Amish Quilt, in progress

January 12, 2014April 27, 2014 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

Finished the inner top. Put on two borders and still have one border to go this gigantic quilt (finishing at 105″ square). What was I thinking?

I was thinking I loved the colors, the sparkle of the brights, and the use of solids.

This picture is titled Border Fail. They sent me 2 5/8 yards of Blue Coal (it’s a nighttime photo, so all the colors are wacky), and after dinner I was tired but wanted to push on to finish the quilt. So I came upstairs and whack, whack, whack started cutting crosswise strips to piece together for the outside border. After I’d cut about half the strips, I realized they sent me enough to do a lengthwise cut for that outside border, which would really stabilize the quilt. I slumped into my chair, and yes, got all teary about how dumb I was. I was tired. My husband said some “there, there, theres” and I ordered a new swath of Blue Coal from an online shop, which should be here by the end of next week.

Lessons learned: husband is a gem, mistakes can be made, especially if I’m tired, and beware of cutting after dinnertime. I’d already put on the first inner border, and the little squares border. Now that’s an exercise in frustration. Those squares NEVER fit, so you go back in and stitch another 1/16″ of a seam on a few squares, inching it down to fit. If you want to see what I’m working toward, here’s a photo of Amish With A Twist–II:

Here’s Amish with A Twist–Version I, and it’s really big, too.

Found this on the web when I went searching for ideas on how to quilt my quilt. Which won’t be done until NEXT week now.

So the center of my version, Amish With A Twist-2, is this lighter set of fabrics, so that would call out for beige or cream or light gray or something. But then the outer is darker, so that indicates black or dark gray. And I’m having this done by my long-armer, and to keep it affordable, I’ll probably do an edge to edge design.

This quilter had hers done in colorful variegated thread, which she showed on another page. That’s certainly an option, as it does melt into the light-colored fabrics. But I’m not too crazy about how it looks on the dark black. My version doesn’t have that dark black thing, so maybe it will be okay. What would you choose? Road to California is coming up in a couple of weeks and I can pick up some Superior Thread there. Any ideas?

And if you are going to Road to California, want to try for a meet up–say Friday, late afternoon? That will give the out-of-towners time enough to get there, and by then, I’ll be ready to call it done for the day. If you are going, leave a comment, and we’ll figure out a place. Possibly near the ice cream cones. Or cookies.

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Quilts

In Bed With a Bad Cold

December 7, 2013December 7, 2013 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

In Bed with a Bad Cold
by Pam Rupert

Posted without permission. (Pam, if you wish, I’ll remove it, but thanks for your great rendition!)

And this was the Christmas Tree down at Urgent Care this morning (my second trip–I’m going to lick this yet!)

But I need to digress backwards and show off the three totes made in my Tote Bag class by three wonderful students. They worked hard and all finished up.

I had taken some time this week to work on the quilting on my Santa quilt, and as always, How to Quilt This can really take over my mindset and stop me in my tracks.

I have had troubles free-motion quilting (FMQ) in the past, and have worked to figure it out. I now have three different FMQ feet (the last one was the one that worked best), and am still experimenting with threads. This one, So Fine by Superior Threads, is a dream, as is using their topstitch size 12 needles. I purchased, and read, both of Diane Gaudynski’s books on quilting, which nudged a bit further along on this path. Both were helpful, but I don’t really see myself heading in her direction of teensy-weensy quilting decorated by gorgeous swooping feathers and lots of echo quilting.

This week, Judi Madsen’s book arrived, and this is more what I hope to quilt like. I’m already behind because she has a huge quilting machine, so our techniques of moving the cloth and figuring out the quilting stitches will be different, of necessity. But I found it really helpful in so many ways. She also has a video up on YouTube which is also instructive. So I quilted until the Bad Cold determined that I would not be quilting.

So the quilt is loosely folded up on my sewing room floor, waiting until I get better, get the Christmas tree decorated, the Christmas caramels made, the stack of research papers graded, the final given, the final graded. . . But you know, Santa doesn’t come until the 24th of December, does he? I doubt mine will arrive much before that either. And somewhere in there we need to do a little bit of shopping. Yessiree, it’s a bad time of year to be in bed with a bad cold.

100 Quilts · Quilts

Harvest Weekend

November 9, 2013January 10, 2026 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

With pumpkins and tawny hues and brown grasses prevalent in the colors at this time of year and in the Northern Hemisphere, falling temperatures, it triggers the idea of harvest: cutting the wheat, gathering the last of the fall vegetables, All Is Safely Gathered In, and that sort of thing. Well, what constitutes a harvest?

It all starts with seeds, a planting of an idea, a sowing of labor with the yield some time off in the future. An idea, like beginning to learn how to make Amish quilts from a book, as I sat in the scorching heat of a Dallas Texas summer many years ago, sweat running down my back reading Roberta Horton’s Amish Adventure.

I had escaped to the back porch for three minutes peace from the marauding hordes of hot tired children in watching some movie on the VCR, steeping my mind in the stillness of these stunning quilts.

Strong graphic design and the muted, yet brilliant, colors enticed me, and I began small, with doll quilts, experimenting in the shapes, the colors. At that time the best we could hope in terms of solid fabrics was a mix of cottons and polyester-cottons. Purists would gasp now, but we had just barely graduated from using cardboard templates with taped edges to cutting out the lids of margarine tubs to use instead.

Roberta Horton’s book, first published in 1983, rocked my tiny isolated world of quilting.

I moved from doll quilt-sized quilts to a larger wall quilt, still unfinished. And then to a larger quilt, laid out in rows in the corner of my bedroom for weeks, while I refined the gradations of color.

I had drawn out Sunshine and Shadow on graph paper, trying to figure out the coloration, mimicking what I saw in fabric. This was early in my quilting career: all of my quilts on this post are numbers 10 and 11 quilts on my 100 Quilts list. I also made a faceless doll to match what I’d heard were common in the Amish country. And then, Amish Quilting was the first quilt class I ever taught, in a small shop in Arlington, Texas, now defunct, and yes, we made a doll quilt, and yes, we used Roberta Horton’s book.

Back to the Sunshine and Shadow, I figured out the borders, sandwiched with flannel (as she noted that Amish quilts were flatter than our fluffy renditions) and I began quilting it by hand, criss-cross, and then cut paper patterns for a twined-vine border design.

The seed planted by Horton and her quilts and her book is now in a second harvest, if that’s possible. Last summer, C & T Publishers put out a call for Amish quilts of all types to be considered for a new rendition of An Amish Adventure. I submitted my photographs and had one quilt accepted. The book has now been released and is titled Amish Quilts–The Adventure Continues, and it as much a celebration of that first book in C & T’s publishing history as it is the style and cultural contribution of the Amish quilt–certainly a forerunner to today’s modern quilts.

Here’s my doll quilt, made so many years ago. I now consider it as an entry in the first round of strong bold graphic designs and solid fabrics. In the book, mine is right next to Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr, of the Modern Quilt Studio and Craft Nectar blog. I certainly did do a happy dance in the kitchen as I opened up the package.

You can get the book from the C & T Publishing website and from Amazon.com. My mother already has her copy, so I know it is shipping. If you haven’t had a chance to make yourself an Amish quilt, perhaps now is the time, before too many more harvests stride past.

I like to think about harvests, as to me it always indicates a leap of faith somewhere. At some point I made a quilt, and now can “raise the song of harvest home.”

Quilts

A Quibble and A Muse or Two

October 7, 2013 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

To prove to my Mid-Century Modern Bee, that I am on task, getting ready for their blocks, I decided to start on the center Santa. And instead of raw-edge fusible applique, I went with needle-turn hand applique. The directions are sketchy, at best, on this center square, just the big piece of art (shown in disguise, above) and a note to cut the finished center piece to 24 1/2″ square. I didn’t catch that one at first, and started appliqueing.

I traced the pattern, in reverse (taped up onto a window) onto freezer paper, which I then ironed onto the top of the fabrics, and cut 1/4″ around. This pile was where I started on Saturday morning, while I listened to our church’s General Conference, a respite in the wild and crazy world.

I was pretty far along when I realized that the picture was too big for the alloted measurement, by 1/4″, and that was with no seam allowances. So I cut the top of the tree off.

This is where I am tonight. I must have really gotten excited about shrinking this as it now measures 22″ top-to-bottom approximately, but now I have enough room for a smaller inner border of red. That’s the quibble. Now to the Muse(s).

My grandchildren came for the weekend. This is the first set (4 girls) –well, three of the first set. We made cookies that we later decorated when the second set (4 boys) arrived. I’ve made each grandchild a quilt, so you could say their very arrival on this earth served as inspiration.

The father of the four sons, Chad, is on the left and the father of the four daughters, Matthew, is on the right, flanking my saintly husband. While they look fully grown to you, in my mind, their are young boys, scrappily fighting in the upstairs bedroom over who gets the Transformer toy, like Chad’s boys in our front room shortly after they arrived. Boys will be boys, and that always involves a bit of wrestling around.

I was the muse for my sister Susan, when she made me this beautiful shawl/scarf, which I’ve already used a couple of times to keep me warm while grading. A noted historian, she writes comments on my blog like:

“I find the names of these blocks quite interesting in their historic nature. Fifty-four Forty or Fight refers to the battle over the Oregon boundary between US and Great Britain. It was a campaign slogan in 1844. Clay’s Choice no doubt refers to the great Whig politician Henry Clay, who helped broker the Missouri Compromise that would set back the sectional conflict until the eruption of the Civil War in 1861.”

I love her and was glad to learn about my quilt blocks!

My quilt group is also inspiring–we’ve been going strong for about fifteen years, and Caitlin (above) is a new member with her first quilt top, just finished last Friday night.

I saw this when we went to Greek Days at the local church, just a couple of miles from us. It reminded me of the Marcelle Medallion, which has been so popular around the web, and I can’t tell you how many pictures of stone floors I have from around Europe, quilt patterns in all of them.

I was quite impressed by the stories told by the priest, as he led us through his sanctuary, telling us of connections both modern and ancient, and it was an interesting point and counterpoint to the thoughtful talks I listened to in my church’s conference, as all these things remind me that we are more alike than different in our hearts and our minds, whether or not we worship the same.

This morning, we tiptoed out of the house, the grandchildren still asleep before their big day at Disneyland, to see this glorious sunrise. We stopped to take it all in, then moved on, pausing at each street, savoring the changing colors. This, too, is a muse of grand proportions.

It seems that every time I hit a rough patch, it stills me enough so that I can move in a new direction. Who would have thought that after finishing Kaleidoscope, with all its fussy English Paper Piecing, I would be appliquing a Santa down to a new square of cloth? But this is the direction the Muses have beckoned me to follow.

I am always frustrated by the rough patches and I can hear my parents chuckling in the background, as they know I like things to always be still and placid and never, ever, in turmoil. I’m a harmony junkie, if you will, not only in relationships, but everywhere in my life. “This too will pass,” my father used to say to me when I’d come to them in tears, upset by something or another, yet I always found it hard to believe their soothing counsel.

But I feel quite enriched this weekend, in spite of the chaos of an afternoon of eight children. I savored their noise and games, hoping it would never end, but of course realizing (that for sanity’s sake) it needed to. The trip to the Greek Days Festival on a hot October’s day. A visit to my sister last week. A new sewing project. Thoughtful and touching messages to the heart. And last, but not least, the best inspiration of all: the anniversary of our first kiss, twenty-five years ago.

May your muses find you this week. Happy Quilting!