Pinterest

I know you know about Pinterest. Maybe you have your own pin boards or maybe you do like I did, lurk & look at the boards of others. I was resistant to starting my own -- I knew what an enormous time-suck Pinterest can be. I could imagine sitting down with my morning coffee, checking in to see what was new; the next thing I would realize would be that my coffee was cold, my feet were asleep & the sun was setting. But I succumbed & drank the Pinterest kool aid (you can find the recipe on Pinterest!). At first, it was almost as bad as I had imagined -- I never actually wasted the *entire* day, but I certainly squandered quite a few hours. I had no idea about the social aspect of Pinterest -- a pinner can send pins to friends, chat, comment, etc. Then there is the curiosity of finding someone, a stranger, whose tastes are very similar to your own & wondering, "Would I like this person? Would this person like me?"

Anyway.

Work has been keeping me from what I love -- no cutting, no piecing, no quilting. I've hardly sewn a stitch in weeks. I get home physically spent. Evenings, I eat some dinner (thanks, Shug!), then sit in front of the television & scroll through Pinterest. Scrolling one evening, I saw a charming, scrappy plaid quilt & pinned it to my "I want to make that" board. A few days later, a Pin Pal commented on it, which caused me to look again & more closely at it. Yes, it really was glorious! The source of the pin was eBay, so I clicked through to see more details. There it was, a buy-it-now listing & a really good price. A few clicks more & about a week later, this glorious quilt was mine!

As always, I wish this quilt could talk. The fabrics are old but the quilt is brand new -- never used, never washed. At first, I wondered if it had been recently finished with true-to-the-era backing & binding. There are a few fabrics in the patchwork that make me scratch my head, like the larger-scale florals & a neon orange, but most are clearly from the early 20th century. It is pieced & quilted by hand; the quilting is simple straight lines in one direction -- except on two opposite sides, in a of row of blocks, there is perpendicular quilting. The backing is four plain feed sacks machine-stitched together & here are where the "problems" are: several dark, smeary stains. Blood? Did these stains spoil the quilt for the maker, leaving it unfinished, unused?

All I can do is wonder & fall passionately in love with this glorious quilt!

Be careful what you look for --

In my stash, you may not find what you were seeking but you will find something.

I recently found these -- a mass of eighth yard strips from the early 1990s when I was working in a quilt shop. At the time I really wanted to make a Joen Wolfrom-style landscape quilt. I looks like I collected a piece from nearly everything in the store! But like many of my best laid project plans, this one didn't get made. (When I think of all the classes taught by quilters I admired that I have taken over the years! Wasted money & effort? Well, no, I don't think so. They helped me to find out who I am -- & who I am not -- as a quilter.) But now here are dozens of fabrics sure to get me banned for life from the Modern Quilt Guild! They are kind of pretty & really do represent an era. A strip or string quilt seems obvious, so I am gathering ideas & putting these on the back burner to simmer for a while.

In the meantime ....

I got some good comments about whether a quilt should coordinate with the bedroom. For my sailboat pluses, the suggestion was to add some of our room color into it -- brick-y reds to all the blue. A splash of complementary color is always a good idea & since the suggestion sort of gave me permission to shop, that's what I decided to do!

As I waited for my ordered fabrics to arrive, I took the sailboats down from my design door, then, because I can't look at an empty design door, I started playing with another fabric stack that had bubbled to the top -- romantic & sweet (maybe a bit saccharine) florals in very girly, rosy reds & blush pinks -- almost the opposite of the blue sailboats.

For a while now, I've been obsessing over chunky, strippy medallion quilts. I want to do something of this sort with the fabrics from my & Mom's dresses. I thought a test run with fabrics considerably less dear would be helpful. So here I go. The center is a vintage pillow cover I got from Etsy; most of the florals are half yard pieces from big box stores & quilt shops. There are few fat quarters, an inherited plaid, a piece of real French toile, kittens, butterflies, gingham. I'm having fun!

Collaborating with a friend

This was a new experience for me -- working with someone to make a quilt for someone else.

I think it was Wrongturn Rojas' idea to make something with Anna Maria Horner's feathers (very generously available for free on her web site) for our mutual friend. I said we could go through my batiks for some bright blues & greens suggesting macaw feathers. We got together one day to sew. Because of the odd angles & shapes, the blocks were a little tricky to sew, but we soon had *almost* enough feathers for a quilt. Then we ran out of our background fabric! What to do?!?! How about adding a different background with some red feathers! Problem solved!

We texted back & forth one Saturday morning deciding on layout. Wrongturn assembled the blocks -- she did a BEAUTIFUL job, let me add (I would have been very casual about matching feather shafts & corner seams). We met at a fabric store & found the perfect fabrics for a border & binding. Because she put it together so well, it was super easy for me to quilt -- my go-to wiggle stitch again. Back to Wrongturn for binding; back to me for washing & a photo session.

Voila! We are both very happy with our quilt & very eager to give it to our friend!

Siren's call

I've been spending quite a bit of time sitting at my sewing machine finishing up several quilts. When I am piecing, I can watch or listen to things, but quilting requires my full attention & silence. In the silence, I think -- life stuff, work stuff, what's for dinner & -- my beckoning stacks of fabric.

One beckoning stack of fabric resolved itself while I was quilting. Sailboats & sea-ish, marine-ish go-withs. The sailboats are mostly scraps from shirts I've made for Shug -- the shirts have all been various levels of, I won't say failure, maybe non-success?, all either too small or too short. Anyway, I had been thinking of another no-plan outing with free-cutting & free-piecing. But the shipshape nature of these prints seemed to want to be more ordered.

And because I had not lashed myself to the mast, I heeded their siren's call.
Why not add another plus quilt to my oeuvre!

And here is a question for you: you've heard the saying "art doesn't have to match your sofa"?
Well, does your quilt need to match your bedroom decor?
Shug's & my room has terracotta-colored walls. The furniture is a jumble of Mission-style & inherited family things all with a patina of cat damage. Will this quilt "go" with our room?
I would love to hear your thoughts!

Quilt of Shame

My brother & his wife were married 12 years ago. They married almost exactly 8 months after my brother's & my Dad died. My sister-in-law-to-be had already been a part of the family for a while then; she was there with us through Dad's diagnosis, treatment, death & had been a support to all of us. Their wedding felt like a family renewal, so I wanted to make something special for them.

A wedding ring quilt, right?!?

But a cheater sort of wedding ring -- the ring arcs appliquéd on to squares. No problem! The finished top was gifted to them at their rehearsal dinner.

Then came twelve years of quilting.
Not literally, of course -- twelve years more-off-than-on quilting.

I am such a better &, more importantly, a smarter quilt maker now. I know my strengths & I know my weaknesses. This quilt was waaaay more quilt than I could handle back then. But as I got smarter in the following years, when I would pull this quilt out to work on, all I could see were its flaws.
Well, it is done now. It looks a bit dated (12 years, approximately). It will soon be with its rightful -- & patient -- owners.

BAM!

My finished quilts kicked it up a notch -- from 1 to 7!

A mini & a lap-sized, made with on-hand parts were shipped to new owners before I made photos. Here's one in its new home.  A big quilty hug to you, Mrs. O'Quilts.

Besides the massive amount of quilting on the hummingbird stars, I also added some perle cotton ties. I mentioned before how the block edges are all on the bias & these edges are where the heavy quilting *isn't*. So to keep the quilt from looking like a Jonathan Adler vase, I tied the block corners.

The Pop Art nail polish bottles are done -- quick & cute.

And a jelly roll race -- not completely done, binding is on & hand-sewing is in progress.

In the not-ready-to-count-as-finished-but-nearly-so category are these: I got another 2 bands of Laura's Lightning quilted -- it's another with dense, time-taking quilting -- much more to go, so please stay tuned.

Then there is my Quilt of Shame -- a wedding present? -- 12 years late! UGH! I am hanging my head. My reason -- not my excuse! -- was that the quilt was at the edge of my abilities when I began it sooooo long ago. Materials & my equipment were different back then. The all-cotton batting helped reduce -- but not eliminate -- the number of tucks on the backside but also made the huge thing weigh a TON.  Free-motioning it on my dear Bernina was hard. The deeper throat-space on the Brother is making it much simpler. The "bride & groom" will get this quilt before the year is out!

Not all who wander are lost: continued

liberated
pattern-free

wonky

intuitive

improvisational

All are terms used to describe free-form quilt-making, unconcerned with patterns, straight lines, pointy points, matching seams. The processes are varied, the resulting quilts are non-standard. Julie Silber calls them "maverick". Roderick Kiracofe calls them "unconventional". I call them "the quilts that excite me & that I want to try to create myself".

As I explore this path, I will be referring to my process with liberated/pattern-free/wonky/intuitive/improvisational quilt-making as "no-plan" quilting.

Why?

Because I am a Planner. Graph paper, colored pencils & the Pythagorean Theorem are my good friends. I don't follow patterns, I draft up my own & follow my them pretty closely. I'm not a natural at no-plan patchwork. I have splashed in the shallow end & I think those efforts made some of my favorite quilts. So, it is time I flexed, stretched & developed my no-plan muscles. I've been pulling how-to books, watching Craftsy classes & reading tutorials. They provide paths to follow -- plans for no-plan piecing, if you will. But I'm beginning to think that the best source of inspiration is Inspiring Quilts -- antique, vintage & contemporary. Studying them has me ready to jump -- well, maybe maybe not a real jump, maybe more of a step, not into the deep end, more likely into the shallow end -- but ready to begin this.

But where to start!?! How to start!?! How about something simple first, a method I saw long ago, but have never tried. Simply stack several fabrics, cut through the stack, mix up the parts & reassemble. I picked a black & white plaid from a skirt, a vintage floral I got swapping with nifty quilts & a few others. And here I go!

Changing gears

The first 6 months of this year were my time for piecing. I put together 5 tops, 2 more are very near completion. Then there are the growing stacks of blocks -- disappearing 4-patches, pluses, geese, bow ties, HSTs & medallions at various stages of growth.

Now is my time for quilting. I recently basted 1 mini & 2 medium-sized quilts. The mini was done in about an hour, one of the medium-sized ones took half a day, the third one took some time -- the quilting was not complex but was pretty dense. All are done now, binding machine stitched on & ready for some quiet time hand-sewing them in place.

After that, I want to move to completion a few quilts that stalled mid-quilting: a jelly roll race that will be for donation, my Laura's Lightning -- do you remember that one!?! -- in spite of how much I love it, it somehow it fell off the rails. Then there is one that is so embarrassing that I may not even tell you about it -- an incredibly, shamefully late gift. After those are done, there is my scrappy Arkansas Crossroads! I'm nearly breaking out in hives I'm so eager to get to it!

But while I sit & quilt, I am thinking of new projects -- Anna Maria Horner's feathers, made with a friend for another friend; more nail polish bottles for a young woman turning 16; big chunks of my & Mom's dresses pinned to my design door.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.

Weather Report

Since the bucketing rainfall in May & early June, we have been under a high pressure system.
Our weather now has been a lesson in sultry conjugation.

It has been hot & humid.

It is hot & humid.

It will be hot & humid.

The forecast has been the same for weeks: highs in the upper 90s, lows in the upper 70s, light southwest winds; the only variations being a slight increase in both the high & low temps, some days partly cloudy rather than sunny, maybe a slight chance for rain, maybe an air quality alert or heat advisory. I go from home to car, car to work, work to grocery store, grocery store to home, only sweltering in the minutes it takes the AC to cool down.

And to top things off, I am on the downhill side of my SECOND cold in 6 weeks. (I was sick. It am sick. I hope I won't be sick much longer.)

My fabric diet

I began this year with an oath with myself to attempt to buy less fabric. My rule was only solids, prints that are on sale -- specifically, less than $8 per yard -- & vintage fabric. I feel like I've been doing pretty well. I've stayed away from my favorite online stores & when I do visit, I only look at what is deeply discounted. I've also not been going to many local quilts shops or big box fabric stores.

As with my physical health & eating habits, I want modest fabric acquisition to become a way of life, not a strict, short-term program -- no fabric fasting, just manageable buying that I can comfortably live with.

But, like my wise friend, RachaelDaisy, says, "Moderation in all things, including moderation."

I've been to 2 quilts shows already this year: QuiltCon & the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival. Seeing quilts that get one's creative juices flowing, then visiting vendors' booths, with their arrays of fat quarters & half yard cuts -- Buy x, Get the x+1 Free! -- well, it's just too hard to pass up! At QuiltCon, my haul was pretty small. Vintage-looking colors & prints were speaking to me that day.

I did more damage at the KCRQF. That day, brown was calling to me, as well as birds & brights to go with them.

Then a trip to a favorite store, perhaps my favorite store in the whole world: Fabric Recycles. I can't explain it, but those 60s-70s era bright calicoes make me so very happy. So, again with the brown, then a large cut of cobalt blue with sweet, tiny posies. And to top things off, 2 baggies of these square-ish shapes. The semi-pinked edges make me wonder if they were remnants from a garment manufacturer. The previous owner had drawn squares on the backs of them all but had not done any cutting.

I wonder what she was going to do with them?
I wonder what I will do with them?

Unexcused absence

Where have I been?

No place exotic -- well, Kansas, which I like, but I would not call it "exotic". I went to visit my MIL. For fun, we went to the first ever Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival. Organized by 16 area quilt guilds, the KCRQF has been in the planning stages for at least 2 years. They put on a great show! A good do-able size -- not too big, not too small -- lots of great quilts, lots of vendors. MIL & I went together on Saturday & on Sunday, took our 13-year-old granddaughter/niece, our Next Generation Quilter! She was especially intrigued by the Bargello quilts.

Back at home, I rested from the 14-hour drive by catching up on work, housework, etc. Then, after a few days, I caught Shug's cold -- I coughed & snotted for about 2 weeks, very tedious & tiresome. I was itching to sew, but had no energy. Finally back in front of a sewing machine, I continue to plod away on the hummingbird stars. I like the block, but am not enjoying *making* the block -- it is fiddle-y & fussy -- so I'm going to make fewer than I had originally intended, then add big, wide borders. I've decided how I want to quilt it -- now I'm excited to get it done!

And geese, there always seem to be geese.

Topping the top chart

When I was a pre-teen & young teenager, the local AM station (WHB, the World's Happiest Broadcasters, dial Seventy One-derful on the dial) put out a weekly list of the top 40 singles. 45 rpm singles, do you remember them? I used to get mine from a rack at the drug store that was next to the TG&Y that was next to the grocery store my family went to. They kept a pretty good selection of singles & there on the counter near the record rack would be that week's WHB Top 40 -- a list of songs with that week's ranking & where they had been the previous week. On the back would be the lyrics to one of the songs. And because you can find anything on the internet, this is what they looked like:

Anyway, what was my point? Oh! The tops I've been sewing up made me think of WHB's Top 40. (My mind works in mysterious ways.) Not quite 40, but my stack is growing.
And not just tops, backs too!

More rain

Crafturday dawned dark & dreary -- 100% chance of rain, flash flood warning, blah, blah, blah.

But it was a fine day to spend stitching.
I had the urge to add borders to the loud, medallion-y thing I started a while ago. The floral fabric is a satin weave & was starting to fray, so I wanted to get it sealed in a seam. Nothing really new here, I just sewed on some borders I had auditioned earlier.

I've got about 24 hummingbird stars made. I am following Missouri Star Quilt Company instructions for this block. It is like quite a few patterns & how-tos you see these days -- that is, it is unconcerned with having the fabric's bias on the edge of the block. I have to tell you, this is hard for me to do, goes against my grain, if you will. I think many who do this use lots of starch. I am reluctant to do this because starch is made of corn & bugs like corn. I have a constant battle with silverfish & I don't want to actually entice them with food. Anyway, you can see a bit of ruffling on the edge of the blocks, but I think (I hope) that will not be noticeable when I quilt it.

And in a jiff, half of this quilt is quilted. Not my best work, but fairly consistent overall.

It turned out that the weekend's weather was not as bad as it had been forecasted to be. I even got out both days for a walk.
But -- wait for it -- now we have our eyes on the Gulf because Tropical Storm Bill is out there.

Pandora's closet

Actually, not Pandora's closet, just my closet.
It doesn't contain the ills of the world, but it does contain a LOT.

In the corner of my sewing room there is a piece of furniture that was formerly used as a chair. It is now the base of a mountain of fabric, quilt tops & backs, basted quilt sandwiches & more fabric. I was rather hoping to return it to its original function, so I began tidying. I gathered things I was not going to get to any time soon; I pushed towards completion several things that were teetering on the brink of being done. It is very subtle, the uninitiated eye might not see the difference, but I think there is a slight decrease in amount of chaos in the room. (Though the chair is still not a chair.)

When I was rearranging things in the closet, I pulled out a summer, battling-less & backless, quilt that my Mom bought for me many years ago. Sadly, I don't well remember the details of when or where she got it. I have a vague recollection that she found it at a neighborhood garage sale, sometime since Shug & I have been married. I also vaguely remember not being all that pleased with it -- the appliquéd ladies were not my style &, at the time, I was not fond of the fabrics. But I love it now & wish I could thank my Mother for getting it for me.
Thanks, Mom, I love it! And I love you!

Rain, rain, go away

Thank you for your very kind emails about Shug's & my safety.
Yes, we are safe & dry -- unlike others in our area -- property lost &, much worse, lives lost.

Regarding the weather, Enough!!!

Shug & I grew up in Tornado Alley, saw our share of brutal weather: blistering heat, softball-sized hail, towering clouds with that sickly greenish light, blizzards, ice storms, sub-zero temperatures, etc, etc, etc. But I had never seen rain like it rains down here on the Gulf Coast. It doesn't seem physically possible to rain as hard as it does here. They say that at one point on the night of the News-making Rains, it was coming down at a rate of 1 inch in 5 minutes (2.5 cm/5 minutes). They say that this May was the wettest month for Texas since they've been keeping records -- for our county alone, official measurements from 10 to 20 inches. They say that approximately 35 trillion gallons fell on the state this month.
And -- now is the beginning of the 2015 hurricane season. {sigh} Please wish us good luck.

Thank you again for your kind questions & comments. I see I've not just made virtual friends with my little blog, but really real friends.
Thanks & hugs to you!

No news

I continue to muddle along in my sewing room, with little to show for my efforts. I have all the blocks made for two tops, but am just not in the mood to put them together. I keep pulling out more WIPs, adding to my to-do list & adding to the mess on my sewing table. I did manage to make 10 pillow cases for my Guild's charity. If you have never made pillow cases, you should; if you haven't made any in a while, make more! They are so satisfying! Easy, quick, pretty -- and they are great stash busters!

Even though the calendar says Summer is still a few weeks away, it is SUMMER! here already. The AC has been running for some time now. We've gotten quite a bit of rain -- good, we needed it -- but it also bumps up the humidity & the mosquito population. The good news is: the magnolia are in bloom! Flowers as big as dinner plates, petals as big as my hand. I wish I had a scratch & sniff blog so those of you unfamiliar with their scent could smell them -- their fragrance is subtle, slightly sweet, slightly citrusy, completely heavenly. As they begin to fade, they look like leather.