Emma's Revisit

My youngest daughter's first quilt was made the summer she turned seven.  It was a Quartered Nine Patch, made in tone-on-tone pastels.  I remember her, sitting at the little table, singing, "Making a quilt is fun to do!" I counted that day a success and promptly quilted up her throw on my machine.  We bound that quilt in red Kona Cotton and backed it in a playful flannel that showed children at play.  She has used that quilt for several years, but now she is taller than I am and the quilt, if anything, has shrunk.

Last summer she made another version, in green and white 30's and 40's prints, with a pop of pink.  I thought she was making a cuddle quilt for the family to enjoy, but she was interested in a fluffy soft quilt for herself.

Frankly, it was not very enjoyable, folded and sitting in the closet!  The backing, a pink flannel with white, green, pink and brown dots, was ready and folded up with it.  Waiting.

By this time, the quilt had grown a bit too big for me to feel comfortable machine quilting it.  She wanted a fluffy batting, but I did not want to tie it.  A couple of weeks ago I found a nearby quilter whose prices were reasonable and took it to her.  She helped choose a charming pattern with tulips and five-petaled flowers.

After two weeks and with no obvious pain to my hands, the fluffy quilt is quilted!  My daughter loves the pattern and took it to her room to wrap up in it, even before binding could be applied.  I expect we shall use a white for the binding.  Now it seems clear that her older sister needs something non-tattered to cuddle into!

Batts in the Belfry ~ Or ~ My Fluff Brain

The second bolt of Warm and White that I began using when I started machine quilting is now gone.  That is probably a good thing, since the rumblings are that folks around here think that kind of cotton batting is too stiff -- and not very warm.

So, what shall I get to replace it?  I prefer a white batting, since much of what I make has white or light-hued backgrounds.  I like hand quilting on wool, but I really like the puckery look that cotton makes when it shrinks.  It is hard to machine quilt on fluffy polyester battings, but when I get them quilted professionally, that is least expensive and my family seems to like it.  Whichever direction I go, I would rather have my own stock on hand, since that is most cost effective.

What do you use?  What deals have you found, and where?  These past few days I have been dreaming about and doing online searches of batting, but I still don't know what to do.  Is the 80/20 blend a good option?  It would promise drapeability and durability, both desirable attributes.  If I am serious about finishing quilts, I am going to use a lot of batting!

Skydiving Turtles

A neighborhood quilt group meets monthly at my house.  During the past year, we have made a "block of the month" to try out new patterns.  People are invited to make up a few samples from the pattern and when we meet again the following month we draw to see who will win the opportunity to make the blocks into a quilt for herself.

To be honest, I was hoping to win these Drunkard's Path Turtle blocks!  The assignment was to use a black solid for the background and to make the turtles out of and "ugly" fabric -- or one that looked like a turtle.  As usual, it is interesting what people think of as "ugly."

Our group laid the blocks on the floor and laughingly arranged them as if the turtles were holding hands, "like skydivers!" The swirly, star-filled sashing fabric was chosen because it suggested sky and its varied blacks made the variation in black background fabrics less obvious.  Swirls are repeated in the quilting design and on the yellow and gold dotted batik fabric on the back, as well as in a few of the prints.  To communicate ocean waves, I would turn the quilting template the other direction, but what we were after is swirls and whorls.

When the sixteen blocks were stitched together, they made a nice baby quilt-sized top.  Three of my adult-sized children asked who would get this quilt, for each of them wanted it!  Because many of the turtles were made of other people's scraps, I wondered how to draw the turtle colors out into the border.  I considered making four wavy snakes in the borders, giving them similarly dimensional heads and tail ends; this might suggest that the snakes were waiting for the skydivers to fail!

Making a border of random-pieced squares solved the problem.  A few of the turtle fabrics are scattered into the border, but others in similar hues and shapes serve to communicate that the quilt was planned this way, rather than that the top was too small and needed to be stretched.

The heads and tails of the turtles are slightly stuffed and they flop about a little.  The quilt needed to be hand quilted so these 3D effects wouldn't be lost or make trouble.  I am using a wool batting, which I really like to work with.  I try to work on this project for a little while each day, while listening to a General Conference talk or to my daily scripture reading.  In a few days it will be a friendly cuddle quilt, invitingly draped over the arm of the front room couch. 

Wild Horses Circling the Log Cabin

This quilt was begun more than a year ago, as a gift to thank a neighbor.  I lost interest in working on it when I discovered that the horse print purchased for the border didn't really work.  It was buried and unearthed several times, then I found a different horse print that worked better.  Some extra of the first print (but not quite enough) was purchased and pieced together to put on the back.

Over the Christmas holidays our entire family worked on quilting the quilt together.  We watched movies, visited, and just spent time together.  Instead of quilting next to each and every line, we quilted long, straight lines in the light and dark sections of the Log Cabin pattern, quilting a rope motif down the centers of the lighter patches.

This quilt was completed because of my husband's enthusiastic encouragement, and he willingly worked on it, discovering that he has a good talent for it.  Our oldest son made three stitches, which were worked as he chanted his love for our neighbor.  Our youngest son's stitches were carefully made, but they are pretty long on the bottom of the quilt.  He told me he was proud of those stitches!  I know our wonderful neighbor will recognize that they are a representation of his love.

My husband's favorite fabric is the blue batik, and I wish I had purchased more of it when a local Walmart was clearing out its expensive fabrics for $1 a yard!  He really likes the touch of the blue in this quilt and wanted me to use it in the border, but it was wrapped up in another piece and could not be found in time.  The batting is a packaged 100% cotton.

When we took it off the frame we washed it to make sure that the colored pencil we had used to mark the quilting lines would come out.  I like the puckery look that shrunken cotton batting makes when it is washed.  Last week my daughter and I finished stitching the binding and we delivered it to our friend and his wife. 

I am thankful for the experience of unity and love this project fostered in our home.

New Quilt From Old

The first week of this year brought an eight-hour trip to Oregon to visit my mother.  Actually, the trip was delayed and took longer than usual, since I was shop hopping to locate some fabric to help her friend complete one of her quilts!  I found a couple of prints in a lovely store in the heart of a rural Idaho town; though they were not exactly what she was looking to match, they ultimately worked for her project.

When I arrived, I asked what Mom wanted me to help with.  We planned to move her sewing room from the rooms on the main floor into the upstairs bedroom across from hers; we wanted to finalize the design on Dad's headstone; we needed to update and reorganize the photographs on the Grandchildren Wall; and she wanted me to recreate the pattern for the quilt design of an antique quilt fragment she had.

We got a lot done!  We spent one day with her UFO group and I worked on the quilt top design that day.  Yes, we visited the monument store and hauled furniture and fabric.  We printed up photos and organized the wall to include everyone -- even the Future Possibles.  She prepared a couple of quilt backs and I stitched binding onto one of her completed quilts.  It was a full and busy week, and I managed to avoid snowstorms both directions.

I like the way the quilt design turned out and plan to use it on a future quilt.  The baby quilt top is complete, in soft mint and a muted 30's reproduction print.  The print squares are 4" and the X blocks are 3 1/2" squares.  The original was stitched by hand.

Loose Change

My mother's church group in Oregon decided to hold a quilt show last year -- and it was so well-attended and so fun, they did it again this year!

For this years' show, the group issued a challenge that they called "Loose Change."  It was encouragement to people to go through their fabric stashes and use what they had.  Nickel packs (5-inch squares) were designated as "nickels"; "dimes" were 10-inch squares (otherwise sold as "Layer Cakes"); fat quarters were "quarters," of course; scraps were "pennies"; and 2 1/2-inch strips (often rolled together in sets and marketed as "Jelly Rolls") were designated as "dollars."  Over the first months of the year, Mom and her friend Debbie had plans to teach classes to show creative ways to use these elements in the creation of new quilts for the challenge.

Sadly, Mom was unable to participate much in teaching these classes.  Dad was hospitalized shortly after Christmas and spent about six weeks in critical condition in a hospital three hours from home.  Mom was given use of a room in the hospital and she took projects and sewing machines, but her time and focus was really spent helping Dad.  He passed away a couple of weeks before the quilt show, which was held in mid-April.

In January and February I went to stay with Mom.  We visited and planned late into each night, ate at restaurants, and did some fabric shopping.  She expressed interest in having a quilt pattern to give away at the upcoming quilt show that could use each form of their "loose change."  She also wanted to make a creative quilt that looked like it had money on the front and she found some fabric to put on the back that looked like dollar bills.  We had so many ideas!

Inspired by a quilt design we saw on the wall of a quilt shop, I came up with a pattern and made it in two colorways.  The first was done in kelly green batiks, along with other fabrics in hues suggestive of dimes, nickels, pennies and golden dollars; the other (surprisingly more popular) was in white with green  30's and 40's reproduction fabrics.  My sister, expecting her second child, expressed an interest in having the green one to match her children's bedroom -- so two more quilts were assembled, quilted and mailed for her birthday, later in April (one of these is pictured above).

The white sashing could have been cut from 1 1/4-inch strips, which is what we get when we cut the 2 1/2-inch "dollar" strips in half, lengthwise; instead, I cut 4 1/2-inch strips and sewed narrow lengths of green along the top:  the tiny green squares required slightly more than a single 2 1/2-inch strip could provide.  Sixteen 4-patch blocks were made from four of these 2 1/2-inch strips (two light and two darker).

5-inch "nickel" pieces, which could have been made into half-square triangle blocks, were cut down into 4 1/2-inch squares.  The seven 10-inch squares were also trimmed (to be 9 1/4"), to accommodate the units made by 2 1/2-inch strips; they could have been made into quarter-triangle squares with more work and a little less obvious waste -- but the idea was to keep things simple for the pattern.  The result was slightly larger than a square baby quilt; I added additional squares and some extra narrow borders to bring my green throw (pictured here, exploded and finished) to a more useful size.  This has been a pretty popular quilt around our house, resting at the moment at the foot of my bed.  My father-in-law particularly admired it, so perhaps a fifth one will be in the works for Christmas.

What with the interruption of a funeral and a load of other projects, this quilt was not completely bound by the time we were supposed to leave for the eight-hour trip to stay with Mom and help with her yard work (and quilt show) over Spring Break.  Mom's friend Debbie came to my rescue, hand-stitching the binding in time for the show!  A week or so later, when my sister's quilts arrived unbound (her new baby will be a girl and her old one is a boy -- and I wasn't sure how matched she wanted their quilts --), generous Debbie whisked the package home and promptly bound them for her.

Mom's idea for the quilt she could make for the show was simple enough, but she ran out of time.  She sent me home from the funeral with the fabrics we had bought when Dad was in the hospital, along with some simple verbal instructions.  Using fusible interfacing and sewing right sides together, I stitched around the edges of circles of fabric to make "coins."  Snipping around the curved edges of each seam allowance, I turned the fabric circles right side out through a slit in the interfacing and finger-pressed the curves until each circle was fairly flat.  It was a simple matter to iron these circles onto the charcoal-tone background sheet; they stayed in place as they were machine-stitched in place.  Pennies and nickels were appliqued with a straight stitch, but I used a more decorative stitch on the other coins to simulate the ridged edge of nickels, dimes, and so on.  It was machine quilted with a lavender metallic thread.  Mom had fun pointing out the "pair-a-dime" and the "two cents" in the corner.  She appliqued the quilt's title when she entered the quilt in a later show.

Baby Quilts for Grandma

What would Grandma want for Christmas?  Why baby quilts, of course -- Grandma has as many babies as everyone else, put together!

Janet, my mother-in-law, has more than fifty grandchildren; she is now in the Great-Grandma business.  Most years, my Christmas gifts to her have been stashes of playthings for her Grandma house:  in years past, I have given bins of Duplo Lego sets, vintage dolls revitalized with sets of handmade dresses, and scores of dress-up clothes (a perennial favorite).  This year, I noticed that her baby quilts are getting a little threadbare, so I began working on a couple in fabrics that I knew she would like.  They were not completed until after the new year, but she said she didn't mind.

When their children were young, my in-laws spent eleven years in Hawaii; six of their eleven children were born during these years.  Ten years ago, just before retiring, my father-in-law did an exchange and worked for a year at BYU-Hawaii, where he had worked before.  Their old friends were delighted to see them!  While they were there, my husband and I paid them a visit.  The island was rained out that week, but I gave Janet some money and she later brought back these fabric strips for me to put in a quilt.

They were a little irregularly-shaped, so they stayed in my stash until this year's need.   The design for this baby quilt was the solution to the problem of how to waste as little as possible.

Janet loves batik fabrics and our shared favorite color is a beautiful turquoise hue.  This swirled batik seemed to soften the bright Hawaiian prints for a baby quilt.  Both quilts share a similar flannel back and are bound with the same swirled batik.

The second quilt was an assortment of bright batiks, cut into squares.  Janet has a quilt on the wall in her study that she made of a rainbow of similarly assorted brights, so I took my cue from that.  She seemed to like the quilts and has temporarily put them on display on her front room couches.  They are machine quilted, which I figured would hold them together well through multiple washings.