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.

Books · Quilts

Polaroid Blocks

Elizabeth E.3 Comments

Woo-hoo!  All the little Polaroid blocks arrived from the Polaroid Block Swap.  I laid them out and looked at them all, and really thought some lovely quilters somewhere had done a fine job making little bits of fabric in a frame.

On the left is one of my favorites, a series of matryoshka dolls (Russian nesting dolls) of which I have a small collection, and the small bit of cloth that Debbie sent along with the batch of blocks: a Polaroid image on a 2″ square, which can be either a label on the back, or made into a block to go with the others.  I had a great time participating in this and appreciate Debbie’s efforts.

And from those pictures, to another kind — the old-fashioned kind — taken at local quilt shows.  I used to take a few rolls of film (remember film?) in my bag along with my camera, come home and get them developed, then put them into little photo books to look at in between shows.  At one time, we traded photos, made our own little books, bought magazines in order to get our ideas for quilts.

This is my friend’s quilt, hanging in Road to California, with another friend standing beside it.  These are all in the pre-internet days, but even so, it’s kind of hard to remember what we did before we could just pop onto a series of blogs, or to Pinterest, or even Instagram.

I have six of these little books, tucked away.  On the left in that picture are Dave and I standing by my quilt that was hanging in Road to California (a different year than Lisa’s quilt).  And yes, I’m wearing a quilted jacket.  (Boy, do I look like an early quilter.)  Even though quilt styles change and the modern quilt movement has influenced a lot of our designs, I still like looking through these when I come across them occasionally.

Last book-y thing: I shopped C & T’s clearance sale and came up with these fun books.  While not all the books are new, and even some are sort of “vintage” it is enjoyable to browse through them when you’ve only paid a pittance for them.  You really should get on C & T’s mailing list, if you aren’t already.

So, now I’m off to sew sew sew before reality will hit and I’ll have to grade the Argument Terms Test that I gave in class on Wednesday.

You can bet that I’m putting off reality as long as I can.