World in Stitches

Today was a day we wait for all year long in the Q8Quilters Quilt Guild. We have the big Kuwait Textile Arts Association Show coming up this weekend, so today everybody gathered to share what we have been working on this year.

It’s mostly the quilters gathering, but quilters are often craftswomen in other areas, too. We had some Sadu woven pieces show up, and many bags, thanks to several workshops, and some cross stitch and some embroidered pieces.

The challenge catagories this year are Quilting Motion and Quilting Emotion, and there were some magnificent pieces that showed up. Everyone has been busy finishing up projects to be ready for this weekend.

This is a quilt I made for a very good friend’s newest grandchild. I call it Spring Chaos, because of the lifely, whirling hormonal activity going on. I can hardly wait to give it to her.

This quilt is called Black and White and Blood all over. It has to do with Beirut, and Kenya, and Zimbabwe, it has to do with man-made disasters and natural disasters. I made it to celebrate a significant graduation. I can hardly wait to give it to my niece.

This last one is for my sister, a sophisticate who loves black and white. I love the way the 8 pointed cross fits exactly with the cross. It’s called Reciprocals.

I just realized that I have patterns of behavior in quilting. I often have up to ten quilts in production at any one time, I usually sandwich three or four in one session, and I quilt three or four in a row while continuing work on the others. So I have fallow periods and then I have times when I complete many quilts at the same tune.

I have three baby quilts just about finished now, and three other quilts just about ready for the upcoming quilt show.

The first two I love because they use up leftover fabrics from projects I have been working on. When I find a fabric I love, I don’t want to waste a scrap of it! (Remember the January cutting project when I cut all my scraps into 2.5″ squares? Here they are!)

I love it that the scrap squares are all the same fabrics in both quilts, but because of the alternate squares, they have a very different look.

This quilt I started ten years ago, when I was still beginning. I have to admire my courage, way back then, working with mitred angles in the center square, which turned out so off square that I had to sew a wonky inner border on it. I got one of the friendship stars backwards and never even noticed it until working on it now to finish it up. I had always hoped to hand quilt it, but when I pulled it out recently, I realized it wasn’t worth hand quilting, and besides, if I haven’t done it in ten years - let’s just get this baby finished.

For all its flaws, I love this quilt. I still love using stripes in borders and mitres, and with all the flaws, I still love the colors. For the runt of the litter, it’s cleaned up good.
 

I love the hatchet block, and use it it a variety of quilts. This was for a new baby girl.

Sometimes you need to do a baby quilt in a hurry. Fortunately, I had some nice fabric with teddy bears on it, and was able to put this one together quickly.

Our friend had a Grandmother shower for Cathy, and we all gave her presents for her new grandbaby. I made this baby quilt - it was one of my first adventures into machine applique, and I love it!

Louise had a baby, a beautiful baby boy - who wouldn’t sleep for a while. I made quilts for both the baby and his beautiful big sister.

Naomi’s brand new baby needed a very Gulf baby quilt, so I did a camel with a braided tail. The black around the camel has crescent moons in it, a traditionally Islamic motif. Paper piecing has never been my favorite technique, but it is a lot easier when you blow a small pattern up 400%!

Baby Liam was born just after my Father died, and is all the more precious to us for it. I love bright baby blankets, and machine appliqued this one with a solid satin stitch to withstand the countless washes a really-used-baby-blanket will get.

Ala means “all good things”, my Arabic speaking friends tell me, but when I looked it up, the meaning was grace, a name I dearly love. This was a baby quilt for Ala. December 2004

This is one of my earliest quilts, made for my dear friend Barbara’s first grandchild. I wanted the quilt to give Emily a lot of power in her life, and I wanted it to be a blend of Chinese and American. And I wanted her to know that the world was hers for the taking.

The Chinese dragon with the ball that is the world is a very ancient motif, it’s rendition is totally my own.

I drew it out on freezer paper, then painfully hand appliqued it to the background, inserting prairie points as scales along the back and tail. I inserted seminole piecing as an inner border. I wanted the eyes to be intimidating, without scaring a sweet little girl.

The dragon itself is hand quilted, using a modified clamshell, which made great scales. The background is machine quilted, using long wavy vertical lines - it was one of my first forays into machine quilting.