Kuwait Map Quilt

There is a new Kuwait baby quickly approaching his birth date, and a baby for which a very special quilt needed to be made. His parents were instrumental in our having had such a good time in Kuwait. We were introduced by one of my Qatari friends who had spent time in Kuwait, and she was right – we were meant to be friends.

The first night we met, we started talking and never stopped. We explored restaurants together, strolled through the souks, and heard all kinds of stories of old Kuwait. Our time with them was – and is – priceless.

I like for a baby quilt to have legs – useful as a crawl pad, useful as a cover to sleep under, washable, washable, washable and in the end, able to be hung on the wall of an otherwish anonymous college dorm room. This one will do the trick, plus having lots and lots of patterns to keep a baby fascinated as he learns how to focus his eyes

I’d forgotten how much work a map quilt can be in the preparation stages. This relatively small quilt (60in x 60 inches until I washed it and it shrank about 2 inches in both directions; I’ve never had that happen before! It was noticeable!) has 900 pieces, and those 900 pieces had to include sea pieces, Kuwait pieces and Saudi and Iraq desert pieces (pale, pale, pale) Of course, there had to be a lot of variety.

Seeking, planning and cutting took longer than assembly. The land portions are quilted in the ditch, a grid, and the Arabian Gulf segments have waves quilted in thin silver strands, so they glint like the sunlight on the Arabian Sea.

There are many many blocks made from fabric finds from the Kuwait souks, also a few with Kuwait memories. In Arabic, there are “sun” words and “moon words” so I found a sun and a moon. A family nearby us had a private zoo where, from time to time, a large cat would escape and put my village in a panic until it was recovered . . . so there is a large cat. In the end, this was one of the most fun and rewarding quilts I have made.

Happy Ending: Art Nouveau

Heidi Shelton taught Stack and Whack in Ramstein back in 1999, and I took her class, cut out these blocks, and stitched them together. She had advised us to use bright fabrics, but I just felt like this art nouveau fabric would make great blocks with graceful flowing patterns.

I love the blocks. I love the blue backgrounds. I could hardly wait to get it all together, which went very quickly.

But once I got the blocks together, and hung it up on the project wall, it was just . . . so . . . . BLAH. I was almost sick, I was so disappointed. I looked at it for about a week, at a total loss. I couldn’t think of how to fix it. I added a wide outer border with the original fabric – I like to do that with a Stack and Whack, because the inner blocks look so different from the original fabric. Then I looked at it for about a week, folded it up and put it away.

I pulled it out and looked at it every now and then, at a loss. It is rare that I am so stumped.

Maybe a couple years later I pulled it out. I knew it needed something red, so I put a narrow red band as an inner border, and added an outer border. I didn’t really add a lot of border because I didn’t want the quilt to get too big.

At least every time I moved I would pull it out and ponder what to do. I often pulled it out and asked my quilting friends what they would do. No one really had an idea. “Add an applique!” one friend suggested.

By 2009, back in Doha, I had some time. I had decided on an applique pattern; I designed it myself. Yes, it took me a while, but that is because I wanted it to be consistent with the Art Nouveau feel of the fabric. I love irises, and I had this great hand-dye fabric, not my favorite color, but a color which would brighten the somber mood of the quilt. I used freezer paper and hand appliqued the iris.

Once again, it didn’t do it for me. I love the irises. Somehow, to me, they are not what this quilt needs, but I don’t know what is. And 13 years is long enough, time, I figured, to just get on with my life. I need to get this quilt finished and OUT.

Here is the hilarious part. I ended up teaching Stack and Whack when we started the Qatar Quilt Guild in Doha. It was quick, it thrilled the beginners, and gave me a chance to teach a lot of skills (rotary cutting, the 1/4 inch seam, chain piecing, etc.) and technique while they produced a quick, usable quilt. Every time I taught it, I ended up with another stack and whack for myself, so I ended up with a lot of them – while the first one I ever learned, this one, languished, unfinished, on a shelf in many quilt rooms as I tried to figure out what to do to make it work.

Finally, I just decided to finish it, unsatisfactory as it may be. Even finishing it was a problem for me, tension problems in the quilting of the border, lots of “unstitching” and restitching to get it right . . . will this never end??

Now the good part. I had my daughter-in-law in my quilt room to show her Sheherazade, but she couldn’t keep her eyes off the stack n whack.

“I love it!” she exclaimed. “It’s Art Nouveau!”

I thought of explaining all the things that made this an unsatisfactory quilt – to me – but then I shut my mouth and thought – one look, and she got it. She got the fabric, she got the iris applique, she totally got it. Guess who gets the quilt, thirteen years after I started it?

Sheherazade: Magic Carpet

I don’t finish quilts as quickly as I once did, and I’ve been working for a while on this one, but oh, what fun. I loved choosing the fabrics, I loved designing it, and I loved figuring out the quilting motifs for all the borders.

I had a conversation with a quilter in our small group who quilts exquisitely, both by hand and machine. I told her I was giving up on machine quilting. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I found myself thinking that all I needed to do was to slow down and practice. I hated machine quilting when I started, but I got so it became acceptable. Taking it to another level is going to take some commitment. I’m no where near where I want to be, but I’m working on it, practicing, trying some new things, and there are elements that make me really happy.

This is the finished quilt:

Here are some close-ups. My favorite element is the paisley that turned into a minaret top in the purple hand-dye border.

I modified a technique my friend Paramjeet taught me. She encouraged us to go outside the lines, to try new things, anything we could think of. Nothing is out of bounds. The minaret tops have bands of zig-zag quilting, using a Coats and Clark metallic. I know there are people who say Coats and Clark is trash thread, but I have tried a lot of metallics, and the Coats and Clark metallics seem to break a lot less frequently than others.

For the yellow segment above, I made an iris template from some Indian design books I have. I really love it, and used it again in the fuchsia border, which is supposed to carry a carpet-border sort of feeling. I used a contrasting thread and went over designs more than once.

The quilt is designed for a baby girl coming who is very special to me; I want her to grow to be a strong and clever woman, so I made her a strong quilt.

Flesh Tones

I have a lot less time for quilting, these months, with my husband retired and ready to play. When he worked long hours, I filled those long hours with my work – quilting. It takes focus, for me. When a quilt comes to mind, it is like a sort of engineering problem, and I am usually trying a new skill. I have a pretty clear idea where I am going but I need to work out how I am going to get there.

I have a great quilt in mind, I’m really excited about it. I am using some fabrics I bought at one of the European International Quilt Exhibits while I was living in Germany and going to European quilt exhibits . Different nationalities see colors, techniques and even traditional patterns very differently, so those exhibitions were always stimulating, and often even astonishing.

But I wander. The fabrics I bought are reproductions of very very old Dutch fabrics by Den Haag und Wagonmakers B.V, one including a tree of life panel, in which the fruit of the tree of life – or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – is the pomegranate, which just happens to be one of my very favorite all time fruits.

I am working out the composition, but am a little bit stuck on flesh tones. I know the tone I want, but the flesh tones look different under different lights. Can you see the difference?

I may have to tea-dye one of the fabrics just a little darker, a tiny bit browner . . . I don’t know. I am stuck. I’ve been stuck before. It will work out, but I wish it would work out sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, I have been burning the midnight oil working on little bags. But that’s another post, for when I have a photo of some of the bags I’ve made, at least the ones I have not yet given away!

Jewel Box with Transitions

This is why I love quilting . . . for me, it is the challenge. I’ve always wanted to do a jewel box quilt, and I thought I was going to be making a scrap quilt. Somewhere along the way, I got the idea that I wanted it to be a transition jewel box, with purple in one corner, red in another, yellow in another and green in the final corner. The borders will have transitions from corner to corner, and then the center will have cross-transitions.

It’s not so easy when you make rules. I had to dig through my stash to find just the right shades, it took me longer to find and cut than it takes to sew up the blocks. This is not going to be quick and easy, aarrgh. On the other hand, I am having a lot of fun with the progress.

This is the only row I have completed; I also completed the yellow block for the bottom right corner, but have not yet done the red-yellow transition:

It will be a while before I can get back to this, as I am traveling. It doesn’t keep me from thinking about where I will go next!

UPDATE

I was out of town for a week and lost a little time, but not momentum. As soon as I got back, I started working on the Red to Yellow transition:

And the Yellow to Green transition:

Only six blocks left, all transitions! I have a busy week this week, don’t know if I will get it finished before Friday, but that is my goal. It’s not a hard quilt. It’s the color selection and cutting that takes the most time. I have to admit, there is something in me that loves this process; it’s not like just sewing the pieces together, you really have to think about it.

Final Update:

I love this quilt top. For one thing, it isn’t boring. I love watching the colors as they move across the quilt and change as they are influenced by other colors. It reminds me of my own life, all the different places I lived and how each place has had an impact on me, influenced how I perceived reality, grew in my spiritual life . . . It’s My Jewel Box Life.

I think I will quilt it by hand.

Kaleidoscope Transition Blocks

I love Kaleidoscope quilts (as you can see on this blog ) and I particularly love ‘colors of the sea’ Kaleidoscopes because I think they capture – in a small way – the shifts and swirls of sea water. Having said that, the best one I made was the first one I made, and since then, I haven’t been so happy.

I have a whole bunch of sea blocks, and I’ve had them up on my project wall forever, trying to figure out why they weren’t working for me. One day, I was almost ready to put them together, and I got the big AHA.

It’s the transition blocks.

In my first quilt, I made a mistake, but I made it on purpose. Instead of making the corner blocks contrast, I made all the corners meeting together the same color. It takes more work, and it is slow and painstaking work, but – to me – what a difference.

A quilt with contrasting corner blocks (meaning the corner of each Kaleidoscope block):

A close up of contrasting corner blocks where they meet:

And now, the newest top, with all the corner blocks meeting up with the same color. To me, it makes a smoother transition, to me, it helps capture the swirling motion I am seeking:

I know this is all very personal, my preference may not be your preference. What do you think; do you think it makes a difference?

The Most Fun I Can Have with my Clothes On

Today was reward day. Today, I have finished all my must-do’s for the week, picked up all our food donations for the big food drive ending at our church this coming Sunday, took care of house needs, took care of tiresome household chores. Today, I finally got to work on a quilt I have been thinking about for a long time.

My favorite nephew and his wife are going to have a baby, due date on January 1st, how cool is that? Always before I have gone with brights, but I am thinking New Year Baby, and I am also remembering how The Happy Baby LOVES black and white prints, it is like he has never seen anything so wonderful. He could actually focus for minutes at a time, trying to figure out my daughter-in-law’s zebra stripe couch cushions.

And I have been cutting out Snail’s Trail quilt patterns for a long time, but all that piecing has intimidated me. My nephew and his wife also have three cats.

Looking through all my quilt clippings, I found a Quiltmaker quilt that was almost what I wanted. With my handy draft paper, I worked around until I got what I wanted. . . a set of four sets of four cats, and my stash of black and white prints.

The first interlocked tails block comes out perfect:

Then, the first cat block, and it is a perfect 8 1/2 inches:

Cat plus snail’s trail:

I was having so much fun. This quilt took more thinking than it took putting together. Once I had it figured out, it just created itself, and I was having so much fun!

The first quarter; I forgot I needed to have the center block a different fabric so I later had to pick it out and replace it with the correct block:

No, it is not a black and white photo; it is a black and white quilt. I am planning to applique little red hearts on the white kitties and little white bow ties on the black kitties. I have to think of something to do in the center of the quilt, but I am thinking that is a good place to applique the baby’s name and birth date when he gets here.

Not all my imaginings turn out the way I imagine them. This one, I loved working on, and I love the way it came together. I love the way Snail’s Trail creates the circular motion and I love the way the cats create their own sort of modern border. I’m not even a big fan of black and white, but it’s fun to step out of the old comfort zone from time to time.

Under The Sea / Colors of the Sea 2

I made my Mom a quilt around ten years ago, and my middle sister has told me several times since then that she wants one like it. I started cutting this one out while I was still in Doha, finished cutting, piecing, sandwiching and quilting here in Pensacola.

My Mom’s quilt:

It isn’t the same. No two quilts are ever the same. When I was back in Seattle, I took a look at the first quilt and saw that I had made all four corner pieces match where they came together, something I have never done since. I think/thought that the contrast in light and dark in the corner pieces helped the movement of the quilt, but I may have to rethink that. I have a large collection of ‘colors of the sea’ fabrics; when I see them, I can’t resist them. I wonder if I can use them up in my lifetime?

Several of the fabrics are from a hand-dye class I took in Kuwait, lovely Diana Hill, and I am still using up my hand dyes – and those of others – as I piece these quilts. Such wonderful, laughter-filled memories!

This is a larger quilt, large enough to cover a double bed but probably not large enough for two people to sleep under unless they are young and in love, LOL.

Can you see the fish I hand appliqued in the photo above? I wanted them to blend with their background, just as real fish do when you spot them in their habitat.

This school of fish (and the others) are from a wonderful fabric I bought in Doha, and from which my Doha Fish Quilt was made. I am a strange woman; I actually love to applique.

I gave the quilt to my niece to put on my sister’s bed, at their Seattle home. I am betting she doesn’t check this blog, so she will have a big surprise when she sees it. I bet she forgot she even asked for it.

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.