Quilts for Pulse: auditioning the layouts of hearts for the quilt top

We have 4 options so far:  Straight rows of color

I find it boring, but in a straight quilt of 6 x 8 in a rainbow, there’s not a lot of room to bend the rainbow

Diagonal rows:

I kind of like the diagonal, but do we lose the rainbow at this point?

Chevron:

If the diagonal lost the color theme, then the chevron just takes it a step farther down the lost path.  I like the idea of a kind of arrow or "arch"... but when put on the table, it doesn't make the cut.

 

Radiating:  Red in center and outside corners, other colors radiating in & out from them…

Just a hot mess, and NOT just because some of my block got twisted as I walked around the table & put them all together!

SO I’m sick of putting all 48 of these blocks on the table, walking around & re-arranging… but someone had a cool idea… how about if I turn the blocks upside down for every other row, or for each half of the quilt?  HMMM… I might have to put some rows together right side up & upside down, and then see how to combine them.  I like the idea.  It JUST might work… at least better than the straight rows. 

Thinking... thinking... thinking... needs more thought.  I'll give y'all the verdict later... but for now... notice, this kind of playing around with the layout requires a few things... first, the camera so that you can remember & put them next to each other, it takes WAY too long to arrange & re-arrange so you can see them back & forth.  Second, a big area to use to play with them... ALSO, you've got them all pressed so you're not dealing with lumpy seams on top of all the unfinished edges and the fact that the stupid blocks will twist & turn on the table since they're not completely together yet. 

AND an imagination.... preferably one that can think in patterns, so that you can envision the chevron and set the blocks in place to make it work.  ANYONE can think in a stripe, but if you can figure out how to move the stripe over by one block, for every new row... you've got a good start. 

Quilts for Pulse: Auditioning the selvage heart and cutting triangles off the heart halves

For my Orlando Pulse quilt, the intention is to have a heart for each of the 49 victims of the tragedy.  The front of the quilt will be 6 columns of 8 blocks each, which adds up to 48 (and magically, it takes 6 colors to make a rainbow, another major element needed in this quilt, so there are 8 blocks of each of the 6 colors).  But I need another block.  And  don’t want to favor any one color over any other.  I’ve been interested in selvage quilting for a while, and this seems a good opportunity to do it. 

 Photo of plain colored heart next to selvage heart:

I considered the possibility of positioning the selvages in a way so that it would appear they were curving around the edges of the heart, but to start with, the hearts called for by the initial Orlando Modern Quilt Guild request were squared off, no curving pieces required.  But on top of that, because there are 6 colors of selvages (and 6 colors in the rainbow), to try to turn it into a curved piece where one color was at the center and the others radiated out from it, would necessarily mean much less of the color in the center and more of the color around the perimeter.  I decided to do it as if I were simply replacing one of my rainbow single-color fabrics, and using the selvages to create a pieced stripe fabric.

I cut two 5 & ½ inch x 10 & ½ inch strips of one of my white-on-white fabrics to use as a base, and lined my 6 selvages up in order of rainbow color.  Because they are selvages, there is a large portion of each selvage strip that’s taken up with brand name, color dots, and other information that identifies the type of fabric, the designer, the store it came from, and the colors used.  One would think this would be good information to use to match and find the same fabric in the future if I ever need it again, but my favorite fabric store owner, whose “colors in quilting” class I took last week, assures me that these days the designs of the fabrics are changing so rapidly that it would be near impossible to find additional sources of a fabric just by keeping the selvages.  Still... I’m sure the manufacturers have a reason for putting all this information on the selvages, probably something involving identifying it in their own inventory, and customers who use fabric have spent centuries slicing off the selvages before sewing (because either the thicker weave of the selvage or the interruption of the pattern and color would ruin our projects). 

Quilters have a tradition of trying to be frugal about fabrics, so it makes sense that modern quilters would look at the selvages as we tossed them in the wastebasket and wonder if they couldn’t find a way to make use of them in a modern pattern… Selvage projects are becoming en vogue, so of course I had to try it. 

But the odd coloring of the edge of the selvage means that my rainbow will be oddly mottled… Still, rather than abandon the idea, I carry on.  I take 22 inch strips of selvage from each color, and sew them onto my base fabric, one at a time, approximately a quarter inch from the cut edge.  The un-cut edge will not fray, so I need now sew it just yet.  I intend for it to show and I don’t need a line of stitching showing down every strip of the stripe… so for now, I’m just sewing each piece down by it’s cut edge, lapping the selvage edge over far enough that IF I choose to tack it down later, it will cover the stitching from the previously placed selvage.  I finish attaching each of the 6 selvages (in rainbow order… ROYGBV) to the base fabric, and slice the two bases apart, cutting through the 22 inches of selvage at the halfway point.  This makes strips that are a half inch bigger than necessary, but that’s not really a problem.  THIS heart does not need to fit in a row or column of similarly sized hearts.  It is EASIER to complete the task if I cut if back by another half inch to make my selvage pieced “fabric” just the same 10 & ½ inches that all the other heart halves are… but it’s not a problem if I choose not to do it that way. 

Before I go further, I have to decide, which part of the heart will be the middle?  I audition the blocks by putting them together each possible way, just laying the white background down on top in a way that approximates the final heart, and I take a photo with my cellphone.  Then I switch the blocks around and re-position the background pieces, and take another photo.  Looking at a photo often clarifies an issue.  You no longer see the waves and threads and strips wehre it’s not quite sewn perfectly, you see it closer to the way it will look when it’s finished.  Before access to easy photos, quilters would put their fabric on a wall and step back, or maybe squint at the different options, to see which they liked better.  With cameras in all of our cellphones these days, it’s easier… we can snap photos and put the photos next to each other to make the choice. 

PHOTOS of selvage heart auditions:

Look at my options.  In one photo, I’ve put the Violet part of the rainbow in the center, in the other, I’ve put the red part in the center.  My informal survey of the people sewing around me at my Friday afternoon quilting gathering, was a tie vote.  And I could not decide which I liked better.  But I ended up choosing to put the red in the center, as this is the color of the blood spilled from the hearts of the 49 people who died in Orlando at Pulse. 

Slicing off the triangles:

My intention has always been to piece the back of this quilt.  We’ll see what I come up with.

My choices are starting to expand as I move forward in creating these hearts.  You see as I finished putting together each heart half, I piled them up, choosing to do all the cutting & sewing at once, and then trim the excess threads (so they don’t show through the white side of the fabric on top of the batting once it’s quilted), trimming off the excess part of the squares (since the heart form only needs the triangle to remain and leaving all that excess fabric inside the quilt is unnecessary and would make it lumpy), and press the hearts so that I can take the next step of sewing the halves together, all at the same time.  Pressing is a job I don’t enjoy, but the results are so wonderful that I don’t skimp on it. 

Photo of ruler ready to slice off some triangles:

Still, I don’t enjoy it, so I delay it as long as possible.  I spent a few HOURS trimming off triangles.  This seems a good moment to show how easy it is to line a good ruler up with the stitches and trim off the excess on a project like this.  My ruler has little quarter inch lines at each edge, and you just put that line on the seam, with the open edge hanging in the direction of the stuff you’re cutting off, then run the rotary cutter up the edge.  Easy peasy… If you’ve done a better job than I have, and managed to attach the little squares with perfect diagonal seams, you can even accomplish the slicing of all 3 little triangles off of every heart half, without spending much time on the repositioning of the ruler.  But if you’re like me, and your seams aren’t all perfectly straight, just match up the top & bottom of each seam, and make sure the middle doesn’t bow out for you to slice through (you need the stitching to actually still be there once you’re finished taking off the triangles) and then slice. 

We end up with a BUNCH of little triangles.  Some that are about 5 -5 & ¼ inches on the legs (right angle isosceles triangles, if you remember your high school geometry, we’ve basically cut a 5 & ½ square diagonally down the middle, leaving ¼ inch for the seam).  Others are about 1 & 1/4 inches to the legs, also isosceles, also right angles. 

It occurs to me that I might have little triangles of colors to pop into the backing of this quilt.  It could be a wonderfully symbolic idea… the pieces from the hearts on the front of the quilt, shattering and creating entirely new designs on the back.  Hopefully beautiful designs.  We’ll see.  It’s an idea.  The smaller triangles even seem a little too small to use, but sometimes a very small pop of color inserted into an otherwise white or beige background can be more powerful than large splashes of color, more pleasing to the eye… and I can’t resist the opportunity to use the little pieces of the hearts from the front of the quilt. 

mid century modern quilt

OK… so for a while I’ve been obsessed with the mid-century modern designs like my parents had when I was growing up.  I know now that we had some furnishings that would be considered Scandinavian (with a last name like “Lindquist”, how could we not?).  OH how I wish I could have back some of the stuff they got rid of when they retired & moved to Florida in the 1990s! 

ANYWAYS, I am more drawn to the sleek, contemporary, “atomic” designs than to the kitschy plastic… I have this ambition to create a starburst wallhanging out of wood shims (great opportunity to personalize on issues of color, as opposed to getting the same thing from a store).  And I’ve been doodling various mid-century artist motifs for a while, trying to come up with some fun quilt patterns… one I finally followed through on was a “chain” type form. 

Anyone who grew up in that era will remember the bead chain “curtains” that sometimes were put across doorways… you could block the vision from room to room while having a super-cool, hip, hippy-dippy decoration.  They even clicked when you pulled them aside to enter the room.  Lots of motifs similar to a bead chain were drafted, some more organic than others, some looking like a chain of amoebas and others looking like some type of interlocking machinery. 

I drew an inspiration drawing, and from that, decided I needed to find a way to do it without curves (at least the first time around).  I was trying to find a way to create this quilt with a bunch of strips and not have to cut exacting small pieces… Strip em together & then slice, strip & slice… seems like less little pieces of things flying around my sewing room all the time.  Always a good plan. 

So I doodle up an idea, then put together a more detailed way to look at it, blocking off several different sections until I can eyeball a single block that can be repeated.  I get to the point where I realize that to make the “chain” portion of it, I need to add “sashing” to the side of each block, then alternate the way I put the blocks together so that the sash turns into a chain separating two blocks from an alternate color. 

For my “chain”, I choose two colors, a light grey and a dark grey.  And for the “beads”?  It took a while, but I finally discovered that a layer cake would be the perfect variety of fabric to fish from.  This was before my selvage obsession, so I was not opposed to purchasing a pre-cut group of fabric just yet.  For the uninitiated, a “layer cake” is a group of fabrics pre-cut into 10 x 10 inch squares.  Usually from the same manufacturer and the same designer’s line of fabric for that season, a layer cake can often help you find a variety of fabrics that have already been curated to match each other in terms of tone, value, hue… You can almost always be sure that if you choose anything from that one layer cake, that you will be able to match it with anything else from the same layer. 

I chose a number of my favorites from this particular layer.  They were single color fabrics, at the most extreme, “tone on tone”, so that the beads of this design would pop from the grey chains by virtue of their color rather than their print… I sliced each of my favorites in half, divided them into two piles.  Each half of a 10 by 10 inch slice went into a different pile.  I wanted an even number of light greys and dark greys… I wanted each color to be evenly dispersed between light greys and dark… if it looked funny, I could always switch off, get a whole new set of colors (maybe pinks rather than blues), and do them up separately to see if it worked better to have the colors be wildly different in each chain.  If I ended up with extra blocks, who cares?  I can make them into pillows or placemats or table runners or a whole different quilt with a whole different look for having a different color combination. 

Then I sliced up a bunch of the greys in width of fabric (WOF) strips of 2 & ½ inches. 

I took all the 5 x 10 inch colored pieces from ONE pile, and sewed it to the side of one of the dark greys.  From the OTHER pile, every one of the colored pieces got sewed to the side of the light greys.  Yes, it would take several strips to get every one of them done, but after they were done, I sliced them apart, then I went down the other side of each strip with the same color.  Then I took the length of the layers and took another strip and went down them, then on the other side.  By the time I was finished, I had a number of blocks of 5 x 10 inch colors, surrounded by a 2 & ½ inch dark grey, and another number of blocks surrounded by the LIGHT grey.  Next step… on every one of the dark greys, sew a strip of light grey to one side.  On every light grey, sew a strip of dark grey to one side. 

CLEARLY, I need to do another of these tops, this time taking more photos of the intermediate process.  It's so much fun to work without slicing up teeny tiny little squares, rectangles and triangles of fabric before starting to do the work, ... it's great to zoom along and get stuff done and then slice it up bit by bit as you create, but I'm having a hard time stopping to show it.  So I'll make an effort... I"ll do another one of these.  But I like the general way it worked.  take a peek & see for yourself!

Now you didn't see that coming, did you?  SUPER cool mid-century-looking chain, from me talking about sewing strips of light & dark grey onto 5 x 10 inch blocks of color?  To finish this one up, I'm going to put more of the dark grey on one side to kind of offset it, and then I'll be using this as a sample top for a longarm class I'm taking later this month.  I want to have several tops finished so that I can rent the longarm machine for many hours & practice, practice, practice... so for now, this is where it stands.  Sitting in my project box, ready to be finished after I take a class in how to use the longarm machine.  HOW MUCH FUN is this? 

quilts for pulse: heart rainbow quilt in progress

OK, so I went to town.  I sliced the selvages off all my fabrics for the heart quilt.  Hopefully these will combine for a cool/modern heart that I can use as the 49th heart on the back. 

I sliced a bunch of "low volume" whites (3 different light beige-y ones) into 2 inch strips & 5 & 1/2 inch strips.  I took the strips and sliced the into squares (2 inches & 5 & 1/2 inch squares. 

I sliced each of my 6 rainbow colors into 5 & 1/2 inch strips... and then sliced each strip into 10 & 1/2 inches again, so from each 45 inch width of fabric, I got 4 strips at 5 & 1/2 inches by 10 & 1/2 inches (that's 4 times 10 & 1/2 to equal 42 inches)... it was VERY lucky that the fabrics were about exactly 45 inches wide and the selvages were not wider than 1 & 1/2 inches, because two selvages at 1 & 1/2 inches each brought me RIGHT UP to the edge of being able to slice 4 colored heart pieces out of each strip.  (It was not expensive fabric, so some of hte selvages were a little wider than I'm used to seeing, with the information printed quite far onto the edge of the fabric). 

 These are the selvages, in a baggie to keep them from getting scattered while I work on the rest of the project

Here are the background blocks, waiting to be sewn onto the heart halves


Here are the heart halves, piled up in rainbow order (ROYGBV) and awaiting their turn at the sewing machine:


Here is a heart block after the white pieces are sewn to the heart block halves (can you see the heart yet?  Look at the diagonal seams across each of the white parts):


And HERE is a heart block, white background parts finger-pressed into place.  NOW you can see the heart, right?:


OK. so I've got 47 more to finish.  After I get them piled up with all the white parts sewn on, I'll slice off the excess fabric (in this last photo, under the white parts), and clip the stray threads, and press them properly.  To press each of these, I'll have to fold under hte red part and press both sides towards the heart.  To press the heart seam towards the low-volume white side would be to risk it showing up through the white fabric in the finished quilt. 

UNLIKE in seamstress sewing, when you do most quilting, you press both sides of a seam towards the darker fabric (in general, there are some exceptions).  You do NOT separate the fabrics and press them open.  In sewing clothing, we want the smallest possible layer of fabric between the body and the top layer.  We also want the seam to ease over curves of the body, gracefully.  Open seams are the way to do it.  In quilting, we want the seam to take wear & tear of GENERATIONS worth of being lovingly used every night as a blanket.  And we do not want the slightest possibility of exposing the threads between the fabric.  So we press the seam allowance to the side rather than opening it.  It's harder to pull apart with rough use, if it's pressed to the side and the FABRIC is holding itself together, than if it's pressed open and the only thing holding it together is the little bitty piece of thread.  AND because we use many colors in most quilts, we want to make the least possible opportunities for the colors to show through each other, which is why we press them towards the darker fabric. 

Next post will have most of the blocks finished and I'll have pictures of how to clean up the block, trim the excess fabric, and press it. 

Quilts for Pulse (Orlando terrorist attack)

It's been a while since I last posted, but I suppose it's time.  We've moved.  We're now in a house in Orlando that's half the size of the one we were in when we last posted.  We've stopped the fostering adventure, having had our hearts broken one too many times and getting to an age where we knew if we made a commitment to adopt, then our retirement options would be delayed and severely limited... we will fulfill our commitment to the next generation in some other way (and I have a few ideas that are more appropriate for a later post).

With the move, there's no chance that I can return to work, at least not as a lawyer.  The process of un-retiring myself from other jurisdictions and transferring/taking a new bar exam, and THEN FINDING work as a lawyer, it would take so long and be so expensive and emotion-consuming, that it would not work.  We've become content to live on less, which is kind of cool.  There's a lot fewer rooms to clean, a lot less junk to manage... we're still busily getting rid of the junk. 

And I've been quilting up a storm.  Sewed a few skirts first, as my last foster daughter needed a new black skirt for a concert she was in a year & a half ago, and as she was insisting on skirts that were too small & short for a violin player on a stage to wear (first concert, lots of the youngsters don't realize how DIFFICULT it is to maintain some bit of modesty while sitting in a cute skirt in a chair on a stage)... so I sewed up a really lovely flowy, flippy knit skirt that would swirl around her legs if she took a little spin... lightweight and fun... and she loved it.  Black to match nearly anything.  She wore it so often that she ripped holes in the seams... choosing to wear it during playtime and running and tumbling around... at that difficult age between childhood and teenhood and not quite realizing that the clothing she chooses to wear at playtime MIGHT get muddy or torn if it's not made for the task.  But on top of that, I think she loved the idea of feeling like a Disney Princess with skirts swirling around her ankles as she defended the world and peace & justice... It was quite cute. 

So I made a few for myself, and then she left (broke our hearts), and I looked around my sewing room.  LOTS of half-finished projects (mostly my own... UnFinishedObjects, or UFOs, are typical for crafters to accumulate over a lifetime. 

SOOOO... since I last posted, there have been a few finished projects.  We'll talk more about them in other posts. 

I've been attending quilt camps (at Quilt Trends, http://quilttrends.com/index.asp , a WONDERFUL space close to our new home), and taking quilting classes (realized that the basic skills are probably worth knowing), and showing up at a Friday day-long sew-in... for a while.

Puttering along, worried about an old friend in Orlando who is now a judge and had an emergency appendectomy a few weeks ago... thinking about some other friends whose children are GROWN UP already and graduating college since I left the city... thinking how our lives would have changed, how we'd have stopped going out to the nightclubs & such as we aged, if I'd have stayed... I get up one Sunday morning for a leisurely walk to church (yep, our new place is WALKING distance from church... woo-hoo!), when my friend, who is being released from the hospital after some post-operative difficulties, posts that some horrible thing just took place in Orlando... This friend is very reliable, but ... well... my friends are law enforcement officers, judges, politicians, criminal prosecutors & defense attorneys.  A wide variety of people with a very wide range of what "horrible" might look like.  If it weren't Bob, making that claim of horror, I might have wondered what new politically charged issue had just come to light. 

But this was Bob... reliable, interesting, super-cool dude Bob.  (Is it POSSIBLE to be both a judge AND a cool dude?  Well, you just gotta know Bob). 

Within a few hours, we hears the news, and that there had been a terrorist attack in Orlando... my heart sank.  As the names and vital statistics of the victims came to light, I realize that most of these kids were truly just in grade school when I left Orlando... and though it was known as a gay nightclub, I recall being a young adult in Orlando and how the gay nightclubs are there... it's not about being gay, it's about having a fun night.  Having a SAFE PLACE to have a fun night.  And I realize the time of day this happened... 2 am.  Last call.  If I recall my young adulthood correctly, that's the time of night when everyone left has had just a few too many drinks, they're NOT at their best (except maybe the night club staff, who are starting the cleanup task)... There are probably a few people trying to fight off nausea from a few too many tequila sunrises... a few looking to hookup and realizing that most everyone they were flirting with earlier have gone already...

The irony for me is that I'm also the ex-wife of a Muslim man, who immigrated from Egypt.  I'm also familiar with that community and it's difficulty with the concept of being gracious about people with lifestyles other than their own.   I had watched as my husband at the time became more extreme about his choices in lifestyle... banning vanilla extract from our kitchen, for example, and refusing to go to a beach (he had proposed on a beach), because people in the mosque convinced him, an adult, that these things were evil.  He was disappointed that he had not been able to convert me, and I realized that the person he claimed to be when we first married, simply did not exist.  This person who claimed he respected my faith, was really trying desperately to convert me, hiding his true intend if necessary, as a 'ends justify the means' choice, because he really wanted me to be able to go to heaven with him and he really did NOT respect that my faith could get me there.  Oh well...

So I feel huge sympathy with anyone who has become victim of this faith that seems to encourage extremes... And I remember going to night clubs with my friends, from time to time, if there was a special event like "Latin night", even a gay club, despite that I'm not a member of the LGBT community and would not be interested in any hookups on any night that my friends & I went there.  AND I have friends who would be the first called out to the scene of any crime, trying to solve disaster... I've been to the morgue and to the medical examiner's office, and I know how this stuff works. 

And when he was first retired, my Dad spent a decade going to Orlando Regional Medical Center... I don't remember whether it was Thursday mornings or Fridays... for Grand Rounds.  He liked being the old recently retired doctor and feeling like the young ones were looking up to him and asking his opinion... and he liked even more that they had free bagels and hard boiled eggs (he told me the docs would peel them and eat just the whites, saying that the yolks were what caused heart disease)... he liked even more that he could keep up with the current trends in medicine, and particular mortality issues (as he had been a Pathologist and Coroner in his career).  THIS is the hospital where the injured were taken that Sunday morning... THIS is the town who were no longer going to feel safe in their own night clubs... THESE were my friends, being awakened in the middle of the night and taking any break in the action to call their own young adult kids at 4 am, to make sure they were home, safe and in bed. 

So when the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild said they'd accept and distribute quilts from other modern quilters for the victims, of COURSE I had to.  I suggested to our Columbus MQG's president that we do a heart quilt, rainbow colors... she said we'd wait till the Orlando quilt guild said exactly what they wanted... and guess what... DUH... heart quilts, rainbow colors.  On "low volume" background.

I know I've been quiet for a while, so I may repeat myself... in quilting terms, "low volume" means very soft, light colors... basically shades of white or beige, usually. 

So I ran out & picked up a rainbow worth of colors for the hearts... ROYGBV... if you recall, you pronounce it, "roy-gee-biv"... it's the acronym for the colors of the rainbow... Red, Orange, Yellow, Green Blue, Violet.  Basically, if you start on the red segment of the color wheel and just go around till you come back up to the color next to it, you'll have yourself a rainbow. 

They're wanting at least 5 x 6, or 30 blocks... but will take up to twin sized quilt tops.  If blocks only, then 10 inch finished (meaning 10 & 1/2 inches on a side if not already sewn into a top)... They have put out a tutorial for making a simple heart.  My quilt guild started the project when the simple tutorial heart was the one posted, but the Orlando quilt guild revised their suggestions several times so that some creativity appears to be acceptable. 

And I've decided not to just contribute blocks, but to do a whole quilt.  Let's see how well I manage that.  My idea SO FAR is to go with 6 X 8... which makes 48 blocks at 10 inches each, JUST ABOUT the size of a proper twin.  But that makes 48 hearts and it's just too tempting to the artist in me.  49 angels were created that night... 49 who went to the dance and never went home, who will be dancing in heaven waiting for their loved ones... 49 families who lost someone.  I can't make a quilt with just 48 hearts.  So I'm going to TRY... Here's my thoughts about making the 49th heart. 

I've been toying with the idea of doing an improvisational "bolt" of background cloth... trying out the "Modern Improvisational" book (I'll post a link to it later) suggestion for a "floating squares" quilt.  I've also been collecting selvages... got to a point of no longer even bothering with pre-cut fabrics, just buying from the bolt, in at least a yard, so that I have enough selvage to make it worth cutting.  I had thought of doing a second "bolt" of selvages, but was just toying with it. 

I think what I'll do here... I've started creating the hearts already... cut off all my selvages from my 6 rainbow colored fabrics and from the 3 low-volume (beige) backgrounds... MAYBE I can somehow create a heart out of the selvages.  I have to figure out how to shape the hart so that as it gets larger towards the outside, that it doesn't lose it's shape as a heart.  I know from experience (my "secret heart of my niece" quilt), that when one starts with a small heart and tries to follow it outward in concentric lines, that the curves get distorted... the problem seems to be that as you try to follow the interior V of the top of the heart, this starts to be less & less prominent as the heart gets bigger, because the depth of the V does not get proportionately bigger. 

I'm going to have to draw it out.  Or perhaps instead of starting with a small heart and moving out until I run out of selvages, I'll cut out a heart and use a technique like "foundation piecing", which is that I sew my selvages onto a foundation block in the designated pattern, rather than sewing them to each other and hoping it works.  My foundation would have the pattern drawn on and I'd keep my pieces within that pattern.  OR maybe it would work as well if I created two half-hearts, and then sewed them together.  We'll have to see. 

And then around it, I'd go with the low-volume floating squares improvisational background.  If I piece these around the selvage heart, it should be possible to grow the backing to the right size without too much muss & fuss... and so my back piece would be a single heart... the 49th heart, kind of near the top of the twin blanket, at the center. 

I worried that having the 49th heart on the back would somehow diminish the meaning of the fact that I was including 49 hearts... one being strange and isolated to the back... but then I remember the whole POINT of being supportive to issues involving the LGBT community, which is that even things which are different from the rest can be just as beautiful. 

So that's the plan.  I'll post a photo or two later... but I wanted to get this up now. 

The Label Adventure Begins!

I was quite the crafter in my childhood, but college, graduate school, careers, marriages, several moves and general busy-ness interrupted my process.  And in the meantime, technology and modern artistic tastes have marched on, progressing past my skills.  I look at past projects with nostalgia, and I realize that the value of them, the story behind them, will be lost as time marches on.    I have become convinced that good labels are necessary as part of quilting in the modern era.  Anyone who has received an antique quilt will attest, it is infinitely more valuable in our minds if it has a story, and if the story is memorialized in the label, so much the better. 

After some research, it appears that labeling will not be too tough.  First, using a word processor to create the proper label, my inkjet printer, and using some kind of product meant to be a fixative for printer ink on fabric, will make the quilt washable (in theory).  This will certainly be an improvement over my previously hand-written or absent labels, handwritten in indelible ink with a pen on fabric that was moving and stretching under the pen as I tried to write.  The messy results were CLEARLY homemade, but not quite as polished as I'd like to think I will eventually get. 

Apparently, one irons fabric onto freezer paper, fusing it together, then tapes the freezer paper to a piece of regular paper that will be fed through the computer printer.  I have Christmas plans to follow through with, but I will soon be back to work on some of my projects, and with that effort, I'll start working on labeling. 

I will post more about this as I experiment with it.  Keep tuned.  This could get messy!