Quilts

Happy New Year 2023

December 31, 2022August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.21 Comments

“Time is draining from the clock,” says 2022 and Mary Oliver. Your loss, my gain says 2023. And here we are again, in a quote/poetry slam. (Quoted works are at the end.)

I made a few quilts, but not as many as usual. I think I made a lot more small makes, like a purse, or pillow tops, or patterns. Or maybe my “time is draining from the clock” and as someone who once had a “confident and quick” walk, I may be slowing down. Or distracted. Or sad. Or really happy. Or on a road trip. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s like Oliver Burkeman says, that “The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.”

Or making quilts. Or immersing in creative endeavors. Or writing a thank you note to someone who doesn’t expect it. I took this last one from another book I read, where the author’s mother noted that we should be thanking everyone for everything.*

So, thank you for reading. Thank you for your letters. Thank you for the conversation that allows me to know people from all over the United States, and from all over the world!

QUOTES/POETRY

*THE GIFT by Mary Oliver

Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful.
That the gift has been given.

TO BEGIN WITH, THE SWEET GRASS by Mary Oliver (excerpt)

The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be…
(excerpt from MORNINGS AT BLACKWATER, by Mary Oliver)

Arguably, time management is all life is. Yet the modern discipline known as time management—like its hipper cousin, productivity—is a depressingly narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible, or on devising the perfect morning routine, or on cooking all your dinners for the week in one big batch on Sundays. These things matter to some extent, no doubt. But they’re hardly all that matters. The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder. (from Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman)

“We all owe everyone for everything that happens in our lives. But it’s not owing like a debt to one person—it’s really that we owe everyone for everything. Our whole lives can change in an instant—so each person who keeps that from happening, no matter how small a role they play, is also responsible for all of it. Just by giving friendship and love, you keep the people around you from giving up—and each expression of friendship or love may be the one that makes all the difference.”
from Will Schwalbe. The End of Your Life Book Club. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Quilts

Merry Christmas 2022

December 25, 2022August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.

My annual Christmas post brings Alison Krauss and YoYoMa and one of my favorite Christmas Carols:
The Wexford Carol (click to listen).

Continuously Hung up In Bias (aka Failing Forward)

December 18, 2022August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.19 Comments

Not that kind of bias. I had to teach that subject when I was an English teacher, and it was a struggle getting the ideas of Preferences vs. Bias into college Freshmen Heads, as well as why they should avoid bias if they can help it.

So you know I’m working on this new pattern, and in one section it calls for a lot of self-made bias, kind of like a self-made woman, but less flashy. I knew I needed about 1044 inches, so I thought–sure, I’ll do it all in one swoop.

Wrong.

If I put this into the pattern like this you would all get out your seam rippers and come after me. Thinking about this, I wound it on a large envelope (above), winding and winding and winding.

So the basic drill is cut a giant piece of fabric after doing math that involves square roots (!), then slice off a chunk on a 45-degree angle and sew it to the other side. NOT like the arrangement in the first photo, but more like the arrangement in the second photo. Two bias edges on either side and cross-grainy bits on the top and bottom.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)

Usually, then you draw lines parallel to the bias edges the width you want your continuous bias. I looked at several websites, but Ann of Obsessive Quilter had the best explanations I’ve seen. Thank you! I was swimming in a sea of geometry and square root equations. She has three versions of the next steps, and I liked (and tested out more than once) her method of cutting strips:

Using rotary cutter was the selling point. None of that 1000 inches of using scissors for me!

So lovely, I hung it on the wall <cough>. Then proceeded to get it all tangled.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill

Untangled and getting ready for the next steps, which are a hybrid of Ann’s. I tried this two more times to make sure I could do this and write it up so you can do this. Instructions will be in the pattern. Which is coming. [Because of recent events, November was obliterated.]

One fails forward toward success. ~ C. S. Lewis

*This Quilt Is A Mess*, from ages and ages ago — a real genuine failure

Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward, a quote attributed to John Maxwell, was ringing in my head as I cut and cut and tried and tried to master continuous bias. I only seemed to get stuck — not really a failure — but I tried to learn from each of my stuck places. Trying to make all the quilt’s continuous bias all at once? Not a good idea. Figuring out how long the bias needed to be? Thank heavens for scientific calculators (an iPhone tipped on its side while in Calculator mode).

But over and over it’s the user of this pattern I think about. I love the design, although it didn’t come easily. I try to write detailed patterns with clear directions and probably too many illustrations, some drawn in Affinity Designer, and when my skills fail (there’s that word again), I turn to photography. I keep trying to fail forward.

*A circle made of my bias tape, then machine appliquéd*

Sara Blakely, the woman who invented Spanx, had a question asked of her (and her brother) every night when she was growing up: “What did you fail at today?” When there was no failure to report, Blakely’s father would express disappointment. “What he did was redefine failure for my brother and me,” Blakely said. “And instead of failure being the outcome, failure became not trying. And it forced me at a young age to want to push myself so much further out of my comfort zone.” However, Ron Friedman notes that “Failure, per se, is not enough. The important thing is to analyze the failure for insight that can improve your next attempt.”

I fail a lot in regular life, but after hanging around a sewing machine for the better part of my teenage and adult life, the sewing failures are fewer. However they do arrive in new ways.

Like continuous bias.

~~P.S. If you want my 1044 inches of 1-1/8″ bias tape (using high quality quilting fabric), please leave a comment. If there are more than one of you who want this, I’ll draw a name from a hat.~~ Bias tape has been distributed.

P.P.S. There is a sneak peek of the quilt in my PayHip shop; the quilt is currently at the quilter and will be revealed soon. It went up because the people at PayHip offered some new designs and I jumped, redesigning my site.
Above is one of the photos. (And no, we didn’t carry the quilts to Italy, Berlin and Spain. I inserted them with my Affinity Photo software…but it is kind of fun to see them like this!)

Quilt Finish

Stella di Natale • Quilt Finish

December 11, 2022December 22, 2025 Elizabeth E.26 Comments

I started this quilt as another class sample for the Triad Harmony quilt pattern. The name “Stella di Natale,” is my version of Star of Bethlehem, but it is also a cake and the Italian name for the poinsettia plant. Every time I make a pattern, I try to do them three ways: the way it came to me, one in a completely different style of fabric, and of course, a Christmas version.

Having come home from my mother’s funeral with a roaring cold (no covid!) and Overwhelmed by Everything, I sat down at the Sweet 16 the next day and quilted away while listening to the latest Inspector Gamache novel, by Louise Penny. The label:

Back in October 2020, this is how it started. It all was about those wedges of flying angels, the last bits of a fabulous Alexander Henry Christmas fabric. The first two images are before the Run to the Fabric Store (I was trying to use my really old stash). I like the last one much better after a fabric transfusion.

I made a video of how to construct this for my Guild Workshop, and these are some stills from that video. It’s all explained really nicely in the pattern, too. If you click through to the workshop post, you can see all their versions of this pattern.

I never quilted it up, because I used it in teaching to show the back — how I pressed the seams, and other questions about that center point (just be bold and follow the pattern directions). But this past week, as I thought about my own personal star in heaven — my mother — it just seemed time to quilt it up. So I did. By the way, that first picture of it surrounded by dried leaves is how December looks here in Southern California, when all the leaves of the wisteria vine coat our patio.

Here’s a shot of another quilt, but in a wintry landscape; this was after the graveside service was over with, and our two boys (now, men) helped hold Jingle Bells for a photo.

My mother was laid to rest where she was born: Paradise, in Cache Valley. Yes, it was very cold that afternoon, but the morning services in Salt Lake City were lovely, the talks heartwarming (all seven of us children spoke), and the scenery at her little cemetery was beautiful.

Here’s another wintry quilt. It’s Shine: The Circles Quilt made up in snowman fabrics and with a unique and playful setting, all done by Linda Kucera. I have a closer look at her blocks in an earlier post. Most of the Shine blocks are free on this website, and the index is found above.

And this happened. I entered two, but only Eris will be in the show. Now I have something to look forward to.

I now close a chapter in my life: that of having a mother nearby to call, to talk to, to share something like the good news about my quilt. I’ve observed from many of you that this may be a long transition. On the morning of her service, I sat quietly in the corner before it began, so bereft, so incredibly sad. My niece Melinda sat down beside me and said “I know there will be times you will want to call your Mother. You can call me, instead.” Her words were a treasure, as was the support from my husband, family, sisters. This past month I also have received many treasured messages of love and support from all of you, and so appreciate them. Thank you all for your kindnesses; it has made this difficult road easier to travel.