Taking Time To Bring Some Order out of Chaos

I have the two tops finished, and am getting ready to quilt, which means MAJOR CLEAN UP TIME; I like a clear table top when I quilt and all my extraneous stuff has to be put away. Meanwhile, I am also cutting out bags – quilts for the Pensacola Quilt Guild Show must each have their own bag – and so I had to take down my batting bin. And I had to open each piece to see if I had enough for one of the quilts (I did.)

As I was putting them back, I thought “I do this all the time, open up, measure . . . why don’t I just label them like I used to?” So I took a minute – well, maybe five minutes, but barely – and labeled quilt leftovers so I would know what I have without undoing and measuring every time.

Ah! I feel so orderly!

Jewel Box Pieces

Here are the pieces for the Jewel Box:

Starring the half square triangle, which I chose to be 4″ finished:

The four patch, which I chose to be made of pieces cut 2 1/2 inches to total 4″ completed:

Each four patch is united with a half square triangle:

Completed component (1/4 of the finished block)

Completed block is composed of four component blocks, above, each rotated to complete the box:

My all time favorite quilt book is “It’s OK If You Sit on my Quilt” by Mary Ellen Hopkins, and I like it because it helped me quilt without having to follow someone else’s idea of how my quilt should be. When I found a jewel box pattern, it was bigger than I wanted, so I scaled it down. This jewel box pattern is a great practice for your first effort at changing scale, because the size you choose for your four patch and your half square triangle changes everything. You could use 1″ blocks, or you could use 12″ inch blocks, and the pattern would remain the same, only the scale would change.

I’ve seen this quilt done with a light background and with a dark background. I made one big mistake right at the beginning; I cut the half square triangle background out of a dark navy blue and the 2 1/2 inch background squares out of black. If I had it to do over again, they would be the same fabric.

If you want the variations in color, you will need small amounts of a LOT of fabrics; this is a great opportunity to ask for small donations from your quilting friends. What is fun is that you later can look at the quilt and remember who gave you that perfect shade of coral, or fuchsia, or pistachio, or parrot, that icy blue. I have a dress I love, ruined by a drop of bleach; a piece of that dress is in my quilt.

As I look at the completed top, below, I am reminded that classic patterns have their own timelessness and elegance, and can look totally different from one another, depending on fabric choices. I would do this one again in a heartbeat; I love the diagonal lines created by the half square triangles.

Quilting Bee

“No,” I said as nicely and firmly as I could, “No, but thank you for thinking of me.”

I had been invited to join a quilting group, and you’d think with being retired now I would have hours to fill, but I find just the opposite. I used to have hours and hours, empty hours, to fill, and I spent a lot of them quilting and going to groups. Now . . . I am spending more time with my husband, and going to exercise, and with my grandson, and . . .

I’d heard such wonderful things about this group, but I can’t commit to a time-consuming group, and honestly, I quilt better on my own; I get more done.

“Just let me tell you a little about our group,” she persisted pleasantly. I couldn’t help it, I liked this woman, I liked her polite persistence, I liked the sound of her voice, and that she didn’t let me go with my ‘no.’

The more she told me about the group, the more my heart knew it was an opportunity, not an obligation. The more I learned, the less I felt ‘no’ and the more I felt ‘yes.’ For one thing, they sound like women I would really like. For another, they do a lot of charity quilts, and I really like doing charity quilts. Third, they only meet once a month for two hours. Wooo HOOO! Better and better.

Then I met with them, and oh, I liked them all a lot. These are good women, the kind of quilters I like, their minds all over the map. They laugh a lot. They like each other. They have a great show and tell, and the group is small enough we can all touch and ask questions.

I found myself excited about quilting again, encouraged and inspired. I joined the group happily, and I look forward to their meetings! I’ve completed three quilts since I joined!

I still have to grin when I think of how firmly I said no, and how pleasantly the leader persisted. She didn’t know me. I wonder how she knew I was right for the group? But by the time she was through with me, I believed she was right. I am loving being a part of this group.

Cool Threads and Everything Else

I am working on a Pensacola Quilt Guild challenge; each quilter was given a 5″ square. The challenge is that in the quilt you make, you must only use the colors you find in that 5″ square. Actually, there were a lot of colors to work with, or at least, there were a lot of colors I work with often. I can’t show you the quilt yet.

When I went to quilt it, I had to go through all four boxes of threads. Four boxes you ask?

My Kuwaiti quilting friend helped me organize my quilting room; we went to Daiso, a Japanese dollar-store like shop, and found just the right boxes, two very flat boxes for “shiny threads” and two larger boxes for piecing threads and flatter, more matte threads.

Everyone has his or her own system. My machine quilting threads are Hot or Cool; cool mostly referring to colors of the sea, I seem to do a lot of those. My piecing threads are Colors of the Sea and Everything Else, LOL.

Or at least that’s what I thought until I started to write this entry. Looking at all my threads in these photos, I discovered that they are all either blue/green/purple or they are everything else. I guess it shows me where my priorities are.

Stash Reorganization For the New Year

I usually do this the first week of the New Year, but I got a little behind trying to make sure I finished White Ties and Tails. I have a new project in mind, and I need to get started, it’s a guild challenge with a deadline, but I can’t work as long as my area is in disorder, and it is. I have some folding and sorting and putting away to do so I can find the fabrics and tools that I need when I need them.

It takes a full day to get things in order. I took a photo because the stash won’t stay in order for very long. And no, this isn’t all of it. There is a plastic tub of ‘shiny fabrics’ and another of batiks and a smaller one of Kona solids. Now I have a better idea of what I have to work with.

Lining Up Projects

I have a lot to do, Christmas coming, a baby coming and a wedding coming, and at least one house guest coming, so I need to be organized and methodical in my approach.

I know what I want to do for the wedding bags, so I have cut out the tops and linings, so that they are ready to go:

I am washing the fabrics for the baby quilt, and I have figured out how to cut the pieces so that all the cat tails will interlock

Meanwhile, I have a quilt part-quilted, and I need to clear that one out of the way before I head into these next two projects:

I keep it out where I have to look at it every day so I will get busy and DO it. So far, not so good, but I am building up to finishing it.

I miss my huge old quilting room.

Hard to Believe it’s the Same Room

Here is what it looks like now – all ready for houseguests:

Momcat and Hayfa – here is YOUR room, just waiting for you.

Hayfa, come in early January. I will plan to need your help! Or come Dec 30th; I am teaching a class on the Sloppy Stars; you can help, LOL!

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!

Minutes to Spare

I can’t tell you off the top of my head the number of times I have moved. I guess I don’t want to think about it. It is always massive, lots of lists of things to do, lots to go through, chuck out, sell, pack up . . . I always think about the old joke about “How do you eat an elephant?” (Answer) One bite at a time.

With quilting, one bite at a time works, too. It’s how you actually get things finished. Here is just a short list of things you can do when you have ten minutes before you have to be out the door:

• design a block in your ever-present squared notebook

• figure out fabric requirements for the quilt size you want

• figure out how many strips of binding you will need for the quilt you need to get finished

• spin bobbins for your current project

• prepare some practice quilt bats for warming up before you quilt

• Practice a new quilting motif

• computer design a label for your quilt

• print off the label for copying later on the light table

• cut a binding

• attach a binding (be sure to wear an apron if you are already dressed for something special)

• clear off your sewing table

• sort your threads

• organize your needles (machine / metallic, hand quilting, embroidery)

• cut scraps into usable squares

• put away some fabrics

(DO NOT get started looking for just the right fabric! You can lose hours that way!)

Please! This list is not complete! Add YOUR suggestions for how a quilter can use ten extra minutes to make life easier and more organized!

Alanna’s Orphans

Don’t you just love people who, instead of talking about “wouldn’t it be nice if somebody . . . ”  say instead “I can make a difference?” 

I want to introduce you to  Alanna’s Orphans and to Alanna. Alanna is a Canadian member of our Q8Quilters (how cool is that? I have lived in TWO countries that start with a “Q” counting Q8!) whose husband came back from a trip into Northern Iraq just full of stories about an orphanage he had visited here, and how moved he was, and how badly he wanted to help.

I want you to go to her site. Just click on the blue type above, and go read her story.

Our Quilting Guild (the Q8Quilters, remember?), sponsored by our parent organization, the Kuwait Textile Arts Association, have committed to donate at least 20 quilts, around 55″ x 75″ for the orphans, ages between 5 and 15. It makes my heart sing to be involved in such a wonderful project.

We are doing it in March! Quiltmakers month! March 24 we will gather from 9 am to 9 pm to cut, sew, sandwich, quilt, and bind a minimum of 20 quilts. The truth is . . . it’s going to be a lot of fun. When quilters get together, there is SO much laughter! And (ahem) there is always food, really good food, there is always CHOCOLATE!

I am going to create a separate page with instructions for some of the very simple quilts we are going to create for this project, so that if you ever need simple quilts, you can use these very elementary instructions. I will also try to post some of the quilts we come up with for the orphanage.

But hurry now! Go read Alanna’s blog!