Barbie Gets An Edge
It’s not really starting a new quilt if you are using up fabrics and pieces you’ve already cut, is it? It’s like using stuff up, not going out and buying something new?
I went to my box of scraps and thought it would be fun to do a quick pink quilt, you always need a girlie quilt when a new baby girl comes along and I had a lot of pink 2 1/2 inch squares to use up. I thought it would be fun to put some 1 inch borders around each one, just to liven things up a little bit.
It isn’t a quick quilt. The four patches were a piece of cake, but putting the borders on is WORK. And I know I am making it harder on myself, but it matters where the colors go, like different colors have to be touching, and they have to sort of drift into one another . . . don’t they? It’s taking a lot longer to put together this top than I intended. At the same time, I find myself enjoying the process, and isn’t that the point, too? I am not doing this like a factory, it’s supposed to be FUN, not work!
Here is where I started:
This is where I am:
I still have six more rows to go:
Here’s where I am having fun – you know how Barbie is all sweet and that sweet pink, mostly like Pepto-Bismo Pink, some innocent and light pinks, sometimes hot pink, but very very pink, right? But I am thinking about Barbie grows up, Barbie faces real life with all it’s thrills and disappointments, the good times and the betrayals, and Barbie shifts into some raging reds, some violent violets and some outrageous oranges – all full of pink, but verging on out-there. I’m having a lot of fun with it. It makes me grin. It’s not a baby quilt. It’s not even a little girl quilt. A girl has to grow into this quilt!
Iceburg Experiment
My friend Paramjeet showed a new piece at our Quilt Guild meeting on Monday. She is working on half square triangles for a quilt, and with the trimmings she had left over from trimming down the half squares so they would be perfect, she made a small wall hanging of little irises in a field. It was beautiful. I looked at it and thought “I could never do that.”
Except that today, as I was finishing the quilting on the Lenten Cross, my mind kept turning to all my scraps from my own half square triangles, from the mystery quilt I am working on, and how they are all right here, right in the waste basket and hmmm. . . . I dug them out.
Paramjeet used flannel . . . so I go digging for flannel, only two, one orange with orang-er stripes, no that won’t do, and one purple . . . well it will have to do. I cut a square about 14 inches to play with.
I did just what she said she had done, well, maybe not exactly because I had a pile of scraps and I couldn’t remember how she made them all lie still while she stitched, I think she said they just stuck to the flannel but mine are not so well behaved, so I have to innovate a little . . .
And just as I am thinking what a total failure I am having, I make myself keep going, make myself finish, clip away the excess tulle, pin it on the wall, walk away, turn around and see if it looks anything like an iceburg on an icy sea . . . and . . . it does! Magic! Thank you, Paramjeet! 
Update: Well, my little bubble has burst. A friend said she really likes my “praying hands” even though the attachment was labled “iceburg.” Sigh. Back to the drawing board.
African Pathways Quilt
I know it looks like I haven’t been producing for a while and to some extent, it is true. I am working on a mystery quilt, I am working on a serious hand applique border to a pineapple quilt, and I have finished a few little projects but I forgot to photograph them, and once they are gone, they are gone, sometimes I don’t even remember I did them!
This one I just finished, and it was a labor of love.
In June of last year, a dream came true – we were able to take our son and our daughter-in-law on safari with us in Zambia. We stayed in the Robin Pope Camps – Tena Tena, Nsefu and Nkwali – and a second dream came true – at Nkwali, we stayed in the famed Robin’s House, which was pure heaven for a party of four who would then be going in separate direction. A third dream came true – they loved the trip as we hoped they would.
I had intended to make this quilt all along – for our son and his wife – and I started it, and had a lot of fun with it. I’ve been collecting fabrics forever with an African theme, and then a good friend had spent several years in Africa and I begged for some scraps from her, which she gladly and generously gave me.
Then my husband had a trip scheduled to the states unexpectedly, and I have an opportunity to get the quilt sent back with him. It hurried the process a little. I had it all put together and machine quilted, but I wanted to quilt some animal tracks on the paths. More on that later.
I don’t have a way to hang the quilt properly to get a good full scale photo – the quilt finished size is 84″ x 84″ – so I put it on the floor, climbed a ladder, shot the quilt and then tried to shop out all the background, so that is why it all looks so funky.
My husband says he loves this one almost as much as I Left My Heart in Africa.
I started with the Elephant tracks:
The elephant tracks took a lot longer than I had thought they would. I had done them on the entire path. Time is growing short. I did one set of lion prints:
And then, nearby, I did one set of impala tracks:
That is going to have to do. I told my husband, whose tracking book I had used to do the animal prints, that the hungry lion was waiting in the bush and ate the impala, and that is why there are so few lion and impala prints. :-0
Here is the label on the back (you can see the backing fabrics on the entry for March 2, 2009)
The rest of this entry is purely for people who love fabrics. You have been warned.
There is one fabric in this quilt that is almost thirty years old. It is the remainder of three meters of fabric I bought when we lived in Tunisia, lo, these many many many years ago. I loved it then, and I love it now. It has been in all three of the Africa quilts, in many other quilts made for family members and close friends, and now I am down to mere scraps, fortunately, enough to include in this quilt, because Tunisia, although North African, is truly also Africa. The pattern featured Bedouin jewelry patterns, the hand of Fatima, crescents, special pins to hold the sefsari together at the shoulders – and it is in turquoise and purple (be still my heart!) with black and white accentuation. Here it is featured in the center, and the second scrap is in the upper right quadrant of the quilt:
I was really really lucky to have a good friend who had also lived in Africa – she shared some scraps with me. There are people who might think some of them are ugly – an artist friend of mine told me once long ago “there are no ugly fabrics, only people lacking in imagination.” She also told me “the eye will blend!” two mantras I repeat to myself when I start obsessing over just the right fabric or just the right placement. She was right. You can cut chunks out of fabrics, any fabric, and make it work. There are some really really fun fabrics in this quilt:
Don’t you just love it? This one was from a big orange, very orange celebration of Gabon’s independence!
This fabric was from Senegal; don’t you love the digitalized palm tree?
I will admit, it was a challenge for me working in browns and yellows, not my favorite palette at all, but I find when I force myself out of my comfort zone, I grow, and learn to see thing in new ways. Some of the colors here I really did not like, but my artist friend was right – the eye will blend. Africa is a country of enormous diversity, and the quilt incorporates some wildly disparate colors, prints and values.
African Pathways is made with two simple blocks – a hatchet block, sometimes also called an anvil, and a 4 patch. In this quilt, all blocks were 4″ finished. The hatchet block is made by stitching a 2 1/2 incl square diagonally across opposite corners (diagonally) and cutting off the excess, leaving a 1/4 inch seam, flipping the top down and ironing, and a four patch is made up of 4 smaller blocks, cut 2.5 inches.
I have a friend who is a beginning quilter. When I showed her how the quilt was made, she said “Oh! I could do that!” It was an Obama moment – “Yes. You can!” This quilt pattern is a real confidence builder, and a great teaching quilt.
There are many, many ways these flexible blocks can be put together. Other quilts using these blocks are here:
Hugs and Kisses
Reciprocals
Black and White and Blood all Over
Quick Quilts for Charity (Instructions for making two hatchet block quilts)
Here is my computer plan for the quilt; having the grid all mapped out helped me to plan the pathways and to know how many of each fabric to cut for pathways, how many 2 1/2 inch squares to cut for the 4-patches, and how to place them. The quilt is built in quadrants and then sewn together.
Happy Anniversary, lovebirds.
A Workshop on Dyeing
“It’ll be fun!” my friend said, telling me about a class being taught through the Kuwait Textile Arts Association.
“Ummm. I don’t think so. I don’t like getting all messy,” I said, hating myself even as I said it for sounding so prissy.
“You know how much fabric we buy that she (the instructor) makes – we might as well learn how to do it ourselves,” she went on, encouraging me. She knows I will give in; sometimes my first response is just negative.
So there we were, in a sun-drenched location, on one of the prettiest days in Kuwait, four of us in our raggedy clothes because yes, it was going to get a little messy. The instructor made it all so easy – charts with exact measurements, equipment labled with how much to add of what . . . it was fun, and mostly, it was easy. We are all totally into color, and we got to do a little experimentation.
First, we chose one color and did gradations, six fabrics from very light to very dark. I asked if I could use two colors, blue-violet and a little black, because I wanted to end up with a very Dark Iris color, and I wanted cold icy blues to dark cold purples. The results exceeded my every expectation:
I wish you could see the entire pieces – they have so much flow, motion and texture. Perfect for a cold, wintery quilt with sparks of green, blue and even turquoise in the icy purple. I could see snow capped mountains, icy streams, distant mountains, rising mists . . . these are perfect Alaskan colors.
We worked in teams, and as we worked on my partner’s colors, a spoon flipped, and the cup full of dye spun out of her hand, spiralling the spatter on me, the wall, the table, the floor – it was everywhere, a brilliant sapphire blue. I was wearing my oldest jean skirt (I could barely zip it) so honestly, it just didn’t matter. It took us forever to clean it all up. My poor friend kept saying “Sorry. Sorry. I’m so sorry,” and finally, as we were both down on our hands and knees sopping up sapphire blue I started laughing and said “Friend, I am down here on my knees just thanking God it was YOU that did it and not me!” If we hadn’t been laughing so hard, we probably could have cleaned up faster, but even the spill was a lot of fun. I had blue toes when I got home! I looked like something out of Braveheart!
The next exercise we did had to do with color families, using two dyes, six fabrics, and varying the proportions from one end of the spectrum to the other. I chose yellow to fushia. The results totally wowed me:
And then – the grand finale – direct application dye. We had squirt bottles, and could apply the dye wherever and however we wanted. We could mix, we could scrunch, we could try anything. It was, it was like being a kid again. My result is like something out of the 1970’s – I totally love it!
I seem to do a lot of quilts with seas in them, and my hands are itching to get busy on another one. These fabrics are inspiration for both sea and sand . . . love those orangey sand colors, too.
If you have a chance to take this class, grab it and run! It is SO much fun!
Map Quilt Class
Map Quilts
28 January 2008
These are all the map quilts in one place, with class instructions on how to make them:
I left my Heart in Africa
Moroccan Dreams
Turkish Delight
African Kaleidescops
1. Start with a graph
Find the country you want to map, or state, or entire continent, and draw it onto your graph paper. It may change several times – that’s OK. You have time. Figure out what colors you want to use, and why. Identify any motifs you may want to use, appliqué, pieced or quilted. Figure out what you are going to do with the area that is NOT part of your focus country!
2. Gathering the Fabric
This actually takes the most time. You need many many different blues, for example, if you will have sea, shading from the very lightest to deeper purple, if it goes deep. You may want desert tones, or greens. You may want fabric from the country you are making, or you may want to appliqué something onto a square, and to identify where you will want it to go.
One really fun part is to ask your friends. You don’t need even a fat quarter, just scraps big enough for a couple squares. The greater the variety you acquire, the greater your flexibility in placement. As an example, I probably use 50 different “sea colors” ranging from the lightest blues to the deepest purples. My friends gave me Egypt fabrics, and Sudanese fabrics.
These first two steps can take months, or even years. You will come up with all kinds of amazing ideas. Keep your plans for your map quilt in one place, and write down your ideas when you think of them, so you don’t forget them.
3. Distributing the colors
I usually figure out where I want different colors – all the golds to almost white in the desert, for example, maybe this quadrant will be red. In the Africa quilt, I used pure black for some places where terrible things were happening. It helps the balance of the quilt to have colors grouped together, and that takes some planning. Also, now is the time to make any specialty blocks you may want to include.
Take a look at your fabrics, and at your graph. Figure out how big you want the quilt to be. In the first Africa quilt, for example, the smallest I could cut the giraffe fabric and still have it be effective was 3.5”. That one fabric, and my desire to use it, drove the entire quilt to its current huge size.
Even if you have been cutting fabrics all along, when you finally get to the point where you are ready to start – you will have to start with cutting. To have enough of every color, you just cut a lot. Even so, there are times when you will have to get up from sewing to cut some more.
I don’t go to a lot of effort to be accurate about terrain, but if you want to include a lake, or mountains, or something particular to that region, you can either use fabrics which show what you wish to emphasize, or you can create your own lake, or desert, or fields of flowers – it’s your quilt, you get to be the boss!
Mountains: You can make a large mountain by making it four squares big, white mountain with blue sky , for example, or black mountain with blue or white sky. As long as you have planned ahead, anything is doable. Smaller mountains can be exactly the same size as the other blocks. It’s just nice to have a little variety.
4. Execution:
Break your quilt into doable sections. You might use quadrants, and each quadrant usually has a dominant color. Cookie trays can keep the squares in some kind of graduated order. Always have the graph on the wall, so you can check it frequently, and use a project wall, where you can hang the completed sections and check them as you go along.
You might do two rows, sew them together, and then sew them directly to the section where they belong. It might seem fiddly, but it helps you keep track of where you are on the graph, and it helps you see where you might want to add more deep / light colors, etc. It is also just a lot of fun to watch it grow.
As you go along, check off each row as you complete it. Again, it may seem fiddly, but it is easy to get lost and confused, especially when you are working on a section of coastline, and you need to get the half-square triangles going the right ways!
5. Quilting and Embellishing
It has been so much fun, just watching all those colors come together and blend into a fabric collage of a country. Now is time when you can make it even more special.
Make the sandwich.
Do a quarter inch outline of the continent/country you are working on, very first thing. It helps keep everything stable, and it gives your focus some definition.
If there are particular quilting motifs you want to use – a mariner’s compass in the sea, for example, or camels crossing the desert, or a hand of Fatima, or a teapot – you’ve been gathering them all together, and now you get to have the fun of putting them in.
You might want to do waves, and spirals, and fish in the sea. You might have your own ideas to make this quilt uniquely your own creation, and now is the time to explore them. These map quilts are not serious quilts, they are supposed to be fun.
6. Surprise.
In every map quilt I do (and in many of the others) I put a surprise. In the Morocco Dreams quilt, I put a camel in the desert, so big you couldn’t see him unless you stood about ten feet away. He was in slightly lighter colors than the rest of the desert. I also outlined him in hand quilting.
You might want to machine quilt in the name of the person for whom you are making the quilt, the date and the place. You might want to machine embroider your own name in the quilt, in an inconspicuous spot, where some quilt-heritage researcher may someday find it and rejoice! Most of all, this is where you can have fun with embellishing the map so that it tells something about why you chose this country, something about how you feel about this subject. Here is where you can use charms and beads and crystals to highlight special and unique qualities.
Photos and more instructions at : worldquilter.wordpress.com. Click on map quilts under categories, over on the right hand side.
My Bad ;-)
Like many quilters, I specialize in rationalization. As the last days of the year 2007 slipped away, I prepared for my January cutting and cleaning and organizing.
As I was putting some fabric away, I came across an old friend I had forgotten. Hmmm. . . . . 6 repeats . . . . just enough to try that hexagon quilt technique again and see if I like the results any better . . .
I had complained to my guild about the annoyance of working with one grain line and two bias lines when sewing these triangles together to form the hexagons and they said “Starch! starch! starch!” so I had a dilemma . . . here, in my hand is the perfect piece of material to try cutting out another hexagonal quilt.On the other hand, I could get a head start on the January cutting-up and organized. . .
I did what ANY hot blooded quilter would do – I got right to work on a new quilt top!
Bottom line – This technique is fun, the starch helped, but two quilts later, I don’t like it any better than I did before in terms of results. This is just Stack n’ Whack with a twist, and that twist is the putting together the hexagons in rows, arranging the colors, etc.
I am never quite satisfied that my efforts in this technique are particularly artistic, and I am not particularly delighted with the quilt top, although there are times it takes me a while and then one day I realize I love the quilt. Sigh – now either I have to sandwich or cut. It’s January. It’s 2008. One drudgery or another (although once I get started I actually enjoy it.)
French Sunshine
Wooo Hoooooo! Sometimes life just makes itself easy.
Last summer, just after I had started this blog, I showed my good friend from college days. We met in French class at a huge university, and ended up having three classes together – the only person I kept having the same classes with out of thousands.
By the grace of God, we have been friends ever since.
As she looked through quilts I had done, she came to the Stack N’ Whacks and said “WOW!”
I already knew I would be teaching a Stack N’ Whack class this year.
The following week, I came across the perfect fabric, and bought the rest of the bolt. How sweet it is. There was just exactly enough.
She lives where winters are long and dreary, and I wanted her to have warmth and sunshine in her quilt. I chose hot, wild colors to bring some tropical paradise into her long, wet winters. I am very happy with the result!
Details:
The quilt has flaws – just as I do. She will never notice. She will just think it is a great quilt. I thank God to be blessed with a friend like her.
Hexagon Technique
“What have you got that is new and exciting?” I asked my old friend who now owns her own quilt shop in Panama City Beach. I had fifteen minutes, my husband and son and my son’s wife were waiting out in the car and my quilt guild was looking for some new techniques.
“Let me show you!” she said, and pulled out this fabulous strip of triangles pieced together. “It makes something that looks very complicated very easy!”
Wooo Hooooo! My kind of technique! Her shop is Quilting By the Bay in Panama City and she always has the latest, coolest fabrics and the newest techniques to share.
This is a kind of Stack N’ Whack technique, only by piecing the triangles three and three, and then playing with colors and whirls until you find a pattern you like, you can sew the hexagons in straight rows, and still have an intricate whirl of hexagons. Very clever.
You still have bias edges to contend with, and it really takes the right fabric. I was happy with how this turned out, glad I had tried the new technique, but it took me ten inch borders to bring the quilt back into a true rectangle!
This is for another of my very good friends, who loves RED. She and I have walked through thick and thin together, and although this quilt, too, is flawed, she will love it because I made it for her. Aren’t I incredibly lucky to have such friends?
Cats Are the Stars
Several years ago when I first started quilting, I designed and made a quilt for my sister, who had a collection of Laurel Burch coffee cups. Burch had just begun designing fabrics, and I found a great fabric, and had a collection of great vibrantly colored fabrics to go with it. As I see it, it is the colors that make this quilt.I had a great time making this quilt, but all photos disappeared with the box of quilt books in my last move. Yesterday, I was able to photograph it again. It has suffered a little fading from the sun, but as I look at it, it still delights my heart. 
The top border:
Square:
As I look at it closely, I remember all the hand quilting I used to do:
Post-Modern
I know my Mother wonders where I came from . . . but the truth is, she also quilted when she was my age, just not big quilts. Lots of baby quilts, lots of pillow covers.
She was never into country-style, not even French country. Danish modern, black and white all the way.
She was complaining about not having any “fat” tablemats; she doesn’t want hot coffee cups marking her beautiful wooden tables (can’t blame her!) We searched all the stores in vain – “fat” tablemats are just not in style right now.
But I can make fat tablemats!
The design process – never be without your graph paper!
The finished tablemats:
They could actually be two rows shorter – I made them very generously sized to be sure the coffee cups land on the tablemat. These are 16″ x 24″:
