Little Workshop Week
I’ve got two girl babies coming who will need (expect) quilts, and I also need to have some little bags, so that was my work for this week:
It’s harder to work with silks and slippery shiny fabrics, but at the same time, it’s fun because the results are so lovely:
Also made tablier style Christmas aprons for two buddies:
VIQ (Very Important Quilt)
The problem with a very important quilt is that you can over think. I know what I want a baby quilt to be – I want it to be colorful. I want it to be lovable. I want it to be big enough to go to pre-school and kindergarten for nap time. I want it to end up a beloved rag, dragged here and there, washed innumerable times, all used up.
I’ve probably made a hundred baby quilts. But when it came to a quilt for my first grandchild, I dithered. Nothing I could come up with was good enough. Finally, I had to give myself a good talking to, “JUST GET STARTED!” I yelled at myself in a figurative way. Just do it.
It’s an OK quilt. Not the best effort I have ever put forth, but I came to the conclusion – it’s not the quilt that is important, but the recipient. God willing, he will love it because it came from me, and because I am a safe place, a place he can count on for unconditional love.
So – it’s just a quilt. For a very important Quentin! 
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!
Al Fardan Quilt Room
When I was living in Kuwait, I had a wonderful view from my quilt room – I looked out over the Gulf. Directly below was a busy street – always something interesting going on – and across the street, a family park. It was a fascinating microcosm, and a wonderful aerie for a quilting eagle.
Now I am back in Qatar, in Doha, and in the same exact villa where I lived when we came to Doha in 2003. No view, but more space and great light.
I got everything unpacked except my quilting room, and then I got really sick. My friend in Kuwait felt sorry for me and flew down from Kuwait and unpacked and put away everything in my quilt room. Before she left, she scolded me, and told me before I start anything new, I have to get working on my stack of unfinished quilts. Yes, she stacked them up for me, and then said “just start at the top and work your way down to the bottom.” She said it in English, but it might as well have been in Arabic – it just isn’t language I understand.
She also sorted all my threads by color and application, and bought special transparent storage boxes so I could see exactly what I have. I felt both very wonderfully taken care of – and also deeply ashamed, that she should see all my flaws. I thank God she loves me anyway.
When she said “What is this box?” and I said “shiny fabrics” she just grinned and said “I have a box called shiny fabrics, too!” Whew!
I told her you really have to trust someone to allow them to come in and unpack your quilt room, it is like someone in your underwear drawer. It’s personal! She just laughed and said she knew things were not the way I would have put them, but it would be easy, a little bit at a time, to get things organized my way. “Like one week you can organize the whites” she said. . . . Ummm. Maybe she better come back – the whites are still not organized, LLOOLLLLL!
Moving away from Doha, and coming back, I changed a few thingsin the quilt room, but not much. What I really love is that I have great light, all day long, coming in over my left shoulder and from behind.
This is the books, teaching materials and reference books. Oh, umm . . . err . . . and the stack of unfinished quilts that I must work on in the background.
This is fabric storage (behind the purple and green curtain), ironing station and business station:
Even room for a drying rack when my visiting Kuwait quilting buddies bring me more of the fabulous batiks we love to use in our brighter quilts:
The hand quilting station, although we all love this chair, and it is where I sit to read the paper, work on my computer, draw out plans for a new quilt, or where my husband or cat sometimes sits:
My work table:
There’s even a bed that someone COULD sleep in, except that most of the time it gets heaped with projects I am working on.
I also need to show you the Quilting Assistant Station:
I love this room!
Elephant Temple Sari Quilted
Every now and then you take a risk. I was with people buying sari fabric at the LuLu Hypermarche in Doha, which, surprisingly, had a very good sari selecton, from the lower prices to the exquisite. My house guests loved going to the LuLu, and several bought sari fabrics at the LuLu dealer upstairs.
One time the salesman brought out sari fabric I had never seen before and never seen anything like it before – it was a creamy white, hand loomed, with gold metallic embellishments and weaving through it. At the end, where the fanciest part of the sari is, was a temple scene, all in gold and cream except for a row of umbrellas. The unbrellas were over elephant heads.
My Indian friends have told me it is an annual festival, held around February, in India where there are both elephants and unbrellas featured at one particular and very special temple. How totally fabulous is that?
I bought the fabric, I couldn’t resist. I have used all the lengths of creamy hand-woven fabric in countless ways, and the gold/cream trip of the sides was even in the Bride’s Bag, but the end – I sandwiched it and hand quilted it, and I use it as a wall hanging in my guest room. It never fails to give me joy with it’s serene, elegant and joyful colors.
Stars over Ireland
This quilt began in a Mystery Night at Ramstein AFB, taught in 2002 (?) by Kimberly Einmo before her first book was published. Oh! We had so much fun, but making zillions of half square triangles was a chore.
The top went together quickly, but I had a photograph of a tombstone from when we visited Ireland, and I wanted to use it as a quilting motif in the white centers. I also found a Celtic border I liked, but it was very small, and I had to enlarge it over and over to get it to the proper size for my border.
The hand quilting took forever, partially because the white fabric was sort of rubbery, and hand quilting through it was tough. Aaarrgh! I didn’t finish hand quilting until I was back in the Kaiserslautern area for an emergency surgery, and had nothing to do by wait for my return flight to Doha and quilt!
12 Days Applique
My friend Shirley and I were bored, and we challenged one another to this quilt. We had the patternm by Mimi Shimp, but we both changed it dramatically – I wanted the blocks in the order they were sung, so enlarged them all to 18 x 18. We also used the beautiful duppioni silks readily available in Doha, and other more difficult fabrics.
The main motif was totally hand appliqued, but the minor motifs were machine appliqued.
We had given ourself 6 months to get the blocks finished, and another year to hand quilt the resulting top. The reality – after 2 1/2 years, I machine quilted the finished top just to get it done. I am not unhappy. I love this quilt, and I will hang it for one month every year, from December 6th – the Feast of St. Nicholas – until January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany.
Tile Quilt
Helene taught our Saturday group how to do this easy tiled quilt, another of the stack and slash quilts. Again, I doubled the number of fabrics to make a larger quilt. You use freezer paper ironed onto the top fat quarter to guide your slashes.
Cathy’s Grandmother Quilt
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!
Sandy’s Farewell Bag
Sandy was leaving and I wanted her to have a little gift:
I sure hope I cut that thread off before I gave it to her! ;-P
