Tag: WIP

Creating · Quilts · WIP

WIP–Halloween Quilt

Elizabeth E.4 Comments

So this is the plan.

Our little Quilt Group (Good Heart Quilters) wants to do an exchange of fat quarters in October of Halloween Fabric.  I’ve already got mine ready to go, but then I thought–go where?  So I got out my quilt program and cooked up this little house quilt.  This is digital–I’ll be working on mine for the next month, but I can see someone appliqueing ghosts coming out of doors, embellishments, witches riding in the sky.

I made up the plan for this quilt.  I call it “The Plan” because I couldn’t figure out how much bigger to print it out to make it real, honest-to-goodness templates. So, in case you want to make yourself a quick little Halloween House Quilt, here is a free PDF file for download:

halloweenhouseCORRECTDownload

Warning — it’s an oldie (but goodie)! I also envisioned using this paper as a place to lay out your cut pieces, so you know you’ve cut the right ones.

Please use the dimensions given to cut your pieces, as believe me when I say I doubt very much it will print to the right scale.  Forgive me, I didn’t take that class in college.  This post is to get you thinking about what fabrics you’ll use, and how you’ll use them.

I’ll have more later on about construction, but tomorrow I’m getting on an airplane and going to my nephew’s wedding in Salt Lake City, Utah and plan to celebrate some newlyweds.  I will have a post on FSFriday, so you can see what I finished this week, and when I return I’ll start into the fabric cutting and piecing for Halloween House Quilt.

I used to link in to this WIP every Wednesday.  This post was one of them.

WIP

WIP–New Projects

Elizabeth E.6 Comments


Lee!  The ever fabulous Lee! has hosted us all, once again, on her blog Freshly Pieced.  Many thanks!

I always seem to have billions of things I want to quilt, to sew, but somehow don’t think to mention them on this blog.  Not that I’m going to start right now because I have to leave for school in 10 minutes and I haven’t eaten lunch nor brushed my teeth.  I DID finish the grading, though.

But what I did pull out and work on this week was my version of Rubrik’s Crush by Ashley, of Film in the Fridge.  I’ve loved this ever since she showed it on her blog in a sneak peek, so I waited until it was published to get my hands on her pattern.  It’s a perfect way to show off large-scale prints, yet still have that patchworky feel to the quilt. So I started cutting it out.  I got ONE square cut out before I had to stop and move on to other things.  Pathetic?  Not really, because at least I STARTED.

Where she used Horner’s line of fabrics, I’ve had some Amy Butler Love fabrics lingering in my closet. Plus a few others.

The other thing I’ve been working is my Quilt Journal.  It’s been a long process getting the photos ready for this book, getting the book ready (as per my father’s advice, I had a larger spiral added to the spine).  I gathered up all the photos I took–one of which involved a trip to Arizona–and bugged/pleaded/asked the other children for photos of the quilts I had made.  My eldest son Chad (shown here holding an Amish Sunshine and Shadow quilt) and I photographed quilts in the conference room at his work (no one was around, nor using it).  I’ve tried to only include completed quilts in this process, but a couple of tops crept in.  A few quilts are gone forever, with no photos, only memories.  They are also listed.

It was interesting writing about the quilts that I’d made over 35 years ago, and about how much came back to my memory–the feelings, the frustrations.  Each quilt has two pages: the first one with its number (keyed to a master list) and the “verso” where I show the back and include any extraneous photos or details.  Writing in this, and sticking in the photos, is an especially satisfying venture.

My total count at this point?  91. If I get going on this Rubrik’s Crush quilt (or the Christmas quilt–see snapshot below), I’ll have some more to add to my list.

This is my goal.

WIP

WIP–Red/White Table Runner

Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Even though my week was somewhat stalled, due to Lack of Personal Energy (that even chocolate and caffeine couldn’t fix), I did force myself to some progress on the Red/White Challenge blocks.  I wanted to make a table runner, but didn’t know how it would come together.  I played around with a lot of ideas, putting the blocks on point, but in the end, it was all about getting the blocks to interact together.  I love how they seemed to “converse” when they were up on my pin wall and I knew if I put them on point, that conversation would vanish.

So I made a mock-up of the blocks with a checkerboard border.

Then I kept switching around the order of the blocks until I got an arrangement I liked.

Stitched together and pinned–ready for quilting!  It’s good to have something smaller to work on, because school started this week.  For those who don’t know, I teach English at a local community college, and this semester (they rotate our classes) I’m teaching Introduction to Literature.  We’re diving into poems right off the bat, so I thought I’d offer up this poem by Billy Collins, as a tribute to what students in literature classes can do to a poem.

Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.

But the most important thing of all is, it’s my daughter’s birthday.  Because she developed pari-partum cardiomyopathy upon the birth of her last child–a life-threatening disease–I celebrate every birthday I can.  Happy Birthday, Barbara!

And if you’ll indulge me for one more, here’s my husband and I with most of our grandchildren, taken at the last family reunion.  I LOVE glow necklaces!

Originally linked up with online Digital Group WIP Wednesday.

See finished runner here.

Something to Think About · WIP

WIP–Details, Details

Elizabeth E.4 Comments

Thanks to Lee, of Freshly Pieced for hosting this forum.


Coming home from vacation is such an interesting feeling.  I read your blogs and your comments on Facebook and you seem to slide from one zone to another, effortlessly.  I, however, have had quite a “re-entry” from my time away.  Perhaps that’s because there aren’t children around anymore to pull and push me into activity.  I did spend close to 10 hours on the computer the first day home getting things to the print center where I teach, then a haircut, laundry, College Orientation on the second day home, which brings me here to WIP Wednesday, and that freshly laundered handkerchief on the ironing board.  So the details of today are laundering and pressing the handkerchief and vintage fabrics (hoping that musty smell leaves soon—any tips?)

More details include making a label for summer’s last quilt.

A little more hand-stitching tonight as I watch one more Harry Potter movie–I’m on Number 4.  A friend dropped by her collection so I could watch them all at once before going out to see the latest.

And I’m listening to Last Town on Earth, by Thomas Mullen, while I work.  Riveting fiction–I highly recommend it.

My husband and I have been retracing our steps of many years ago. Yesterday I said to him, “And today was the day we packed all my four children into our new mini-van and drove to Utah.  Did I drop you off at your parents’ house before I went up to Ogden to stay at my parents’?”

“Yes.  I slept on their old sofa, as my childhood bedroom was full of my sister’s kids.”

Many years ago today was the last day my beloved sweetheart had his bachelor status, and tonight we’ll talk about the “rehearsal dinner” in a park with all his nieces and nephews and my children and his sisters and brothers and my sisters and brothers and our parents coming in together in a great picnic.  That night he and I worried about different things: I worried that my children wouldn’t fit in, that the blending of the family would be too much for the both of us.  He worried about finances and how we were going to make it through all the college years, even though the oldest was only 14 at the time.  But what we didn’t worry about was our love and commitment to each other.  Yes, many years ago the small details seemed to be detritus, like little bugs buzzing around the grand event of our marriage.  But this week we enjoy them, think about them, recall them and relish the bits and pieces and patchwork of our wedding day.