Quilted moments

Two months ago today I finished the quilt I started in July.  A day late for the baby's 6 month milestone in November.  The majority of this quilt was sewn in a state of frustration, exhaustion, tears.  None of which had to do with the quilt and all of which had to do with being the mother of a 2-6 month old.

For example, most 'geese' were made one afternoon while my husband took the baby away for two hours.  I had called him home from work because I couldn't face being a mother that day.  The rest were made in tears one night after the baby finally went to sleep a week later at the end of another trying day.  For awhile, the quilt was keeping me sane.  It was something to look forward to in the few moments the baby didn't need me.

This quilt, though not for me, provided me with a connection to who I was before the baby.  A connection that was very weak, still is, and threatening to break completely.  It meant a lot to have it waiting for me.  If it had been for myself it would probably still be on a shelf.  So much I did for myself before the baby seems postponed indefinitely.  As this was for someone else I made myself find the time to chip away at the project.

It was the perfect combination of directed work and improvisation.  The geese served as somewhat mindless work which became meditative at a time I needed to loose myself in something repetitive.  The improvisation, in the form of the layout, came at a time I craved some creativity with minimal mess.  Taping geese to the dining room wall while the baby bounced nearby meant I could work on the composition over time.  I could look at it all day and consider changes or notice happy accidents without having to pack it up at the end of the baby's naps.  The fate of geese for quite a few weeks.

Piece by piece it came together and it was time to quilt and then bind.  A fair amount went wrong.  I had a fair amount of unpicking and fixing and before the baby I would have outlined each one for you with pictures. Post-baby I realize dwelling on and pointing out my faults and mistakes is not only a waste of time but also, occasionally, an exercise in reverse bragging.  Not allowing myself to be proud or excited about each quilt because of imperfections only visible to myself.

Imperfections make quilts the very special things they are.  Imperfections make people the very special things they are.  Perhaps a bit deep for talking about a simple quilt but I find the story that comes with the making of the quilt, makes the quilt.

I pulled the last few stitches of the binding just before the babies were due dinner.  I bundled up my baby, ran up the street to the other baby, delivered the quilt, enjoyed a glass of wine and returned home.  It wasn't until after I put the baby to bed I realized I didn't take a picture of the final product.  The closest I have is a quick Instagram of the dining room wall.

And even in this last moment with the quilt there is a lesson.  So much of my day is getting through the schedule of events to get to the next nap time.  I frequently get to the end of the day and realize I didn't take the time to enjoy my son.  I wake up and he's eight months old and I can't remember when he first grabbed at a toy or sat up.  I do, however, remember the first time he rolled over.  It was the night before I sent him away with his dad while I created some geese.

That moment will forever be locked in someone else's quilt and I will never forget it.

Getting to Know the Farmers' Wives

If you're at all interested in modern quilting--or really any sort of quilting--chances are, you've heard of the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt.  This book of 111 six-inch blocks has excerpts of letters written by farmer's wives in the early 20th century, in response to a prompt about their daughters' futures.  That may not sound thrilling, but if you've seen the quilts that have resulted, you too would feel the pull to this book.  In fact, the multiple Flickr groups for makers of these blocks have provided hours of inspiration, even before I bought this book.

My Sewing Buddy sent me a bag of scraps from Denyse Schmidt's Hope Valley line.  Everyone should know how much I love DS by now--her fabrics, her books, herself--so this gift made me ecstatic.  Because the fabrics had originally been used in a log cabin quilt, there were some odd shapes and sizes.  I had to be creative in how to use them, though I did know I wanted to use them ASAP.  I ran out to Barnes & Noble, bought the Farmer's Wife book, and got started.

I've wanted a mini quilt for my cubicle, so I chose nine blocks and used a white background (as always).  I knew Hope Valley would make me happy every time I saw it, even while working!

The blocks are small, as I said, and use templates for all the piecing.  Some of the templates are so ridiculously teeny--that led to a lot of odd cuts from my rotary blade.  You can also see that my piecing isn't perfect, and I was perhaps a bit too trim-happy with some of the blocks.  But, as I'm the only quilter at work, no one is going to notice.

I free-motion quilted in lots of loops, which was mostly just fun!  I wanted to try something new.  I should've changed my needle for it--dang.

I backed the mini-quilt in Hope Valley that I used for Modern Maples, and bound it in a DS Quilts print (also used in my Modern Maples).  I added little loops at the top to hang it in my cubicle.  Genius, right?  I'm going to get a patent.  (Just kidding, I'm 100% sure I'm the last person in the world to think of this.)

The mini-quilt matches the Denyse Schmidt mug rugs my buddy made me, so my cubicle is extremely coordinated.  I love it!

In other news, I started another baby quilt!  For those of you counting, that's...five?  Is that right?  All for babies I know, or mothers I know.  That's crazy, right?  2012 and 2013 have been very fertile years.  Be careful out there, kids.

I'll have more information and pictures when it's done, but I decided to use Timber & Leaf for this new baby girl. I'm waiting on two more fat quarters to arrive, but so far I love it.  I hope she does too!

Squares

Prepare yourself.

This quilt is going to drag on and on.  Gone are the days of feverishly cutting and piecing, getting lost in the fabric and calmly hand-stitching while watching TV.

It took me a week to cut the pieces for this small quilt.  I have no idea how long it will take to actually piece it together.  I'm not sure how much I can wax on about the incremental steps each week, but I'll try to keep it somewhat interesting.

As I said last week, this is a quilt for Pruin's best friend down the road.  It seemed only fitting that Pruin help.  Of course he couldn't do much more than babble his agreement or criticism from his spot on the floor next to me, but at least I don't feel guilty about neglecting my son while I try to do something unrelated to his upkeep.

During last week's heatwave we camped out on the floor (where is was coolest) and cut out squares.  Despite picking out seven fabrics, I concentrated on the shirt given to me by my mama friend.  To my mind this is the centerpiece of the quilt so the other fabrics should act as compliments instead of stealing the show.

This decision made it easier to figure out how many squares I needed.  Actually, that makes it sound organized and intentional.  Really, I cut as much as I could out of the shirt and that is going to be enough.

I can't bring myself to plan the design.  I find I enjoy the quilting process a lot more when I just let it flow a bit.  Of course I have yet to follow a pattern so maybe I would enjoy the direction and structure (especially as my time is now limited) but there is something about the serendipity of working with 'non-traditional' fabrics.  I'm never quite sure how it's going to turn out but I find it makes the process just as satisfying as the end result.

Because the materials are somewhat wonky shapes I made templates to ensure I got every usable bit out of each shirt piece.  This doesn't always work.  I tend to slowly shave a bit off during each pass which means later pieces aren't the same size as earlier pieces.  I'm hoping it washes out in the seam allowance.

I am going for a Flying Geese pattern in this quilt.  This pattern has called to me since we started this venture so it seemed the right time to give it a go.  This is as close as I got to planning a design.  The design will come once the 'geese' are sewn together and I see what evolves.

Best Friends Forever

It begins.

Yesterday Pruin helped me pick out the fabric for his best friend's quilt.  I know they are a bit young, but his mom and I are carefully orchestrating this friendship.  They are even the stars of their own talk show.

We aren't pushy at all.

But just in case it does fall apart, this quilt will tell the story of their early days.  Before they got tired of their moms pushing them together.

This quilt is made up of fabric from Pruin's quilt, the Dino quilt, new fabric and a shirt from my mom friend.

Stories abound.

We're going for a flying geese pattern with this one.  I have wanted to attempt this pattern since we began the blog and now the time has come.  Of course there will still be an element of my trademark improvisation.
Mostly because too much planning requires a bit of quilt math and I really can't handle voluntary arithmetic.

Now if I could just get Pruin to help me cut and piece we would be golden.

...now take a vacation.

On the hottest day of the year (so far) I decided I would finish this quilt come hell or high water.  Or in this case, fussy baby or low bourbon.

The binding was already cut.  The next steps were easy.

-square up
-find a way to attach vinyl back to fabric front
-bind

Easy.

My machine had other ideas.

As I always do, I forged ahead without looking for advice on sewing vinyl.  (At some point I will learn, I promise.)  I thought the hardest part was going to be getting a needle through the layers.  Turns out vinyl is pretty easy to sew through.

If you can get it through your machine.

NEWSFLASH: Vinyl does not slide smoothly between the foot and the deck.  Think sweaty thighs on vinyl seats and you'll know what I was battling.

I managed to attach the layers by simply sewing the edges together. Rocket science, I know, but it was actually quite difficult. Not only did the vinyl not slide through the machine easily, it also was a real b*tch to manipulate outside the machine.  It doesn't fold or move easily so the weight of the rest of the quilt constantly pulled the edges out of the feeder dogs.
I moved on to attaching the binding and halfway through decided the only way this quilt was going to be finished was by hand.  My poor machine couldn't take much more.  It was literally falling apart from the effort.  The light bulb fell out during the third side.

Great idea in theory, poor execution in reality.

Once again, Emily came to the rescue with the suggestion of tissue paper or matte tape.  I went with tissue paper.  I covered the entire sewing deck with yellow tissue and took a first pass at 'stitching in the ditch.'

It worked.

The weight of the quilt still pulled at the feed causing some serious wonky stitch lines, but the vinyl slid through like a dream.

And just as Andy Murray finally won Wimbledon (Good job, son. Now take a vacation.) the quilt was finished.

Finally.

Good job, Ariel.  Now take a vacation.

Finished: Rainbow Baby Quilt

The rainbow baby quilt I pieced over Memorial Day weekend is officially done!  I quilted and bound it this weekend.

I quilted it in vertical lines spaced two inches apart.  Halfway through quilting, I started beating myself up because I decided it would have looked better quilted horizontally.  Once it was done and washed, I realized my manager and her baby are never going to know the difference.  She won't look at it and think, "Couldn't she have free-motion quilted it?  Could the lines have been spaced better?"  It's a gift, and hopefully she'll like it for that reason.

I think makers tend to beat themselves up a lot--or congratulate themselves too often, ha!--when they really should be pleased that they possess a skill and can create for others with it.  I'm not saying you should half-ass your quilts or garments or paintings or whatever you do, but you should take pride in the fact that you made something.  That and most people never notice half of the things you do.

I love the backing and binding!  Both are from the new Bonnie and Camille line Happy-Go-Lucky.  I bought them at my LQS but it looks like you can still find it online.  It's just so happy and fun!

The baby shower is July 19 and I am now ready!  Well, my gift is.  As the organizer, I still have a lot to do...

What'd you sew this weekend?

Quilting Updates

It was a really productive weekend at my house!  The holiday didn't give me a reason to slack off; instead, I got quite a bit of sewing done!

The April do.Good Stitches blocks needed to be sewn up.  I originally had plans to make two baby quilts, but I only received blocks from about half of the members, so I only had enough for one crib-sized quilt.  

I quilted in straight lines about one inch apart.  I used a solid FreeSpirit for the binding (I can't remember the color name...) and Momo Big Dots for the back.  I had bought it on a whim for a backing and it worked out beautifully!

I still need to sew the label on the back and send it out, but that sounds like a job for the couch tomorrow night.

I also sewed the quilt top for the Rainbow quilt I mentioned last week.

It worked out really well!  I only had to buy the white fabric--everything else was from my stash.

It came together really quickly.  I cut out the blocks earlier last week, but cut out all the white last night, and then sewed it all together.  I bought backing and binding, but decided I needed a break!  The baby shower isn't for another month or so.  I have plenty of time!

 What'd you sew this weekend?

The Technicolor Baby Quilt

Earlier this month, I discussed the final baby quilt I have planned for this year.  My manager is due in August, and time is definitely ticking, as we're currently planning her baby shower.  She isn't finding out the gender before she gives birth, so to add onto the already nerve-wracking task of making a quilt for someone, I have to also consider that this baby could be a boy or a girl--and I really have no way to prepare (and, honestly, neither does she).

As of, oh, four days ago, I had decided on making the Thimble Blossoms Juggle quilt with fabrics from my stash. With all the awesome fabrics coming out this summer, I wanted to spend more money on fabric for me, and also create some room for it!  I grabbed about twenty fabrics and posted a picture to Instagram, asking for input.  It's so hard to stay neutral, because blues and green looks great together, and purple and pink look great together, but the four don't necessarily work well.  And I didn't want to go too modern with black and white--that isn't my manager or her husband, even.  But I was going to make it work!

Yesterday evening, after we got home from our road trip (you can read about it in Sunday's post in Queen City Stitcher), I opened the new Quilty magazine to relax.  Do you read Quilty?  I bought the first issue last summer, as I was getting into quilting, and wasn't impressed.  It just seemed too basic, maybe, or not modern enough.  I have a hard time relating to most quilting magazines because they aren't modern enough!  But I kept buying the new issues and it really has gotten better and better.  The newest issue has quilt patterns from Ellen Luckett-Baker, Sarah Watson, and Katie Clarke Blakesley, just to name a few.  Plus, it has some sarcastic/witty moments, and I thing the commentary is relevant.

Anyway!  I found a great quilt in it that I had to make: Rainbow Baby, by Cynthia Brunz.  It's a rainbow design on a white background--perfect for both sexes.  And the size--48" by 54"--is a great crib size, or would be perfect for playing on the floor, whatever my manager chooses.  It was kismet!

I started pulling fabrics and slicing squares today.  Here's some progress:

My current stash is color-coded, which makes this task pretty easy!

All five color families and the plan in Quilty

Red and orange--I'm using the same deer print in both colors

Green and blue--using the scissors in yellow and blue!

Yellow

With the holiday weekend coming up, I should have plenty of time to work on this, my do.Good stitches quilt, and some other projects.

What do you think?  And what are you working on?  Thanks to Christina Cantrall for her guest post Friday!

Sew it would seam

Hand-quilting again.

And again, the lines don't quite match with the seams so I'm improvising.

Actually, in that photo the seams are pretty good.
One of these days I will master the quilting/seam match-up.

To be fair to myself, the vertical seams are true and that's where I chose to begin the hand-quilting treatment.  The horizontal seams suggest a lack of planning/measuring. I'm not sure if the same hand-quilting treatment will hide the issue or make it even more noticeable.

To be honest, this bit has taken quite awhile and isn't always pretty.  More of this might just clutter things up a bit.

And I still have to figure out how to attach the vinyl backing.


Good thing we aren't picnic-ing anytime soon.

One More Baby Quilt...

As you've noticed, it's been a baby-filled year in my life.  Thankfully, no babies have belonged to me, but it seems like everyone I am close with is starting a family.  My last (planned) baby quilt for the year is for my manager, who's due in August.  Plot twist: she isn't finding out the gender before the birth. 

As you can probably tell, this throws a monkey wrench into just about everyone's plans, including her own.  How do we avoid drowning in a sea of yellow and green?  I'm starting to work on her quilt--my go-to gift--and, as I'm pulling together ideas, I'm noticing the quilting world is very gender-specific.  You can find fabric with astronaut kittens, but it's difficult finding fabric that isn't almost stereotypically male or female.

Because of this, I've had to go a bit outside the box to gather inspiration. 

Both of these Thimble Blossoms patterns are fun for babies and can be adjusted in size easily.  For "Summer," I'd like to use solids with a printed backing, but for "Juggle," I'd use hexagons in all different prints.  A baby quilt uses 42 hexies, so even 21 different prints would give a nice variety, and I could fussy-cut if I found something adorable and baby-related.

Sarah Jane's new line "Let's Pretend" has the same playful feel as "Out to Sea" and "Children at Play," which are both part of my stash.  I could mix-and-match prints from this line with her others, and with some fabrics in my stash, to create something playful and childish but not specifically girly or boyish.

The above fabric is from Ed Emberley's "Happy Drawing" line with Cloud9.  I think animals are a pretty safe bet for kids--sometimes too safe, and then you get into cartoon or baby animals which are pretty boring.  But these are still fun, and I could use prints from this line--including frogs, owls, and giraffes--with some solids in the Juggle quilt for both a boy or a girl.

What have you done in the past for a friend who isn't finding out the gender of her baby?  Do you have any ideas?  I need to figure out something soon--her shower is in July!