Stash Giveaway Follow-up Report

This project has turned out differently than I had originally envisioned.  During the course of the year, instead of personally finishing fifty-two quilts, I only completed a couple of dozen or so and gave away enough fabric and other supplies to have made more than the fifty-two I had intended!  Cleaning out the basement and hall closet fabric stashes with an intent to move out of state necessitated such a purge.

My friend Jennifer came over today to show some of the things she has done with fabric I shared with her.  I hope other friends and relatives have had similar fun with what they took home.

 This quilt was made with some darling blue fabric with cowboys on it.  It was a Christmas gift for one of Jennifer's sons.  My mother gave me this fabric, probably to be a backing for one of the quilt tops she sent for my own little cowboys, but they had very definite ideas about what they wanted on the backs of their quilts!  The red flannel on the back is a very soft one, originally purchased to do a project for a neighbor.

  These denim quilts were made from jeans that I had collected for the same purpose, and the flannel backs were purchased at a great price several years ago.  Jennifer made a quilt for her husband, then I think she made three more for her sons!  I have been on several denim quilt kicks in the past thirty years, making "emergency quilts" for each of our family's vehicles and as Christmas gifts for the families of my husband's siblings, neighbors, and friends.  For our family, they have mainly served for emergency picnics, but they have also come in handy for cushioning on campouts, hiding Christmas surprises after shopping trips, and as cozy wrapping during evening rides home in the wintertime.

 This fabric did not all come from the same store, but I sure felt clever to find a flannel to coordinate with the designs I got for the front!  A local quilt store had a kit that made up into a baby quilt in very feminine colors and prints; this was cut out as an attempt to re-do the design for a baby boy.  After a decade, I never got to assembling the sewn blocks, but Jennifer finished it!  She also did the machine quilting.  This design, sewn in a set of yellow-on-white fabrics for a friend's nursery, was the pattern I used on the very first free-motion, machine-quilted project I ever attempted.

This is the back of one of Jennifer's denim quilts.  She has done a clever job of stretching the scraps and making it into a nice framed piece.   The lighter-colored fabric was a very soft one that I had always wished would grow more yardage if it sat long enough in its box.  Jennifer made it work.

Jennifer's daughter made this quilt.  She first pieced the grid, then she appliqued the palm tree on the front.  It is tied onto a soft clouds-in-the-sky flannel backing.  She was rightly pleased with her work, and beamed as she showed it off this afternoon.

  I love fabric with hearts, and have collected quite a few over the years.  These blocks were made by cutting nine-patch blocks into quarters.  I had intended to set them together in a quilt for my sister's 40th birthday, but the birthday arrived before I finished; I imagined the blocks were probably happy when they went away to a new home.  Jennifer's younger daughter was so delighted with this feminine quilt that she required a bit of coaxing to part with it long enough for me to get a look at it!  The back was a Wal-mart find, purchased with a baby gift in mind.  Jennifer quilted little hearts in her stipple-strings; it turned out very well.

 I made several of these square-dance pinwheel quilts, and had quite a few solid squares saved to make another.  Jennifer wondered what I had had in mind for this and it was difficult to try to explain without actually bringing the pattern over.  I actually like the way Jennifer has spread the color throughout this bright, cheery quilt better than the demonstrations in the book.



Many, but not all, of the flannels Jennifer used for this strip quilt were from the stash of leftover flannel pieces from my basement stash.  These strip and snip quilts are quick to make and can be very warm.

Jennifer's oldest daughter saw a little yellow tulip block that I had made up nearly 18 years ago and got an idea to make a quilt in multi-colored fabrics to represent the Young Women Values.  Jennifer made the square borders for this quilt and they all tied the quilt this morning.  It was so pleasant to see Jennifer's daughter's delight at completing this quilt and to hear her children say how fun it was to work together on this project!  That, for me, is one of the most rewarding aspects of sharing sewing activities with my own children.

Carnival!

September is one of the best times of the year!  The garden produce makes wonderful dinners, the orchards are loaded with fruit, and the evenings and mornings have a crispness that reminds us that winter is coming.  It also spells the excitement of school starting again, and that inevitably brings the school carnival.

 I do not know why the schools choose September for this annual event.  They have just picked everyone's pocket for fees (nearly $300 for each junior high or high school student), and many people shell out money for new school clothes, too --- nobody is ready for another fundraiser!  This weekend, our family has two carnivals, back-to-back; four children attend one grade/middle school and a fifth is in another.  And each child is to donate something.  So that means quilting for me.

In one school, the students from each grade assembles themed gift baskets.  Our kindergartener took a pink quilt, nearly 45 inches square, to contribute to the baby gift basket his class was working on.  Our other children, whose classes gathered camping, golf, or spa collections, were given other items.  This cheery quilt, cut and completed after kindergarten one afternoon, was bound to be my favorite!  Many of the fabrics had hearts or bubble dots.  It was sent off to school the following morning.

The purple sister of the first quilt was sewn together and sent off the day after its twin.  The three-and-a-half-inch squares were cut at the same sitting as the pink ones were.  Strips were sewn together in threes, then these were cut into strips of three squares.  Stitched together in random Nine Patch blocks, they were shuffled into place on the floor in such a way that no matching squares shared a side.  Sixteen blocks were stitched together, then an extra row was sewn onto two sides, to make thirteen rows (just because I think an odd number of rows looks more pleasing.

I cannot say which ended up being my favorite, for each is charming.  The meandering, loopy, stipple quilting will make the cotton batting in each pucker nicely when it is washed.  Each quilt is backed with flannel, which I think is cozy for the coming cold weather --- one of the "real" reasons we make quilts!

Collegiate Misgivings

This project has been begun and tossed aside too many times to count, and I know why.  I have been ashamed.

My oldest son’s birthday comes shortly after Christmas --- each year!  It is usually a monumental challenge to come up with gifts for him that differentiate his day from the usual holiday festivities.  We always cover the table with multi-colored jelly beans and have homemade pizza (or calzones) and Buffalo wings, and for awhile my husband would take him and some friends for an activity; but coming up with gifts has ever been a puzzler.

One year, a couple of weeks before Christmas, I walked into a fabric store and saw some collegiate flannel that I determined would be perfect for my son and his brother for their bedroom.  I imagined our family setting up quilts during the holiday break and sitting around them for a few hours while we tied them both.  The only problem was that there was Someone cutting into the fabric and it appeared that several additional Someones were waiting for it.  The store was crowded with shoppers, and my time was limited.  I left the store, wistfully hoping some of that fabric would still be available later.

A couple of hours afterward, the rush was gone.  I walked in and made a beeline for the rack where I hoped to find the flannel.  Pulling two coordinating bolts of fabric off the shelf, I walked over to the tricot racks at the rear of the shop to find some backing, calculating whether or not there would be enough flannel and figuring how much yardage of each product my project would require.

I was engrossed in my own thoughts and was only vaguely aware of the fruitless search going on in other parts of the shop.  When I approached the cutting tables to get some help, the attendant was astonished to see that I had the bolts they had all been trying to find!  Everyone was dismayed to hear that I wanted all of the fabric, and the shop ladies who helped me could not believe I would be so selfish as to take it, once I saw Someone Else wanted some.  It was selfish.  Frankly, there was quite a bit, but I still worried there would not be enough for my wants.

The young wife who also wanted it was making a gift for her husband.  The women working in the store helped her find other things that would satisfy her need, and by the time I was ready to share they had come up with something that was “even better.”  But I was not Better.  By the time I dumped my purchases in the back seat of the car, the project had lost its appeal.  All I could think about was the unchristian way I had behaved --- and at Christmas, too!

I returned to the store at a later date to apologize.  None of the women who had been working on the fateful day were on duty, but the gal to whom I spoke had heard of the incident.  She was very uncomfortable and could hardly make eye contact.  And there was no way to make it right with the other shopper. 

We can change the future, but we can’t undo the past.

What happened to the odious fabric Reminder Pile?  Oh, it was presented as a gift, but it sat in various boxes at the front of the closet for more than three years, being trotted out occasionally for yet another attempt to be made.  When my son was offered full scholarships to a nearby state university, I imagined I could be permanently off the hook and that perhaps I could donate the mess and thereby infuse it with some virtue! 

It didn’t work out like that, though.  Because of a quietly simple spiritual prompting, my son turned down the scholarships.  He plans to apply at his Original Favorite School in a couple of years, after some missionary service.

My son’s faith to be obedient to God made finishing this project a possibility, because the project became a token of hope.  For I do have hope in God’s blessings to my son, who put aside concrete plans for his future endeavors.  I have hope that God will be merciful to me, that my heart may be purged of the selfish feelings that led me to such an unkindness in the past.  Yes, I have hope for a brighter future.

When these two partially-finished quilts moved to the next spot on the 52 Quilts docket, my sons decided they neither needed nor wanted them.  The next day, the prospect of having this project delighted their aunt, who has been visiting from far away, as it will be the perfect Christmas gift for her two sons.  And that, at last, is the Happy Ending that satisfies us all.

A Change in Focus

For several reasons, things are changing around here.  So the focus of this blog may change for awhile, too.  I started this project --- and this blog --- because I have had an abundance of fabric and many projects hanging around and I had hoped to do the clearing out that needed to be done by completing what I have had planned.

I now see that I have less time than I had imagined --- and less space than I have previously had! This means that many of the projects which I had hoped to complete this year must find new homes and be completed in wonderful ways without me.

At the midpoint of the year, I have quilted nearly twenty quilts (but if they are not bound I cannot officially count them, according to the initial rules of this blog!) and I am now working hard to shed others before they are complete.  And it's OK.  I shall continue to write about them and the progress I can make with them --- and the joy I find in sending them off to their adventures with other creative people.  Because the reasons I planned and began them in the first place were not just to prove that I am capable or creative, but to share love --- and a bit of myself --- with others.  And I hope to do that in other ways, now that my time and space are different.

A Baby Quilt for Grandma

My wonderful mother-in-law was doing me a favor --- and it was a big one!  My husband had a business trip scheduled for Vancouver Island, and the work associate who was to have attended the trade show with him could not come.  A few days prior to his departure, my husband invited me to travel with him, and his parents offered to chaperone our seven children for a few days while we were gone.

Our children are very good, but their grandparents also had additional plans of their own.  The day we expected to return, they were to leave for a week to attend the dental school graduation for one of their younger sons.  Because this brother and his wife are expecting the arrival of their fourth child, my mother-in-law was putting together a quilt to take as a gift -- and it needed to be quilted before they left.  I was delighted to offer to do it for her, though the stipple quilting is not as fancy as a professional might have done.  Still, it saved the cost of having someone do it, and it was completed before my children arrived at her house!

This quilt is made from Thirties and Forties charm squares and solid pink strips; it is backed with a darling print in green, pink and blue on a soft white field.  I was particularly pleased with the way the piecing came together -- my family could hardly find those seams on the back!  At nearly 60" square, the quilt is a bit large for a newborn; a younger child often "shares" with older siblings (whose infant blankets are still good).  The stippling worked up fast and looked nice and fairly consistent.  I was pleased with it and felt a great deal of satisfaction when it was returned to my mother-in-law the following morning!

I finally figured out how to include a picture:  I photographed the quilt with my cell phone, but it had trouble talking to the computer....

"Happy Prints" Beginnings Quilt

The summer my middle daughter turned ten, I issued a challenge:  the girls needed something to occupy their energies during the vacation months so they would have something to show for their time, and I suggested they make quilts.  For the tops, they would need to use things from our family’s stash, and they would do all of the sewing themselves.  By the end of the summer, they would have something they could use right away or put in a trousseau for their future lives.  I was willing to cut, to instruct, to pin, and to help press; but the object of the endeavor was for them to do the work of stitching.

The stipulation that no new fabrics would be purchased is reflected here.  Nearly every inch of the butter-colored Kona background yardage was used.  The quilt is not big enough to be the coverlet of a queen size bed; it could have been made larger with the inclusion of additional borders, but by the time it got to this point, she was ready for the project to just be over!

Her younger sister chose to make a quartered nine-patch.  Its six-inch squares in soft blues, greens, yellows, and lavenders made it work up fast.  It was machine quilted in a couple of hours, and it has been used regularly for years.  But the middle sister wanted hers hand quilted and preserved for later.  The problem was that she could not decide how it was to be quilted.

We put the quilt right up anyway, outline-stitching the squares that make up the border, but no decision was made by the time we finished that.  The quilt stayed on its frame for several weeks, but it was eventually taken down and stowed.  She likes to make her own decisions about things and I considered it foolish to rush her.

This spring when the quilt returned to the frame, I was armed with several stencils.  My daughter selected the most feminine --- and the most time-consuming --- of the choices, but I agree that it worked well with the quilt.  She insisted that only her and my stitches should be included, but grew discouraged about her own stitches.  This daughter has tomboy tendencies and the quilting reflects this in the long diagonal lines that connect the colored squares in the quilt’s corners.

Finished?  Yes, at last!  It was completely quilted, but choices about binding took time….

Fenced Flower Patches

A year ago, my mother let me choose quilt tops from her for each of my children.  The moment I saw this top, I thought of my youngest daughter, a red-haired sweetheart who simply loves purple!  The browns and soft turquoises are ever-so-flattering on her.  She now wants a skirt just like her quilt (and we purchased the fabric for her summertime skirt-making project when we picked the binding stripe)!

The backing is pieced, as there was not enough of any of the three pieces selected to do the whole thing; it turned out delightfully well anyway.  The three are harmonious, featuring dark brown backgrounds and flowers, stylized butterflies, or swirls in white and turquoise.

The striped binding went together so well, it appears almost seamless!  It is remarkable that the fabrics complement each other because the front, the back, and the binding came from different stores and from different years.

Because I have been working on hand-quilted projects for the last several weeks, my machine quilting was a bit rusty:  the stitches are not as even as I would like and the meander pattern could benefit from better uniformity.  But the top was quilted and ready for my young daughter to select a binding fabric in less than two hours, which time was measured while still attending to other mothering responsibilities.  

I like the look and feel of handwork better, but it takes so long that the goal of completing fifty-two would require more hours than I have!

A Mother's Day at the Quilt Show

I received a delightful Mother’s Day treat from my mom, who lives 500 miles away.  Apparently nobody in her quilt group could use a pair of tickets to a national quilt show in my area, so she sent the tickets to us! The day before Mother’s Day, my daughters and I wore out our feet at the Convention Center where the exhibit was held.

We saw beautiful quilts, all right.  We picked out our favorites and took lots of photos to share with my husband, who had the boys doing yard work at home.   We even got to experiment with a luxury longarm quilting machine! But my girls were particularly touched by the lovingly enthusiastic artist at the Sulky Thread booth who took time to explain in detail how to make a scarf with one of their handy products.  

Not surprisingly, we made a modest purchase at the booth and my oldest daughter has plans to make some beautifully unique gifts for her friends.  But the best thing was the personal connection that was made.  I am thankful for that delightful woman from some faraway place --- whose name I cannot recall --- who took time to reach out and share a part of herself with us that day.

Hers was a gift of Mothering.

Jury Duty

What can I say about jury duty?  I spent an entire day at it this Monday, and it provided a good deal of quiet time!  I took a volume of the complete novels of Jane Austen and a bag containing the supplies required for finishing up the green-on-white Ti Leaf quilt block that I began nine months ago, during a family trip to Hawaii.  It was my first attempt at hand applique, and, thanks to the time I spent sitting on a bench in the courtroom with little else to do, that part is now complete.

I think my applique abilities improved over time, though I do not consider the work worth bragging about.  I like how the outside edges worked, but not the inside ones that were just snipped straight down:  they left little room to turn and little fabric to stitch down.  My stitches, though nicer than the ones on the inexpensive offerings at the flea market, are neither teeny nor invisible.  But I'd like to try it again sometime.

The question that remains is:  What shall I do with it?  The block is only about 20 inches square.  Should I put something else with it and make a somewhat larger wall hanging, or just quilt it and frame it?

Eight in One Blow

This began in December, just when everyone is itching for yet another project!  I had been serving as an Activity Day leader with Kara, and we traded off teaching the bi-monthly lessons.  This means, of course, that each of us took a turn teaching the six girls in the group once a month, attending and supporting the other during her turn.

For this project, I assembled eight quilt kits.  These included fifteen pre-stitched blocks, half of which were intentionally designed with clear spaces in the centers for the girls to write kind messages to one another.  Kara helped me with the last of these, and by the December activity the blocks and the backings for each quilt were ready for the girls to choose from.  We made eight so each girl would have choices!

Only four of the girls would attend.  The other two have never yet seen their quilts; one of them moved away shortly thereafter.  Each girl selected one or two colors of Sharpie that coordinated with her quilt kit and wrote her name on one of her blocks, then we rotated around the room to write our observations of the good qualities of the other girls on one of each girl's quilt blocks.  Surprisingly, this took a long time.  We had had a short opening exercise and we had a story afterwards, and we went over the hour that is allotted for our activities.

The following month's activity was a success.  We set up five sewing machines and worked with the girls as they organized their blocks into rows and stitched them together.  This was a new experience for each of the three girls who attended.  One girl, whose older sister is taking a sewing class at school, was enthusiastic about her progress and continued to remark on how much fun she was having and how good she was at sewing.  She begged to continue working on into the night!  Another girl, who had literally been dragged to the activity by her friend and who refused to participate until the others were engrossed in their own work, seemed very frustrated as she worked to arrange the blocks.  She was unable to get any sewing done before the time ran out. Yet, the following day, she reported to another friend (with an unheeded injunction "not to tell" the first friend) that she had had a great time!  You never know.

During the course of February, I tried unsuccessfully to get each of these three girls over to  my house to work with them on the stitching.  We decided to postpone tying the quilts until March's activity to allow them time to finish sewing the blocks together.  I used my February lesson to teach about modesty and personal style and image instead.


As the March activity approached, the quilts were not any more complete than they had been two months before.  Aunt Elizabeth's gift complete, I dragged out all of the parts to this project and gave them a temporary home on the parlor floor.  It was overwhelming, particularly since I had sick children.  I cut out strips for all of the borders, then tackled the sewing.  When Kara called with an offer to help, I confess I felt badly about it, but I accepted her kind assistance.  As she assembled three quilt tops, I finished the rest with a light heart and a glimmer of hope for the end of the project. 

By this time, our leaders had decided to change the program and had released us from this assignment, so tying these quilts was to be our last activity with the girls.  The project turned out to have been ideally timed, as it provided an opportunity for the girls to work with their old leaders and their new ones, offering needed continuity.  Additionally, the two extra quilts were required after all:  another girl moved into the neighborhood, and the birthday of a younger girl moved her into the group!  There was something for everyone.


Were the quilts completed?  According to the rules of this project, Yes.  Ends of two of them had to be stitched during the activity (while everyone was busily tying the two we sent home with their owners), but they were bound and are in the possession of the new leaders.  Two of my daughters attended the activity with us and added extra pairs of hands to the labor.  They also took photographs that day, to document the design and the activity.


The rest is a bit of a frustration about this blogging business:  I have tried three times before now to document this activity, and have had difficulties editing posts.  My computer died during my last attempt to insert photographs into the last set of text (which I have had to delete and write again), so we have been (and continue to be) without one.  And all of those pictures?  They shall have to be included another day, when we find a solution to the problem.

Binding Matters

Thursday morning was spent visiting and handstitching green pin-dot binding onto a quilt that my sister-in-law just finished for her oldest daughter.  It is lovely, constructed of 1930's prints on a cream background and featuring pieced tulips in pink.  It spent the past couple of weeks at the home of our husbands' parents, where many family members quilted on it.  What a happy day for her to have it finished!  The little girl's two sisters have matching quilts, so the set is complete --- for at least a month, until their new baby is born.

The bindings for the first two quilts (not shown in the photographs) matched the yellow or blue checked backings, and were identical prints (except for the color, of course). Tiny white silhouetted birds and vines softened the buttercup and deep sky backgrounds.  They were straight cut and went on quickly, without a hitch.  They will communicate that the quilts are a set.  I mailed the quilts Friday, before lunch; they should have arrived today.

The children were home from school for the past couple of days; I did little with this project.  But a minor marathon looms around the corner of the weekend....

Two Down: Fifty to Go.

The second quilt was stipple quilted in less than an hour.  The back looks good and I even had a few feet of thread to spare.

I know why these took so long to finish:  I decided that I don't really like everything about them, and wish I had done things differently.

What does that mean?  I would rather that the little blue squares were not there; that the hearts looked like they were just floating along in a sea of white.  While I am partial to the fabric used for the small green border on the second one, I think the project would have looked better if I had chosen something blue, to bring out the blue flowers in one of the fabrics inside the quilt.

My motto, which has gotten at least one frustrated perfectionist through the process of learning to quilt, has long been:  Each quilt is practice for the next one.  These patterns will probably be used again, and certainly the principles will come in handy in other situations.  I need to look longer and more carefully, before installing a border.  And I plan to keep going, even when there is an "ugly stage" to the current project.  It seems like there usually is an ugly stage.

Now it's time to make a visit....

Make a Start!

Yesterday I began a list of the projects that needed my attention.  It quickly grew to the point that it got out of hand; it became so discouraging that I quit writing and went to the parlor closet to see just how bad things were! As I began to pull bags of partially-complete quilts from the closet, I realized that what I needed was a strategy of attack.  I held out the most urgent and closed the door.

The first two quilts were begun nearly two years ago, after a visit to my father's aunt.  Aunt Elizabeth has always held a cherished place in his heart, and she has become beloved to me as well.  As a child, I enjoyed each visit to her house, for she had a swing indoors, as well as a smile that didn't stop.

Aunt Elizabeth's kitchen and nearby sitting room are fresh and crisp in white, yellow, and blue.  For her quilt tops, I mostly used fabrics that I already had, including greens (my favorite) and primarily utilizing 30's and 40's style prints.  The quilts are small, about the size of a crib quilt --- just the right size for a naptime or board game snuggle.

These two came out of the cupboard with their gingham, flannel backings already folded neatly with the tops.  They needed batting cut and they still need something for the binding, but otherwise they were ready.  I pressed them, cut some batting, then pinned them together.  Within two hours, the first was machine quilted.  This includes the time my eight-year-old and I spent picking out little lumps that happen when the backing bunches up in little places (I haven't yet figured out how to completely avoid this).  While I cannot yet consider that this is done, according to my definition of complete, two hours was a small price to pay for progress!  And the other one is also pinned and ready to go!  Aunt Elizabeth, of course, hand quilts everything and these are just machine stippled, but they are not worth being embarrassed over.  I hope to finish them up this week and take a drive through the canyon to deliver them to her.

The Big Idea

I guess this idea has been a long time in coming, but it arrived today.  I have accepted the challenge from myself to finish fifty-two quilts this year.  It is already a week into March, I know, but I think it will be possible.  And it may well be essential.

As a long-time collector of fabric, I always think of myself as a quilter.  I have dozens of projects started, and for many others I have a complete --- or nearly complete --- collection of ideas and materials assembled to accomplish what I have in mind.  But the only person who is even a little impressed with this stuff is me.  As long as the creativity is only expressed in my mind, nobody else can appreciate it. 

Frankly, my family is not enjoying this "hobby", and neither is anyone else for whom these generous projects are supposedly planned!  The fabric storage is bursting at its seams, and I continue to think that I need to acquire more fabric to "finish" projects that are not really even begun.  I don't just want to be an idea gal; I need --- and want --- to become a Finisher.

So here it is:  Starting today, I shall work to finish fifty-two quilts this year.  These projects may be of any size, but the edges must be bound or otherwise finished in order to be counted as complete.  Quilts may be tied, hand quilted, or quilted by machine.  They may be kept or donated; given as gifts within or without my family; hung or draped or folded in the car for emergencies.  But they are to be completed by January 1 of 2012.  Projects that I help my children complete shall, for the purposes of this count, count.

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle the progress of the project, and to share photos of the finished quilts.  I confess that I have done poorly at recording life through photos, so this will require figuring out a way to take pictures and post them.  I recognize that all of this will require discipline, because the other responsibilities of life will not just get away and let me take all the time I need to do this:  I still have laundry and dishes and shopping and chauffering for my family, and I still have two little boys at home with me during the days.  My college classes will still require attention, as will the assignments from Marie for her website.  But I have hope that it will help me to clear out the clutter and to organize and beautify my life --- and the lives of others around me.  I think it will.