WIP

English Paper Piecing, continued

February 21, 2012February 21, 2012 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

I’m leading with the same photo I did yesterday, the very first English Paper Piecing Block (EPP) I’ve ever done.

But here’s the beginning of my work in progress: block two, all looking like a set of green and blue flower petals, waiting to be joined into a rosette-like flower. It has a different background border.

Block Three is in progress, as I cut my fabric full of swiss-cheese-like holes.

And it’s only as I begin to work on Block Four that I’m beginning to see that it’s really no use to get too much of a blender series of kite shapes there at the outer edges. Otherwise you might as well cut a giant triangle and piece into place. What makes this form of patchwork beguiling is the ability to incorporate different fabrics to get a mosaicky look to it, like it’s a kaleidoscope or tumbling pieces of glass.

I realize that some of it is the fabric I’ve chosen. If I’d gone more the color route, drawing different colors form here and there and making them into a rose, I wouldn’t have had to worry so much about getting too much blending. Typical of me to think of a hard way to do something easy and beautiful. But I like this challenge, and how the project is teaching me as I work through it. And in searching for different darker borders, I found two one-yard pieces of this fabric, but I don’t know how many more flowers I want to make. The first took me about two weeks of TV and conversation time; it measures over 17″ from point to point. Jumbo. That small center hexagon on the desk is out there to remind me of Block Two as I work on 3 & 4, as Block Two is usually tucked away in the basket downstairs, waiting for conversation with my husband.

Or a good show–like the Academy Awards, which is coming up this Sunday. (Go *here* to How About Orange to download the Oscar Bingo cards and Ballots. Her photo, above, is used with permission.)

What else on this WIP Wednesday? Finishing up the label for the red/white quilt I’ve been working on. Which is less than wonderful (more on that on Friday), but I love love the quilting. So isn’t that how it goes? Sometimes you love the whole of something, and other times you only love parts of it. Just like toddlers. Or teenagers. Or teaching. Or just like life.

Many thanks to Lee of Freshly Pieced Fabrics for hosting WIP Wednesday.

Head back over there to see other works in progress.

EPP: A Shared Gift

February 21, 2012 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Because I am a complete quilt dork, loving nearly all things quilting, I love looking at my very first completed English Paper Piecing (EPP) block. I love how I can use the fabric to make a secondary design. I love how I can sit and watch Downton Abbey or a movie or talk to my husband, and at the end I have another something to show for the time. I love how I learned it from Krista, and how she shared with me how to put it together, and how I went to other blogs and quilters and friends, enjoying the fruits of sharing from this community of quilters.

I suppose my enjoyment is kind of all stitched together with the trip to the surgeon’s office today, and when he said, “Have a nice life. You’re all done,” I thanked him, hopped off the table, got dressed and zipped out the door, with only a bandaid (instead of a bulky gauzy dressing) on the healing wound site. I called my husband to tell him the news as I sat in the parking lot. I know I’m an easy-to-cry person so I wasn’t too surprised by the tears that followed, streaming down my face as I sat there in the warm sunshine, thinking about my little journey of the last two-plus months, and getting that advice from the doctor.

So, I pass it on to you. Have a nice life. Finger some cloth. Sit in the warm sunshine for a few minutes. Enjoy those skills that you are developing, or have developed, in making something of yourself to leave behind if the have-a-nice-life line doesn’t materialize at the surgeon’s office, and you realize, like Sir Launfal, that all we ever have in this life is what we share. So, just today, I share my first EPP block with you on this very normal, this very poignant day.

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Lines from James Russell Lowell’s poem: “The Vision of Sir Launfal:”

Not that which we give, but what we share,–
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,–
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.

Something to Think About · Textiles & Fabric

(Presidents) Day in LA

February 18, 2012 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

My mother often says, “A change is as good as a rest,” meaning sometimes just getting out of the house and doing something different — a change — does a body good. So we took off early to LA, and while I didn’t really expect to do anything “quilty” I did run into several design things that made me think about quilts.

These screens are from the Japanese Pavillion, the light coming through the windows in soft waves of grays and silver. The whole pavillion is quiet and calm and filled with interesting angles and objects.

My husband and I also played hide and seek behind this giant stack of plates. I was talking to a friend the other day and said about all they could write on my tombstone for accomplishments is washing 1.4 million dishes in my lifetime. Some days don’t you feel invisible to the world? I do.

Then we enetered the Pacific Standard Time exhibit, where they had this fabulous Airstream trailer. Take It Easy, it says. Yep. I needed this day out.

Textiles were part of the modern design that was evolving mid-century.

Couldn’t you use this as a map for a quilt? Half-square triangles, 30/60 triangles, curvilinear shapes balanced against grids. Delicious.

This all-over textile is more interesting when you focus on the detail.

More half-square triangles. And dots.

This bathing suit is called Swoon. It was made during the war in 1942, as there was rationing on rubber. Which means: no elastic. So the designer used the laces to adjust the form to the wearer.

Here’s the exhibition tag. Given that so many quilters are swooning over the recent Swoon quilt block design out on the market right now, I loved the parallel names, although they are very different. Did you know that Catalina, another prominent swimsuit manufacturer was the original sponsor of the Miss America Pageant? Maybe that’s why they always had swimsuit competitions.

More swimsuits. Don’t you just love these? (And guess what we had later for lunch? Lobster rolls!! They had a series of food trucks parked outside in affiliation with the exhibit, and we ate at the Lobsta Truck.)

That wooden bench in the background is so intriguing with all its cutout wood pieces all fit together like a . . . quilt.

Yep. A hexagon barbeque pit.

Which leads me to this. My husband drove out to LA (it’s about an hour from our house on a good day with no traffic) and I was able to stitch on my rose window block–hexagons! Sometime I’ll have to get a good shot outside so you can see the colors. I’ve only made one mistake in putting pieces together, which is okay with me.

So, I had a change. Which is as good as a rest. I’ve ignored the grading in the briefcase because it’s a holiday and I’ll have an extra day to get it done. I’m off now to cut another rose window hexagon–I want to be sure and something to stitch on for Downton Abby tomorrow night!

Happy Presidents’ Day Weekend!

WIP

Bits & Pieces

February 14, 2012October 2, 2019 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

WIP Wednesday–here we are again. This is a good mid-weekly progress check every week, and many thanks to Lee of Freshly Pieced for hosting us all.

Well, I met a goal.

For two months, goals have been something to hide from or add to a already-too-long list or wistfully stare out the window while contemplating goals. But yesterday, Valentine’s Day, I met my goal of getting this quilt quilted. And had I not had to stop to read 50 pages of the novel I’m teaching (Moon Over Manifest), I probably would have had the whole thing done. But sometimes it’s okay to leave a project at the cusp of completion as it will draw you in for tomorrow. So, I guess you could say, this is still in progress. But in a good way, not a moaning way.

UPDATE: I drew up some loose instructions and have it for you at its new home: Revisiting the Red & White Pinwheel.

And under Krista’s enthusiastic encouragement, I tried my hand at English Paper Piecing. You know I had an English great-grandmother, who I’m named for (Elizabeth). So I called up my mother and asked her if my gr-grandmother ever did English paper piecing. “No,” she said. “She was a gardener. She spent any free time she had in her garden. It was my mother — your grandmother — who was the sewer in the family.” So, in homage to them both, I’m making something with flowers.

I finished the middle, sewed some more together and attached them to the central flower. Kind of a stuck space for knowing where to go from here in terms of sewing things together, but IF I can imagine myself as a young bride in the late 1800s far away from my mother and hometown of Bloxwich, England, and IF I were a quilter, carrying forward my mother’s traditions, I’d either have been doing this since I was a child, or I’d figure it out.

I’ll figure it out.

I hope you noticed the new notice on the side of the blog: On Leap Day, check back for multi-blog giveaway.

Now head over to Freshly Pieced and see some more fabulous Works In Progress.