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! 
Duffels
Sometimes I am afraid that some people don’t much like home made things, and you never know who is going to be a person who likes them and who is going to be a person who doesn’t. I made a glorious quilt, a prize winning quilt, and the person I gave it to used it to stabilize a rock table. (00)
My Uptown New York niece, when I hesitantly asked her if she ever wanted a quilt, already knew what she wanted, and picked out the fabrics for it from my stash, and wrote commentary – which I returned to her years later – on what the colors meant to her. Surprise surprise!
I hesitate to give these duffels, just more home made stuff, but most of my friends seem to love them. I had made a Hawaii Quilt for my oldest friend from university, and she loved it, so I made her a duffel with the leftover fabric. She loves it!
I have some wonderful friends, they are also long long time friends, and they love to fish. At Christmas, I made a fishing apron for him, and for this summer, I made them a matching bag for gear to take on their boat. (They loved it!)
My sweet niece just had a baby girl, and while I was giving her a bunch of girly-girl clothes, I gave her big brother a big-boy bag for books and toys, with his name hidden (in quilting) on the bag. He loved it!
This one I haven’t given yet – and I am hoping my sweet daughter-in-law doesn’t know about this blog or doesn’t care about this blog and won’t see it before I give it to her next week, full of baby clothes. She taught English in France for a year:
Because I am slow, and because the lady who taught me how to make these is painstaking, and taught us how to line them completely so no seams show, and how to make nice stuffed straps that don’t hurt your shoulders – they take about a day each to make, but they are so wonderful in these days of bring-your-own-bags.
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.
Lenten Cross
I’ve been thinking our church needed a new hanging for Lent. We meet in the basement of a church that is not our own, and we don’t have a lot of things to make it our own. Lent this year is particularly somber, and as I am experimenting with low contrast (because I really love high contrast and I need to challenge myself) I envisioned a lighter purple with texture on a darker purple.
I went straight home from church, pulled out the fabrics and started cutting. After I got the main parts assembled, I needed to let it hang a little bit so I could percolate how I was going to finish it.
The lighter purple is an Italian textured silk I just love. The center is cut from quilter’s plastic, covered with the darker purple and then with the silver fishnet, an effect I just love and reflects Kuwait’s fishing and pearling history.
The priest blessed the cross today, and it can be hung tomorrow.
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.
He Loves My Backsides ;-)
“I really love this fabric,” said my husband, fingering a piece of faded fabric with giraffes striding across the plains. He had just finished telling me about a man he had met and they discovered they were both quilter’s husbands, so they had a lot to talk about, including “har har har” how their wifes said they could quilt when they retired.
“Good reason to keep working,” they concluded.
“Why is it so faded?” he asked, and I reminded him that we live in a bright sunny country, and I keep this quilt wrong side up on the bed so the front part doesn’t fade. I make my quilts to be used, not kept in some dark closet, preserved for the ages. I want my quilts to be worn out. We aren’t going to live forever. I don’t care about a legacy – I want people to enjoy using the quilts I give them. My husband says he wants to be buried in this one.
Sometimes when you are working on a quilt, there are fabrics you love, but they just don’t work in the quilt you are making. That’s what happened with these. I managed to use small scraps of them, but the scale of the giraffe and the guinea fowl was so large that they wouldn’t fit in the pattern I was using. Since this is the first Africa quilt, and I had no idea I would ever make another, I wanted to use up all the Africa / Africa theme fabrics.
“Show me the backing on the newest Africa Quilt” he demanded, so I showed him and he loved those fabrics, too.
He was with me when I bought this one in the airport in Lusaka:
These were pieces I added to complete the back. I am glad I am married to a man who can appreciate fabrics!
Mystery Quilt Mayhem (Part 1)
I admit it. I am a control freak. I did a couple mystery quilts early on in my quilting life and found myself looking at those quilts critically ever after, wishing I had used a darker color here, a lighter color there, etc. I am choosy. I like making choices, and I like enough contrast in just the right places to make a quilt work.
So when our Q8 Quilters announced a mystery quilt, for me it was all like “Ho Hum” until she started telling us about it.
Our first month, we have to make a 20 inch block (20 1/2 inches unfinished) that can be turned on point. We will need about 4 yards of one fabric for the background. We choose our own colors, our own theme – Hey! This sounds interesting, and as challenging as we want it to be. In spite of myself, I was already planning my 20″ block.
I did all the math. I drew it out on my squared paper. I gathered my fabrics and carefully decided where I wanted them to fall in the pattern. I chose a Lone Star Center, because I have all these beautiful snowflake patterns in blue and silver, and I am dying to use them in a very wintery quilt.
It went together fine, and then I placed the insets by machine. Hmmm. Not so good. I did a Lone Star as my second ever quilt (I know, I know, fools rush in) which was in Seminole Colors as a graduation quilt for my son and I remember piecing and repiecing to get all the diamonds to line up. I did all the inset squares and triangles by hand. Now I remember why.
When I finish, my heart sinks. No matter how careful I was, no matter how I planned and measured – the square is more like 24 inches than 20. I don’t know how that happened.
As I am looking at it, and it looks all wonky, I see that I scorched a section as I was ironing. I quickly call my friend who knows everything about home things, and she gave me several suggestions. I tried the baking soda suggestion, and then, as I was rinsing the baking powder out, further disaster struck – my focus fabric, an Alaska-at-midnight blue with silver stars ran all over the crystal pristine white and silver that was to work as a snowflake. Horrors!
It was late in the day. I know there is too much wrong here to salvage, and, thankfully, I have a lot of the fabric; I can do it again.
The next day I started again, using a half inche less in every diamond measurement. I changed a couple fabrics, and I think I like the result. I also set in the setting triangles and squares by hand. Piece of cake.
I had to add a frame to bring it to 20 inches, but I was pleased to come as close as I did, working with so many seams, diagonals and a fixed block size. If anyone knows where there is a chart to tell you what size diamonds to use to get size X Lone Star block, please let me know.
Here are the results:
The one on the top is the one I will use as the Mystery Quilt center. The one on the bottom . . . it needs a little work. I don’t think I will trash it, but I need to think about it for a while.
Church Banner: Nestorian Cross
Our priest asked me to create a banner for the church, and provided some examples of a Nestorian cross, examples of which have been found in the Gulf, and since our church is a church in the Gulf, he thought it would be fitting.
I really wrestled with it for over a year. I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Finally, I threw up my hands, prayed for God to use my hands, and just got started. Honestly, I had no idea when I began how it would finish up.
I started by drafting a very large circle on freezerpaper. I found a piece of fabric that made my heart sing for the background – a sea-life batik, and it was perfect for Kuwait, with the ancient traditions of fishing and pearling. I added a layer of net that catches the light here and there, like the sparkle of the sun on the waves.
Then, I segmented the circle, and gathered up all my neutral silks and beaded and embroidered neutrals, hoping to get a stone mosaic effect for the circle around the cross, and I liked the effect so much, I decided to mosaic the cross, too, to get a more elemental and carved feeling.
While in the original, the circle around the cross comes out from the cross, in my version, the circle is separate.
For something that took me so long . . . meaning the thinking about it took so long – I actually had a lot of fun when I started working on it.
For me, the richness and textures of the fabrics bring to mind the richness and infinite variety of the population here, the rich brew that develops when cultures cross, mix, trans-pollinate – isn’t that what we are supposed to be doing?
God Provides
OK quilters, back me up here. When you walk into a store and all the batiks are on sale at 50% off, isn’t that a sign? Isn’t that God saying “buy batiks?” You know how expensive they always are, right? So when you don’t even know there is a sale and you walk in and see 50% off, it would be like spitting in the eye of a blessing NOT to buy, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?
I was not greedy, nor unreasonable, but joyfully accepted the blessing for what it was. Here is the result:
Are they not beautiful? Wouldn’t you have done the same?
