Something to Think About · WIP

WIP–Details, Details

Elizabeth E.4 Comments

Thanks to Lee, of Freshly Pieced for hosting this forum.


Coming home from vacation is such an interesting feeling.  I read your blogs and your comments on Facebook and you seem to slide from one zone to another, effortlessly.  I, however, have had quite a “re-entry” from my time away.  Perhaps that’s because there aren’t children around anymore to pull and push me into activity.  I did spend close to 10 hours on the computer the first day home getting things to the print center where I teach, then a haircut, laundry, College Orientation on the second day home, which brings me here to WIP Wednesday, and that freshly laundered handkerchief on the ironing board.  So the details of today are laundering and pressing the handkerchief and vintage fabrics (hoping that musty smell leaves soon—any tips?)

More details include making a label for summer’s last quilt.

A little more hand-stitching tonight as I watch one more Harry Potter movie–I’m on Number 4.  A friend dropped by her collection so I could watch them all at once before going out to see the latest.

And I’m listening to Last Town on Earth, by Thomas Mullen, while I work.  Riveting fiction–I highly recommend it.

My husband and I have been retracing our steps of many years ago. Yesterday I said to him, “And today was the day we packed all my four children into our new mini-van and drove to Utah.  Did I drop you off at your parents’ house before I went up to Ogden to stay at my parents’?”

“Yes.  I slept on their old sofa, as my childhood bedroom was full of my sister’s kids.”

Many years ago today was the last day my beloved sweetheart had his bachelor status, and tonight we’ll talk about the “rehearsal dinner” in a park with all his nieces and nephews and my children and his sisters and brothers and my sisters and brothers and our parents coming in together in a great picnic.  That night he and I worried about different things: I worried that my children wouldn’t fit in, that the blending of the family would be too much for the both of us.  He worried about finances and how we were going to make it through all the college years, even though the oldest was only 14 at the time.  But what we didn’t worry about was our love and commitment to each other.  Yes, many years ago the small details seemed to be detritus, like little bugs buzzing around the grand event of our marriage.  But this week we enjoy them, think about them, recall them and relish the bits and pieces and patchwork of our wedding day.

Creating · Sewing

Squiggles, AKA, Stipples

Elizabeth E.Leave a comment

It all started with this video, which I saw on Boing Boing:

It reminded me of quilting.  Of our famous all-over squiggle quilting, AKA, “The Stipple.”  But the gal in the video goes on to create some really interesting things.

When I walked through the Springville Art Museum’s Quilt Show, I, too, focused on the quilting, and on the different iterations of it, although not to the Hilbert Curve level.  And since I’m always collecting interesting photos of quilting patterns, I thought you might be doing the same.  Enjoy the show.

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Textiles & Fabric

Summer To-Do List

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

Make Quilts–check

My parents, Dave and I, our children and our grandchildren

My parents and most of their posterity

Family Reunion–check

Yellowstone National Park–check

More family days–check

Quilt Show–check

Now I need to work on getting my syllabus ready for the first day of school, but here’s some interesting things I found at Yellowstone:

Yep.  They’ve figured out us quilters.  A whole display of little fabric patches to use in quilting and projects.  At the top of this, they had a quilted tote for display. So, of course, I figured out which patch set I wanted and bought that.

I also bought a tea towel in the Grand Teton National Park, which has an embroidered flower; I figure I’ll use it for the inside of my tote.  The name of this park has some controversy about its origins–hilarious.

And on the second shift of visiting family (the OTHER side of the family from the blue shirts), I slipped over to the next door neighbor’s estate sale, where I scored on some vintage fabrics . . .

. . . and charming handkerchiefs.
Now to go climb Mt. Laundry and do some schoolwork!

100 Quilts · Quilts

Lyon Carolings

Elizabeth E.5 Comments

The mad summer of sewing quilts has come to an end.  I found the list of quilts I’d made at the beginning of my time away from the classroom, and “French Quilt” was on the top.  I’d remade this–or as I like to say–I made this twice, just trying to find the right way to show off these fabrics from France.

I just couldn’t decide what to quilt in the center of the yellow squares, but went with a floral motif from the border.  I had to rip out one block when it turned out I hated that particular thread.  I have picked out a lot on this quilt.  I’d originally stitched the green borders with a swirling design from that same outer border.  Wrong.  So I unpicked that, and channel/echo stitched it to mimic the blue X’s in the center of the quilt.

I chose to quilt one of the flowers in the center of the yellow blocks.

Does anyone else hate marking?  I don’t want pencil, although that is the easiest.  And since I don’t plan to wash this quilt (it’s for display), I don’t want something I have to wash to get out.  I don’t trust the disappearing markers, so that only leaves me with chalk and my ragged eye to get the job done.

And the back, with its four colors of toile.  Make that five if you count the hanging sleeve at the very top.

How did I come by all this fabric?  Like Miss Carrie of Schnibbles fame, we had traveled to France.  The first few days were touring around the south of France before we were headed to Toulouse for his scientific meeting.  We’d traveled far that one day, arriving at our B & B late (8:45 p.m.) just outside the town of Aix-en-Provence, after getting lost.  They did serve us our dinner, and the part I remember was having a chilled melon soup in the dark in their courtyard.  It was lovely, and served in a hollowed-out cantelope half that had been frozen.  The French do food right, I must say.

Aix-en-Provence, painted by John Horsewell

The next morning, we ate breakfast with the white mountain in view, an oft-painted mountain, then glancing at the darkening sky, checked out and drove to into Aix-en-Provence.  We were hoping to catch a market day.  As soon as we parked the car (in the carpark on the outskirts of town), the skies opened up and a huge torrential downpour kept up trapped in a deep doorway for ten minutes.  Of course we had only one umbrella between us (!), so we ran from doorway to doorway to the center of the town.  The market was closing up, even though the rain was ending–it was still quite drippy.  We caught a few photos of the newly washed melons, berries, tomatoes, when the downpour started up again.  We dodged into a shop that ringed the market square, peering out at the rain.  We were pretty discouraged.

Then my husband leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Turn around.  I think you’ll be happy.”  I turned and looked.  We had ducked into a fabric shop and although tiny, it was filled, floor-to-ceiling with glorious fabrics printed in the traditional manner of old France.  Those were the days when an extra suitcase was no problem and weight limits had not been heard of yet.  I had brought along a soft-sided suitcase and between my purchases here–and the ones the next week in Toulouse (for they had a lovely fabric shop as well)–I filled that suitcase full.

I have purchased these fabrics in other places, but this shop, found while dodging the pouring rain, was the genesis of my collection.

If you want to start your collection, I can recommend French Connections, here in North Carolina in the US of A.  They have a wide range of choices (that’s where I bought that fabulous yellow border) and I think given the cost of importing, the high price of cotton and the weak dollar against the euro, they have reasonable prices.

Happy Sewing!