Constant Quilting

Well, today is the last day of school and instead of making me excited for summer, it always makes me melancholy.  The kids are another year older; we've had to say "goodbye" to teachers, classmates, and friends; and our nine-month routine is about to go out the window.  It's an inescapable reminder of the steady march of time.  Clearly I'm not good with change.

But because change is inevitable and, try as I might, I can't stop time, I've had to find a way to slow time down... yes, it's quilting.  Planning, cutting, and piecing while listening to music or with Pride and Prejudice playing in the background (for the 20th time) I'm able to forget.  For a few stolen moments I don't have to think about the fact that my daughter will enter high school next year or that my son will have to face junior high without his best friend.  With my mind on the quilt taking shape before me I can set aside my sadness that I have only one child remaining in the village school that has been at the center of our lives for 9 years and I can ignore the nagging worries about how I'm going to entertain 3 kids and a dog for 2 months.

In quilting, as in life, the colors and fabric, the patterns and textures are ever changing.  But unlike life, the process of quilting remains constant -- always rhythmic, soothing, and familiar.  And so for the past few days, instead of singing the blues, I've been working on a small quilt for a favorite teacher.  Call it avoidance, call it escapism... I call it healthy.



For Mrs. Johnson - 14" x 14"



And the Verdict is...

I recently decided to have some of my quilts quilted by a long arm quilter.  As a dedicated hand quilter, this was not an easy decision to make, but a huge backlog of quilts awaiting quilting was enough to finally put me over the edge and give it a try.  Remember this block of the month quilt? 

It's the first one back from the long arm quilters' and the verdict is... I love it!

Here's a look at the finished product:

Actually I've had the quilt for a couple of weeks, but between baseball and lacrosse games, puppy school and a submission deadline, I didn't get around to starting the binding until yesterday. 





I'd like to say that I'm finished with the binding, but in the interest of full disclosure, I should probably tell you that I'm still working on sewing it down on the back.  Sigh...

But back to the quilting.  I love how the stippling in the inner border makes the appliqué pop...

I think the pattern on the setting triangles is really pretty...

And I especially like the "piano key" pattern in the outer border...

The drape is a bit stiffer than with a hand-quilted quilt, but my mom assures me that it will soften with use.  And it is a very different look than hand-quilting -- although no less pretty.  In retrospect, I might have chosen a less visible thread color for the blocks and setting triangles, but short of changing the thread color to match every block (and probably driving up the cost) I'm not sure what would have looked better.

But all in all I'm very happy with the finished quilt -- the operative word being "finished."  Let's be honest, it would probably have taken me a year to finish by hand (IF I finished it at all) and I would never have attempted that outer border.  Quilted and bound in less than 2 months (well, almost bound) all while working on other projects and without sore fingers.  I'm sold!

Quilting Hangover

Today I have the worst quilting hangover. 

Yesterday was the deadline for submissions for Quilters Newsletter's Best Fat Quarter Quilts special issue and for the past couple of weeks I've been spending every spare moment in my sewing room designing and constructing quilts--hence the dirth of blog posts.  If I had to leave my sewing room for yet another baseball or lacrosse game or school event, I made sure to bring graph paper with me just in case I was struck with inspiration.  I've subjected my poor daughter to countless "design consultations" and my husband, sons, and even my parents have had to endure my pleas for advice.  I've been distracted, disorganized, and perhaps mildly obsessed.  The house is a wreck, I've abandoned my poor sister, and the puppy is jonesing for a walk that lasts longer than 10 minutes.  To top it all off, I stayed up until past midnight for the past couple of nights frantically piecing blocks and trying not to accidentally do myself harm with my rotary cutter.


Aren't they pretty!



So now I'm tired, out of shape, and addicted to Diet Coke again, but (fingers crossed) it was worth it.  At 12:15 am Eastern Time, but 10:15 pm Mountain Daylight Time at the QN offices in Golden, Colorado, and therefore on time, I submitted designs for one lap quilt, one table runner, and four (yes, four!) small quilts for charm packs.  Now the waiting (and the clean-up) begins...

In other news, check out pages 50 and 51 of the June/July issue of Quilter's Newsletter.  There you will find my article "Make Peace with Your UFOs".  It's about coming to terms with both my 40th birthday and my large number of unfinished quilts.  And no, I won't be sharing how long ago I wrote this article!!

Mod? Me?

This is the quilt that my daughter Grayson used to sleep under:

I made it as a Christmas present for her when she was 7 and in 2nd grade.  It was strictly a utility quilt -- basic patchwork and quilted on my machine.  At the time my daughter loved anything bright and colorful.  I had so much fun collecting the fabrics for this quilt because they were totally different than the muted colors that I usually used.  I couldn't stop smiling while making this happy quilt and I've loved it ever since.  It suited my daughter and her colorful personality to a "t."

But my daughter just turned 14 (argh) and this year the only present she wanted was a redecorated bedroom.  Needless to say, the patchwork quilt did not make the cut.  I guess my vision of her marching off to college with her cherished childhood quilt in tow isn't going to come to pass.  And to make matters worse, she decided that she doesn't want to sleep under a quilt anymore.  She wants a duvet. 

After the initial shock and feelings of betrayal subsided, I was able to pull myself together enough to help her shop for a duvet cover.  This is what she chose:

It's from IKEA and has some Swedish name that I can't pronounce, but she loves it.  The new bedding looks nice against her yellow walls (thank God, no painting!), but we took down the pink curtains and replaced them with white linen.  We also took away the white headboard that I had stencilled with pink flowers when she was 2, painted the matching dresser blue, and dispensed with the pink table scarf that has covered her dresser for years.  The final touch was replacing her wooden lamps and pleated shades with ultra-cool glass lamps and barrel shades.

Basically we eradicated any shred of my influence and/or taste from the room and made it utterly her own.  She's thrilled with the new space and that makes me happy, but I'm also a bit sad to say goodbye to the touches of little girl that I spent so much time creating.

BUT she still needed a table scarf for her dresser to protect it from her fish bowl AND she couldn't find any that she liked in time for her birthday slumber party.  I saw an opportunity and I decided to take it.  Unbeknownst to my daughter I bought a 1/4 yard each of 8 solid blues that matched her duvet cover, cut them into 1 1/2" strips, and sewed them together to make this table scarf:

This quilt is like nothing I've ever made before.  I'm a pretty traditional quilter; I favor muted colors, small scale prints, and traditional patterns.  But once in a while it's so much fun to step out of your comfort zone and make something different, especially when you are creating with someone else's tastes in mind.  And I have to say, I love the result.  I even got carried away and made this pillow with 2 1/2" strips of the remaining fabric:

Now everybody is happy.  Grayson loves the table scarf and pillow because there's nothing girlie or traditional about them.  I may have made them, but they are totally her.  And I'm happy because once again my daughter has inspired me to stretch my boundaries and try something new AND I managed to get a quilt (and a little piece of me) back into my daughter's bedroom.  Shhh...

Spring Vacation by the Numbers

Last week was my kids' spring vacation.  My husband could only take one day off, we have a trip planned for June, and the weather was supposed to be beautiful, so the kids and I decided to spend the week at home.  I imagined a week of relaxation and play, interspersed with a bit of spring cleaning, a touch of gardening, and a lot of quilting.  Needless to say, the vacation didn't exactly go as planned.  Let me give it to you by the numbers:

Baseball/lacrosse practices:  7

Orthodontist/hair appointments:  4
Tacos consumed by 9 12-year old boys at son's birthday party:  60
Playoff games watched by the hockey obsessed men in my life:  10
Hours spent redecorating 13-year old daughter's room:  5
Hours spent looking for the perfect lampshades for 13-year old daughter's room:  6
Trips to hardware and craft stores for supplies for redecoration of 13-year old daughter's room:  7
Windows washed by me:  25
Fingers somehow injured during washing of 25 windows:  1
Hours spent icing finger injured during washing of 25 windows:  2
Pairs of shorts tried on by sons during a "quick" shopping trip:  19
Pairs of shorts tried on by daughter during said shopping trip:  5 (go figure!)
Pairs of shorts tried on by me during shopping trip:  0
Pies baked for cookout with friends:  2
Hours spent cleaning for cookout with friends:  4
Hours it took for the house to go back to normal after cookout with friends:  1
Articles of husband's clothing ironed:  15
Loads of laundry washed:  11
Loads of laundry folded and put away:  3
Baths for our puppy Casey due to mud season:  8
Times Casey ran away to the neighbors' houses:  6
Branch arbors built with husband:  1
Nails bent during construction of branch arbor with husband:  78
Colorful expletives used by husband during construction of branch arbor:  153
And finally, hours spent quilting:  0

BUT today my husband is back at work, the kids are back at school, Casey is napping, and it's raining outside.  At long last, time to quilt...

NOOOOO!!!!!

Yesterday I finally had my appointment with the long arm quilter who is going to be doing a couple of my lap quilts--one is the tessellating leaves quilt that was pictured on my last post; the other is this block-of-the-month quilt:

The quilt is done in Kansas Troubles' Garden Inspirations fabrics.  It's a project that I did with my mom a couple of years ago.  I was good about keeping up with the blocks and I managed to piece the top up to the tan inner border, but when faced with doing machine appliqué for the first time, I put the quilt aside and there it sat.  For two years.  But last week I finally sat down and faced the appliqué...

If you don't look too closely it actually came out pretty good.  And the bottom line is that the top is now finished and hopefully being quilted as we speak!!

During the drive home from the long arm quilters' house I started to get fired up to finish more of my unquilted quilts (4 being quilted, 7 to go); and I was thinking that I might try a bit of machine quilting of my own.  I knew just the quilt I wanted to start with...

It's a simple pattern but to give it something special I made it out of fine-wale corduroy.  Yes, corduroy.  I thought it was an inspired choice, but unfortunately the magazine I submitted it to didn't agree.  Sigh.  Anyway, in person this quilt looks velvety soft and I've been thinking that machine quilting in the ditch might get the job done without detracting from the impact of the fabric.

So when I arrived home yesterday I got busy.  I cut a back and batting for the quilt, taped them down to my table, and smoothed the runner over the top to begin pin-basting.  I was humming along, happy to be making progress and already thinking of other quilts that I might be able to machine quilt.  And then, horror of horrors, I noticed that one of the star centers looked a bit different.  "No," I thought, "that can't be."  But sure enough, it was.  The center was wrong side up and because it's corduroy you can't miss it.  To fix it I would have to take off the border and the sashing and the star points.  And just like that the bubble burst.

For a couple of minutes I actually thought about leaving the center and moving on with the quilting.  After all, I've heard the myth of Amish quilters intentionally adding a mistake to their quilts for the sake of humility.  But alas I'm not Amish and my quilts are already far from perfect, so I picked up the seam ripper and removed the center.



so sad...


Now I have to decide if I'm going to rip the quilt apart to repair the center or if I can try to fix it with some hand-stitching.  But first I've got to decide if I'm going to push on, fix the mistake, and try to regain my motivation; or if I'm going to admit defeat, pack the quilt away, and move on with another project.  Hmmm... seems like the perfect time to write a blog post!

Spring Cleaning

Well, my spring fever has passed and been replaced by a desire for spring cleaning.  Let me clarify:  I have a desire for a home that has been spring cleaned--not so much for the cleaning itself.  The brighter sunlight is great for the soul, but has the downside of making the smudges on the walls and the water spots on the windows much more apparent.  I didn't want to shock my system by starting my cleaning with painting or window washing, so I decided to warm up by taking the logical step of reupholstering my great-grandmother's chair.  I'm not sure what made me decide that it was finally time to take on this project--I haven't had purple in my home decor in 6 or 7 years and I've managed to walk by this chair that lives in our 2nd floor landing for years without feeling compelled to redo it.  But last week in a burst of productivity (or maybe it was procrastination disguised as productivity--that often happens to me), I not only bought the fabric, I actually re-covered the chair.  And finished!

Here are the before and after shots...

and after.

Before...

Fueled on by my success with the chair, I momentarily thought about reorganizing my junk drawers.  But walking through my sewing room on the way to the kitchen, I was side-tracked by a quilt top hanging on my quilt rack--I should never walk to the kitchen through my sewing room.  Anyway the quilt top is one I finished a l-o-n-g time ago.  It's a lap quilt with a tessellating leaf pattern that I love, but I just never got around to quilting.  I'm a hand quilter and the thought of spending 6 months plus quilting a big project just didn't appeal at the time.  There were just so many new projects to try and as much as I enjoy hand quilting, it's the piecing I really LOVE.  So the poor thing has been sitting, waiting, for years.

Tessellating Leaves pattern by Jackie Robinson

I really didn't feel like tackling the junk drawers, so I decided to pull out all of my unquilted quilt tops.  To my surprise there were 11.  11!!  Four of them were already basted and ready to go.  That's a lot of quilting.  And now it's confession time.  Despite all of the projects I've made, I've never sent out a quilt to be machine quilted.  Can you believe it!  Why, you ask?  Part of it may be procrastination and part of it is the hope that my husband will someday surprise me with a long arm quilting machine, but I think the biggest reason is a fear of giving up ownership of the process and risking the outcome.

But as I sat on the floor surrounded by my work, I realized that if I didn't get some help, these quilts were probably never going to be finished.  And since I was pretty sure my husband wasn't going to pony up the long arm quilting machine any time soon, I decided it was finally time to contact a long arm quilter. 

So now I've got appointments with two quilters to have 4 of my quilts done and to be honest, I can't wait!  I'm looking forward to finishing up some old projects and freeing up time to work on some new ones.  Don't get me wrong, I still want to hand quilt a lot of my work; I love how it looks and I love feeling connected to my quilting "foremothers" (if such a word exists); but I think it's time I entered the 21st century and I'm excited about the possibilities.

I still haven't gotten to the "cleaning" part of my spring cleaning yet, but I'm feeling pretty good about the items I've crossed off my to-do list.  It's amazing what you can accomplish when window washing is impending!