WIP

Really? It’s Wednesday?

April 3, 2013April 3, 2013 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

I’m not yet “jammified” (in my p.j.’s) but I could be, for how energetic I (don’t) feel. Bob Hope noted that “You never get tired unless you stop and take time for it.” So I’ve taken some time for it this week, after my Ta DA! post of earlier. I also heard Joyce Carol Oates once talk about how, after a novel was newly finished, she took her time to coming back from working–she read poetry until she felt sufficiently ready to start work again.

I was asked to teach a class on the Lollypop Tree quilt, as I’ve noted before, I made up my own pattern, and thought I should get going on the class sample. It was intended to be a Kaffe-fabricked Christmasy design on Kona red. What it ended up becoming was a whimsical Kaffe-fabricked design on aqua polkadots. The red one is still in my future. . . perhaps tomorrow, after I grade some of the late essays and finish up prep for class.

I became stuck on this one leaf. You can see the progression, of trying desperately to become unstuck, and I just noticed I put two of the same in the photo. Ignore that.

I finally got to this point, and although I’m still not happy with parts of it, most of it is coming together.

Eric Maisel said that “If, because of anxiety and self-doubt, you procrastinate and only think about working, you’ll feel more exhausted than if you’d created for hours.” I certainly had a lot of that going on today, but I think it was also because I was listening to the end of a Graham Greene novel, which was driving me a bit batty. Then I switched to This American Life and listened to the two-part episode about Harper High School, which starts *here* and ends *here,* which I’m still thinking about, and which should be required listening for every American, no matter where you stand on the gun-control debate. It was sad, frustrating, illuminating and it got me working through my puny problems of how different pinks should go where. Perspective is always a valuable thing.

Then I went downstairs to the kitchen and made two dinners: tonight’s and tomorrow’s, as I don’t get home from class until later and my husband and I just aren’t up for cooking, or for going out.

After dishes, I finished off a good book–the latest Guido Brunetti mystery–and then traced off and cut out another Lollypop Tree, ESE-style, to begin again tomorrow with a red background, for my shop sample for the class.

I was talking to a biologist friend once, describing how sometimes I felt as there was nothing creative coming forward (this was when I was an undergrad in Creative Writing) and yet the deadlines didn’t seem to go away. “Ah,” she said. “You’re in lag phase.” I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but the gist of it was that while I felt like I was doing nothing, my ideas were percolating, growing, or “metabolically active” as a biologist would say, before I entered a time of real growth (log phase, if you must know). I’ve experienced this more than once. During that time, I feel unfocused, blasé, wiped out, or just plain stupid, if you must know the truth. I ingest vast amounts of silly internet videos, or lollygag through quilt images online, or read blogs without commenting. Then slowly, something shifts, I become truly bored with being bored and I get back to work.

“If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.” –Sister Corita Kent

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Chris’ Welcome-to-the-Family Quilt

March 24, 2013April 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

This is where I was Wednesday morning, after listening to hours and hours of a new audio book: Beautiful Ruins. My mother’s still ~~reading~~ listening to it, so I’ll withhold my review until later. But the really good thing about audio books is that when they are playing on your desktop computer in the same room as the sewing machine, a lot gets sewn, like a quilt top for our new-to-our-family adopted grandson Chris. This is my Sashless Quilt, with the tutorial found *here.*

Full length shot on our front porch, with hands belonging to my tall husband Dave.

This isn’t a complicated quilt, it sews up quickly, and I love using favorites from my stash like the bicycle fabric. I’d been saving that for a long time and this was the perfect use because my son (Chris’ Dad) loves bike riding, owns a bunch of them and takes all his sons out on bike rides.

I started cutting this on Monday, sewed Tuesday and Wednesday morning, quilted Thursday, did the binding on Friday. Hey! I felt like Rita from Red Pepper Quilts, only I’m not listing it in my ETSY shop. (I don’t even have an ETSY shop.)

The “label.” Sometimes with quilts I know will be washed and washed, I don’t mess with a formal label, but simply write directly on the quilt with a Micron Pen.

Glamour shot, reclining on the sofa. I did the basic quilting: stitch in the ditch. I’d played with the idea of doing echo-quilting alongside the seams, but in the end changed my mind.

I gave it to Chris as they arrived on Saturday evening to celebrate my husband’s birthday. Chris’ younger brother Andrew used it first.

Later on, after dinner and all the adults talked, Chris nabbed it and settled into a movie. Or was it a game? I can see that at the dimensions of 46″ x 57″ he will soon outgrow the quilt, but I didn’t want it too big–it’s a “welcome to the family” quilt, like what his brothers received when they were newborns.

Chris seems to like it–I’m so glad!

It’s Quilt #109 on my 200 Quilts list.

Quilts · WIP

Another Sashless Quilt

March 20, 2013 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

Starting another sashless quilt, based on what I did in the Sunshine and Shadow Quilt Tutorial. But this one’s for my newest grandson Chris, adopted into our family this past December. Chris is eleven, so a “baby” quilt just won’t do, but every grandchild has a quilt from me, and soon he will too.

In pieces, on the pin wall. Having a pin wall is a real luxury, I think. Short of a stiff breeze, all the pieces stick there until I’m ready to sew it together (tomorrow).

The rows are marked. My Spring Break is half over and I still have a few things to get done, as Robert Frost noted: “And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

Another late WIP post, but if you get a chance, head back over to Lee’s Freshly Pieced blog and see what unfinished projects others are working on, plus the beautiful blocks that Lee’s crafting.

200 Quilts · FAL · Finish-A-Long · Quilts

Star Mother’s Youngest Child quilt

March 8, 2013March 31, 2013 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

Here’s my second finish for March: Star Mother’s Youngest Child. The book, from which the title of this quilt is taken, was about Star Mother’s youngest boy who came to earth to experience Christmas before he was destined to take his place in the heavens, shining brightly forever. He landed at the home of a cranky old woman, who, childless and alone, just wanted to have one Christmas to celebrate before she died. And so the two came together. The illustrations are charming, and the child’s spikey hair and ugly countenance reminded me of the weirdo star in the bottom left corner, the points going the wrong way even though I tried really hard to get them like the picture of this quilt from the Moda Bake shop pattern. But in the aggregate, I think it all works okay.

Whenever I’m looking for a back, I usually go for whatever cheap fabric I’ve picked up on sale, or snagged from IKEA or the Marimekko from the Crate & Barrel outlet. I went to the guest bedroom closet, where these lengths all hang, washed, pressed and waiting and lo-and-behold! I’d purchased some of this Sweetwater Christmas line when I was buying the rest of the fabrics for this quilt. It had been two years and so I’d forgotten. I pieced it carefully to make the seam as invisible as I could. I’ve tried doing pieced backs. I usually fail at that sort of thing because at that point, I’m just so ready to be DONE.

I had also purchased this black/red stripe for the binding and even if it was on the original, I just didn’t know if it would work for my sensibilities. When I went to quilt night last week, Laurel told me it was just perfect. Sometimes you just need that atta’boy to help get these quilts done. I hand-stitched the binding while 1) watching a movie, 2) attending a baby shower another night, and then 3) coming home and talking to my husband after a long day.

My quilter used Superior’s King Tut in a tight red/green variegated color in a medium meander.

For the label, I scanned a picture from the book when the little child first knocks on the Old Woman’s door, and included a quote from the last pages of the book.

This is #108 on my list of 200 quilts. Frankly, I can’t keep up this pace of finishes unless I stop sleeping or eating (neither of which is very likely). The last two quilts have been in the pipeline for a couple of years, and I just had some extra time this semester and was able to get them finished (along with the help of my quilter). But for today, it’s nice to see this all done, lounging on my sofa.

That makes five Christmas quilts I’ve done in my lifetime: two have been given away, and the other three reside here. It will be fun to get those out this coming December.