Quilts · WIP

A true, blue WIP list

Elizabeth E.8 Comments

First off, let me tell you what I’m working on now: Portuguese Tile Quilt.  (To readers of this blog I apologize for showing the top one more time.)  I’m displaying it for my weekly foray to Lee’s Freshly Pieced blog.  Return there to see lots more interesting quilt works, and many many thanks to Lee for hosting this weekly forum.

The above quilt, when it is quilted, bound, labeled (properly finished) will be the first quilt on my list of 200 Quilts, in other words, the above is quilt #101.  A few bits ago while working on my Quilt Journal, I made a list of quilts I need to finish up to add to the 200 Quilts list.  Like women, who NEVER reveal their true weight, it’s an embarrassment for a quilter to realize how many unfinished things she has lurking around the edges.  And I’m not even talking the fabric in the stash that is being held on the shelf for imaginary projects.  Here goes.

Potential Quilts for the 200 Quilts List:
1. Autumn quilt–needs borders, backing, quilting.

Here’s where I left it.  No, I did sew on that striped binding to the left, then I folded it up and hung it in the Guest Room closet.

2. Friendship Quilt

I could have gone on collecting signatures for years, for like all of you, I make new friends and keep the old, but I decided to cut it off at the time I sewed the blocks together.  Now I should get crackin’ and get them sewn together.

3. Wedding Ring Quilt

Yes, I started one of these.  In the leftover Aunt Grace fabrics from the above project.  Which is cut out, but only a little bit sewn together.  I should save this for a summer project, providing I get LAST summer’s project done.  This has a poignant memory attached to it: I took my box of fabrics over to my friend Leisa’s house and we sat and cut and sewed on 9/11, needing each other’s company while we watched and listened.  And cried.  Definitely need to finish this one.

4. Summer Treat

You’ve seen this.  I’ve decided on the border, the backing.  Now I just need to steal some time from somewhere.  And given the quality of the English paper I just graded, I think I’ll give up grading for a couple of days to recover (the student earned a 43 out 100), thereby gaining me some more time.

5. Maroon/Forest Christmas Quilt

This one was made about a hundred years ago in the 1980s.  It’s so not “me” that I haven’t even given it a name.  I would go and dig it out to photograph it, but I am already depressed from grading (see above) and just can’t handle any more disappointments tonight.

6. The famously unfinished Lollypop Quilt, this summer’s gigantor Work In Progress.  I just received my next semester’s teaching assignment and it is a class I have taught before (and loved) so I believe things will align in the Sewing Studio just right in order to get it finished.

The last two are on the first 100 Quilts list, but they are still WIPs:
Hunter’s Star quilt, began when my last child went off to college.  He said he didn’t really like it, so I switched up and made him a different one (each child gets a quilt for their bed for their first Christmas season away from home).  Top’s all done.  Not much else. . . and the last WIP recorded in my Quilt Journal is. . .

Millenium Quilt.  In my memory, I didn’t like it much.  But when I pulled it out of the back of the closet to photograph it, I found I did like it.  Plus those fussy cut pieces of fabric referring to the Millenium (the year 2000) are kind of like a bit of my own personal history.

Now like that proverbial woman who stepped on the scale in front of a room full of people, I have to go and hide for a while in order to recover.

Happy WIP Wednesday!

200 Quilts · Something to Think About

Blind Ambition

Elizabeth E.6 Comments

So I’ve been thinking about old age and dying, especially after the dream I had last night where I was trying to get off of a bridge littered with bodies and it was imperative (like dreams can be) that I not stop and help anyone (maybe they were infected with a ghastly disease, or something) and I kept dodging people and not slowing down and only woke up when I got to the other side, leaving behind, in a rainstorm (! but it was a dream) that site of sadness and death and human suffering.  It took me a long time to come awake, and I watched the sun’s color paint our backyard trees, including the olive that has died slowly from an airborne illness, killing it from the leaves downward, and which needs to be removed.

So from there I  began wondering about how many productive years I have ahead of me.  It’s a fool’s quest, this kind of thing, because I could get wiped out on my way to school tomorrow (two major freeway interchanges, one bout of commute traffic).  Or full-blown arthritis could arrive tomorrow and sewing would be out of the question.  Or maybe those poor souls on the bridge in my dream are only a harbinger of some invasive cancer that I’ll have to navigate somehow. (Does the ending mean that I get to live?)

When you are thirty, these thoughts are considered morbid and completely unnecessary.  When you are post-forty, they are a part of your life, especially as a friend or a grandmother or a close relative dies.

But yesterday, I did something life-affirming.  I added the tag of “200 Quilts” to the post I wrote.  I don’t know if I’ll reach 200 before my quilting thimble gets left in the drawer for the last time.  But I took the ambitious step — a blindly ambitious step considering we can’t ever know the future but pin all our hopes on it — and declared my Portuguese Tile Quilt to be number 101 of 200, a lovely, big, ambitious, and history-laden bi-centennial sort of number.  We’ll just see how it goes.

200 Quilts · Quilts

PTQ–Tips and Tricks

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

This is a continuation of what-I’m-calling the Portuguese Tile Quilt, a free quilt pattern from *here.*  I arranged my pieces on the board so that no two fabrics were in any block, meaning in the blue quadrants, they were different from each other and the pink quadrants also had fabrics different from each other.  I didn’t care so much if the pinks imitated the blues, but I did watch out for strong fabrics in the same block (like that “plaid”).

To sew these blocks together, flip the right-hand side of the block onto the left-hand side, then place the top two on the bottom two and stack them on your sewing surface.  That’s my confusing method; you’ll probably develop your own.  The basic idea is to get the quilt block, which is now in four pieces, over to your sewing machine in some semblance of order.

So, on the top, is the right-hand upper piece flipped over on the left-hand upper piece.

On the left on the bottom, is the similar pair.  I have no idea what that other bit is doing–just hanging out?  Quilt blocks are buddies and they seem to like to do that.

Sew the center seams on those pairs, then press the fabric toward the black pinwheel on all of them.

Here’s my little trick.  I sewed these pairs in a chain, then left the pairs that went together hooked in the middle, but cut the chain into “two’s.”  Then when I go the ironing board, I don’t have to match them all up again.  They’re already joined. Flop them right-sides together.

Sew that seam across the two blocks. I found that if I took the step of going to the ironing board to press toward the pinwheel, I could get away without pinning this thing to death, or eliminating the pins altogether.  The block kind of fits together because of the directional pressing.  It’s not perfect, though, so if you are all about perfection, get out the pins.

Head to the ironing board, and clip that little joining thread, and liberate any others that might keep you from opening up that center “flower” of seams.  As you work with it, you’ll be able to figure out the tiny clips of threads here and there.  Don’t cut any of the fabric, please, just the seam-threads.

You want that center to lay down into a flower.  I put my thumb on the center, and applying pressure, give the whole thing a twist, flattening out the seams.

Then press from the front. Even without using pins, I think that center join looks pretty good.

Lay out your first row on your pin wall.  Then you want to add to it, lining up your blocks so there’s no obvious repeats or clashes.  This part goes quickly.  In fact, the whole quilt went quickly: one week from cutting to sewing on the borders.

Stand back and see what is “clumping together” and needs to be separated, like squabbling children.  I find taking photos helpful.

The blocks I moved are not really noticeable, but calmed down the arrangement for me.  Don’t fuss with this too much, just keep moving forward.

Use those nifty row markers to mark your rows and sew them together.

If you pay attention, you won’t sew a block on the WRONG end of the row, like I did up there on the left.  Unpick.  Re-sew.

You’ve seen this before, but it’s really fun to show off a completed quilt top, isn’t it?

Feeling blissful over here.  I’ve already pinned it to the backing, and after I finish grading their argument terms tests, making up the next essay assignment, writing the peer review for the current essay, creating the rubric for evaluating their rhetoric presentation, writing another blog post for the class, and calling my mother, I plan to start quilting it.