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. 

Practice makes perfect... options to find quilts to practice on, and my great binding adventure

For former seamstresses, such as myself, who are struggling with the teeny-tiny 1/4 inch seam allowance on quilts, doing the job of binding feels relatively familiar.  Fold, press, pleat... when they talk about a "miter", it's very similar to a Dart.  And the finishing stitch feels very much like that final hem that we put on a dress or a new pair of pants.  Tiny little hand stitches, hoping not to have them show too much against the front of the dress... and the wonderful thing about the binding is that in a QUILT, unlike in most dresses, you've got several layers of fabric to work with.  You can easily stitch through the first few parts of the quilt and not get anywhere near having your work show up on the "good" side. 

On the other hand, most quilts (at least the non-framed variety) are meant to have both sides showing.  Both used... neither should have little stray threads poking from a frayed edge of a seam!

The good news on the 1/4 inch seams is that if you've purchased fabric meant for quilting, at least, the feel of it is a little stiffer (it's not meant to softly conform to a body part, there is never any stretch at all in it, and even on the bias, it's a little less stretchy and soft than we're used to)... the fraying is also not as prolific.  Which means, of cousre, that we have to be more exacting in our seams and cuts.  We can't add a little ease into it (like we do when we put some ease in a bustline, for example) by simply letting our machines stray a little further into the seam line... and the quilter never seeks to nip in a waistline a tiny bit by making the curve of the path of the needle be just a little wider. 

No, the straying that we are used to doing with our machines... the graceful curves along a seamline, the diminishing part of a point of a dart, the things we do to give a little more contour to our clothing, does not work well on a flat surface. 

So we need to learn how to sew a straight line.

Luckily, it seems that most quilting groups are involved in joint quilting adventures.  It sees the safest of these joint ventures to get involved with is about quilts for charity. 

There are many projects... for children in hospitals (the Linus Project) ... or for wounded war heroes (Quilts of Valor), and many, may other similar projects.  Most quilting organizations will pick one or several charity projects, and will share in the making of quilts to donate.  The wonderful thing about the sharing of these projects is that there are many opportunities to learn the basic skills of quilting while doing this good work and there is almost no way your beginning quilting skills can really mess up the project enough to worry about it.  There is always someone who can help you figure out what you did wrong and no one will ever get fussy that your points did not match! 

Don't get me wrong, they'll TELL you that your points don't match (often with an offer of help to figure out how to do it better next time), but as everyone will tell you, the beauty of a quilt is often in it's errors, so this is a good way to learn that point.  The recipients of your quilts will never know that you made the work harder for yourself by using the wrong type of needle, or that you should have mitered the corners rather than that awkward little tuck that you used... And you're not getting stuck on your own pet project!  They will LOVE the place in their quilt where the point doesn't exactly match.  As they are waiting for the pain medications to take effect from the latest and hardest physical therapy yet, they will be staring at your imperfectly matched star and they'll think, "I can't believe they made all these quilts for all us guys.  Some nice lady, a perfect stranger, did this for me.  I wonder what she was thinking when she realized that the star was a little lopsided..." 

They will love it all the more for it's imperfections.  Believe me.  I inherited some quilt tops that a great, great aunt thought were not worthy of being finished, and I cherish them all the more for the imperfections.  It is not the same with clothing.  My mother made me many items of clothing in her lifetime, and I loved every item... but for some, the imperfections in the clothing make it impossible to wear.  Imperfections in a quilt RARELY make them unsuitable for providing warmth and comfort!

Still... as nice as it is to be able to be imperfect, it's also nice to try to improve our skills... and this is what those charity quilts are great for.

A few weeks ago, I took on the binding of a Project linus quilt.  A wonderful little quilt made of simple squares in primary colors.  The binding had already been cut, the sandwich quilted and squared up, and all that needed to happen was for me to sew together the binding and get it ON to the quilt.  I had only done one binding before, having accomplished the finishing in different ways before... So I pulled up a tutorial online and followed it exactly.  Unfortunately, my sewing machine did not cooperate.  I had to get it serviced.

At the sewing machine service shop, the lady taking in my machine asked, "did you know you were using embroidery thread?"  Well, yes, I suppose I did, it was still there from a previous project and the color matched so I just used it.  Hmm... could this be part of my problem?  

So I said, "I may need to organize my thread a little better if I'm going to keep working on the variety of projects that I want to work on". 

Was that an understatement or WHAT?  I was sick of a growing collection of thread spools and bobbins that had no home, so they kept getting separated and moved around.  With no dedicated sewing space for the past 8 years, I had managed to separate and move the pieces of my crafting/sewing supply cabinet over & over until it was unmanageable.  I'm sure I have 3 or 4 spools each of every color in the rainbow, if only I could FIND them. 

So when I went to pick up the machine after it was serviced, I wondered aloud to the saleslady, "I have always wanted one of those things that hangs on the wall and displays all the thread, so that I would have it all in the same place and easy to see".  I'm glad I said that, because she said she doesn't like those things, they allow the thread to collect dust!  BRILLIANT!  If I've got so many different spools of thread that I've had some sitting in the closet for nearly 8 years, of course it would get dusty if I let it sit out. 

So I went to JoAnne's... and $20 later, I had enough little plastic bins for all the CONES of thread I have as well as all the LITTLE spools... a little thinking and I realized that I can put a bobbin that's still full of thread on a spike close to the actual thread spool it came from, and there you go... suddenly, I've got a level of organization that I've not been able to achieve in 8 years!  yippee!!! 

Because the bins are plastic, I can see through to see the colors of thread, unlike my mother's old sewing basket... and because they have lids, I can avoid the dust issue. 

Binding this little Linus Project quilt taught me a lot.

Oh yeah, and it also taught me how to miter the corner... a very cute little trick that makes the whole finishing process on the quilt a whole lot easier than I had originally thought.

From now on, no more stalling on the final touch... it seems binding is NOT a part of the quilting process that will hang me up any more!  Binding, I have discovered... is EASY! 

OK... next step... join in one of the "block of the month" or "heart block" adventures... where I sew JUST ONE BLOCK, according to the instructions of someone else, and either give it to them (a heart block for a sick quilting bee member, or a "thank you" block for an officer of the quilting club who is leaving her office), or enter into the lottery where I might get ALL the blocks to use as I choose...

I hear these block things can sometimes get picky.  THey want seams pressed properly, and the right size, and points all in the right place... and exactly the right size... and colors need to be followed... well, basically, ALL directions need to be followed closely to do it right.  And I understand that I can learn a LOT in these things, because if I do not do it right, someone will tell me... (hopefully in a nice way)... and if I WIN the lottery for the month's blocks, then I will have the chance to see how other people accomplished the task and see how exacting their standards are, see whether my own work measures up, as well as start to understand why one would want to follow all those pesky instructions... that the blocks where the seams are NOT pressed into the darker color start to show through, or the blocks that are cut too small or where the seams are too big, may not fit into the whole quilt... etc., etc...

Practice makes perfect, and quilting clubs, bees, guilds, projects... can provide plenty of opportunities for practice. 


 

Wedding quilt in progress, still in the planning stages.

OK, I've ripped out the seams of my wedding dress and it seems a lot smaller than it did when it was all together, flowing, and ON.  And my old giant sized "boyfriend" style suede jacket, likewise.  THe linings are out and only one dress left to disassemble... my stepdaughter's red silk dress that she wore to my wedding.  I've sought the advice of my Faithful Circle Quilt Guild , and came up with the very smart idea to get fuseable interfacing to use to stabilize the silks that I'm using for this quilt.  That will make them easier to work with. 

Pretty much everyone was in agreement with my idea to do a crazy quilt from this, but my contrary nature just kicked in and said to myself, "if that's what everyone thinks should be done, I want to do it differently.  DANGEROUS idea.

So I've thought through this.  The double Irish Chain pattern would look really cool in these colors.  My white skirt providing the white background color, Songee's red dress being the dark X color, and the medium part of the chain would be the beige jacket.  Hmmm... I'm thinking of it.  If I cut the strips and pieces that I need to do a chain, and it doesn't work for me, I can always start just piecing them, willy-nilly as originally planned.  We'll see. 

And as I look at it, it doesn't look like NEAR enough fabric to constitute a whole quilt... the nice kind that I want that will keep me warm with all my memories, as I get older... but I know that can be deceptive.  We'll see. 

Another idea for this... I might just take 4 squares of a foot per side, of the white dress, and use it to make very small art quilt pieces, like quilting/stitching samplers... and then string them together for a wall-hanging... maybe using some of the beading trip that I used for the neckline.  A few beads to string together 4 mini-quilts... Still thinking, thinking, thinking. 

My Wedding quilt idea

OK, so I've got three active quilt projects going... First, I've got to do a label for the one I just finished, and I'll post when that happens, how well it worked.  Second, I've got a lot of green & antique white fabrics with a bit of red, for a series of log cabin blocks that I intend to use in a variety of ways for Christmas decorations.  The third is my wedding quilt.

I made my own wedding dress.  It was very simple in it's styling, not to be too frou-frou, and to show off my curves rather than add a lot of fluff around them.  The one thing I wanted out of a dress was that it be real silk.  No fake fabrics for this bride-zilla!  So I ordered some silk charmeuse from an importer that I trust, and voila, enough to make a long dress with a flowing skirt.  I was very happy in it, but no one is likely to ever wear it again. 

For the occasion, we bought my stepdaughter her first real silk dress also.  Also simple styling, not a lot of ruffles or tucks. 

I also have an old jacket, very soft and supple suede of a neutral color.. I'm not sure whether you'd call it fawn or dark beige or light brown, but it's a good color and texture to provide a little variety.  It was given to me as partial payment for legal services about a dozen years ago.   And I'm thinking of taking one of my old black dresses that was velvet, for a little more and different texture. 

What I intend to do is chop all these things up into various shapes, without a lot of forethought, for a truly "crazy" quilt.  I've seen crazy quilts recently that were actually cut using a pattern, and there is a definite repeat, definite blocks involved.  For this one, I think I'll try a "quilt as you go" method. 

Instead of making a series of patchwork blocks, I'll be making a sandwich first.  The backing, the fluff, and the underpinnings of the craziness will go first.  I will lay down a piece of wedding dress and stitch through all layers.  Then I will take a piece of stepdaughter's dress, put it right side together with the piece of wedding dress that is already attached to the quilt, and I'll stitch a straight seam through all layers, then turn it over so it's right side up.  Press.  Repeat

When I come to a place where the suede goes, I'll not have to turn it under, the edges of that will not fray. 

I figure I'll just keep going till the whole sandwich is filled on top, and then if there are parts of the sides that are uneven, I'll slice them off, bind, and VOILA!   Wedding dress quilt.  OK, not ENTIRELY wedding dress, but it'll be a quilt made of clothing that were very special to me, a big part of which happens to be a wedding dress. 

After it's finished, I might also find myself taking some little pearls from the dress and sewing them onto the quilt, or buttons.  Or maybe I'll find some lace to add... something a little more frilly, because I'm no longer worried about over-fluffing my hips.  

In my constant quest for something that will be both cool, meaningful AND easy, I'm hoping this will be all three!  I'll have to post updates about that, though.  Charmeuse is difficult to deal with (making the dress was a challenge!) and layering it on top of less slippery fabrics, I have no idea if it'll be easier or harder to deal with.  And I sorry about the suede a little... it's VERY fine, without all the stiffness that we see in most suedes.  Hopefully, I'll be able to make this work. 

Wish me luck!

The Double Irish Chain is easier than it looks

I'm all about easy.  What attracted me to quilting was the possibility of creating things that did not have to fit a three dimensional shape.  I've been sewing since I was 5 years old.  The first thing I sewed, with the help of my wonderful Mommy, was a sundress.  A cute little blue and white striped a-line sundress with straps that were an inch wide.  Perfect for a 5 year old!  Just a few years later, I asked Mom about the patch in the straps, and she confessed that while she was showing me how to do it all, with my little hand in hers in the scissors, we had cut a divot in the strap.  She pretended it was nothing, and by the time we were ready to sew a seam the next morning, the divot was totally repaired with a patch where the stripes matched so well you'd not even know i was there unless you inspected it closely.

I liked homemade things, but I did not want them to LOOK homemade.  I babysat for a woman when I was growing up, who had furnished her house with homemade items.  Home sewn calico patchwork bedspreads, curtains, napkins, tablecloths, placemats, pillows.  Afghans crocheted in a style familiar to all of us who lived through the 1970s, and macrame plant hangers.  Thought my teenaged self admired the effort, but the effect was overwhelming.  My parents may have been raising us in a small town, but I fancied myself as being much more fashionable than to drape and clutter up my whole house with calico everything.  So I stuck to sewing garments.  I did an occasional needlepoint or cross stitch project when I found one that fit my aesthetic. 

Two decades full of self-made clothing later, I saw a tumbling blocks quilt.  Something about the way a flat piece of fabric could be sewn to show shadow and light, create a graphic that could trick the eye into believing it was three dimensional.  How lovely, flat and seemingly easy to make.  I figured out how to cut the diamonds by cutting strips first and measuring the diagonal to make multiple diamonds at once.  But sewing it required just as many little tricks as sewing a garment, between turning the pieces this way and that to get the Y seam.  (It took nearly 30 years for me to finish this one.  I quilted it myself for my Dad's 85th birthday a few years ago, a twin-bed sized quilt.)

A few years later, I saw a book about Irish Chains, and that excited me.  You see, for the irish chain quilt, you don't cut lots of little squares.  No, you cut strips and then sew them together, then slice them crosswise to make a whole line of already-sewn little squares.  Change up the colors in each set of sewn strips, and when they're all sliced up and re-combined, they create the larger blocks that make up the irish chain pattern.

Mine is dark red, antique white, and navy blue.  Yes, the red and blue were prints... very typically quilty fabric for the late 1980s when it was made.  Mainstream modern quilters had not yet moved in the direction of solids and brights, and while I feel a more modern aesthetic, my mother had just visited colonial Williamsburg and I thought a vintage-looking red, white and blue quilt would be kind of fun to have, particularly for the summer... Memorial day, Flag day, Independence day and Labor day could also do well with the patriotic feeling decor, so there you go.

There are two blocks to this quilt pattern, and no Y patterns or curves! One of them is centered on the main background color with a patch of the chain color on each corner, and the other block contains an X made of the chain's colors with a small patch of the background color in the middle of each side.  To put the quilt together, you alternate these two blocks like a checkerboard, and the whole chain just magically appears.  I find excitement in the magic.  The two pieces of magic in this one are the fact that you never have to cut a small square, it's all about the strips.  And the second piece of magic in this one is that when the blocks are combined properly they create a pattern that is not obvious when you are just looking at the stack of blocks in front of you.  MAGIC! 

I'll post later on how to create the two types of blocks (the easy way with strips).  But for now, I am just happy to have finished this one.  My next pattern is going to be a log cabin.  Stips are good for this one also.  In my head, I have more ideas for patchwork where the work is in the planning rather than the cutting, and strips and patterns can combine to create different magical patterns.

I love the idea that the magic of this medium can take straight seams and straight cuts, and create an amazing variety of beauty.  So for now, I'm exploring the magic.

I'll be posting photos of the double Irish Chain later.  I'm having a problem downloading it to my computer right now, but I was just so excited to get it done.  I just had to post!  HOORAY!!! Tonight, my new summer quilt will be a topper to my winter blanket and quilt combination.  25 years and finally, it's done!

(P.S. Please send me to have my head examined before I start any new king sized quilts.  As wonderful as they are, it's tough to finish.  I don't have a longarm, I have a hard time entrusting my babies to someone else, so ... for me... at least for now.  Art quilts, crib quilts, lap quilts, pillowcases, table runners, placemats, twin quilts... that's probably as far as I can go.  For now.  I'll save another king sized until AFTER psychiatric intervention.)