay. I’m a total fan, but I thought you’d like seeing his Creative Housekeeping, especially in summer. (He just needs a quilter in that last frame.)

Quilts

Deep Summer

July 21, 2014 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

In deep summer, everything moves a little slower because of the heat. The sewing slows down because we’re at the beach, or watching Endeavor on the television, or just lazily talking after dinner on the patio. The dusk deepens, and we realize we’ve talked the evening away as we flip on the overhead twinkle lights and talk some more, maybe eating an ice cream bar. Or something else cold and slippery and refreshing like a tall lemonade.

So I sip some lemonade while fighting the urge to take the scissors and whack off this veritable mountain of seams on the backside of Circles Block #2, which I’m currently working on. I’ve made this section twice, and have now realized we need a Design Change. It will work fine, but in Deep Summer, it’s best not to be thinking too hard.

I finished the block this morning (this is the backside–full reveal the first week of August), went to add the background corners and realized I’d drawn the whole shebang one inch too large all the way around. I slumped into my chair–it’s really too hot to do anything else, right? Then after slumping for a while, I got up and redrew parts of it to make it conform to what we have going on so far in Circles Block #1 and #2. I’m NOT remaking that center section, though, having already sewn it twice. It will all be correct when I finally post it, and tested.

We had our annual Good Heart Quilters Retreat at Lisa’s house, and were joined by her two sisters-in-law, who traveled down from the Mountain West to join us. This is just the first batch of quilters in the moring–more came and by evening, when the fudgy brownies came out of the oven, there were many more.

Jean was a phenom, getting several quilt tops to the finished stage so she can quilt them on her machine. Others quilters were just as industrious, but I was head-down-fingers-stitching on the Circles Block and forgot to take photos.

I also finished my Four-in-Art quilt, but that reveal is not until August 1st, so check back then. I really like this one and tried a new technique of printing on fabric. I’ll share the quilt and all the “deconstruction” details next week.

And in Deep Summer maybe something we ought to do is read a poem or two, while sitting outside under the twinkle lights on the patio downing the last of the frozen peanut butter cookies — a poem like this one, by Susan Hutton, found *here.*

Falling Through

My neighbor, perched high on a ladder
one weekend afternoon,
trimmed the wrong branch and sent himself
slowly wheeling through the sky.
He curved through the air as smoothly
as if he’d been drawn with a compass,
a graceful inflection discordantly accompanied
by crepitating branches and breathy leaves,
and landed in a lush, bent sapling.
To call it beautiful misses the point.
To say he stood and walked away unharmed
is true. For fifteen years I’ve remembered that shape,
its pace, but it’s the moment when he understood
it would happen that I return to: that fear,
and whether he resisted it or surrendered.
How often it happens that we step, half-consideringly
into the impersonal forces at work,
unable to pull ourselves back.
The tread of the stair beneath our feet
the appalling speed of our own blood.
The fifty years of our working lives limit our thoughts
as the pyramids’ size was ultimately determined
by what they could build within the pharaoh’s life.
The arctic whale moves through the water
with a century-old, ivory spearhead buried in its flesh.
My son was born early, before his body had developed
the reflex to suck. He spent his first two weeks alive
covered in wires and tubes amid loud, beeping machines.
I did not know him yet, in the lasting way,
but I saw he had my grandfather’s face.
And oh I was afraid. And we moved through it.
SUSAN HUTTON
Michigan Quarterly Review
Spring 2014

Quilts

Pineapple Quilt Block (for Bee-mates)

July 15, 2014January 3, 2015 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

As my friend Susan of Patchworknplay says, I’m Queen Bee. I wrote this post as I had both my bees, the Always Bee Learning Bee (August) and the Mid-Century Modern Bee (November), make this block for me.

When thinking about what I wanted, I thought I’d try a Pineapple Quilt Block, but use a paper foundation piecing technique to keep everything true and accurate during the process. This is an 8″ block when finished (8 1/2″ when you finish your block for me), and I’m using solid fabrics coupled with small print fabrics with a WHITE background — no grey, no tan, no beiges, just white. In this bee we also mail out fabrics, and some of my bee-mates have already received theirs; I mailed them out early because of traveling and family visits in the last half of July. Idid this as well in November for the Mid-Century Modern Bee, but for that bee we typically don’t mail fabrics, but simply provide descriptions and examples. **NOTE: If you feel you have too many of the same prints, feel free to substitute in any from your stash, as long as the print background is bright white, and the figures are small rainbow-colored designs. Ditto for the substituting the solids. I tried to distribute them randomly, but you know how things go.**

I’ve written up some step-by-step directions (below) but I got the paper foundation from Generations Quilt Patterns, another website with a really good tutorial on Pineapple Blocks. (They have a discussion of setting the blocks on this page.) Their ideas and explanations are top-notch, so if you find my step-by-step confusing, feel free to step over to that site and take a look. If you want the pattern, head over *here* and download the 8″ size of the Pineapple Quilt Block.

(Chart modified from Generations Quilt Patterns. Used with permission.)

Using the diagram above, which is modified from Generations Quilt Patterns *here* cut your pieces to size, keeping track of which is which (solids vs. light bright prints). I cut all my strips 1 and a 1/2″ wide as I didn’t ever want to have to mess with unpicking if it went on slightly skewed. (NOTE: for the outer corners (#38-41), sometimes I just cut a 3″ piece of fabric by 6″ piece of fabric. I know the corner will be on the bias that way, but that’s okay with me.)

Here they are, all cut out and ready to go (I am doing multiple blocks, so don’t get confused by what you see above).

Step One

Using a glue stick, dab a small amount of glue on the small square and glue it to the back (unprinted side) of your paper foundation chart.

Step Two

One by one, align, then sew on the first set of print strips, using a 1/4″ seam.

When stitching on this, and all other rows, start your stitching a couple of stitches before the line, and finish a couple of stitches beyond the line, so as to secure the sewing.

I sewed on the first two, pressed them to the side, then did the next two. I learned to pin the fabrics so as not to have slippage.

I printed out your parchment paper on my Laserjet, which can leave a residue on the ironing board, so I put down a piece of paper and pressed on that. This is the messy paper at the end of my pressing session (sorry about all the transfer stuff).

Step Three

Fold back your parchment paper in order to trim it up. I sketched in the first fold, above, in pink.

Lay your ruler so that 1/4″ peeks out, then trim. Again, I used Generations Quilt Patterns as a reference, if you need to read or see it differently.

All four sides have been trimmed (those fold lines look so crisp in this paper!).

Here’s what the stitching looks like from the printed side. Notice I’m a couple of stitches over the line every time. Generations recommends a full quarter-inch over, but it tore the parchment paper too much. Two or three stitches will be fine.

Step Four

Repeat this process, using the solids this time. At this point you can do two at a time (opposite sides, like the yellow and green shown above). Stitch those, press out, then add on the remaining two solid strips. Stitch, then press open.

You’ll turn the paper and fold back again, as shown this time by the green line, above. Trim as in the previous step, all four corners.

It’s looking pretty cute! I like how now I start to see blunt ends on the corners.

Step Five

Add on the next row of light bright print strips, again doing two (only) at a time. Soon you can do all four, just not yet. Trust me on this.

Press open, then trim.

One nice thing about paper-foundation piecing is how nicely the points come out and how it is all perfectly aligned.

Step Six

Still doing only two at a time (opposites) add on the next row of solids.

All pressed and trimmed up. The blunt end is becoming more pronounced.

Step Seven

Okay, now! You can now pin on all four light bright print strips onto your pineapple, and lifting your needle/presser foot in between to pivot the paper and move to the new stitching place, then begin sewing again. Clip through the traveling threads after you are finished sewing.

It’s pressed.

And now, trimmed. Keep going, keeping track of which row is solids and which row is light bright prints until you only have the corners left to do.

Step Eight

Some of you have 4 1/2″ triangles in your packet and some of you have 3″ x 6″ strips. I show both in the following photos. To figure out the alignment, Generations Quilt Pattern uses a nifty trick of letting the point of the triangle guide you.

Line up the outer raw edges of the diagonally cut triangle, with the point centered in the square, as shown by the bright blue (above). Stitch.

For the 3″ by 6″ strip, fold in half to find the center, then line that up with the center square, as shown. Pin, then stitch.

Corner blocks pressed.

Step Nine

Okay, I know this ruler isn’t perfectly aligned (the phone rang right as I was going to snap the photo and startled me, and I didn’t find out until later how crooked it was). So, don’t do as I show, do as I did: make sure to only trim 1/4″ outside the solid line, all the way around. DON’T TRIM ON THE SOLID LINE.

Once trimmed, turn it over and use Katie Pasquini-Masopust’s famous “Fatty Thigh” method for removing foundation papers (I learned this from her at Houston one year). As she instructed us: lay it over your fatty thigh, and pop the papers off, starting on the outside, working in. The parchment paper comes off so much easier for me than regular paper, so I hope you have an easy time of it. Thank you, thank you!! You are done!

Here are four together. I look forward to seeing all of yours!

–Final notes–

I listened to The Boys in the Boat while working on this project, a fascinating story. I’ll never look at this sport the same way again.

And the paper? Here’s a photograph of the information on the edge of my ream of paper. I bought this paper several years ago, beginning with my Come A-Round quilt (below), a foundation-pieced quilt, and have used if for several other projects (including Scrappy Stars and I am currently using it for my selvage quilt). It will probably last me until I die, and although not cheap (I think I paid 35 bucks for this ream) I feel like it was a great investment. I bought mine at my local Kelly Paper store.

Yep, all those spiral dotty circles in the middle were arcs that were paper-foundation pieced on this paper. The pattern is a Piece O’ Cake Design, titled Everyday Best.

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