Cuteness, so cute, darling, adorbs, charming, majorly adorable.

Yep, that’s why I bought these things.  So by now you have figured out it’s time to sew up another Frivols, and now we are on Frivols Tin 6, which you can find on the Moda blog.  Here is the errata for this box:

Note:  After learning that a handful of customers had received rolls of pre-cut squares that were a bit scant, we decided to re-work the cutting to make the pieces a bit smaller and allow a little leeway.  The artwork and text for the tin had already been sent for manufacturing so it could not be changed.  However, the pattern has the correct sizes and instructions, and we apologize for the discrepancy.  It just needed to be done.

After opening, I’m thinking: Still pretty cute, yes yes yes.

I unrolled and pressed the squares.  Um.

(silence) Oh, please.  (rolls eyes)

Not another one of these pastel boxes! she moans to no one in particular.  Even my husband said “Another one?”

Here’s my Happy Barometer in working with my Frivols Tins so far:
Frivols #1  <happy> for it was a gift for a friend’s baby.
Frivols #2  <happy>
Frivols #3  <happy>
Frivols #4  <meh>  It was a test of will, but I’m keeping it around for gifiting to future babies.
Frivols #5  <not bad> once I got going
Frivols #6.  <——-extreme dismay——>  I know all the Bonnie and Camille fans out there are like, “Send it to me!!” but really, a deal with myself is a deal.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t change it up some.

The finished quilt measures 45″ x 54″ supposedly, but I don’t know if that is the before measurement, or the one they took after their changes.  I also took a look at the outside of the tin requirements, which is code for BUY MORE FABRIC, but since that fabric — Strawberry Fields Revisited — is long gone, given the current habit of our manufacturers of deluging us with fabric lines until we are overwhelmed, then taking them off the shelves forever.  (A personal pet peeve of mine.)

And given the fact that one of my 7″ by 7″ squares was cut off at the knees, and another one skewed and shredded by the cutter, it’s time to hit my own stash and pull out some colors/shapes/fabrics that will coordinate.

That piece in the upper left by 3 Sisters ought to be just fine with this group of toned florals and geometrics.  And given that I’m already flummoxed by the cutting instructions, we are definitely changing up this puppy.  And because I needed a project to do after Annularity’s completion, I charged on ahead (still moaning about these mushy-valued pastels).

Each Frivol has 7″ squares.  Even though they warned me not to trim off any bumps, after doing one as a trial, I found I could trim off the sides without any great disaster, then proceed to cut them as they asked.

And by that night, I had One Grecian Urn.  Kidding.  I had one churn dash (you have to have seen the movie The Music Man to know the inside joke about Grecian Urns).

A Word About Value in Quilts.

We need some.

Value is how light something is or how dark something is.  Quilts without value shifts tend to be mushy-looking, and sort of blah.  It’s the mushy ones we walk right by at quilt shows.  I see a lot of these, and have even made some myself (see Frivols #1 and #4).  But it is value that moves your eye around a quilt, makes it interesting to look at, gives it depth.  When I worked in the photo lab at University of California, the photography professor preached the same gospel: you need black as midnight and white as snow in the black and white photographs.  OF COURSE there are exceptions, but we are not always making exception-quilts.

Note the two flowers above.  Which one is more interesting?  Which one grabs your eye, pulls it around, as you notice things?  Of course you said the one of the right, a calla lilly by Robert Maplethorpe (the other one I greyed out to have only medium tones).

Same with our quilts.  So what can I do with a box full of medium to medium-light fabrics?  Smash them up against each other:

Now that medium brown in the upper right corner can function effectively as a “dark.”  It’s still not wonderful, but I do think it’s better than the one they wanted me to do:

Kidding.  Here’s theirs:

I could tell from their description I was in trouble: Sun-washed.  It is a lovely little quilt, perfect for babies, and other people who don’t like contrast in their quilts, I guess.  But this is my blog and you are subjected to my bias, and I trend towards quilts with good light-to-dark values.

I also believe if you are going to sell me a tin of fabrics, I should be able to make a quilt with what’s in the tin.  (Right.)

It needs some kind of borders, so I was going for the look of Frivol #2, but this is a Major Fail.  It has that baked potato problem.  So I ripped off the borders and pulled out nearly every fabric I had in my stash to find one that I though perked up this baby.

 

A lovely tomatoey color of red with white dots will do nicely. I’m happy with it. Now I’ll get it quilted and bound and will show you the end product, at some later date.

What I learned from this tin of Frivols:

• Don’t let your quilts be mushy.
• Move beyond one manufacturer’s grouping of fabrics to avoid having your quilt be only a medium value quilt.
• And some advice as well from my photography professor, given to us on the last day of class: keep your camera dry.

 

I am continuing with my determined goal to make all my Frivols tins this year.

Because this one was quite small, finishing up at 29″ by 32″ (different than what was measured on the tin), I finished it early, so I get to put an X on the circle of Frivols.

As mentioned in the last post, the fabric is by French General, and while it looked really dark in the tin, with the black and white four-patches added, it is fairly lively.  It reminded me of an extended game of checkers, and since the quilt is small, like a doll’s quilt, I titled it Child’s Play.

I quilted it with a stylized flower.

Every doll’s quilt needs some dolls, and I just happened to have my mother’s play tea set from when she was a little girl.  She’s celebrating her ninth decade this month, and because she’s turning ninety, she’s always saying things to me like “You’re not old.”

She’s right.  I’m not yet up to her age, but I am one lucky girl to still have a mom here to talk to when I need a cheering up.

Because I’ve been thinking about my mother today, the chair above is an antique from “the farmhouse,” a place where my grandmother (my mother’s mother) moved when she married grandpa, a widower with a passel of children, and adopted — and adapted herself to — a life as a farm wife.  And then she had three more children, my mother being one of them.

A photo of my mother when she was in college. My daughter, who is named for my mother, is with her on the left.  And below is a photo of my mother’s Magnum Opus, a quilt with cross-stitched designs, all hand done while we lived in Peru for two years.

Since it is also Mother’s Day here in the United States, I hope you treasured some memories of your mother, and if she is still here — I hope you called her or visited her.

It wasn’t until I grew up that I realized that my mother (and father) gave me the greatest gift of all: a young life where I could pretend, and get dirty and dress up and have imaginary tea parties and fight with my younger brothers, and go to church, and roam the neighborhood, time to read books, and to hope to be like my older sisters.  While soon enough I would discover that there were real sticks and stones out there, she gave me a life sheltered from the world’s harsh realities.

She gave me Child’s Play, every day.

Happy Birthday, Mom, and Happy Mother’s Day!