Milestone–100 Completed Quilts

July 10, 2012July 23, 2012 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

I want to make a hold-in-the-hand book–full of clippings and writings and photos–about my quilts, following the example of my friend Lisa, and my father’s art journals (which we children all covet) and in keeping with my desire to leave some sort of legacy behind for whoever cares to know what I do, or create. I haven’t made much progress on the journaling part, but today–since I was moving at about sludge pace–I decided to update the list. At least I could do that.

So I was surprised to notice that I have reached a milestone of sorts.

I have made 100 quilts.

It’s a loose compilation with these caveats: include very few tops (only two large quilt tops are included and a few minis, class samples for when I taught Amish quilts in Texas–the first time we all fell in love with solids), and no sewing projects. So the era when I was sewing up a storm for my children, dressing them in clothes of my making, yielded very few quilts of any kind. Those were mostly the ones to go on a bed, rather than express my creativity.

That did change, right about the Amish quilt craze time, when I made Sunshine and Shadow, a classic quilt comprised of one-inch squares, which I had laid out in the corner of my bedroom. When my then-husband pitched his shoes off into that same corner that night as he went to relax, something in me snapped a little bit. That was my art, my creativity. Something I had done, which stayed done. That slight shift canted me towards a greater appreciation and reverence for the act of creating, of making quilts. I had found my medium in which to work. (And by the way, that husband is long gone.)

The one-hundredth quilt technically isn’t completed yet. It’s Scrappy Stars, which you all know, but I did drop it at the quilter’s and it is a WIP for sure, but I’m counting it.

Near the end of our trip to New York, we wandered over to Grand Central Station via the elaborate subway system/tunnels. We emerged into a new tunnel that had a banner embedded in the mosaic on the wall that said: “Dripping water hollows out a stone.” I guess I feel a little bit like that today. That my hours and days at the machine were like that, and all of sudden I look up and the decades of working with cloth and thread has yielded this body of work, a lovely surprise.

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Of course, any good quilter still has a few quilts they are working on. I’m reveling in the COMPLETED quilts today; next week I’ll detail some others that still need finishing. Many thanks to Lee, of Freshly Pieced and her guest, Kati of the Blue Chair, for hosting us today on WIP Wednesday.

And many thanks to those who played along in Project Gingham. Next post I’ll round up everyone’s project, plus give you a look at my first received Far Flung Bee blocks!

100 Quilts · Quilts

Project Gingham!!

July 4, 2012July 23, 2012 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

A long time ago, in a ~~galaxy~~ garage sale faraway, Elizabeth found a whole lotta’ gingham. She shared with Krista, who really likes vintage fabrics. Then we hatched the idea to share with a few others. And today’s the day everyone is sharing with us, but first–my reveal!

I’ve titled this quilt: Gingham Quilt. Really original, but certainly it has to get points for being descriptive, doesn’t it? I auditioned a lot of different block ideas, and then decided that just about anything would work with these prints, especially a lot of white. I know some of the checks get in the way of the bow-tie, but I wanted this to be a fun, summery quilt, without freaking out about anything. So there you go—some things you just live with and love.

I had seen in a Roberta Horton book that she had used a different fabric for the outside blocks in order to create a border, and I wanted to try that too. I picked up the cool lavender almost randomly, wanting it so it wouldn’t intrude on the crisp white in the middle of the quilt. A slight shift, only, in that border, and I tried to use many of the darker ginghams to highlight that shift.

Detail of the quilting, which is a spool of thread and a needle. My quilter Cathy always has a great design for me.

Two glamour shots of the quilt. I wanted to show one of my favorite ginghams–one not likely ever seen again in today’s mass market. It’s that true lavender in the middle of the quilt.

I left this picture bigger so you could click on it for detail. This is made with (deep memory, here, from my CloTex degree) a dobby loom. The word comes from the early days of fabric manufacture, when a little boy would sit on top of the loom and pull up individual warp (or lengthwise) yarns so the weft (crosswise or selvage-to-selvage) shuttle could glide across and make a design. Dobby is short for “draw boy,” or so the rumor goes.

If you look closely on the back, you can see white yarns (threads) that are carried across the back, and create the design on the front. The floating yarns are the tip-off to which side you are looking at. A lappet is another type of machine but it’s my understanding that the lappet can only do one direction of thread, whereas in this design both the warp and the weft are involved. Like I said, we aren’t likely to see this fabric ever again.

Label.

I chose a Jane Sassaman print for the back, and not only because I got a bunch of it for a deal when I went up to Michael Levine’s in Los Angeles, in the garment district, but more because it seemed to be in the mood of the front.

I think of this as the quilt for a picnic, for throwing down on a meadow somewhere and pulling out a wicker basket, kitted out perfectly with gourmet feastiness. Right. Not my life. In reality, I think of the time I went up and took my then 4th-grade daughter out to lunch. . . on the front lawn of the school. We got a lot of crazy looks from the gardeners and the kindergarteners as we enjoyed our sauteed pepper-and-onion sandwiches, just the two of us, with moms picking up kids in the school’s driveway just three feet away. It’s a great memory; it’s that kind of a picnic quilt.

Now hop on over to the other blogs and see their Project Gingham reveals!

Krista, of KristaStitched

Cindy, of Live A Colorful Life

Rachel of The Life of Riley

Suz, of PatchworknPlay

Kris, of Duke Says Sew What

Becky, the Sarcastic Quilter

Creating · Quilts

Scrappy Stars Saga

April 24, 2012July 16, 2012 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

So I left you all when I thought I had the answers to the Scrappy-Star-conundrum with the Japanese fabrics. Nope. Discouraged, I headed to a quilt shop, where guess what–out of all of the fabrics we tried, we liked the stars on some red Quilters Linen fabric.

Like I said, it seemed like the answer. Here’s some pictures of the process I went through. I was happy with the red, as it acted like a solid, but still wanted to beef up the quilt with pattern and texture, a la Material Obsession quilt shop in Australia, as I love looking at their quilts.

Now I’m trying to add in those fabrics. As you can see–it’s not working. Again. This is when I wrote the blog post on Struggle, appreciating Robert Penhall’s quote particularly.

Auditioning, Take Two. I realize that photographs flatten out what’s going on, but as you can see, what was going on had problems. I came home right after school, took an Internet Sabbath, and worked steadily on sewing together the center section. When my husband came home last night, he kissed me hello and asked me how my day was.

“I hate my quilt,” I said.

After dinner, we went up together to look at the ~~disaster~~ quilt. We talked, and I felt like a balloon deflating. The view evolved as we tried different things, talking and talking, but really the quilt just has so much going on. Like I’ve said before, I was trying to take Cinderella to the Prince’s Ball, and she really just want to go out for a burger and fries. We folded back the end stars, took down some of the wild fabrics, paring it down. I felt as if the quilt had beat me, as if I had caved. But burgers-and-fries it was going to be, no matter where I wanted to go.

Cutting off of the side star. I unpicked the center so I could save two of the star points for another project (like I ever want to tangle with this one again!). I finished sewing the center all together, smoothed it up on the wall, and went to bed. In the morning, the pared-down quilt, white on the wall, greeted me and I chose the tomatoes on yellow for the inner border and auditioned the outer borders:

I guess I don’t feel defeated anymore, just happy it’s to this point. I wanted that sophisticated, interesting quilt, really I did. But what I have instead is a bold graphic set of stars, demanding un-adornment, insisting that the rest of the crowd pipe down so they can shine.

There’s a great children’s book titled “Babe, The Gallant Pig,” which was made into a movie. At the very end, the farmer looks down at Babe, his pig, and says “That’ll do Pig. That’ll do.”

That’ll do, Scrappy Stars. That’ll do.

100 Quilts · Family Quilts · Quilts · WIP

WIP–Roses and Doll Quilts

March 14, 2012April 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

I brought along my third block of the rose window block series — still working on it — but I think a friend of mine wants to try doing this too, as she’s a “Band Mom” and needs something to keep her hands busy while she whiles away those long hours at competitions. Good luck, Lisa!

Before we left, I was also able to finish a series of doll quilts for my son’s daughters: Emilee, Megan, Brooke and Danielle. Their mother Kim got them the most adorable doll beds for their dolls for Christmas, and I’d been wanting to make them little quilts ever since I returned home.

Somewhere along the way, I had purchased Moda Candy Bars, which area pack of four stacks of fabric (measuring 2 1/2″ by 5″) and while I liked having the variety of pieces, I had no idea what to do with them.

One little stack makes the perfect-sized doll quilt. I was thinking I’d do four different quilts, but ended up with three different patterns (the two on the top are the same–a variant of rail fence).

I tied them up with some silky double-faced satin ribbons (hair bows for my granddaughters?) and sent them off before we left to our Spring Break vacation.