WIP for the New Year

January 8, 2013December 28, 2024 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

I can’t believe I’m still working on this. No, it’s not the Christmas quilt, although that is still very much in play. It’s the Autumn Quilt.

Since I started collecting fabrics for this oh, 8 or 9 years ago, and started cutting and sewing this quilt 2 years ago, it’s no wonder that I let it sit for a while after getting it back from the quilter as I couldn’t figure out what to bind it in. You know we all hunger and thirst over the cute bindings that Red Pepper puts on her quilts, but sometimes it’s best not to over think this quilting thing and just move forward. This is a plaid that was in the quilt, spliced up with a couple of other prints, as I didn’t have enough of the plaid.

I don’t know why, but I love the autumn colors. Living in LA, I get autumn about NOW, in January, when the liquid ambers turn maple-like colors. I went looking for quotes about autumn to find this quilt’s title, and all of them were about the fall that they have on the Eastern seaboard, or New England or mid-western areas of the country–so romantic about leaves and color and the “twilight of the year” and death and harvest and so on. I found a quote I like, but I’m still letting it mull over in my mind.

I mean, I can’t just call this “Autumn Quilt,” now can I?

And this is where I am on the pillow shams for my wonky star Christmas quilt. I decided to make a normal star, as they are 16″ finished, slap on some fabric on the top and bottom to get it to equal the size of a pillow sham: 20″ by 26.”

I want a flange around the outside edge, so I cut about another 100 2-1/2″ squares, and sewed them together in strips.

So now they look like this. I stopped because I’d taken the quilt over to the quilter, and gave her the red/green thread I’d purchased at Superior Threads when I’d gone through there at Christmastime.

I stopped because I had to get the syllabus and the course calendar and the expanded course calendar done and sent to the school copy center, and while I was at it, I sent over vats and barrels of more things to the copy center, trying to prep up for the first few weeks of school, which starts next week. But it was oh-so-nice to not have to create those things from scratch–to be able to find them on the computer and send them over with minor alterations.

I may actually get more quilting done this semester than last, given the fact that I’m teaching a course I’ve taught before. And that is a very good thing.

And lastly, I had a lovely surprise from a fellow quilter: she heart-attacked my door on my birthday, which was this past week. I’ve never been heart-attacked before, so I laughed and took a picture to remind me forever. Thank you Lisa! I had other lovely gifts to celebrate that day from other friends and family, phone calls from my children and some friends. A good birthday, for sure.

And then, just to remind me that I’m no spring chicken anymore, my back went into spasms the next day and I’ve been ~~wincing, whining and moaning~~ a good girl and not complained once about it. Like all things, this too will pass.

Hope you are all getting your new year off to a good start!

Something to Think About

Happy New Year 2013

January 1, 2013January 1, 2022 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Finally! I can show a these little wristlets — mini-zip purses with straps — that I made for Christmas, because I gave the last one away yesterday. Just a simple zip, to which I added a loop out of the side seam, and attached a strap. They all have clocks on them, with a crazy mix of patterns around the central clock. For who ever has enough time? So I gave some away.

The top photo is another clock in the series, and the bottom shows the stap flipped back over, or as I like to call it “Bashful Portrait of Zip Bags.”

I also made up some giant canvas bags for my grandsons (hope the last grandson isn’t reading this post–we haven’t given that family their gifts yet!), and attached a tag that read: “Some toys you put together, and some toys you take apart.” Along with the item in the bag (see following photos), we also gave them a tool box with some basic tools.

Yep. I went to a TV repair shop and picked up some old electronics (VCR, CD players) and slipped them into their bags. They went right to work, taking them apart. They told me later that they’d finished them the next day. All of this was inspired by my mother, who when visiting our family when my boys were little, got one of them a television to take apart.

Finishing up this quilt. I was arranging the scraps of the remaining fabrics, trying to come up with a pieced back that didn’t look all garbage-y like my usual pieced backs do. My husband walked in and after inquiring what I was doing, I confessed I really didn’t do pieced backs very well. Sometimes I like to show the backs of my quilts and I’ve just never gotten the hang of that artsy look that some quilters can do so well. We went to the guest bedroom closet (AKA, fabric storage warehouse) to see if any of the Marimekko fabrics would work, when lo! and behond! there was a hunk of the red “joy” fabric, a coordinate to the Countdown to Christmas line. I’d forgotten all about it, but this morning I pieced it together and now that quilt can be quilted. (What you see on top are the pillow shams. Still working on those.)

I gave away this book for Christmas, and bought one for myself, too.

Not only does it have a lot of prompts for good deeds to to daily, there’s also room to record a deed that you did–an interesting way to keep a journal for a year, I think.

How about instead of a handmade card, we all make a handmade quilt? I like that.

So Happy New Year, everyone. Let that old year go, just like it says above, and enjoy this first day of the year! Now head back over to Lee’s blog, Freshly Pieced, to see others with WIP Wednesday projects. Maybe it will inspire you to pull out some of your own to get those Works-In-Progress quilts move to Work-Completed quilts?

Quilts

Ring Out, Wild Bells

December 30, 2012December 28, 2024 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Every New Year’s this poem, In Memoriam, by Lord Alfred Tennyson, has been recited in Sweden to welcome in the new year. It’s one of my favorite hymns, not only because of the arrangement (the Marsdon tune, arramged by Crawford Gates in an especially riveting D-minor key, which gives it a haunting quality) but mainly because the last stanza urges us to “Ring in the . . . larger heart, the kindlier hand,” among other things. And while I could say that the wording might be reversed, giving us “kindlier heart and larger hand” and that would give us more chances to do quilting, I think I’ll leave it well enough alone and hope for what Tennyson wrote.

Yesterday I just finished the quilt I started one year ago. This is a terrible, horrible blurry picture, but you get the drift. That’s what happens when you finish up late at night, and the pin wall has all sorts of other things pinned around the edges. Better pictures are coming. The fabric is Countdown to Christmas by Sweetwater, and the pattern is by Angela and found on Moda Bake Shop. Since the stars and I went several rounds before I finally was declared the victor, and because I think they look beyond wonky in some blocks, I’ve been thinking about the book Star Mother’s Youngest Child, a delightful story of how a wonderfully ugly little child comes down to earth to see what Christmas is all about, and ends up sharing the hearth with a grumpy old woman (which I certainly was at one point in this quilt’s construction). It’s okay that nobody but me will know what it means, but I like that title: Star Mother’s Youngest Child.

I’m at the point of deciding whether to just piece up the extras for the back, or to take the last steps and make the shams that could go with this so as to decorate the guest room for the holidays. I’ll just make up two star blocks, for they measure 16″ and then border them and call it a day. It IS New Year’s Eve tomorrow, and I don’t have much on the schedule, so why not?

This is the stack from IKEA that I finally got washed up and ironed (yes, I’m one of those), excepting the bottom red/white snowflake fabric, which I bought on my way home from Utah in a bookstore that also carried fabric. How great is that? Forget coffee. Give me books and fabric and I’m happy. But that red snowflake fabric is destined to back the wonky snowman quilt I started LAST November, which is the next to go up on the pin wall, while I can still listen to Christmas carols and before the urge to clean out closets creeps in with the New Year.

(Self portrait)

I’m too old for resolutions, but I try to put down some things that have me looking forward, for that is where the future is. One is our newest theme for Four-in-Art: trees. I took lots of photos of snowy trees while in Utah, and here’s a photo that my husband snapped of me in a lull in my photo-snapping.

But the one tree I remember was by the side of the highway while I was driving up north, covered in glittery frost and standing completely out in a field, all by itself. I did see snowy trees on the way home, but most were obliterated by a huge snowstorm which had me sitting up straight in the driver’s seat, clenching the steering wheel, praying that the semi-trucks would stay in their tracks and I could stay in mine. I don’t know how the folks do it who live in snowy climes–you have my admiration.

Another bright spot is the Mid-Century Modern Bee. All of us Mid-Century Modern quilters are gathered together by Cindy, of Live a Colorful Life. She and I had fun creating the logo together when she visited in November, and I look forward to participating with such a distinguished group of quilters.

I don’t know what this New Year will hold. Certainly the Mayan calendar is going to go for another round of days, so I guess we should too. I hope to add to my 200 Quilts list, with another quilt just back from the quilter and awaiting the binding, then the documentation onto the list. I hope to write more, both on this blog and others that I maintain, to teach well in the classroom, to read some books, and attend some quilting conferences (next up is Road to California, with its emphasis on glitter and crystals (not a fan), but hopefully I’ll find one or two that I love).

I hope that you are gathering some bright spots together in your future, and that we are all able, like Tennyson, to “Ring in the . . . larger heart, the kindlier hand.” Happy New Year of Quilting!

Something to Think About · WIP

Wonky Stars, Wonky World

December 19, 2012December 14, 2024 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

I know you must think I fell off of a cliff. I posted on Lee’s Freshly Pieced blog as a guest host, (who has since removed the post) then went dark and silent for lo, these many weeks. Below is a composite of what went on, minus the rolling-of-the-eyes pictures while reading student papers and grading grading grading.

Besides grading, we got a new sofa, I made vats of a potato dish for our church Christmas party, sewed giant canvas bags for my grandsons’ Christmas presents (we gave them small tool boxes and broken electronics from the local TV repair shop, so they could take them apart with their new tools), decorated the Christmas tree, celebrated Christmas with my son and his family, pulled out an old block swap project then put it away, started on Secret Project A, Secret Project B (it is Christmas, after all) and then would up my time making Butternut Crunch Toffee and Christmas Caramels.

I have been feeling much like the grandma in the snow.

And then last weekend’s horrible events happened, and like you, everything in my world pretty much came to a halt, and I watched the news about Sandy Hook, read about the lives of the slain children, and cried and cried. And one really bad day, both my daughter’s and my tender emotions collided in a colossal disagreement over nothing, and I realized that the resultant tears on both our parts was more indication that our days would be forever changed by our concern for twenty-eight families in Connecticut. I wanted to write about it, but mostly I just wanted to gather a quilt around the closest child, read them good books and ward off the outside world to protect them. How to move from this wonky, capsized world back to Christmas?

Start slowly, by doing the things that right the world after a terrific up-ending.

I wrote Christmas cards. Thinking about those closest to me enabled me to brave the mall and do some gift-buying. I spent time with good people, friends, church friends, family. Many many years ago, after I went through my Horribles on a tear-filled Christmas (a divorce), the counselor said that trying to get back into a routine would help everyone. So I made some toffee. Then my annual Christmas Caramels, while listening to Christmas carols.

And realized that I’m no good at making Wonky Stars. I can get the star “blades” on crookedly, a necessary ingredient for wonkiness. But I keep messing up the placement of the star blades direction, like the one above.

So I would lay them out, and invariably have to unpick one. I decided to plow through it, for if I left this project midway, I might never be able to get back in.

The stars turned out appropriately wonky, maybe more wonky than they should have. But more importantly, the stars are done. And I hope to find some time in the sewing studio to sew the companion blocks to this quilt.

Next week, we’ll be spending some time with my family, with my husband’s family, looking at lights, singing Christmas hymns at church. We’ll also be listening to Uncle Earl play Lady of Spain on his accordion (a rare treat), celebrate the season with my Dad and Mom’s great cooking, and yes, like most families, we’ll tell jokes, admire the babies, trade stories of cancer, new furniture, failed toffee and failed marriages, changed jobs, successes in grad school, all of us sharing bits and pieces of our patchworked lives.

I wish you all the best of a patchworked Christmas!