Project Progress

Robert Benchley once said: “Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing.” Yeah, that's me, and what led to my foot dragging about a few things that then led to it being a stressful week as I could no longer put them off (multiple tries before rental insurance document successfully uploaded to renter's portal, getting over dread of seeing NP re suspicious moles, etc.). Still, I actually got quite a bit done on the "fiber" front.. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way because I am doing small bits on more than one project, but I have managed one finish and marked major turning points in others. Let's start with the leftovers from the antique quilt. To refresh your memory, above is what I had to work with, more than I wanted to just toss, less than would make for an easy way to use them.

Pieces overlapped, pinned and ready for stitching

Zigzag stitching hardly shows

Several of you suggested I make a needle case, which I thought a great idea. I fitted the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle, overlapped slightly and zigzagged together with white thread. Nothing fancy here. Not terribly pretty either, but I forged on. After squaring up, I had a piece 11" x 15". Way too big for a traditional needle case. But you know what I really need? A needle case for my circular knitting needles.

I took up knitting as a teen, and once my mother saw how into it I was, she found a beautiful zippered case for my growing collection of straight needles. It had one wider slot that would hold my first circular needles, bought so I could make a poncho (it was the 60's, what can I say?). But once I discovered Mobius scarves that required different sizes and lengths of circular needles, and started finding sweater patterns requiring them too, my circulars no long fit in my case. I've been stuffing them in the front pocket of the binder where I keep patterns, and although it sort of works, a separate case for them would be much better. I spotted this piece of hand-dyed fabric left over from my business days with friend Judi, and decided why not? Matching old with new would perk things ups a bit and the hand-dyed tightly woven fabric would make a sturdy lining for my case.

I decided a layer of batting would be a good idea and sandwiched a piece of Thermore between the patched together outside and the lining folded to create pockets. I found a piece of red twine for a closure and caught it in the line of stitching down the center.

I finished the edges that holds the whole thing together with the same blanket stitch I used on the tote bag. 

Front

Messy back

And that's it! Here's the front and back - again, not the prettiest but very functional. I may decide to run another line of stitching down the center of one side - some of my needles are packaged such that they would fit in the smaller pockets that would make - but I'll wait until some of my circulars currently in use are freed up and ready to store. 

So that's my finish. A partial finish could be that I completed the back of the red sweater (which unlike the other two sweaters is knit in four pieces that will be sewn together later). Lots of curling in this unblocked piece so it was difficult to get it arranged, but there IS a little shoulder/neckline shaping at the top, but not much - it's a drop shoulder design. Sitting on it is the crochet basket which, once the base was completed, magically started up the sides with the change of a stitch. When I worked that first row, it felt a lot like when I made my first coiled fabric bowl on faith and found that the slight tipping of the flat base made the sides appear. As for my other knitting projects, the Autumn Wave sweater is past the yoke "wave" pattern and sleeve stitches have been put on waste yarn for later while front and back are now joined and worked down an inch or so. The Watermark sweater continues its slow progress but I was excited to get out the measuring tape and realize I'm only a few inches from starting the ribbing at the bottom. Now that cooler weather has arrived, I'm very anxious to get these done so I can wear them! 

Tote Intimidation

Apologies for the very out of focus photo. Right side trimmed, ruler placed to trim the left side.

This happens to me more often than I like to admit. I decide on a project, excitement builds as I get out pattern, fabric, whatever, and then at the first or so decision to be made, I freeze. A simple project turns into something I can't face because for a variety of reasons, I can't take the first step. That's a bit of what happened with my idea to turn the antique quilt remnant into a tote bag. As I stood assessing what I had to work with, I eventually would have to make some cuts, and there'd be no going back after that. So many questions I couldn't answer at the moment shot through my mind. But as the weeks went on and I kept going back into the studio to stare at it, I continued to think about those questions and the first cuts, and worked out answers so I could proceed. Folding the piece in half as it would be in the finished tote, I checked where my limits were on each side (since the piece was not perfectly squared up) and chose to make those border buds my guide two up, two down.

My only question as I placed the ruler for the trim on the left side was, will this leave enough for straps. It did, perfectly. Did it pain me to cut through the applique flower? Yes, a bit. But that was part of what intimidated me about working with this remnant, and I soon got over it.

I had a better piece with that same flower on it that was perfect to make a pocket out of. The top would need to be bound though, along with one side of the tote top - the other side had the original binding still intact. I had the perfect white muslin in my stash that I folded like commercial bias tape and could stitch down in one pass.

Since all these pieces are quilted, I opted for my machine's buttonhole (or is that blanket stitch?) setting to both sew the pocket in place and edge-finish the straps. Key to remember is that this tote will not get heavy use. I found a subtle variegated blue thread in my stash of King Tut cotton threads very similar in color to the blue applique pieces. 

The pocket fills in an open space on this side and works better than if I tried to just stitch the flower onto it. Trust me, I did try to make it fit while it still had its curved stem in place, but I couldn't make it work. Fine - pocket it is and the stem got trimmed away. It couldn't be centered because I didn't want to overlap the leaves on either side. Still, I love the way this looks.

I decided against lining this, again because it's a quilted piece and won't get heavy use as well as because of that one edge that was already bound. I realized I could sew the sides up using a French seaming technique that would encase the raw edges while also giving some heft to the sides. I decided I had enough room to sew across the bottom ends to form a box at the base.

Still a bit flimsy as totes go, but I'd noticed on the Staples promotional bag I'm keeping my downstairs sweater knitting in that it had binding sewn over the side and bottom creases which I think helps hold it up. Hmmm . . . I decided to do something similar by sewing a little pintuck over my edges. 

It does help, not as much as I'd hoped but I still think it was a good move. 

On the flip side from the pocket side, I suddenly saw another gap that could be filled with a remaining applique piece. This one was cut with one side of original binding and boy, did I want to make it another pocket.

Try as I may, I could not find a way to sew it anywhere keeping its pocket shape. Regretfully, I faced facts and trimmed it down, leaving a small allowance of the white background it was sewn to in order to use a zig zag stitch to attach it without stitching on the actual applique. Almost looks like it was always there. Only thing left to do was sew on the straps, which were amazingly the right length just as they were trimmed off the remnant.

Shipping bag in background, quilted tote much better

Now for the test run. My Autumn Wave sweater yarn has remained in it's original tyvek shipping package and I've been anxious to get it transferred to a more suitable bag. Perfect!

And that pocket sewn to the outside is just the right size to hold needles and any other small items. My "new" tote bag may be a little tired and worn in places but so am I - lol. A week's worth of work well worth the time spent. I still can't believe that the person who gave me this remnant didn't think it was very well done. The more I worked with it, the more I admired the workmanship.

This is all that was left over. There are still a few pieces I couldn't find a place for on the tote that I'm loath to toss out. I'm thinking maybe I can cobble together a small accessory bag or something. Waste not, want not . . .

 

Muse Still Up To Her Tricks

Wellll . . . . my week of seclusion did not go as well as it has in past years in that I struggled to settle on a single focus. I knew that I'd be knitting on my Watermark Cardigan every day, and I did. I'm now on row 42, bearing in mind that every other row grows longer by 8 stitches so takes longer to complete, and have started on my second ball of yarn. I've looped the handles of the big tote bag where I keep the yarn and knitting in progress over the arm of my office chair which is working well as I concentrate on the pattern directions laid out on my desk. Things ARE moving a bit quicker as I finally memorized how to do those left and right "make one stitch" increases as well as mostly memorizing the sequence of the pattern stitches on the row I am working on, having to look at the pattern less often. Still, I'm making a few errors here and there leaving me with not enough stitches upon completing a row, and having to backtrack to see what I've done wrong, sometimes unknitting to the spot, other times being able to fudge in a stitch where it is missing when I knit the next row. As the pattern designer says, we all make these errors - even she - and rather than beat ourselves up over it, think of any visible ones as design features. Sound familiar? By the way, I've left Venetian tiles hanging on the wall where I pinned it for photos, right next to my computer, and I've just noticed that the color of my yarn is nearly identical to the green in that quilt!

Beyond the knitting, I felt I should do something in the studio but couldn't decide what. Early in the week I'd finished the last panel of the crochet cardigan, scanned the directions and realized it recommended a light blocking before attaching the front panels to the back panel. In a recognizable procrastination move, I decided to get that done before starting anything else, crawling around on the floor as I smoothed and stretched the panels to size. I'm getting too old for that much crawling around and getting up and down from the floor - I paid for it with a lot of stiffness and soreness the next day!

While messing around with that, I suddenly had a lightbulb moment of what I could work on the rest of the week - making a couple of tote bags to hold my various knitting projects. I've had that piece of antique quilt the person who'd cut it up to make a jacket had sent me for quite awhile, finding it difficult to let go of my anger at her, and not having a good idea of what to do with it, until now. I think I was inspired by Angela Walters who did a video not too long ago of how to turn quilted panels into baskets and totes (watch the video here). So I got it out, folded it this way and that, and decided there was enough for a bag.

But I did notice a large area with some light brown staining, very typical of old textiles, and remembered I'd bought a product quite awhile ago which is supposed to remove that sort of thing without damaging the textile - Retro Clean. I'd meant to use it on some heirloom handkerchiefs but as usual, had not got around to it. There was an area I could cut off to use as a test piece to be sure it truly did not disintegrate or fade an already aged quilt so got to work. 

The directions said to soak for 24 to 48 hours - I was NOT expecting it to take that long - and preferably to set it in the sun to keep the water warm. Ok, if you say so. Even though it's very hot here, the water was cool when I brought it inside after the sun went down. I decided to skip that part on the bigger piece. It did seem to lighten the brown area but not harm the fabrics in any way. Time to soak the large piece for the full 48 hours, followed by rinsing and washing (by hand). Although I think I can still see some staining it is definitely almost gone. And in wetting this piece of old quilt, I immediately could spot tiny seeds here and there in the very thin layer of cotton batting. In fact, the batting was so thin that it had shifted in some areas to leave places of no batting at all. Another bit of evidence to the old age of this quilt.

So much for whipping up a quick tote bag from this already quilted remnant. However, I also had in mind a couple of tote bag patterns bought ages ago and once again, never made up. Time to hunt them down. These two I found right away, hanging on a cork board. Technically not totes but I thought the Two-Hour Tulip Purse made in the largest size would be perfect to hold a knitting project. I'd seen it made up with a flap at a quilt show and thought it would make a perfect purse, hunting down the pattern locally, but I now have plenty of serviceable purses on hand. Better it be a tote bag. But I laugh at the "Two-Hour" designation. I know darn well it will take me longer than that!

What I really wanted to find though was a tote pattern that used that black plastic screening and as a sample showed, combined with batik fabric. I pictured myself picking up purchases at quilt show vendors and tucking them into my see-through bag, so bought the pattern and the batiks the sample was made with. I still have those batiks, but do you think I could find the pattern now? The muse apparently thinks it's funny to hide things from me. I searched in so many places, through piles again, and in drawers, and in old pattern keepers, as well as in binders where I'd filed ideas and patterns for clothing and other items. As I scanned the labels on the spines, I felt the muse nudging me to open the binder labeled "Mariner Compass" where I've filed so many ideas for mariner compass blocks and quilts. Now why would that tote pattern be in there, but shrugged and took it down. Ohhh, the muse had decided to give up where my Judy Mathieson Mariner Compass books were! When I was hunting them down expecting to find them among the other titles on my shelves, it never occurred to me to look in this binder. It has pockets in the front and back covers and there were the books, one each in each pocket. Thanks muse, but now give up that tote pattern!

By now the week was pretty gone and I settled into a weekend of watching multiple motorcycle races, deciding to be content with what I HAD gotten done, disjointed as it was, and the daily knitting. I think Allen would be ok with this. I'd changed my computer wallpaper to this picture of Allen such that when I fired up the computer each day, I'd see him smiling at me and reminding me to not dilly dally too much here but get to work creating. That's all he ever wanted of me, to be happy making things and making progress on them more days than not.

New Project & Some Visitors

Lattice Overlay - Ohio circa 1925 - 74" x 78"

In 1995, I made my first of several treks to Paducah, KY for the American Quilt Society annual show. Big event covering many venues, one of which showcased antique quilts from the Hamilton collection. That is where I was mesmerized by the above quilt and its faint grid pattern superimposed over the dark angled lines. Whether it was intentional or the result of fading, I noted that it made the quilt look out of focus as you looked at it. At the time, I wasn't familiar with the block that created this effect but later learned it was a variation of the split nine-patch.

At some point, I worked up the block color scheme in my Electric Quilt software, and printed out some reference examples (top of photo) as well as doing a small drawing of two blocks with slightly different color schemes on the graph paper (lower right). Later, friend Judi came up with the two quilt patterns she hoped she could sell along with our hand-dyed fabric, and it too used this block pattern. I even taught some classes of how to make those quilts, making up sample blocks showing how they would look with traditional quilt fabric as well as batiks (the 4 blocks on the left). Patterns, class handouts, sample blocks and my previous printouts; these all went into a file for when I might eventually get around to reproducing that antique quilt.

I went through quite a faze of. making and teaching Mariner Compass blocks using Judy Mathieson's method. She included instructions for how to "set in" the round block into a bigger piece of fabric, eliminating piecing four sections of background fabric together. It requires cutting away a hole in the center which leaves you with a a very large circle of fabric to use on something else. Well, I had one of those in a darkish purple batik and I got the idea that it would make a lovely moon with a tree placed over it. And what if I took those batik sample blocks and made more for the background? Yes, I've been thinking about this for some time! This will be my realignment into piecing again.

After looking at everything in the file, I decided I needed to scan my original photo of the antique quilt and print it bigger so I could study all those subtle lighter colors that produced the grid. Stare and think and look at notes before I finally figured out what was different from the split nine-patch quilts I'd been making from Judi's pattern. If you look at those batik blocks, you will see that the center square is dark fabric. But as I studied this larger view of the antique quilt, I suddenly saw it - these blocks had light center squares which is how you get that grid effect. Talk about tunnel vision even though all my notes from before I made Judi's version were right there. Now everything else in the file made sense. And sorry, batik sample blocks, you will not be going into this  quilt!

As for my visitors, last week I spotted a duck pair swimming and feeding in the swales along my walk. Late February seems too early for them to appear; then again, it's been a very mild winter. I'm wondering if this is the same pair I saw last year. The female was gobbling away, head under the water, with the male seemingly standing guard like before, but this time he did more dipping of his own head to feed. I found the post where I talked about them and it is from March 5, mentioning a warming trend, so maybe they aren't here too early.

Then there are the deer. They usually amble through the bushes in the greenbelt behind my place, occasionally popping out to look around and perhaps browse. I've seen the mother and two young ones from last fall recently, looking good and healthy. So when I saw a couple of deer again last week, I thought it was the same ones. But my, these look a little bigger, stockier, and there were only two. Oh well, good and healthy. 

Slowly making their way, browsing on the new shoots of grass.

One ambled over to this scrubby pine by the corner of the house for a nibble.  

What a beauty. 

And it just kept coming, right up to my deck, and sniffed around. Sorry, nothing there, not even grass. But by now I was getting a good look - have never seen them get this close to the house - and could see how "bulky" this one was, like there was a real layer of fat under that fur.

As it turned to leave, I noticed the tail. Wait - I've been seeing white tail deer - that wide tail brown on top, white underneath, but this tail is totally different. These are NOT my usual deer visitors. A quick google gave me the answer. My visitors are Mule deer, which besides the different tail, are slightly larger with darker fur than white tail deer which explains what I was noting in their body bulk.. Welcome to the neighborhood. 

Published!

Now now, don't get too excited. I'm referring to the beautiful book Sacred Threads has published which includes all the quilts in this year's exhibit. Still, this is the first time I've been included, or rather my quilts, in any kind of book. And I do know artists who choose exhibits to enter based on whether or not they publish an exhibit catalog. It's something they want to be able to put on their resume. Me - not so much. But it's still a thrill.

And I couldn't be more pleased. Look! There's Bubble Prayers featured on the leading page to the section on Grief.

And my quilts are the first one's in that section. It takes away some of my disappointment in not being included in the traveling exhibit. The layout is pleasing and the photos I supplied printed true to color and in focus. I was really sweating that.  It tells me I can trust I'm seeing the rest of the quilts in this book just as they were in the exhibit. And at over 300 pages, I have hours of enjoyment ahead of me as I take in the variety of expressions and read their accompanying stories. If you are interested in purchasing your own copy, just follow this link.

I also sprung for a thumbdrive of the audio tour - why not? I'd recorded a little extra myself and am curious to hear the other artists' voices and the additional things they wanted to share. However, I was really puzzled when I pulled what looked like a credit or gift card from the box. Wondering if my lack of smart phone would mean I'd have no way to play it. I certainly couldn't think of anything I had on hand that might work.

It took me forever to realize that the little black rectangle on the back actually rotates out to be inserted into an SD card drive. Whew! I'm not as technically out of it as I thought.

Thank you letter & picture of antique quilt on my repro version

Although this is my first time to be published in a book, I have been published in a magazine a long time ago. This was back when I was making traditional and repro quilts and collecting antique ones. I was commissioned to make a copy of an antique Forbidden Fruit Tree quilt for an historic building in Wisconsin. Their budget only covered materials; good cause or not, I was not willing to donate all of my time for such a labor-intensive project. It was with great reluctance that the owner of the quilt with whom I was negotiating agreed to let me have the antique quilt as partial payment. Its value was not equal to my labor costs but it meant a great deal to me to add it to my collection. And my name and info about the reproduction got posted along with the quilt.

This really was a major undertaking, figuring out how the original quilt was constructed and making my own pattern sized to their specifications. The block itself is a complicated one and it was a challenge to convert the hand quilted design to machine quilting. I wanted to share all this so I submitted pictures and my story to Traditional Quiltworks magazine, thinking it might make it into the Letters from Readers section. Instead, they wanted to feature it and me along with a pattern. I'm still pretty pleased and proud about that. Look! The antique quilt made it on the cover.

And look again! Both antique and reproduction are shown with the pattern (you better believe it's a three thimble difficulty rating) and a small photo of me! My 15 minutes of fame... Click on the pic and any others for a larger view.

You can't see it in these photos, but looking at this diagram from the magazine pattern instructions, I am reminded of one of the things that made me want to own this quilt and that made reproducing it a challenge: as the magazine states "an extraordinary setting." I'm so happy that this antique quilt also got its 15 minutes of fame. Wonder how many quilters actually gave this a go or at least made a single block as those brave enough to sign up for my class did? It makes a lovely pillow cover - one I still get out each Christmas.

Thanks for suffering through my sharing of my several experiences of 15 minutes of fame. How about you? What brief rise to prominence have you had in you quilting career that makes you beam with pride?