Quilts

Colorwheel Blossom is Finished!

December 16, 2014December 18, 2014 Elizabeth E.30 Comments

Colorwheel Blossom
Pieced, Appliqued and Quilted
48″ square
No. 140 on 200 Quilts List

This was the quilt top in April 2014, held aloft by my husband. Then it went AWOL for a while, as I’ve mentioned before.

Realizing it was do-or-die time, I printed out several of these “faded” photos to doodle on, to try out quilting. I thought about quilting it all in lines, a la “the hard-edge industrial look,” but I wanted it to represent garden, blossom, flower, soft, and fragrant more than I wanted it to look like it had been scraped by a saw. I’ve read lots of print articles about how to quilt a quilt. What they don’t tell you is that starting to quilt a quilt takes massive doses of courage. Gigantor-sized, even. Sketching it out helps me visualize what I’m doing and sparks that bit of courage to get going.

I have good success with Superior Threads’ line of threads called So Fine, but I filled in with Gutermann, which also works well for me. Yes, I kept filling bobbins to match all the quilting in the flower part of the quilt, but for the rest of the quilt, I used a neutral-colored Bottom Line (in this case, white) in the bobbin. Bobbin Statistic: 10 (in other words, how many bobbins it took to get this thing quilted)

Thread Matching

Matching the colors, section by section. Where did I get this idea? Look on your iPhone home screen for the Photos button.

I needed to draw on the feathery components with my marker. That’s called Finding More Courage. I don’t know why I thought you had to just go at it without marking anything. Marking (in blue for longer time and purple for shorter time) is my new best friend. Just keep it away from the iron and out of the sun.

I loved seeing the quilting in the last light of day, the deep shadows calling the stitching into relief. Another Courage-Enhancer.

The last two pictures are shots taken outside, for its formal portrait.

The backing fabric is Wild Garden by Dan Bennett, for Rowan/Westminster Fibers. Now you can see my hanging system!

This quilt was a turning point for me, in terms of gaining skills for free-motion quilting. I learned about marking, about when to mark. I slowed down, remembering what my teacher this summer used to say when she’d watch me: “Elizabeth. Be more deliberate.” It helped to repeat that often as I stitched, and helped me avoid many of my earlier mistakes.

I learned to depend on the wisdom available through social media. Two quilters on IG, Linda, of Flourishing Palms and Leslie, of PlainandFancy were always there with tips and tricks. But without all the lovely likes and happy face-emoticons and positive comments from all the readers, I wouldn’t have been so courageous, I’m sure. It was if after every quilting session, all the fans in the bleachers around my sewing room would stand up and cheer me on. So gratifying, especially as I felt like I was on thin ice most of the time.

One day in the mail, a card arrived. It was my father’s stationary, my address written in his bold Montblanc pen, which in this note he called his Meisterstuck. My father has been one of my best cheering sections in my life, right along with my mother and my husband. I’ve written about my father before, his courage in renting himself a studio after he retired and pulling out paints and brushes, a good example to all his seven children. His brief, descriptive note now hangs near my sewing machine, reminding me that my work extends sometimes far beyond my little room, far beyond my own little place. And, on this day in December, I honor him: Happy 89th Birthday, Dad! You are a treasure.

Because of you, Dad, because of so many people, and because the creative urge is made manifest in me through quilting, Colorwheel Blossom is finished, and is hanging in my hallway. It’s a nice feeling to walk by, letting my fingers run across the soft trellising, the vines and flowers. It brings a smile to my face as I pass by this garden.

Quilts

Christmas Tree Skirt

December 13, 2014December 1, 2024 Elizabeth E.24 Comments

Christmas Tree Skirt 2014
Quilt #141 on the 200 Quilts List
(Post updated August 2019)

Here I laid out the old Christmas Tree Skirt on top of the new one; it was made in the early 1970s out of pre-quilted fabric with a tricot backing, and homemade bias tape.

I was inspired by Betty’s skirt that she made last year, as well as others. The original inspiration was a tree skirt from Fat Quarterly 2013, but since I didn’t have a pattern and it was all proportional squares, triangles and rectangles, I just started cutting. Here I’ve laid an embroidery hoop so I could judge how the center circle would look. It took me about two days to get all the houses and trees arranged, partly because I wanted to use my stash and it that necessitated some color and value balancing. I have a piece of fabric from my first quilt in here, as well as some scraps from dirndls made from German fabric (which I love). I even have scraps of fabric from cotton I’d purchased in Rome, Italy some 14 years ago, as well as some Japanese fabrics, also purchased on a trip. Build your stash, everyone. It’s a fun place to visit.

UPDATE 2019, BASIC DIMENSIONS:

Fuse a series of fun fabrics to Steam a Seam II. I cut everything a bit larger, then trimmed to make sure the fusing covered the back completely.

Basic skirt circle: 52″ diameter (piece some white cotton fabric to allow for this dimension of circle)
Center hole is a traced 6″ circle embroidery hoop.
Tall Skinny House: 9″ tall by 3.5″ wide
Pointed triangle roof is 6.6″ wide and 4.5″ high. Follow the basic directions for tall Christmas Trees to cut yourself a wonky triangle.
Two-story house, short: 7″ tall by 6″ wide
Two-story house, taller: 9″ tall by 7″ wide
Trapezoidal Roof measures 8″ across the bottom, 3″ across the top and is 3″ high. So, cut a rectangle 8″ by 3″ and fold in half. From the outside lower corner, draw a line so it ends 1.5″ from the fold. Cut that section off and you’ll have the roof.
Pointed Roof for two-story house measures 7″ wide by 4″ tall.
Tall Christmas Trees: Cut a rectangle 7″ tall by 4″ wide. Fold in half lengthwise, and cut from lower outside corner to the center fold at the top, making a Christmas Tree shape.
Medium Christmas Trees: 6″ tall by 4.5″ wide (cut as above)
Stacked Christmas Trees are formed the same, but the dimensions are 3.5″ tall and 3″ wide.
Christmas Tree Trunks are 3.5″ tall by 1″ wide…but some are shorter (like 1.5″ tall). Cut them to your liking.
Wonky-cut stars (Do a search for a 2″ pattern online; trace the outlines onto fused fabric, then cut). —-> Or use this one: 5-sided-stars <——

Use my photograph at the top of this post to plan and map our your pieces, but cut some different dimensions if that’s what you like (like making a shorter, skinny house).

WARNING: Prewash your reds!!! I did them once with Dye Catcher Sheets. I should have done it three times, so my tree skirt suffered. We still use the tree skirt, as the discoloration is up near the binding in the center circle, but I wish I’d washed them more than once. Now we call it Christmas Tree Skirt at Sunset.

I thought I’d use a large red/white dot for the binding, but when I cut it on the bias, I got this effect. So I went with a narrower stripe than the one shown, cutting it on the bias so it would go around the curves. I pieced it, then folded it in half, then sewed it to the back and topstitched it to the front. A trick I learned in Clothing and Textiles in college was to press a curve into the bias tape. It went on like a charm.

In working on this, I zipped through two books and am in the middle of one more. The two I couldn’t wait to listen to were both Inspector Gamache mysteries, set in Canada. One was titled Still Life and the other was titled A Fatal Grace, both by Louise Penny. And I’m halfway through The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. Fitting, isn’t it?

We finally finished decorating the tree, and I’m enjoying the new tree skirt!

Bobbin Statistic: 5 (in other words, how many bobbins it took to get this thing quilted)
Quilting: First I stitched through the quilt sandwich on the raw-edges of all the house and tree shapes, letting it be slightly wonky as I went. Then the top-stitching on the stars. I switched to white thread and did a loose, large meandering quilting around all the shapes.

Quilts

Lora’s Quilt

December 2, 2014December 15, 2014 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

To Lora, with Love
Quilt #139

Pieced by Elizabeth Eastmond, Quilted by Lisa J (Lora’s niece and my friend)

This was the quilt top, and it measures 54″ tall and 43″ wide, before quilting and binding.

Lisa was headed up to Utah to see her Aunt Lora, so after she finished the quilting and binding…

. . . she sewed on the label I made, wrapped it up and took it over to Lora’s assisted living center to present it to her. (More about Lora’s situation can be found *here.*) Lisa and her two daughters arrived the same time as a lot of other cousins, so the room was full. As soon as Lisa brought out the quilt, Lora began to weep. Lisa read the label to her — more tears — and by the time they unfurled it and showed all the signatures, nearly everyone in the room was crying, too.

A few days later, after Lisa finished telling me the story, she gave me a big hug and thanked me for thinking up the idea of the quilt, but really, we thought of it together. I’m really glad we did, as it obviously brought the message to Lora that we loved her and cared for her. And we do.

Lora

Quilts

Home Stretch: an Illusion

November 21, 2014 Elizabeth E.28 Comments

I finished up the quilting on the inner white field (background to the petal part) and thought–“Good! I’m in the home stretch!” Au contraire, mon ami.

The next morning I got up and marked the swoopy quilting on the narrow inner border. Yes, I’m pathetic enough that I feel like I want to mark every stitch. At this point I’m watching millions of hours of longarm videos, as well as domestic machine (DM) quilting videos and everyone makes it look soooo smooth when they quilt. I am really trying, but marking also just in case. I stitch this and as I round the final bend, I realize that my stitching is more fluid and even that in the first foot or two of where I started. I stop, unpick that section and re-stitch it.

Migrating threads can be taken care of by inserting a teensy crochet hook in between stitches in a seam, and pulling the thread out the side. I’m successful at this about 70% of the time. When I try this, I vow to study the quilts at the quilt shows a little harder. Do they have this problem? Do they worry about it? I go back to studying longarm photos, seeing how even their stitches are, if they have wobblies. They do, just fewer. Is it fair to compare? Not really, but I do it anyway.

I like it best when I can just go and go and the thread whooshes through and the machine hums and the TED Radio Talks are on in the background, not making me concentrate on anything. I hate it the most when the thread breaks, or the bobbin runs out, or I bobble too much and feel like I need to unpick it and restitch it.

I take this photo before I go to bed that night and think “I’m done.” “Not so,” a little voice says. Something’s just not right.

I put that photo up on Instagram (IG) hoping for some feedback and the answer came back: the density of the quilting doesn’t match the inner field. I knew that. I just didn’t WANT to know that. I overlay some transparent paper on the quilt and sketch in what’s been quilted, then try out some more bits and pieces. I like the simplicity of the grid the best.

More marking.

A ton more sewing.

And I finish.

Somewhere in here I found about the acceptance of my quilts in the juried show of Road to California. I’m dancing around on the bed, jumping around the house in complete and utter happiness. For the last few years I’ve not gotten any quilt in and then to get all three?? I’m over the moon.

A very helpful Leslie, a quilter on Instagram, coaches me through the next step of getting out the blue marks. I find a video on YouTube where the quilter uses a sponge and a cotton swab to get out the marks. I follow her instructions.

I’d done a teensy bit of grid right in the middle to tie into the outer border.

As I take off the marks, I can’t believe how different (and better) the quilting looks! I’m smiling as I swab. And then. . . of course. I see all the areas where I’d missed stitching–there is one to the right of the vine in the photo above.

I checked my other expert I turn to for help: Linda of Flourishing Palms, and both she and Leslie suggested laying it out and putting a fan on it to let it dry. So I put down my two cardboard cutting boards for a stiff surface, layered it with towels, then smoothed it out to dry. Next up is finding and fixing all those missed sections of the quilt, and then the age-old question: how to bind this? One of my quilty friends suggested a faced binding, and I’m leaning that way, for sure.

I’m pretty pleased with my work thus far, as I see it laying on the bed in the other room. And I’ve really benefitted from a lot of encouragement from all of you here on the blog and in Instragramland. But as I said to a friend today, why is it that I see all the mistakes? And do I need to unpick them and re-stitch them? I had the same experience with my Lollypop Trees quilt–and my uber-observant husband also found all the wobblies on that quilt (I’ve asked him to not do that again–one of me is bad enough!). Leanne suggested living with it for a while before deciding, and after a couple of months, I didn’t notice the problems. As much.

I’ve complimented others on their quilts and in return I get a litany of all the mistakes and the problems. I don’t want — as Benjamin Franklin said — to look for the worm in the apple of my eye, nor do I want to see those flaws that others point out in their own work. (BTW, my father always said the correct response when someone compliments you is”Thank you.”) So what is it about human nature that only sees the flaws? Do you do this too?

All that being said, from the vantage point of the above photo, and my forays into the next room to check on the drying, I’m enjoying this quilt. And happy to be at this (almost) home stretch.