Posts categorized: Quilting

Of Revolution and History

This past weekend, we went on a rather last-minute spontaneous trip to Boston to celebrate five years together (and to embrace our love of traveling, which we haven’t been doing quite so often lately). It was a lovely break from the usual, with great food, wonderful tours, and a bit of biking around the city (the idea of having rentable bikes stationed throughout the city that you can just grab and return at any location may be the best thing since sliced bread).

Sometimes I think I should have studied history in college instead of computer science. I mean, I totally geek out about things like this headstone, with its pre-standardized spellings, type ligatures, Roman capitals and half years (a period of time where both the Julian and Gregorian calendars were used).

And, though I don’t have a photo of it, our guide’s historical costume was top-notch; the hand-stitching was beautiful and the linen looked sumptuous, yet well-worn (we took a Freedom Trail guided tour).

On the way home on Sunday, we went to Old Sturbridge Village. It was kismet—it happened to be Textile Weekend with a focus on early New England quilting. They had a lovely mix of original quilts and faithful reproductions on display throughout the village, and a small show of quilts by their members. We stopped into the member quilt show, and I was a bit disheartened when the woman soliciting votes for their viewer’s choice picks mentioned that some visitors had adamantly voiced that they were only voting for hand-quilted entries, or only machine-quilted entries, etc. Can’t we all just get along? All of the entries had admirable qualities.

This was my favorite quilt in the village itself. It’s just such quintessential early 19th century patchwork:

Photo by me, featuring quilt by Susannah A.A. Howard c. 1840 in the collection of Old Sturbridge Village

It was wonderful to hear about early quilting without being fed one single mostly mythological tidbit passed off as absolute fact (like humility blocks, making thirteen quilts before she wed, etc).

And, since I can’t go on vacation these days with buying some sort of fabric, I came home with a pair of reproduction FQs from the Village (haven’t a clue how I’ll use them, but these particular two really caught my eye), and some yardage of a print from IKEA that I love. It will likely be a quilt back. I joked that I only agreed to go to Boston because there’s a nearby IKEA. There may be a bit more truth to that statement than I want to admit. 😉

What historical places do you love?

Foto Friday

Posted in Quilting

I was a little “bleh” about this as the arcs were coming together. I’m a little more psyched now that I can see how the rings will look.

I hope the saying that you can “quilt out an A-cup” is true, because this one might need it. 😉

A Ruffled Baby Quilt

Posted in Quilting

I have the need to make a couple of baby quilts for friends and family in the coming months. This is the first, which started as me wanting to play with a few new things and ended up as a finished quilt that I’m pretty happy with. It was also very quick—the binding took longer than the rest of the quilt, I think.

I started with a designer roll of Wrenly (Valorie Wells), but ended up only using nine strips in the quilt itself. The marbled fabrics are flannels, the thin border is Minky, and the outer border is something I picked up from the sale bin at the LQS.

Foto Freitag

Posted in Quilting

We’re starting Double Wedding Ring in Sew You Want to Quilt. Here’s my background fabric and two pieced arcs. If anyone is interested, we’re mostly using this free pattern from Free Spirit.

Momentum slowed a bit, as the handouts from class were printed smaller than my printer printed yesterday. Now I have to figure out the scaling factor before I can continue piecing.

What I’ll Never Tell You

Posted in Quilting

There’s one bit of information that I can guarantee I’m never going to tell you on this blog: that I’m a Traditional quilter. Or a Modern quilter. Or an Art quilter. Or a Contemporary quilter. Or even a modern quilter (at least without qualifying it with “mostly” or “lean towards”).

I’m just a Quilter.

I make things that I like. Sometimes they are distinctly one thing or another—an 1812 reproduction is pretty Traditional in my book. Most of the time, I say “I lean mostly toward little-‘m’ modern”, because I make things out of mostly current fabric in styles that are mostly current to the more-or-less generic 2010s aesthetic in design, fashion, and home furnishing. In other words, modern because it’s made in the current era.

I think that makes me “just a Quilter” just like all the men and women of the past who were making things out of what fabrics and patterns they could buy at the time.

But, there seems to be a push for labels in our global quilting community. Multiple times in the past week alone, I’ve (or we’ve) been asked what kind of quilter I am (we are). So, why do I have to label myself as little-‘m’ modern to get the point across? I doubt the woman making a double wedding ring out of bleached muslin and pastel calicoes in 1930s called herself modern, even though she was by my definition.

So, I’m just a Quilter.

I might make modern quilts sometimes. I’m sure I’ll make a Modern quilt, if I haven’t already. Some day, I want to make a Civil War repro. And one of those crazy-intricate applique quilts full of flowers and vines and birds. Mostly, I just want to try things. I want to try new techniques in old ways and new ways and in whatever way I find myself leaning toward at the time.

There’s no label for my quilting, it’s just Quilting.

I don’t think that means that I don’t have a voice, either. Everything I make is something that is me expressing myself at that point in time. And I have themes that appear in most of my projects. For instance, almost all of my quilts have a non-quilting cotton thrown in (or more). I’m in a grey period right now where I’m really into pairing colors with greys of various shades.

I don’t mean to say that there aren’t quilters out there who don’t deserve a label if they want to claim it. And that they aren’t happy with it. But personally, I’m just a quilter, and I think I’ll always be just a quilter (well, and costumer, and sewer, and sewist, and fiber artist, and crafter, and any other number of things because I don’t just quilt, but I am a Quilter).

What are you? Are you something? Are you many things?

(A lot of this was inspired by Lynne from Lily’s Quilts asking about guild membership and modern vs. traditional. We’re a varied bunch in the quilting community!)

Foto Freitag

Posted in Quilting

This is the top of a doll quilt version of a simple project I’ve been working on between larger, brain-power–requiring projects. Or maybe it’s a pillow sham. I haven’t yet decided. Mostly I wanted to play with my ruffler foot.

Saturday Sampler Q2

Posted in Quilting

Back in April, I showed you my first three Saturday Sampler blocks. Here are the next three—bringing us to the halfway point.

For those who missed the explanation the first time around, this is a monthly block meetup at my LQS. Every year, they choose a theme for the 12 monthly blocks, and this year’s is “Road Trip.” We meet up the last Sat. of the month, learn how to make the block, and are given precut strips to complete it with. They chose to do this one out of batiks.

At the end of April, we hopped back on the Road (to Oklahoma City)…

…which isn’t quite Road to Oklahoma, and is likely another Jacob’s Ladder variant. This block taught me to measure the pre-cut strips before cutting off the required pieces. Two of mine were about 1⁄8″ short of the length needed for all the pieces. Since I’d started cutting the first one without measuring, I didn’t realize until the last two squares—so I had to be careful sewing with 1⁄8″ seam allowances for those. The other strip, I was able to cut the pieces about 1⁄16″ short–not enough to badly throw off my piecing, and enough to squeeze it all in over the length of the strip.

In May, we jumped over to the East Coast, warming up on the Philadelphia Pavement…

…which is very simple to make.

And June brought us back down to the South for Alabama.

…a block that I can’t seem to get to lay flat. Mine is a bit lumpy, but it can be quilted out. I think I was subconsciously using a scant ¼″ seam, which didn’t work out well.

I’m still thinking about layouts and such. I thought I had a great one (it looks awesome in my head), but when I try to mock it up, it just doesn’t look right. So, who knows. I have plenty of time to mull it over.

I have started a label… but you only get a sneak preview so far.

Stay tuned for the next installment in mid/late–October!

The Big Reveal: Cyclist

Posted in Quilting

Source: jaybirdquilts.com via Pinterest

I’ve been in love with Curious Nature—and every quilt I’ve seen made with it—since it was released this past Spring. When the ebook Geared for Guys started making rounds, and Julie of Jaybird Quilts showed us the “Gamer” quilt, I was inspired with the perfect project for Curious Nature.

See, Carl just turned the big three-oh. He’s having a bit of an existential crisis about it, and we all know how cuddling under a hand-made quilt can help with that. But, he’s not a gamer (we have a Game Cube… somewhere… that gets used for Mario Kart maybe once a year). He is a cyclist, so I give you “Cyclist”:

It is larger than Gamer: around 70″ square (because there are more letters and because he likes square lap quilts). The background is Quilter’s Linen in Charcoal.

Disappearing Nine-Patch (with sizing table)

Posted in Quilting

The disappearing nine-patch is my new favorite block. It’s so simple to make, but looks like you pieced together a ton of small squares and rectangles. Great effect with minimal effort—my kind of thing.

Take these, for example. Just some basic nine-patches—all the same.

Then, they are cut into quarters.

And sewn back together into a four-patch.

To become all of these!

See? Simple-looks-complicated. Lovely.

Math

If you don’t want to do the calculations, here’s a table of sizes:

Starting square sizes and corresponding disappearing nine-patch block sizes
Starting Square	Finished Block
Common precut sizes are bolded
1″	1″
1.5″	2.5″
2″	4″
2.5″	5.5″
3″	7″
3.5″	8.5″
4″	10″
4.5″	11.5″
5″	13″
5.5″	14.5″
6″	16″
6.5″	17.5″
10″	28″

Unfortunately, some common block sizes, like 6″, 8″, and 12″, end up requiring the starting squares be cut to third-inches, so I didn’t include them above. You could try rounding up to the nearest eighth, and use a generous ¼″ seam for the nine-patch piecing (and back to an exact seam for the four patch)—if you’re adventurous and aren’t concerned about absolutely perfect points.

Otherwise, the math isn’t that hard for these once you know how to do it.

To calculate final size from your starting squares

Example using 3″ squares.

Short answer: (Square Size × 3) − 2″
Example: 3″ times 3 equals 9″; 9″ minus 2″ equals 7″. 3″ squares make a 7″ disappearing nine-patch block.

Long answer:

Add together a row of squares. Example: 3″ times 3 pieces (a row) equals 9″
Subtract the row seams (½″ per seam, two seams). Example: 9″ minus 1″ equals 8″
Subtract the four-patch disappearing seams (½″ per seam, one seam). Example: 8″ minus .5″ equals 7.5″
Subtract your final piecing seams for the finished size. Example: 7.5″ minus .5″ equals 7″ finished block

To calculate starting squares from finished block size

Example needing 5.5″ finished block.

Short answer: (Finished Size + 2″) ÷ 3
Example: 5.5″ plus 2″ equals 7.5″; 7.5″ divided by 3 equals 2.5″. 2.5″ squares make a 5.5″ disappearing nine-patch block.

Long answer:

Add your piecing seams to the finished size. Example: 5.5″ plus .5″ equals 6″ unfinished block
Add your four-patch seams (½″ per seam, one seam). Example: 6″ plus .5″ equals 6.5″
Add your nine-patch seams (½″ per seam, two seams). Example: 6.5″ plus 1″ equals 7.5″
Divide by 3 to get your individual square size. Example: 7.5″ divided by 3 equals 2.5″ starting squares

Have fun with your own disappearing nine-patches! Let me know what you make, I’d love to see it.

Foto Freitag

Posted in Quilting

The end is in sight (albeit close to a month late)!

And, this evening I will be seeing both Seven Nations and Enter the Haggis play live.

These two things make me immeasurably happy.

In other news I changed my template around, so now the blog is a bit more blog-like, for your perusing ability, and the homepage has a slideshow of finished projects. Enjoy!