1 in 8

I love these fabrics?  Aren't they the greatest?  I love them for so many reasons....

My niece-the-quilter gave them to me.
I love pink.
I love that salmon can be pink and that the "white" one is pink when compared to white.
I love the hot pink.  It is really HOT!
I love they are Konas and feel like a dream.
I love that I have leftovers.

Here's what I don't love.
I don't love that we still have to have a month devoted to breast cancer.
I don't love that 1 in 8 of the females reading this blog will get breast cancer (at least in the US).
I don't love that we do not have a cure.
I don't love that too many women I do love have had breast cancer.

If you're a reader of my blog periodically, you may have read this post entitled a Quilter's Fairy Tale last year.  This is a tribute to a special friend who successfully fought IBC (Inflammatory Breast Cancer).  But it was a terrible battle.

This year I happen to be reading the book "The Emperor of All Maladies" by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Subtitled "The Biography of Cancer" -- it is fascinating and horrifying at the same time.  I am particularly interested in the references to breast cancer early in the book.

Would you believe the first documented case of cancer was breast cancer and was noted in an Egyptian papyrus believed to be from the teachings of Imhotep who lived around 2625 BC.  It's a very clinical description.  The next documented case of cancer appears to be IBC and Atossa, the queen of Persia, around 440 BC. What's the irony in that?  The first two cases of documented cancer are still being battled today!

Since it's October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- and this is a pink pink pink quilt -- I'm linking to Amy's Creative Side's Blogger's Quilt Festival.  If you have a chance, check it out.  She does a wonderful job of providing an opportunity for all quilting blogs to post and for us to wander through a quilt show of blogs.  There are prizes and voting and, most of all, inspiration.  I'm going to link under the "Throw" category (I did think about 2 color but I thought that was stretching it!) -- not because I'm soliciting votes but because I hope a bunch of women will read this post and make sure they are doing breast exams and getting mammograms -- and pestering other women they love to do the same.

Details on the quilt:

• Modified from Cozy Modern Quilts by Kim Schaeffer
• 65" x 65"
• 21 shades of pink from Robert Kaufman's Kona line
• Phillip Jacobs fabric for lattice
• Quilted with Lava by Superior (no rush to do that again although I love the color changes)
• Bobbin was So Fine by Superior
• New overall pattern I wanted to try -- learned a lot and will use again

For a giggle -- here's how I started my month!  It's given me some opportunities to talk about breast cancer to people I might not have -- servers in restaurants particularly!  I'm happy to stay they are still intact. I wasn't sure if we would get through the month together.  I now think we will.

I hope you are

Playing with fabric you love
Finding inspiration at the Bloggers Quilt Festival
Doing breast exams and getting mammograms!

Jan

It Takes a Village -- Part 2

It's that time again -- Amy has her fall edition of Blogger's Quilt Festival active for a week, starting today.  If ever you wanted to see an encyclopedia of quilt goodness, it's worth taking a stroll through all the submissions.

I am going to submit my "It Takes a Village" because of what it means to me.  I love this quilt.  I love the women it represents.  I love to quilt.  

Seriously -- take a minute and walk through the incredible quilts and stories over at Amy's Creative Side!

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I am a scrap hound.  I admit it.  I like it.  I profit from it!

I call this quilt "It Takes a Village" for a very special reason.  Only about 40% of this quilt is from my scraps.  The rest have come from my friends in the village where we lived outside Chicago.  It's all batiks and I haven't done much with batiks in the past few years.   A few of them, however, work mainly in batiks (to my advantage, I'd like to say) and aren't particularly fond of small scraps and using them up (to my advantage, I'd like to say!!!!!).

When we would get together to sew, it was always great fun to find a little baggie of snippets.  Some might be a bit too small to use but many could easily become 1.5" squares or greater.  And there was one particular trash basket at MacQuilts house that was always worth going through if I could get there before the cleaning lady.  My goodness, I've found some great scraps in there.  Tsk!  Tsk! 

Even more touching for me have been the times that a package would show up at my door after we moved to Kentucky and there would be baggies of cute little batik goodness in there.  Hence, the name of this quilt.

I did lots of "cutting" for it but not in the usual sense.  I pulled out all my 1.5" squares, some 1.5" strips,  trimmed up all the donated scraps, and started sewing!  This has been such fun.  Between the fabric and the randomness of it, it really was "grab and go" sewing.

The quilt is modeled after Tonya Ricucci's "Lego" quilt that I found on her site about a year ago.  There are a number of posts where she talks about her process and that led to a plethora of similar quilts being made and enjoyed by other quilters.

Basically, these are 10.5" blocks that are set 6 x 6 so the quilt finishes at 60" square.  As I started to lay it out, I wasn't thrilled with the fairly apparent demarcation where all the blocks were coming together vertically, so I changed the setting a bit.  The first row is six 10" blocks.  The second row starts with a half block followed by five 10" blocks and ends with another half block.  That breaks it up a bit.  You can certainly still see the blocks when you look but it's a bit less obvious. The third row is six 10" blocks and so on.

As I laid the blocks out, I actually looked for places where the "logs" were the same fabric end-to-end -- or at least similar.  This is the first time in my quilting life that I wanted same fabrics touching!  That helped break the lines a bit more.  As you can see in the red piece here in the corner, there are two blocks there but the same fabric is a bit of a fooler unless you look closely.

So -- I love this quilt.  It's really not mine.  I made it but the fabric was from special people who are now in Chicago, Iowa, and the Bluegrass area of Kentucky.  My intention (once I get it labeled and washed) is that it goes to them.  It can travel among MacQuilts, CookingMama, Mom22SmartChix, MyNeicetheQuilter, LogCabinQuilter, and ShirasGram.  They can keep it as long as they want (years!) and then pass it on to the next one.  I certainly don't need it -- I've had my joy in looking at the fabric, playing with them, remembering the person that shared them, and often recalling the project they were used in.  Aren't quilting friends the best?

I would absolutely make this quilt again.  It's a great way to use those 1.5" strips of all sizes and walk down memory lane.  I hope you're finding time to be creative and remember those you enjoy sharing your quilting with!  Jan

Life lessons from fabric

Welcome if you are coming over from Amy's Bloggers' Quilt Festival.  Often it's so hard to decide which quilt to showcase, but it wasn't this time.  Many of you will have seen this quilt recently in this post but if I think back on the quilts I've made/finished in the last six months, this one makes me smile!  A lot.

Let's start with the fact that the scraps from the trimming are my "avatar" in my blog heading!  That should tell me something.  When I thought the leftovers that were too too too tiny to repurpose were beautiful, it means I was loving the fabrics and the quilt.  And I was.

This is from Victoria at Bumblebeans and a tutorial that she created. When I saw her quilt and the others that popped up afterwards, I immediately started collecting solids.  I even used them in a challenge with two friends in order to buy more.  That's explained in the original post.

I pin.  I measure.  I like matchy-matchy.  I prewash fabrics.  I like to iron fabric.  I starch.  I rip if it doesn't suit me.  I am not a perfect quilter -- far from it.  Lightyears from it, actually.

But this quilt and process opened up pockets of freedom that I don't normally use.  No need to pin.  Eyeballing is close enough.  Trimming supersedes cutting...why take the time to be fussy!  It was so much fun and went so fast.

I smile every time I see this quilt and even unfold it occasionally to look at it.  I've decided that I will hang it so that I can see it more often -- and others can as well.  So - this time, it was easy to decide which quilt I wanted to share.

I hope you are making quilts that are giving you joy and expanding your horizons and teaching you all kinds of lessons -- both life lessons and quilt lessons.  This wave runner has definitely done all that for me!

Keep piecing!  Jan

Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

As you can see, I'm linking to Amy's Creative Side's Bloggers Quilt Festival.  There are lots and lots of wonderful quilts featured...so be sure to check it out.  You won't be sorry but you will need an extra Diet Coke or cup of tea!  She's an incredibly creative quilter and sponsors this opportunity for additional sharing among bloggers throughout the world!

This little quilt has had a long and unwanted life.  I finished it about 2 years ago and even put the binding on -- just didn't stitch it down.  I loved it but never could decide "who" it should be gifted to.  So, it lingered in the UFO pile and I'd pull it out, do a little stitching on the binding, and put it up.  It was truly an orphan.

I had finally decided that our four poster bed needed a quilt and that one done in 30's reproduction fabrics would be perfect.  This block has lots of names, I think, but it was called "Grandmother's Choice" in the pattern book I found.  I downsized the blocks to finish at 5" because I thought smaller blocks were more appropriate for the tiny motifs in the fabrics.  I calculated I would need 72 pieced blocks for the full size bed.

I WAS WRONG!  By about half, I think.  Ultimately, I made the 72 blocks and started to lay out the quilt and all of a sudden, it was a large lap and a long way from being a full size quilt with some drape.  I was done -- I had no desire to repeat history and make more blocks.  It was time to move on and do something else.  All of that probably contributed to my apathy in getting it done and presented to someone.

But, the good news is that "all's well that ends well".  Our search for a home has been a journey with lots of twists and turns and our realtor has been a gem.  We have used her twice before and she's been wonderful when we decided to retire and return to Kentucky but couldn't find a home that met what I was looking for.  She actually "cold called" the people that ultimately sold us their home.  She had seen a "for sale by owner" sign months earlier and knew the location and size were what we were looking for so she called to see if they would like to do a private listing for some "out of town" clients.

Once our sale was final, she scheduled some much needed and fairly serious surgery.  My husband asked if we had a quilt for her as a token of thanks and I knew exactly which one to give her.  We just had to have  our furniture delivered so I could find it!  All I had to do was finish the binding to give it to her before her surgery this week.  I think this must have been who it had been waiting for as it's perfect for her.  So - it has a home, she has a snuggle quilt to use in her recovery over the next month, and I'm happy it's finally where it needs to be.

I hope you're finding lots of time to quilt (and are NOT having math issues!).  Jan

PS - don't you love the shadow of the "invisible man" behind the quilt?

And yet again....

I had to make it!  I don't remember the name of the book that this is from but I saw a sample on a wall at a shop and it began to dance in my head.  Again!  I would go back and visit and think about fabrics and finally started cutting the strips.

This is not strip pieced in the way you might think (and I thought at first).  Instead, you create two strips (staggered at the ends to account for the diagonal cut you're going to make) and sew them together at the top and botton (so you really have a tube).  You then cut the "tube" into a triangle and pick out the stitches at the peak of the triangle.  When it's opened you have a square....and you have homespuns on the bias with no foundation.  So, for this to work, you have to use WOF strips and not the "scraps" we normally have for foundation piecing string quilts.

I got really weary of this and all the sewing and put it up for two years.  I'm pleased to say I pulled it out in a fit of "finishing" last year and perservered to finish it.  I really like it but it lost some of it's appeal when I got tired of sewing, cutting, and re-sewing along the way.  The sashing is great,I think, and does a great job of stabilizing the blocks.  You can see just a bit of the piano key border -- which was a great way to use up scraps, thank goodness.  I had oodles.

My learnings are that maybe homespuns weren't a good choice for this type of construction.  Batiks would be great because they are not 'wishy washy' fabrics and they have a mind of their own.  But, too much sewing makes Jan a tired chick and that's what happened here.  I started getting pulled to new projects when I thought this might never end.  I have a few others of these out there and hope to get the finishing push back one of these days.

I'm happy to say I have one more complete and on the shelf and, by the way, it's heavy!!!  Between the seams and homespuns -- there's a lot of fabric in here.

I hope you have your mojo in full swing (who wouldn't after looking at all the amazing quilts at Amy's Bloggers Quilt Festival).

Keep piecing, Jan

Bloggers Quilt Festival -- a first for me

Bloggers Quilt Festival, hosted by Amy at Amy's Creative Side (link at end of post), is a brilliant idea (and I'm sure loads of work).  Here are two terrible pictures of a quilt that completely fits the bill of a quilt that has meaning.  I hope to get better daylite pix if it will ever quit raining -- but I wanted you to see my birthday quilt.  I love this quilt.  It's not fancy...it's not intricate...it's not even color balanced.  But when I look at it, I hear stories in my head.

Some of you may have read an earlier post about my 60th birthday last year when I asked my very small family to each give me one FQ of any fabric that reminded them of me or something we had done together.  All I wanted was the fabric and the reason written in a card.  NO PRESENTS as I had too much stuff and I would use the FQs to make a quilt for me.

This is the quilt.

So, how do you take 8 FQ that range from a pastel homespun to batiks to a flannel and come up with anything congruent?  I decided that I needed a lot of neutral and some way to tie them together but keep them apart.  Each of the 8 outer blocks is from a FQ (altho my husband cheated a bit and gave me two batiks for two separate reasons which is why one corner block has both red and yellow in it).  The center block is the "family" block and contains all of the fabrics placed randomly.

It was a wonderful day.  I would open a card, admire the fabric, silently read the note, weep a bit, admire the fabric some more and maybe we would talk about the "why" and maybe keep it to ourselves.  My nieces took two opposite approaches.  One recalled something we used to do together in church on Sundays and looked for a fabric with a specific motif.  The other (the quilter) went to the FQ section and slowly looked at the fabric without knowing what she was looking for but being "open" to it.  And, one particular fabric caught her eye, caused her to recall a particular piece of clothing I used to wear during a time that had meaning for her.  I love them both. I even love the brown flannel with bright green and orange dinosaurs that was given on behalf of my yet to be born grandson (first grandchild!) because they were sure that "F" would love dinosaurs.

So -- for me, I have the quilt and I have a treasure trove of notes from my immediate family -- each with a corner of fabric stapled to it.

I love this quilt!  Amy, thanks so much for the chance to post for the first time to Bloggers Quilt Festival. I am not likely to get the button to work so here's the link to some incredible quilts and blogs.  Worth every minute of your time!  http://amyscreativeside.com/2011/05/13/bloggers-quilt-festival-spring-2011/

Keep piecing, Jan