Clean and packed!

Can you tell what this is?  Yep -- it's quilts and a few wall hangings.  The packers come on Monday and we move on Tuesday.  Oh my.  That's another post in and of itself.

This whole moving thing is a pain as you know.   Instead of being focused on my china or my clothes, I've been focused on my quilts and my quilting.

These are all the quilts we have (other than the one on our bed and one that I'm taking to tempoary living for the next 2 months).  Most have been washed (not the vintage ones), folded, and put inside 100% cotton pillowcases for safekeeping. 

The pillowcases have their own stories.  Can you see the tatting on some?  Many of these are pillowcases that have outlasted the matching sheets or were made by my grandmother as her creative outlet.  That's all well and good -- except that today's pillows and feather pillows of days gone by are very different sizes.  So, generally they have languished in the linen closet.  You can't get rid of a pillowcase that your grandmother handstitched -- everbody knows that!  :-)

I remember her going to the local dry goods store and buying the pre-printed panels and then hand stitching up the sides and hemming them.  She was always so pleased to give my sister or me a set and you can see some of them here.  Others have tatting or crochet added to them and were wedding gifts years and years ago.  They've yellowed and can't really be bright white again -- although I have not tried bleach and probably won't.

For now -- they serve an important purpose.  My quilts are way too precious to trust to the packers without making sure they are clean and protected.  I want them to be usable as soon as we have a new home and beds to make.  In the meantime, they'll be in storage and as protected as I can make them without putting them in my car and lugging them everywhere I go. 

There are 18 pillowcases on the bed -- and I've given a few quilts away.  That, too, is another post for another day. How many quilts do I really need?  Hmmmmm -- at least 20 if I have 2 that aren't packed!

Have a wonderful weekend and keep quilting.  Today I put off the dreaded task of servicing my Bernina and putting her away as well.  My little Janome Jem and I will be moving to temporary housing together along with more projects than I can possibly get done.  My biggest fear (slightly overstated) was that I would get in this apartment and not have things to work on.  I think I have that covered! 

Keep piecing!  Jan

Lessons Learned

 Here's a walk down memory lane that's full of all kinds of early quilting memories -- and many of them not too good!

This is the first quilt I ever tried to make my own.  I was completely self taught (via books and magazines) and did not know one single quilter I could ask for advice or guidance. 

My lessons learned:
1.  I used cheap fabrics
2.  I used cheap muslin for the neutral (like cheesecloth!)
3.  I didn't understand 1/4" seam allowance and didn't even try to achieve it
4.  I didn't have any idea how to do the setting squares
5.  I started hand quilting and over quilted it -- thinking that I would do cross hatching 1" apart.  That never happend -- I lost my mojo after completing one direction.
6.  I had gaps where the squares were so poorly constructed that there was batting showing.
7.  I didn't understand color layout and placement and should have made some different decisions in order to have a secondary pattern.
8.  All I had to go by was a black and white picture in a magazine with no cutting instructions.

It was a mess!  I worked on this forever and became very disheartened because I had taken on so much with so little knowledge and certainly no standards on construction.

I pretty much did everything wrong that could be done wrong.  I've kept it for years as a reminder and finally donated it, as is.  I was ready to move on and I certainly remember all my mistakes. 

In some ways, I think I'm a better quilter as a result of so many mistakes in one quilt. My second and third quilts weren't even close to good -- but I was able to course correct various errors noted above as I went. 

I hope you are quilting with great abandon and precision (if that floats your boat!).  Jan

I spy with my little eye

I should call this post "Alpha and Omega" because this is the first and last one of these I will make.  It's a first birthday quilt for our grandson and it certainly is bright.  And it's not very big and I'm OK with that!

I should not complain -- the smaller hexagons were donated by a quilter from a chat room that I followed.  I believe her mom cut these for a quilt she was never able to make.  So -- a post appeared one day with the offer of the hexagons to the first requestor.  I was lucky enough to be first and she quickly forwarded them to me.  I had started cutting the larger ones with a template and realized this was going to take forever.  I don't tend to use novelty fabrics except for an occasional pillowcase.  So -- as a result of her generosity, this quilt was finished last week

With all that said -- it was a pain to figure out what the dimensions for the smaller setting triangles needed to be.  Lots of trials, errors, ripping and then figuring out that I could cut them from a 2.25" strip.  It took me a while to realize how I should position the bias of the triangles since this is put together in rows with no inset seams.  Way too many bias pieces to suit me -- thank goodness for silk pins.

So -- I like it and am glad it's done.  Don't you love this nurse with attitude?  I asked a friend for this piece when I saw a quilt she was working on for her daughter's teacher (or someone).  Anyway, I love her and wanted her in the quilt!

I hope you are piecing and are keeping your "attitude" as well.  Jan

Asian fabrics

 Don't you just love them?  There is something so wonderful about the saturation of color, intricacy of design, and the absolute beauty of most Asian fabrics.  I don't know about you but I find them hard to cut into and then I want to use every little piece to make sure there is no waste.

I saw this quilt at a LQS and fell in love with it.  I knew it was just a matter of time until I had to make one.  But it was hard to cut those beautiful florals into strips and the leftovers are still together in a small shoe box. I just can't mainstream them yet.

I do believe that I could start a buying frenzy all over again if I got in the right "mood". 

For this quilt, I tried something I had not done before and will not rush to do again.  The quilting thread is white for the "white" portion of the quilt and dark for the patterned portion.  That was a lot of changing as I rolled the quilt up and down the frame.  In the end, it was probably worth it because I wanted the "purity" of a white-white and I didn't want a light thread to take away from the deep rich colors of the florals.  But it was a pain!

I do like this pattern and am considering it again in scraps so that the lights and darks are not so controlled.  What do you think?  Will that take away from the pattern or just change the "feel".  I have made a lot of log cabin quilts (neutrals, Christmas, scrappy, and have another scrappy in the making).  I do love using those strips I've cut from leftover fabric!

I hope you're piecing and quilting to your heart's content, Jan

Reflections

This has been quite the week.  On two separate blogs that I follow with quilters who are separated by half the world, two young men they loved died.  One in his 20's took his own life and the other in his late teens died suddenly in his sleep - presumably of natural causes.  But when you say "natural causes" about any young person's death -- it's not true.  There is nothing "natural" about that.

It has been heartwarming and reaffirming to see the support and caring that has gone out to both of these talented quilters.  Although in these minutes, they are not 'quilters' to us - they are mothers with broken hearts.  It gives me pause to think about how much we learn about each other as daily or weekly or monthly comments are posted to blogs.  There are hints in references to family member, work, location, trials, etc.  Some of us are very open with who we are and what we do and where we are.  Others, more circumspect.  But, nevertheless, there are links that begin to form as family members are mentioned, personal events shared, etc.  And, so, when someone we know from our computers has pain and shares it, we feel pain with them.

If this were someone we knew personally -- we would give them a quilt.  But these are generally people we will never meet, haven't seen pictures of, and there is no physical connection -- just a personal one from reading about their lives. So, instead of a quilt, we give them comments, we offer prayers, we send good wishes, and we hope for better days for them.

I feel remarkably blessed in so many ways and these unexpected and tragic deaths are such a good reminder of how lucky we all are and how important our friends and family are to us.

I hope you feel equally blessed today, Jan

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