Dumplings

September 16, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

Not *this* kind of dumpling!
Yes, these are dumplings, but it’s not the kind I meant. However, if you want the recipe, I describe it here (but the NYTimes Cooking website is the original source). It’s soooo good for an end-of-summer recipe.

This is the Dumpling I was thinking of — a sweet little zippy bag. It’s a design by Michelle Patterns, and she has a great tutorial and a free pattern at her website. I’ve made many, and use them for little things in my purse, I use them for travel (it carries my tiny portable phone charger/battery/thing). They hold lip gloss, lipstick, treats — all kinds of stuff.

This is why I made them: my granddaughter’s wedding had champagne and beige and cream and white for her wedding, and my daughter — the designer — had used chiffon and satin ribbons everywhere. So I grabbed some of the ribbons when we were cleaning up and brought them home.

I pulled all the tones of the wedding I could find in my stash, cut 2 1/2″ squares and sewed them together in rows. Then I backed them with batting and fabric, did a random wavy pattern for quilting, and cut out the dumpling bag shape. It goes together really quickly. I sewed a clump of ribbons onto the zipper pull and sent them off!

Glad they like them! A little momento of a big day.

And what else have I been doing? Mending quilts. If you’d told me I’d be mending quilts decades after making them, I wouldn’t have believed you. The Christmas quilt (since passed down) was ripped, but luckily I had the fabric. Watch the little movie here. But the other was an earlier quilt of mine.

This is how it — and we — looked in Road to California in 1998. I’d seen a Wheel of Mystery Quilt in a National Quilt Show in a city close to ours (the only time I can remember one coming that close). I didn’t have a template and can hardly remember if 25 years ago we were using rotary cutters, but I’d sort of figured out the pattern and made a template from a Crisco shortening container lid, and used that to draw all those circle-y shapes.

I purchased just about every color way in the pansies fabric, and used solids to coordinate. It took me about 3 years to make this, and yes, it was hand-quilted, on a small hoop stand that was in the corner of our dining room.

Last night, Dave held it up for me in our back yard, another sun-going-down photo.

The back. This is Quilt #25, in my Quilt Index. Unbelievably, that’s 254 quilts ago.

The label on this well-loved quilt reads:

I SEND thee pansies while the year is young,
Yellow as sunshine, purple as the night;
Flowers of remembrance, ever fondly sung
By all the chiefest of the Sons of Light;
And if in recollection lives regret
For wasted days and dreams that were not true,
I tell thee that the “pansy freaked with jet”
Is still the heart’s-ease that the poets knew.
Take all the sweetness of a gift unsought,
And for the pansies send me back a thought.
Poet: Sarah Dowdney

I used the phrase “heart’s-ease” as a title on another quilt, but this one is just all Pansies. And yes, that label is all reverse appliqué –I slid the hand-written poem underneath a pansy rectangle, and edged it with a border of pansies. I cut out and appliquéd more pansies around the edges.

Why was I mending it? The binding had worn right along the edges (we used it on our bed for many years). Because I had made a double-width binding, and because I didn’t have any more of that fabric, I pulled off the binding, pressed it, and cut it down the middle, tossing the worn side, and saving the “underneath” side:

I did a double-fold binding, sewed it on, then trimmed away excess before I folded it back over the raw edge and hand-sewed it down.

That’s what talking on the phone is for: put in earbuds/put on headphones and talk and sew. It’s already been claimed by one of the children, and I’ll deliver it to him in the next couple of weeks.

*Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer)* by Claude Monet (1890-91)

In last week’s poem, I mentioned “ricks” and found out they were haystacks. Well, this past week I was in Chicago (my husband was at a scientific meeting) and I spent two of those days at the Art Institute of Chicago, even becoming a member. And here they were, these piles of hay as described by Dylan Thomas: “hay / Fields high as the house” and “the nightjars / Flying with the ricks” as painted by Claude Monet. There were multiple images of these haystacks, and lots of beautiful Monets.

(Above is a video, if technology is working for me. )
I hope that wasn’t too fast, but you get the picture. Multiple pictures. And a patchwork Rail Fence floor.

When I left to Chicago, I determined I was not going to seek out quilts, or fabric stores, but instead accept whatever Chicago was going to give to me. It gave me so much: time away, time for walking, time for seeing pattern, time for seeing art, time for resting. It also gave me a chance to see many interesting things, catch up with some friends, go to church with a different congregation, and stay in a grand old hotel where I didn’t have to clean and I didn’t have to cook one meal all week, and where they claim the brownie was invented.

Of course, I saw the grid — and quilts — in everything, everywhere–

Title: For the Pansies, Send Me Back a Thought
My quilting has evolved and changed, but I still love this quilt.

WIP

WIP Wednesday (Selvage Blocks)

March 12, 2014March 12, 2025 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Okay, these 20″ blocks are addicting. Someone on IG commented on my selvage stash, but the whole thing could fit into a gallon ziploc bag. There are all those selvages on my stash, however. . .

Other Works in Progress, this Wednesday morning:

Rainbow Petals–the more I type that name, the more I realize it needs to be changed

Lollypop Tree Quilting. It’s such a big project, I keep waiting for the decks to be cleared to start on it. That’s always a bad idea if you are trying to get something done, but a good way to procrastinate.

Cross-X Quilt Blocks. That’s February’s installment on our Friendship Swap to the left.

Cutting out the quilt with the Mirror Ball Dots fabric. Let’s just make that THINKING up the quilt with the Mirror Ball Dots fabric. (No photo) That’s enough for now.

Update: I used to be a part of a “linky party” titled her WIP Wednesday, and that’s why this is here.

Quilts

A Record of Quilts–Making A Quilt List

January 14, 2014January 11, 2014 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

I have two links up above, one titled “100 Quilts List” and the other “200 Quilts List.” It’s been interesting to be able to say with some accuracy how many quilts I’ve made over my lifetime, but I didn’t start those lists when I first started quilting.

Those lists began because of my father’s journal of his paintings (this is one volume of five), which are a record of how he created them, colors he chose, inspiration, sketches. My friend Lisa also had a quilt journal and when she showed it to me, some time ago, I was in an insanely busy time of life and thought I could never do such a thing. But life changes, from busy to not-so-busy, and as an experienced quilter, I began to want a record of my work in this life that didn’t vanish under dust or dirt, or disappear into a student’s backpack, never to be looked at again. I began quilting in my twenties, some four decades ago, so that was a lot of quilts to account for.

And once I started my journal, I wanted it to be accurate, a habit that has come about because I am married to a scientist, and we are all about accuracy in this house. I started making a list, pulling photos from albums, and bugging my children to let me come and photograph their quilts. That’s my oldest son, Chad, above. We met one day at his work and we laid out the quilts he had in the conference room, so we could photograph them.

At that time, we had wooden lift-up garage doors, and I stapled a white sheet to the front, set up a table and gathered every quilt from what I had in our house to photograph. I pinned the quilts as straight as I could to the sheet and waited until the sun had moved off the door, so I could get an even tone (adjusting for the shadow). It took me about three days, and the neighbors were quite entertained by all my going up and down the stepladder, photographing the front, turning the quilt over (you see a back up there), and then a few close-ups here and there.

Another time, I drove to Arizona, where two of my children lived, set up a borrowed frame and pinned and photographed, over and over, with grandchildren watching, finally being allowed to wrap up in their baby quilts.

I started going through all my digital photographs, looking for quilts. Above are Peter and Megan the night before their marriage, holding a quilt I gave them. And from all these sources, I started compiling my list in a simple spreadsheet. Where I had dimensions, I put them in. Dates were critical, but I decided to keep it just to the year. Was the quilt labeled? Photographed? I noted that too. A couple of quilts are gone forever, but I remembered them, and tried to put them in where I could, numbering and re-numbering.

I decided to only include finished & quilted tops, but I know Thelma, of Cupcakes and Daisies counts hers by pieced tops. However you decide to count yours, I would encourage you to start writing down what you have accomplished. I guess the biggest pay-off came from me when I came home from Arizona with those frames and was able to photograph some of the larger bed-sized quilts that I couldn’t accommodate on the garage door.

This is Clay’s Choice. The first big quilt I’ve ever made.

My husband helped me put it up on the frames and I stepped back a bit to photograph it, then looked up from the camera to really see it. This was the first time I had seen my quilt off of a bed, all arrayed in its beginner-quilter glory. I paused and studied it–the white floral sheets, the solid greens, the Clay’s Choice triangles in a dainty blue print spinning around, each in their own block. I remember tracing around cardboard to get those shapes, stitching the blocks, and hand-quilting it over several years on a small portable frame. I looked at it, all the memories of the making, here, visible in this fabric concoction, never needing to be dusted, or re-done, or rewritten. This quilt, nearly 35-years old, captured all of that in its pieces, waving back and forth in the late afternoon breeze.

“Everything okay?” my husband asked.

Oh, yes. Everything is just fine.

100 Quilts · Finish-A-Long · Quilts

At the Bandstand, Under a Starry Night

September 22, 2013October 3, 2013 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

At the Bandstand, Under a Starry Night, front

I’ve written about this quilt on this blog before, where I referred to it as Hunter’s Star, a description of the block. But now it is finished, binding and all, and has a new name: At the Bandstand, Under a Starry Night.

I’ve done a couple of “under the starry night” experiences this past week, and there’s also been some bandstanding, or music. The photo above is of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, where they have an LED art installation, The Bay Lights, which makes patterns with fish swimming across the bridge, clouds, waves, shooting lines, sparkly doodads and all sorts of patterns. We drove up to San Francisco to see this, as it’s only here for two years.

And here’s The City’s lights, with the Ferry Building in the foreground. I had first made this quilt for my youngest son’s college quilt. He was enamored of music of all kinds, acquiring the nickname of Audioman, so I incorporated music-themed fabric into the Hunter’s Star design, a personal favorite.

At the Bandstand, Under a Starry Night, back

However, he took one look at it and kind of squinched up his eyes, subtly shook his head and didn’t say much. I figured it out, and made him a different one (#43 on the 100 Quilts List), which he liked much better. This one sat around.

I pulled it out because I’d put it on my Finish-A-Long list, rummaged through my fabric stash, finding the borders already cut out. I slipped in the yellow inner border for some variety (funny how your quilting tastes change), found a large piece of IKEA fabric and put a back on it so my quilter could get it quilted for me.

Back detail

As you all know, it had been a beyond-stressful week for me not only for my own puny reasons, but troubles within my larger circle of people I love. And then the landline phone on the house telephone went out. That’s it, I said. So I sat down and put on the binding, and Friday morning found me traveling north with my husband to a scientific conference. I happily stitched as he drove.

quilt on a large cypress tree, outside our hotel room

So we found ourselves here in Monterey and it’s the jazz festival — a Big Deal, with Big Names — jazz in the lounge, on the stereo, musical instruments being seen everywhere. And I thought of the best kind of music, being played with great affection and intensity under a starry night, perhaps even by a band on a bandstand on a summery night, and so the quilt found its name, and its finish.

This is one of my project on the Finish-A-Long list, and quilt #47 on my 100 Quilts List. Yes, I went backwards. (Although now I only list them when they are completed, earlier I slipped in a couple of tops only.)