Sewing

Mending

August 5, 2019August 5, 2019 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

I’ve had mending on my mind and wanted to write about all forms of mending, but hadn’t been able to find a way in until I saw this:

“The Opposite of Hate is Mending,” by Kate Sekules

Mending 2a

I’m a long-time mender. I recently fixed a favorite purse for my mother, replacing the torn pocket with some vivid yellow lining. I stitched up a few other ripped places, re-glued the lining into the frame and sent it back to her; she was pleased as punch to have her little purse back in working order.

ChristAdulteress_0 I always look for handsewing in pieces of art, and found it in this image by David Habben, in a recent art exhibit in Salt Lake City. It depicts Jesus and the adulteress with her angry mob of accusers. The clenched fists with rocks, the tortured shapes, and the vile expressions in the background convey the tension in this well-known scene.

ChristAdulteress_1

In the foreground, Christ kneels and writes on the ground, this thread looping around his other hand. This puzzled me, as I knew it wasn’t in the original story.

ChristAdulteress_2

I found gold stitching in areas of the woman’s veil, clues to my small mystery. My sister, viewing this with me, provided the connection: calmly drawing in the dust with his finger, the accusers slinking away after his measured rejoinder, Christ was mending. The accused woman may have stitched her clothing, but now He would mend her soul.

A mended surface can carry a scar. In the case of boro, or of artful kintsugi, we appreciate the addition. But more often that not, we humans don’t want imperfections, or wrinkles, or sadness, death, old age, or any evidence of a rent place. We want happy. We want life to go on with daisies and sunshine and lollipops: no fights or bad diagnoses or mistakes that reverberate for generations.

For years I’ve taken comfort in Eugene O’Neill’s line: “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.” Are we broken? Certainly we only have to the watch unbelievable tragedies of this past weekend trickle in a headline at a time on our screens, to know that broken and torn places are piling up somewhere in a onslaught of rage. I turned away from the yet-again, awful headlines, not knowing what to do.

I take comfort in O’Neill’s wisdom, and Christ’s golden thread. Rather than join the fury, I can fix a torn pocket, a broken heart, work through a quarrel, listen to someone who is trying to heal a shattered life. Whether at the epicenter of the current bad news or in our own homes, we can do our part to draw together the gaping edges, mending them with careful, even stitches.

Wonky Hearts Aflutter

July 25, 2019December 1, 2024 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

How do I make nearly 60 wonky, improv-y hearts and not go crazy? Now there’s a challenge.

I started here, with a rough pattern of how big I wanted my “improv” wonky heart to be. The free PDF file is available for download. It finishes roughly at 5 1/2″ wide by 7 1/2″ tall.

Click here: Unfussy Wonky Heart

I started with the heart pieces. I layered up seven pieces of different pink and red fabrics, pinned on the heart pieces and placing my ruler along their outer edge, I cut around them with a rotary cutter: it wouldn’t really matter if I was hyper-accurate…close enough would do. I repeated this nine times.

Then I did the same thing with the background pieces, but was careful with my directional fabrics: I kept the pieces oriented as they would sew into the heart block.

Everything’s stacked up.

Word Quilt in Process — These photos were taken over two weeks’ time, as I tried to fit all the words together. Words were made in The Spelling Bee, from 2016.

I shuffled the fabrics so no two fabrics would be together, and made a sample heart (at the top of the post). I pinned it next to the quilt of words I’d been working on, closed up the machine, turned off the iron, and enjoyed the sunset:

When I woke up in the morning, I decided to try a digital mock-up of the quilt with the hearts as a border, as I wondered if the hearts were too big. I sent the photo to my two of my quilting buddies and they gave me two thumbs’ up. I’ll probably try to sneak in a narrow red/pink border between the quilt center and the outer border of hearts.

I’ve become braver about being wonky and improv-like, skewing seams, overlapping, cutting off points, generally going at it easy, instead of pristine.

I have a few more hearts, now, and while the widths vary from 5 1/4″ to 5 1/2″ (I just trim them where it feels right), I’m forcing them to 7 1/2″ tall (that’s before seaming). Because I am tired of cutting off the points, I’ll now be cutting about 1/2″ off the bottom heart section before I seam it to the top part.

This is one of two long-term UFOs that haunt me in my dreams. The other one is Small World, which I keep in parts in a basket in my shelves. I do have hopes on finishing that one, too. I signed up for a Jen Kingwell class at Road to California in January; I suppose one goal would be to have it finished so she could sign it? Right.

In other sewing news, I finished July’s Gridster Bee blocks for my beemate Linda and sent them off.

And I’m trying this new type of tomato, developed for scorching temperatures. This year we were almost chilly and foggy until June, then the temps shot up high. I haven’t had good luck with my garden in three years, after a stunning first year of beginner’s luck. But hope is a thing with feathers, said Emily Dickensen, or my case, tomatoes.

I’ve also started quilting City Streets, a quilt of my own design.

I’d picked up this Magnifico-cousin (same type of thread) when I visited Superior Threads last time. It’s color 101, and it looks like a gold thread, but isn’t a metallic thread:

I hope I don’t run out before I finish this quilt.

Finally, in my discussion about how the internet irritated me, I read a ton of blogs, some of which I can’t quite remember. But I did take a screen shot of this gem, a featured quilter on a truly dedicated quilter’s blog. (Given what he says about his favorite fabric color, I don’t think he would like my gold thread.) However, I leave you with the hope that you, too, have started quilting several times, as well as the ability to make the quilts in your head.

300 Quilts · Gridsters · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilt Finish · Quilts

Far Away Doors • Quilt Finish

July 21, 2019January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

Doors opening, closing on us
by Marge Piercy

Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But

while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters

most just yield a bathroom or a closet.
Still, the image of a door is liminal,
passing from one place into another
one state to the other, boundaries

and promises and threats. Inside
to outside, light into dark, dark into
light, cold into warm, known into
strange, safe into terror, wind

into stillness, silence into noise
or music. We slice our life into
segments by rituals, each a door
to a presumed new phase. We see

ourselves progressing from room
to room perhaps dragging our toys
along until the last door opens
and we pass at last into was.

Far Away Doors
Quilt No. 216 • 49 1/2″ wide by 43 1/2″ tall
Some blocks sent to me by the Gridsters Bee

Finished!

I originally named it “Home-keeping Hearts” but that was just its milk name as it had just been born and I was in a cheezy mood of Hearts and Deep Meanings and All That. Marge Piercy said it best about doors, even quilty ones inspired by far away doors from Dublin, Ireland:

“the image of a door is liminal, / passing from one place into another / one state to the other, boundaries // and promises and threats. Inside / to outside, light into dark, dark into / light, cold into warm, known into / strange, safe into terror, wind // into stillness, silence into noise / or music.”

The photograph on the truck? It went like this: on our way to get some Vietnamese bùn châ for lunch, we trekked down to our newest neighbors’ home to ask if we could please pose the quilt on their cool car, and so I knocked on their door and it opened to a crying baby in the other room and a smiling baby in his father’s arms and good-natured parents, owners of a new-to-them truck and the mother’s name was Genesis and the father’s name was Nate and we introduced ourselves and they said yes, of course, and then they headed back inside because it was about a hundred degrees outside, as they smiled and waved and shut the door behind them, the lovely music of a home with a young family and a Ford Ranger just made for quilt posing.

And so, this variation of Merrion Square is finished. I pass out the how-to sheet as a freebie when people take my Merrion Square classes, so hopefully you’ll be in one soon. Check my schedule to see if there’s a workshop near you.

And finally, many thanks to all who entered the giveaway for the ruler. The winner has been notified by email and I’ll get the ruler off to her this week. I am leaving the post up because there are so many great responses to my question. You are all a significantly talented and experienced group of quilters — thank you for your ruler advice!

Classes

Can We Talk About Rulers?

July 17, 2019April 26, 2021 Elizabeth E.58 Comments

Stack of Rulers

When I teach,often there seems a disconnect between what rulers students have and what rulers they need. So I thought I’d write a post talking about the basics that I wish everyone could have. [And while I’m at it, rotary cutters need a mention, too. The largest I’d recommend in a classroom size is 45mm, for a variety of reasons. I think the larger ones are less helpful, and sometimes even dangerous.]

Vintage Folding Ruler — I use this folding carpenter’s ruler when measuring the width and length of quilts.

I got started on my ruler fetish honestly, when a mild-mannered shop owner named Carolyn hosted weekly class based on making a sampler quilt. And every week, she’d hold up a new ruler saying that we needed this to make the block that week. My friend Leisa and I would exchange glances, knowing that Carolyn was a Ruler Enabler of the Worst Kind: she made it so necessary, that you just knew you couldn’t go on without it. Because of this, I’ve used a ton of different rulers, and have two drawers and bin full of those plexiglass gridded items.

Tips:

Please don’t buy the cheap rulers. Take your time to accumulate these, and buy sturdy rulers, as too thin rulers can warp out of shape.
Buy rulers that have some sort of coating on the back, preventing slippage.
Please buy rulers that have accurate measurements on them, and enough gridlines on them.
I am not partial to any one brand, but I did notice that most of my rulers seem to be from Creative Grids, Omnigrid, and Olfa.

I wish every student, every quilter had these basics:

rulers 6 x 24

6″ x 24″ ruler

What it’s used for: large initial cuts off yardage, long narrow cuts of yardage

rulers 6.5 a 12.5 inches

6.5 x 12.5″ ruler

What it’s used for: when working in a smaller space (some classrooms are beyond tiny, and some of our sewing spaces are too), it’s useful to fold the fabric to get the longer cuts. Also good for truing up smaller parts of blocks. Good for even-ing up sewn sections.

Caveat: some people hate having that extra 1/2″ on the edges of their ruler. I got used to it and appreciate it, but for some, it can be distracting.

Small Square Rulers

Small square ruler

With this size, you can rule the world. You don’t need specialty Flying Geese rulers, if you know how to use this. The small one is easy to flip around, when truing up blocks, and easy to use to cut smaller shapes, when scrap sewing.

Square rulers, ranging from 6.5″ – 9.5″ – 12.5″

What it’s used for: I use the 6.5 the most, as I believe in truing up sections of a block before sewing it together. But the other sizes are great for truing up larger blocks, helping you trim your corner of quilt borders evenly. One day I even purchased a 16.5″ gigantor square ruler, and believe it or not, I do use it more than I thought I would.

BlocLoc 6.5 inch

Bloc-Loc ruler for trimming up Half Square Triangles

What it’s used for: Keeping your sanity when truing up HSTs. They are expensive and I rarely see them on sale. I’d start with a 6.5″ BlocLoc and invest from there. Here are some of the others I’ve picked up over the years:

BlocLoc Rulers

Specialty Rulers I think should be in your stash:

Triangle Rulers — *A few of my angle rulers*

30-60-90 ruler

Some times, for some patterns, you need one of these, like when you make Annularity.

Tri-Recs Ruler

Tri-Recs ruler

If you are a traditional quilter, or jump in on one of Bonnie Hunter’s Thanksgiving Quilt-A-Longs, you may find yourself needing one of these one day.

Essential Triangle Tool

Bonnie Hunter’s Essential Triangle Ruler

I only purchased this because she said I would need it. Since then, I ‘ve used it a ton of times in making triangles, and now I consider it one of my go-to rulers.

rulers Cute Cuts 4.5 inch

Lori Holt’s 4.5″ Trim Up Ruler. Careful. You can go broke on these, as she has them in every size from newborn to old age. I have only the 4.5″ and the 8.5″ But what makes these unique is that is is a form of a “centering ruler,” a tool I had to purchase when I studied Clothing and Textiles in college (and which I still use today).

rulers 2.5 by 6.5 inch