Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2014: Everything's coming up roses

I have finished exactly ONE quilt since the beginning of the year so my options for the Spring 2014 Blogger's Quilt Festival were a bit limited.  Unfortunately, I have also already blogged about the quilt twice. 

The first time was for 52 Photos Project prompt A Crooked Line & the second time was for a Block Lotto linky post about color.  So without further ado here is the quilt I made as a gift to the couple who had my cow bred (so folksy, right).  He is the Dexter cattle fan (& rancher) but she has a landscaping business with a special interest in heirloom roses so my primary fabric choice was easy-peasy (it was not until afterwards that I thought about how many Einstein-themed gifts we get-they were still very gracious about it).



It may not be obvious at first glance (I think it is, but I already know) but this block is a revamp of a Block Lotto block I have taken to calling 8:56 (four to nine).   The original block pattern begins with equal parts of two fabrics & then a narrow slice is taken top to bottom & another side to side there is some flipping & voilà.  I am beyond fond of this pattern & have made several times it before & I am certain I will make it over & over again & even give this variation another roll.

In this most recent incarnation, I played with the dimensions of that center slice making it gradually wider as I worked my way out from the center.  I was mostly interested in seeing how the larger cuts actually diminished the punch of color; the highest contrast seems, to me anyhow, to be in the blocks with the most unequally sized individual pieces.  Because I varied the size of the cuts there is just that one center seam to match (except that one place where I accidentally bumped two blocks with the same size cuts up against each other WHOOPS!) so this quilt went together super-quick.  After al that cutting is done which can be exhausting.

As for the quilting:  the fabric had a vaguely geometric quality & I wanted to pick that up.  I used a wide piece of bleached white muslin so no center seam would interrupt the design (which was just a happy accident).  I made several starkly triangle "roses" in a variegated pink to yellow thread & then outlined them in dark green thread making ever larger triangles until they started bumping up against each other & then I threw in some jagged thorns in between.  I was going for a sharply angled bouquet sort of look, but I am not sure it worked. 

The quilting (& the piecing for that matter) was done on my Bernina 153 which I still love.  I have flirted with getting a new machine, but somehow they never feel right; this machine is the right size for me.  On the small side by today's standards, I can still jam a queen sized quilt through it if need be. 

This quilt finished at just over 54" x 54".  The fabrics are all cottons mostly from my scrap basket except of course for the yardage of that rose fabric.  The batting is 70% cotton/30% polyester (my preferred batting for quick free-motion quilting).  The thread was a YLI variegated & a Sulky solid dark green.

& as I said when we went to pick up our dairy cow (baby due in December fingers crossed), they took such wonderful care of her I wanted to say extra-thank you.  Because while Cow-girl is standoffish & maybe even ill-suited to the whole backyard diary thing she is MY cow & I love her. 

I have entered this quilt in the Home Machine Quilted category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  & because I adds up to 216" all around, it is also in the Small Quilts category. 

Quilter's confetti

Let's blog about fabric

My cough lingers, but most of everything else that has made me so uncomfortable has fallen away.  Not a moment too soon, either, as I am behind on way-too-many things.  So naturally I spent  a good chunk of my first real feel-good day in the sewing room.  & rounding it out with a Block Lotto-Linky Party post about fabric.

I don't know that I have anything to say about fabric that I have not said before...over & over again.    I am addicted to novelties, the more off-beat the better.  Flamingos on bicycles, mushrooms doing arithmetic.  FYI: I am still looking for more of that hot dogs dressed on barbecue aprons barbecuing hotdogs that I am almost out of, so if anyone happens across some let me know.

Lately I have been on a Thursday Next themed fabric quest.  Clocks & cheese (not, alas in the same print) have been easy.  More difficult is fabric with dodos, Neanderthals but I am optimistic.


People often ask what I do with novelties & the answer is pretty much everything you would do with a not-novelty.  Block patterns of large simple graphic shapes work really well with crazy patterned fabric.  One of my favorites is an old Block Lotto block I have made more than once.  Most recently with saturated pink roses (boring!), but also successfully with simple chickens in head kerchiefs speaking French (good stuff!). 

My novelty addiction started small.  Well, not small, but specific.  I was cruising through a book, The Modern Quilt Workshop & I discovered the Story Quilt.  It is clear that this quilt was probably designed for a child, but I didn't see it that way.  Right away it looked like something I wanted to make & wanted to keep. 

As it happens I have never kept one, but I have made them for all kinds of people, including kids...& mothers (my mother!) & physicists (my husband, my brother).  It is my go-to quilt when a new small-person (they aren't all babies, some of them are adopted internationally) arrives in my circle.  Years ago I posted this picture of one I made for a brand new baby girl; this time next month she will be a big sister.

In those early days, my novelty fabric purchases were limited to what could be viewed in a 3" square, but those early days were brief.  Almost immediately I began to expand the images, which meant expanding them in the quilt.  usually I limit most squares to 3", but I toss a few 9" squares in there for fun. 

& that's all  I've got.  Oh wait-I keep my fabric sorted by themes, mostly:  people, buildings, scenery.  Within some categories I have sub categories.  As in aquatic- animals- mammals.  Most of my fabric is out on open shelves, one shelf deep from the ceiling.  This way I can see it with tripping over it, or I would be able to if I ever put anything away.

Let's blog about color

This month's Block Lotto-Linky title is "Let's Blog About Color" & I thought this revisit of an old Block Lotto block would work nicely.  The block (& maybe you can tell) is the one I have called 8:56 (four to nine) & we lottoed them in March 2011. 

I like this block a lot (obviously) & have started mixing it up with other favorite things.  First, I like to use a single fabric for 1/2 of all the blocks (each block has only two fabrics).  I am crazy for oddball novelties & I think they work well in 8:56.

Another thing I like about this block & the quilt pattern is the balance: there are equal parts of each of the two fabrics in every block, but it doesn't always feel that way.  & most of the reason it doesn't feel that way is the colors.  Some colors recede & some stand up & shout.  For a long time that back & forth was enough (you can see my favorite example here).  I made the block more or less as originally described, all blocks exactly the same except for the 2nd fabric. 

This time I thought I would mix it up.  I made many many many large (12.5") 4-patch blocks using a fuchsia & chartreuse rose fabric.  But when I made the second cut, instead of cutting each block in exactly the same way, I cut different size strips from the center.  Each block has either a 1.5". 2", 2.5" or 3" strip cut & flipped (if you are interested in the directions I started with, they are here) making the 9-patch from a 4-patch.  

Although there are some fabric repeats, I made sure to cut them with different center dimensions.  In other words each & every block in the quilt has exactly the same amount of each fabric, but they are all mixed up.  Then I tried to line them up with no two equal-cut blocks next to each other but I was not quite successful because....

Because I don't use a design wall.  I had a design wall & I found I rarely used it.  I forced myself to use it & was very unhappy with the results (but I am not telling which quilt it was, so there!).  My intention is to make quilts that get used, on beds, couches, under dogs...  & I found with a design wall I spent too much time evening things out while my preference is for patterns that are a bit more irregular.  For me, the choppiness works better especially as it is rare that someone get a good look at an entire quilt top anyhow (yes, quilt photos on this blog are an exception); most of the time, you just see a corner, or a band & I make my quilts to be best seen by the person using them.  Choppy is how I work & choppy is how it will be seen ever after.

But back to color.  Because this is a blog about color. 

I like to work with colors that blend together.  Honest, I do.  Which means when I am working with a high volume color (like fuchsia or chartreuse), I more or less limit myself to high volume colors. & then I like to throw in a good old fashioned neutral to make things pop. 

Notice the brightest thing in that quilt top of saturated yellows & acid greens & every variation on hot pink I could locate.  That's right, it is plain old background white.  Because color is all relative, at least to my eye. 

52 Photos Project: Crooked Line

I prefer machine quilting to hand quilting (you would have to look pretty hard to find an example of my hand quilting, in part because I usually disguise it with machine quilting).  My preferred method of machine quilting is not exactly free-motion & not exactly not-free motion.  It has been called -not by me, at least not originally- yoni quilting, but I usually call it free motion with walking foot.

Lately I have been working in sharper angles & aiming for nice straight lines.  I guess practice will make close-to-perfect, but in the meantime I still have plenty of crooked lines. 

This is the back of a old block lotto block quilt (the front will be revealed later this week).  I have taken to using plain white muslin for quick-backs.  It is well-sized, wears well, etc.  The only drawback is it shows every single mistake, so I am learning to live with them. 

Bloggers Quilt Festival Autumn 2013: Bird Trap, the first

Ordinarily I try to put something not before posted in the Blogger's Quilt Festival but I am still in love Love LOVE with the Bird Trap Quilt.  So everyone who has had too much of this quilt, just scroll through & look at the pictures (they are mostly new, I promise) but for new-to-Bird-Trapers here is the short version:

I became enamored of an image of a quilt I saw in a book (Maude Wahlman's Signs & Symbols: African Images in African American Quilts), specifically Pecolia Warner's Bird Trap Quilt which I am pretty sure resides at The Belger Arts Center in Kansas City, Mississippi although I have never seen it in person. You can see a close up of the inspiration for my Bloggers Quilt Festival entry here, but if you are really interested there are more pictures in the book or even better you could call The Belger Arts Center (something I have never done) & ask them if you could see it in person.

& before I get even more distracted with the story of this quilt, let me give the vitals.  This quilt measures  56" wide by 60" tall more or less.  It was pieced & quilted on my home machine a Bernina 153.  Bird Trap was assembled this year (2013) using blocks that were also made in 2013 mostly although the first samples were made in late 2012.  I entered bird Trap in the Autumn 2013 Blogger's Quilt Festival scrappy quilts & home machine quilted quilts.  When I entered this quilt in a show earlier this year, I put it in art quilts, but only because it didn't really fall into the other categories, which were mostly variations on pieced.

The blocks came more or less right out of my head, after being kick started by the original, with the exception of the pieced birds.  Those birds are NOT foundation pieced, they came from a Block Lotto pattern earlier this year that I altered (big surprise).  The quilt top is all cotton....I think.  I spent some time rooting round in old remnant bins, scrap bags, etc. & the origin of that black & white gingham is a bit sketchy. 

The back of the quilt is a single piece of bleached muslin, with leftover bird trap parts making the label.  There really isn't much to see here except maybe the quilting, which is my lazy version of corner to corner (I neither mark the lines, nor do I always go all the way to the corner).

The arrangements of the blocks was even less organized.  I started with a center block, thinking it would be a 3x3 arrangement.  I picked my nine blocks.  They were, if you are curious the three blocks in the middle of the top row  & the two rows of three that kinda fall beneath them.  Then I got distracted making birds & sort of swung those in at the side & then the lower left birds became a panel & then it all went to hell.  When I said this all to my husband he said he could see it, the off-center center & the pushed out sides & maybe you can, too.

Now for the quilt story extended mix: I fell so immediately & completely for the elements of this block pattern that I have trouble seeing it today without wondering what is WRONG with people who are not similarly afflicted.  On the flip side my mother said she thought this was one of the ugliest things she had ever seen anyone do on purpose & label "art"*.  I like to think she has since changed her mind; she certainly came on board when I started putting up pictures of blocks based oh-so-loosely on the original.  I say oh-so-loosely because I more or less skipped over the historical references, meanings & went straight to listing the shapes & other varieties that most of the blocks had in common.  Yes, I am a philistine. 

So that it part one.  Part two is that the Facebook Quilt Block Swap group, while more popular every day had become a bit of a snooze for me.  I was sort of tired of thinking up limited feature blocks or themes or whatever & throwing them out there.  There has to be some unifying feature after all, a particular block or range of colors or whatever & it began to feel same-y  Don't get me wrong I enjoy it more than I don't (I wouldn't do it if I didn't, it's not like I get paid), it's just that by the time any swap actually happens I am sick of looking at it.

In my defense, I make several of every block whether I like it or not, in order to work out the written directions, etc. & I often get to the other end wishing I could start over with something just a bit further down the creative road.  I think I heard/read once that Alex Van Halen wished they could record the album at the end of the tour after they had really explored the music but of course, if you do that no one comes to the concert because they don't know what you are playing & that is just bad business.  Despite being a drummer, I suspect AVH might have more brains than a bag of hair-not that I think drummers are stoopid, my husband was a drummer & he is smarter than most people about most things. .

Where was I?  Oh right, Alex Van Halen if he ever said that & if he were a quilter syndrome.  So I was percolating a year-long, less guidance from me type swap (which became the Rainbow Connection & was hugely popular, if you are curious) & in the way these things happen -to me anyhow- instead of one idea I ended up with two & I couldn't really decide which was better.  So I floated them both.  As I said Rainbow Connection caught like a wildfire & I think I could run it another year, but I am not going to because even with minimal guidance from me I am a little burned out on ROYGBP.

Bird Trap has been so much slower & I don't much care because I LOVE it.  I am still loving it; yes I have enough for another 3x3 block arrangement & am still making more.  You could love it, too:  sign up is open until Hallowe'en & the blocks aren't due until the last Saturday in November.  To be fair, it took me more than a month to settle into the pattern- more like four, minimum- so I'm not sure jumping in now would be as much fun as jumping in ten months ago was.  Of course you can always join our 2014 swap What Burgoyne Begat.

*October 27, 2013: I should clarify, it was the inspiration quilt my mom spoke ill of, not my quilt.  She says nothing but nice things to me about my own quilts.

52 Photos Project: In My Hands

While I am not a mega-Christmas person, I often send gifts around that time of year which means this time of year is when I really have to get the lead out.  I will have this pile (of five & another almost as big) of unfinished quilts on my hands if I cannot manage to get them basted & In My Hands soon!

Bird trap gone

So.  It is finished & off to Quiltfest 2013 in Jacksonville, FL.  It is hard to think of something to say that I haven't already said:

• the swap that inspired this quilt doesn't close until Hallowe'en & then the blocks are due the last SAT in November 2013.  You can get the details here or even better in the Facebook Quilt Block Swap group.
• I made way more blocks than I need for the swap.  Enough for this quilt...& another top I have already started working on.  In my defense...I have no defense, I just like this block.  Or rather the guidelines that go into it as there is no exact "block".
• I don't think it hangs straight.  I thought I had squared it up...mostly, but after I washed it, it got MORE crooked.  I didn't know that could happen.

Oh, here is something new!  The Quiltfest JAX form was a bit of a challenge.  I could not decide "pieced quilt" or "art quilt".  I polled several quilters & with one exception they all said pieced quilt.  Then I took a look in the past pieced quilt winners & decided art quilt was the way to go.  What can I say, those pieced quilts were so even & harmonious & regular.  I am fully aware the Bird Trap Quilt cannot compete; I truly have no expectations of accolades of any kind.  The competition is just as fierce over in Art Quilts.  I just thought this would be too disruptive in Pieced Quilts.  Also & I know this is no big deal, there is just the teeny-tiniest bit of embroidery.

The theme this year in JAX is "Quilting Thru the Ages".  Not through the ages but thru the ages.  So I don't feel so bad about entering my rip-off of an african-american quilt top that could have been made during the Civil War was but was actually made in the late 20th century. 

& the word du jour is ERSATZ. 

Color catcher

Brace yourselves, I am about to go commercial.  OKay, not really because no one over at that family company even knows I am typing this & since I am not getting any cash, I don't think I could be described as commercial. 

Anyway.

I am a dedicated pre-washer.  Let me back up.  As a quilter, I pre-wash everything but the thread; the fabric, the batting, everything.  Well, that is everything but you get my drift.  I do this because I used to get headaches in my sewing room.  Can you imagine the conflict I want to sew but my head hurts?  I thought maybe just maybe it was the formaldehyde in the fabric (a good thing or it would rot in transit to your local quilt store).  So I took everything down off the shelves & washed it. Also I had a new washing machine & I wanted to play with it.  & it worked!

Since then, of course, I have been made happy because of all the colors that never ran & ruined my quilts.  Or clothes, clothes are important, too. 

But this means you can trust me when I say everything in the quilt in the picture had been washed before.  Except the thread.  In fact, some of it had been washed more than once because it is made of little squares of many novelties & I often get these in swaps & trades & as gifts & not knowing their history, I wash them. 

Also, you cannot really see it, but the outer border is a very saturated red, & the background & back & binding is a kind of orangey maroon, & there are four panels of la virgin de Guadalupe with a lot of color & a lot of black so I took no chances & washed all of that at least twice before I even began to work with it.  Then when everything was all done, I tossed it in the machine with a color catcher sheet thinking "what the hell".

Imagine my surprise when this came out! 

I was expecting something maybe vaguely pinkish but not this.


This is the exact same color as the background, back & binding just a few shades lighter.  & I do mean just a few.   I am a little concerned about what will happen in its new home; I gave it to my brother saying this will be a good thing to hang on the wall near the door because you can always take it down & wash it.  He lives in another part of the country, but the world is, if anything, grittier & sandier & dirtier than it is here & we live on a dirt road just a few houses down from speed hungry red necks.  Seriously, it is like they think they're mud bogging out there.  A few years ago I could not get out of my driveway because one of them was stuck.  He had over rotated when he started to hydroplane.  On mud.  & he got caught, nose down, in a depression too narrow & too shallow to really be called a ditch.  In mud.  He had to walk home & get towed out, which is no easy fete on a road barely wide enough for two cars to pass.  Do you know how fast you need to be driving to hydroplane on mud?  Too fast!

Enough about my idiot neighbors, back to the color catcher.  I think I am going to include a new sheet, this sheet & the box top when I send this off.  He's a physicist, (no really), I think he can do the math. 

Bird trap quilt block quilt top (almost)

As promised, I dialed down the posts about the bird trap quilt block, but I did not stop making these blocks.  I am crazy addicted to these blocks.  I cannot see a time when I am not running these through the machine; I hoard every weird shaped scrap or left-over 1/2-square triangle & I look forward to the one (or two or three) days a month I let myself play with them. 

Yes, I am that sad.

So without further ado, here is the first, almost complete bird trap quilt block top.  Yesterday, A helped me measure the sides because they are waaaaay out of sinc.  Over an inch difference from the left to the right side; I usually go borderless with any out-of-my-head quilts because they just don't need them & when I am done I like to be DONE (no, I am not OCD when it comes to measuring, it's just that the same ruler, the same machine, the same presser foot usually add up to the same size edges...but not this time).  & while the not-square shape would make it even more like the original bird trap quilt block quilt, I decided I would be happier if it was squarer.  Or at least rectangler.

& now the quilt:

There is a lot going on here (just the way I like it!).  There are seven (7) blocks that actually meet the criteria for the Facebook Bird Trap Quilt Block swap & two that don't (mostly because they are too big).  There are others that could have met the requirements if I had kept going (they were undersized & missing a few rounds) but I already had the nine (9) to swap & plenty of extras (yes, another quilt top worth if you must know). 

Also in here are many birds from the April 2013 Block Lotto pattern, sort of.  As with some of the bird trap blocks, these also did not meet the criteria (& FYI that little legless one at the bottom there will get legs, I need to embroider them in as she is too small for the pieced-stick legs) so I kept them.  Okay, I made them to keep, they were never going to the Block Lotto.

I should be clear, the bird trap quilt block does not actually require birds, but I saw that birdcage fabric & well.  Then as I was wrapping those up, the Block Lotto birds got posted & well.  So. 

There are still plenty of spaces in the swap if you are interested.  Your quilt top won't look like this ( my next quilt top made from blocks made from these same fabrics won't look like this), but do you really care?  Wouldn't you rather have one of your own one of a kind?  & lastly, if you came over from Block Lotto - Weekend Update: Welcome!

How I got Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking brand new & free to me

Have I ever told you about Paperback Swap?  I feel like I must have but maybe I didn't.  So here it is:  Paperback Swap is another one of those niche on-line .....communities seem unnecessarily broad.   It's a swap meet that specializes in books (yes, yes, it says paperback but really they will swap any book, paperback hardcover, audio, not e-books I don't think but when they figure out a way they probably will swap those, too).

It has a deliciously egalitarian quality: a book for a book.  Unless it is an audio book, then I think it might be two books for an audio book.  I don't know, I don't swap audio books.  The truth is I don't much swap any books, I just drain them from the system. 

Like all on-line communities (I'm sorry, I don't have a better word), there are users, abusers, good citizens & parasites.  Guess which one I am.  The system works when you add a book to your shelf, another swapper requests one of your books, you mail it to them (postage is on you, the sender) & once it arrives, a credit transfers from their account to yours.  You can use these credits to get books sent to you OR if you are my mom you can periodically refresh my account so I can get stuff without posting anything much. 

Now that I think of it, I owe mom A TON of postage reimbursement. 

In addition to the shelf of books you have to swap, you can also create shelf of books you want.  This means that when someone else adds the book to the system, you will get a notice (if you are number one on the list or if #1 declines & you are next & so forth).  You are limited in the number of books you can put on your wish list as there used to be a problem with people putting thousands of books effectively on hold & then declining them when they became available (to what end I am really not sure) leaving the good citizens who cruise old library sales holding tons of unswappable books.  As in most successful societies rules come into play when a few people make it hard on the majority...or whomever is doing the majority of the work.  Or sitting on the majority of money.  You know what, never mind about that.

I put Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking on my wish list more than a year ago.  It might have been more than four years ago, I don't keep track.  My local library district has one copy that I check out frequently & while I knew if I "lost" it I would only have to pay it's original cover cost less depreciation & not what it goes for on Amazon (just under $85 as of this typing) still it would be wrong to keep it.  Wrong.  I have to keep saying "it would be wrong". 

Library books that I cannot buy & no one else seems to check out are the very definition of temptation for me.  Lately Tintin in the Land of the Soviets has been burning a hole in my library card (those little pictures would make ideal redwork patterns & they are so...dated?odd?), especially since C****** told me they might be purging it even though it is checked out every couple months (guess how I know this), but I digress.

I started to list other books I have gotten through Paperback Swap that I never would have been able to put my hands on even with interlibrary loan, but then this post got way too long, so I will stop now.  Except to say that if you want me to e-mail you the Recommend a Friend link let me know.  You will start out with two extra credits & I will get one which I am happy to transfer to you.

& lastly:  M****** remember that stack of books you purged?  Well, somehow I ended up with a  Laurel Burch one which is odd because as you know I find the Laurel Burch figures creepy & not in a good way.  I am going to Paperback Swap it unless you would like it back, maybe to Paperback Swap it yourself (six people have it wish listed so it should go ASAP) or you would rather I gave it to the Friends of the Library which was our original conversation.  I think.  Oh & on another note, Paperback Swap is where I found that life on the Farming Today Yesterday's Way book B liked so much (would you believe Amazon is asking >$100 for an unused, brand new copy of that book? I swear some of those sellers are high).  Soooo, I will just give Laurel Burch back to you at bookclub next week, yes?

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Spring Break

The Blogger's Quilt Festival opened on ?Friday?  I think....?  This is no reflection on the Blogger's Quilt Festival; I have been very out of it for a month now (nothing to do with quilting, just in case you thought I had fabric induced dementia or something). 

This go round the festival is broken down into categories, which I guess I understand.  There is no question that one big list of links could be overwhelming.   Still, I think it is worth a cruise through even the categories that don't much interest me (I'm sorry art quilt makers & professional quilt quilters; if it helps I know I am a philistine).  In the end my favorite quilt is often a quilt I know I never would, never could make.

& now for my entry:

After no thought at all, I decided my quilt belonged in the bed quilt category.  Because it is on a bed.  My parent's bed, to be precise.  The bed is an old-fashioned, not often seen anymore, garden variety double bed.  & while the quilt does look like an old fashioned pattern, it isn't. 

After I cruised around the festival I realized my quilt could go in more than one category, so I also put it in home machine quilted quilts because it was, although I know I deserve no particular accolades.   My style of machine quilting is to sort of slowly push the balled up quilt around while I do what I am told looks like really lame yoga poses that all seem to involve my arms being held out straight, locked at the elbows.  I call this technique "free motion with walking foot".  The result is wavy irregular lines that sometimes look more like... ehrmmmm... stylized lady parts than I ever Ever EVER intended. 

Once this was pointed out to me (yes, it had to be pointed out), I started quilting in a more or less diagonal pattern, limiting the swoops & swirls & that was fine.  Until SOMEONE asked why I was not doing anymore yoni quilting (her words, not mine) & I thought "oh screw it, yoni quilting it is" & have started doing it again. 


With almost no changes (one change, which I will go into in a bit & maybe another), it is the Spring Break quilt pattern from Atkinson Designs' pattern book Spring Cleaning. 

Spring Break is another one of those quilt tops I made in abundance.  Off the top of my head I can think of five quilts I made from this pattern, soup to nuts, on purpose.  I also once taught a (very poorly attended) workshop using this quilt as a jumping off point, so I guess I could say I was in on those as well.  As it is what could be described as "cutting intensive" & so I have also cut up scraps for it & then handed them off as well as received fabric cut by others... 

In short, I have had a hand in at least a dozen versions of this quilt.  But this one is the first one I made all by myself, cutting to piecing to basting to quilting.  I honestly cannot remember if I bound it.  I certainly MADE the binding but I might have sent it off for mom to bind.  Because I do that.  Also, I think it may have been a Mother's Day gift that showed up MONTHS late.  Which also sounds like me.

I tried to take a picture of just one block so you could see what makes it so cutting intensive, but alas the fabrics I choose (with the idea they would match the bedroom of the recipients, which I think it does) are so soft & blurry you cannot really see the contrast.  In fact, when I blew up the whole bed picture at the top and below, I realized it looks like there are dirty pillow cases on the bed!  There are not.  It is just that what it took to bring out some contrast in the quilt blocks also brought out every shadow of the ordinary wrinkles of the pillow, making it looks like a brylcreem aficionado sleeps there (he isn't).

Lastly I tried to get a whole quilt picture but it was December 24th & one of the room's residents was getting dressed for his once-a-year appearance & somehow I never made it back in there with the camera.

This is almost the only angle you can almost see the one change I am quite sure I made, though.  The quilt top itself is 5x6, that is five blocks across by six blocks long for a total of thirty blocks.  I think.  Which might be a deviation from the suggested layouts, but if it is it is a small one.  Then there is a narrow border around the whole thing & finally, wide borders on the left & right sides & the bottom which do not connect, giving the whole thing a distorted T-shaped layout.  The concave corners allow the quilt top to hang snug to the mattress without getting caught up on the footboard.  This is a fairly common feature in New England quilts, but not often seen (at least not by me) anywhere else. 

& my digital quilt label:

Finished Size is approximately 69 inches wide by 73 inches long

Pieced & quilted by me on my Bernina 153

Pattern is, as stated above, Atkinson Designs Spring Break from the book Spring Cleaning

 

 

If you came here through the Block Lotto Weekend Update, I hope you will hippity hop back to the beginning of the Blogger's Quilt Festival & if you came through the quilt festival, please do pay a visit to the Block Lotto.

Something to do

This is a monster big weekend around these parts. 

First it's graduation which means a lot of people coming & going which is good for local businesses (& hard on local-locals).  But unless you re a graduate or related to a graduate or otherwise student involved, you are not going to make a special trip for that.

Well, this is also my favorite weekend of the month:  the weekend the antique rose place is open.  They only do this once a month because they have other pay-the-bills jobs but once a month it is like a little rose festival.  This is where I got I got my Reve D'Or.  They are out of stock today, but keep checking they are worth it. 

& finally it is the Tree City Quilt Guild's every other year quilt show.  It is not a huge show, but it is still interesting.  There are a lot of outstanding local quilters & what with snow birds, there are a few outstanding not-always local quilters.  Also that snow bird thing means techniques from other parts of the country seem to make there way here & sort of mix together.  Whatever the reason, despite being a local guild show, there is usually something new to me every other year.

Where have all the quilts gone?

I am trying to keep abreast of the Block Lotto Weekend Update  ?themes?assignments?, but it is really hard! Okay, not my children are starving to death & my husband is out of work hard but still not easy.  This is no reflection on Block Lotto, but more a reflection on me.  I don't really have an assigned kind of mind.

This week, this month actually, as there is only one "assignment" a month (did my difficulty just get sadder?):  Where do your quilts go?  My quilts are a lot like the old joke about last call:  You don't have to go home but you can't stay here.   Because when I am done I am done.  Also my house is small & crowded enough as it is, so if I am not working on it & cannot use it out the door it goes.  I wish I could say the same thing about shoes.   Or books.  Or dogs (although I am still using them, in a completely not creepy or food-based way). 

Wow, this post is going hopelessly astray!  Let me start again- where DO the quilts go?  Mostly they go as gifts to people to whom I would otherwise give a gift of some other kind.  I am always a little bit freaked when someone talks about making a donation to a person going through chemo & it turns out that person is their brother-in-law.  In my book that does not quite fall under the heading of donation.  I am not saying it isn't generous.  I, too, gave a quilt to a neighbor of mine going through chemo but I don't consider it charity.  Actually, it was more payback for all the stuff she has done for me (she mowed my pasture without being asked, just opened the gate & mowed it.  I was so happy I almost cried.  & then she did it again & again & again) & the quilt was in the works before she was diagnosed (in an everything loops back to the beginning way, the quilt was completely lifted from a Block Lotto pattern which did not register until I was putting the finishing touches on this post; despite all appearances to the contrary I occasionally use spell-check). 

So mostly the quilts I make go as gifts to people I know.  The next big block (no pun intended) of quilts really does go to pay some karmic debt that was not incurred in this life (like paying back a pasture mower which is incurred in this life, every summer).  I have made quilts for auctions & raffles to raise funds for causes I believe in.  I have made quilts at a shelter for the use of the residents, both to cover themselves & to teach them a technique (one of the favorites to make & to give away is the foundation free string quilt). 

There are a few (a very few) quilts sitting on a shelf waiting to become one or the other of these.  They tend to be quilts I made while working something out; like a potential block swap pattern.  They are rarely personal enough to use as gifts, unless it is a gif to someone I don't know all that well (A's grad students went through a fecund period a few years ago & it was nice to have some potential baby gifts on the shelf.  Fortunately physics grad students aren't like so many other fields where you really can fit in a family life so I rarely make more than one baby quilt every two-three years). 

The last big pile of quilts are those that are not quilts yet. Because I hate to baste.  I hate to baste so much I have ELEVEN quilt tops, with backs pieced & bindings pressed ready to go if I would just baste them.  But I hate basting.  & yes, I am getting to the baste or die point in my sewing room because there is quite literally no more room for one more completed top + accoutrements on the almost done shelf.

Finally:  number of completed quilts I have kept for myself:  none.  There is one in the tv room made especially for my husband & one in the dining room he puled from the giveaway pile, so I think of those as his.  The quilt on our bed came from Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Poulet pays à quatre minute à neuf

It was my intention to get this quilt done & shipped off (walked next door) last spring but, well, too much happened.  A lot happened here & a lot happened there.  Ordinarily what goes on next door does not impact my free time one iota but in this case there was a death in her family, which meant W***** was out-of-state for right around 3 weeks.  She meant to go for just the weekend but discovered more unfinished business than expected when she got there.  & back here, we were having henhouse problems & assorted other issues on both properties & since I had to deal for me, it only made sense to deal for her.

As a result, this quilt, which had already been delayed was delayed further & did not get into her hands until this very October.  Doubly sad as I have PICTURES of the blocks on my blog dated March....2011.

The pattern is straight forward.  I got it from Block Lotto, made numerous blocks in the red & white colorway that was part of the direction.  It didn't take the link to the source pattern (where Block Lotto seems to have gotten it, although I am not trying to suggest this is the first place it appeared ever in the history of quilting & the internet) for me to realize this block had potential with my favorite & most useless kind of fabric, large scale novelties with peculiar subjects.

Enter chickens.  Chickens wearing bandanas.  Chickens wearing bandanas with endearments written underneath them.  Chickens wearing bandanas with endearments written underneath them in French.  Anyone who knows me will realize that of course I bought the remaining fabric on the bolt.  There was not a little & it is already almost gone. 

I am still calling the block 8:56 (4 to 9) or en français: quatre minute à neuf heures.  & they are country chickens (poulet pays), although I suppose what with the colors, etc. they could be gangsta chickens...  Turns out, there is no google translate for gangsta, so I guess I will stick with country. Yes, I realize that this all mock-french, but it will work for me.

The finished quilt measures  56"x56" more or less, just the right size for a lap or a nap.  It was pieced & quilted on my Bernina, 153 Quilters Edition.  I used an irregular on-the-diagonal stripe which I have used before.  In addition to being a bit snazzier (& easier) than a regular side to side stripe, I have learned it wears well & so it is my default quilting for anything I know is likely to see regular use & thus regular washing.

Lastly there is a display sleeve on the back, machine stitched at the same time as the binding to the front.  Under ordinary circumstances I would consider this a strictly utilitarian quilt, but I know W*****'s entire house is decorated in chickens & I suspect this might get hung up as often as it is used.

So, here it is, my entry for the Autumn 2012 Blogger's Quilt Festival.  All my previous Blogger's Quilt Festival entries can be seen here.

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures : 56″ x 56"

Quilted & pieced by : me on a Bernina 153

Best Category : Throw Quilt, Scrap Quilt, Home Machine Quilted Quilt

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Little Gem

I know photos2fabric quilts are ho-hum for some, but I have fallen in love with the technique.  It probably doesn't hurt that I am OBSESSED with the University of Florida Herbarium.    Like the Nymphaeaceae I entered in May 2011, this is a central photo of a specimen collected at the Kanapaha Botanical Garden.

& so, my entry in the May 2012 Blogger's Quilt Festival:  Little Gem.  The central image was printed (by me) on a deskjet, as was the information label on the back (it is the label information from the FLAS # 211550 specimen itself).  The frame is one of my favorite piecing techniques, foundation-free strings.  That's when you make giant sheets of varied-width strips & then cut them on a 45degree angle & then work with all that open bias on every edge (I will give you a hint though, the seams of the strips are actually quite stabilizing; I would rather work with a foundation-free string block than any other block  with just one open biased edge).

The frame is machine quilted but the medallion image is hand stitched.  A friend was kind enough to open her vast embroidery floss collection & we matched the colors in the blossom as closely as we could.

Not even a whimper

So my laptop is still dead, the computer in the tvroom is still sketchy & you would think with all of this not-on-line time I would get so much more done but I think I am actually accomplishing less.  This year did not start with a bang.

I did manage to baste & quilt a quilt top from last year but then it sat & still sits unbound & unfinished.  The binding is stitched but not pressed.  I seem to be stalled an arm's length from the finish line.

I started a scarf for the Red Scarf Project, finished it too even though I had missed the collection deadline by about a week & a half & would of had to keep it safe & clean for another ten months except it turns out it was too wide & too hairy (they frown on mohair-y-ness because people say it ?itches?).  Not having a computer to check & treble check the guidelines was a problem.  In happier news, C****** liked it & took it home last week & the pattern I sort of doodled out is easier enough that I have already made another (not in red, not for the Red Scarf Project, but whatever).

I finished the February book club book Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin.  It went fast, didn't make much of an impression or so I thought until I found myself really wanting cake. Enough to bake one.

I missed another month of Block Lotto, tried again to drop out of the Quilt Block Swap & generally just kept my head above water chore&household-wise.

It seems in the absence of dumping my brain out onto a page I get rather clogged.  This week-end I think it might be laptop buying time.

Broken dishes from years ago

I thought about sitting out this Blogger's Quilt Festival, mostly because we have been in the throws (& I do mean throws) of a kitchen remodel & I have nothing new & nothing I have not already blogged about &....&...

I was wrong.  This month, over on the Block Lotto, I submitted three Broken Dishes blocks for the October Sampler Lotto.  & then I went hunting through my blog for photos of the Broken Dishes quilt I made my step-father.  It turns out I have no blog entry & no complete photos of it at all, YIKES!

This quilt hung in a Veteran's Day 2006 quilt show before it went on to it's final home.  For reasons I am not clear on, it was hung upside down, so that instead of the label being in the lower right corner (& oriented correctly when folded up in the usual way of looking at quilt labels on hanging quilts), it was folded over itself.  No other quilt in the show was hung this way (including another I made with a similar label right-side-up when you lift the corner type deal).  Anyhow, it means the only picture I have does not show the whole quilt top.  

Trust me though, it is the same all over, Broken Dishes alternating with Snowballs to make a woven sort-of criss-cross pattern.  I used the same fabric for the center of the Snowballs, the corner squares of the outer border & the narrow inner border.  All the others were scraps in shades of blue, light & dark meeting in the center.

This quilt was made especially for my step-father & happened to coincide with a quilt show honoring veterans, so I made a label with photos of him in the service & more recently fishing & a blurb of how he spent his time, specifically building quonset huts during the Korean War.  I don't usually go in for such elaborate labels, but this was a special case. 

Nowadays the quilt lives in my parent's den, over the back of the rocking chair he sits in every night to watch Pardon My Interruption, college basketball & what-have-you.  I see it every time I visit & have never thought to take a better picture.

Nymphaeaceae

I have so many many not-quite-finished projects, but when it came time to spotlighting a finished quilt for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, I could not believe how many of my finished quilts have already been covered in my blog.  Virtually every one I had here that I could take a picture of or had taken a picture before I shipped it off has already been shown here.  With one exception: Nymphaeaceae.

Quite some time ago (yea, I could look it up or I could just move on), a floristic inventory of the local botanical garden was begun & a while after that it was mostly finished; these things are never finished-finished.  As it was wrapping up, the wife of the inventoryer, the guy collecting & identifying one of everything in the garden, & I took a fraction of the digital images & made a quilt for a show at the museum of natural history (they were having a quilting natural fladidah-themed exhibit) & we made this.  Meanwhile, the manager of the collection was doing everything in his power to make things easier for us.  By everything, I mean everything, including re-prioritizing what specimens got mounted & photographed when so we could get the images we needed ASAP & not taking it to heart when they turned out not to be quite what we wanted & oh, could we have this instead?

In the course of this whole process, it became very, Very, VERY clear which image was his favorite.  He used it for buttons on the website, he used it as his screen saver; everywhere he could squeeze it in, he squeezed.  When we finished our main project & started planning our Thanks For All Your Help project there was no other choice. 

As with all the images for our original quilt, I printed the images on 100% cotton using the Bubblejet product & an HP Photosmart printer.  We used a single close up of the primary image for the center of the front & several others that we cut up to incorporate into the sawtooth border.  As patterns go, it is not complex; we wanted to be careful that the quilt layout not clash with the image we were trying to highlight.  For the back, we printed the whole specimen with label.  While not particularly important in terms of the quilt, it is (almost) the most important part to an herbarium manager. The whole thing is less than 30" x 30"

If you want to see the original specimen (kind of) you can search for accession number 214601 thru 214601 at the collection search page.

More on red

I have already blogged about the March Block Lotto block, so I will spare you except:  it is red, I didn't have much red & then once I bought some red I figured I may as well use what I had selvage-to-selvage set & made four sets of most.  As I was doing this, I remembered C****** really likes red & black (she really likes light blue & black, too; I guess it would be more accurate to say she likes black & other colors) & so I thought I would toss a few black & white blocks in there.

By the time I was done, one set of red&white will go to the block lotto winner(s), which still leaves me holding more red&white blocks, almost of them triplets & much more than I could ever use, especially after I had thrown in the black&white blocks I made soooo....

I thought about this post on the Block Lotto blog.  To be brief, she collects 8.5" unfinished/8" finished red&white blocks & makes quilt for leukemia patients (& you can read more here).  I had actually already thought I would send her whatever I had left after I was done with the first part, but I had not yet thought thru the whole C****** likes red&black thing either,  so I have more left over than if I just used the spare red&whites.

Off these go, to France as it happens, altho' I am guessing they won't necessarily stay there.