first finish & a short story made long

I put the final stitches in the binding of this one in the early days of 2016. Technically, it is not my finish, I merely turned a top into a quilt, but it is now a charming & cuddly quilt in our home.

I bought the top years ago. When both my parents were living & well, I would go up to visit twice a year. During these visits, Mom & I would usually take a day & go to the thrift stores & flea markets. On one of these trips, I found this bright, simple vintage quilt top. I always had plans to quilt it, had folded it away with fabric for backing & binding. For more than 10 years, it had been on my shelves until late last year I pulled it out & decided it was time to do this thing. I simply & quickly quilted it, was sewing on the binding -- rats! -- it lacked several inches of meeting up. Well, time to formulate & implement Plan B.

Under my sewing table, are 2 vintage suitcases & a decorative box, all are filled with fabric. I knew one held my gathering of 30s looking fabrics where I might find a binding-gap filler. I wiped off thick layers of dust & began exploring.

What's in the box? Oh! It's my collection of Day of the Dead, Virgin of Guadaloupe & bright florals. Eep, I had forgotten all about them.

What is in the black case? Well, flapjacks, more things I had forgotten I had. Woven stripe, ikats, batiks -- beautiful stuff, but, whhaaaat!?! I'm sure I had some lofty plan that did not materialize. But now what!?!

 The brown case was Mom's high school graduation present. She took it with her to college & several years later, it went with her on her honeymoon. Now it holds fabric. And here is what I was looking for, my 30s fabrics that I gathered together after I cut up Aunt Evelyn's embroidered tea towels & set them into blocks. I was thinking of something cheery & kitchen-y -- it still could happen, I suppose. And, look! There on top is the perfect substitute binding!

 Early in my quiltmaking history, I read or heard that, for cohesive quilts, we should keep like fabrics with like fabrics -- no vibrant Day of the Day prints with florals in chalky pastel with indigo hand-wovens. I pretty much kept that axiom close to my heart all these years. Now I am trying to let it go. You may soon see many of these coming together!

Shame and Forgiveness

Before every Quilt Festival, I think about what I might be shopping for -- do I need anything? do I want anything? Quite literally, the whole world of quilting supplies will be coming to MY neighborhood! Of course, I know there will be impulse buys, the thing I Must Have! that I didn't even know existed, but I try to make a list. This year, I had thoughtfully decided to get very little fabric -- nothing I particularly wanted & certainly, nothing I needed.

After Festival was over, I awoke with a headache & was a bit disoriented. I was surrounded by teetering towers & enormous piles of cloth. I've read that when a person over-indulges in a behavior she intended not to do all, this can be a sign of addiction. I hardly knew how & when it happened -- but happen it did. I was truly embarrassed & a little ashamed.

Anyway, what did I get?

A fat quarter bundle of Lizzy House's mini pearl bracelets. I am such a sucker for bundles of all the color ways of a print -- put a bow on it & I am a goner. But don't I have an un-used bundle of her first pearl bracelets? Why, yes I do. Maybe they should come together, maybe using a Cherie House pattern!

10 pieces (!) of Anna Maria Horner's Loominous! They are so beautiful! The colors are like candy! They made me think of the Laura Ashley skirts & dresses I have cut up on my shelves.
 

Then, not one, not two, but THREE quilt kits!!! I mean -- SERIOUSLY!!! But there the quilts were, made up on the booth's wall, all pretty & everything. I crumpled. The coarse Daiwabo prints may become what they were packaged to become -- a simple medallion.

What if I skip the pattern & combine these others with things I already have?

Dots with Lonni Rossi?

Heavy Metal with a vintage print?

Quite a haul. After some introspection, I have decided to forgive myself. Simply put, I went on a bender. I'm not trying to excuse my behavior, rather to understand it. I think the reason for my spree may have been longs weeks of stressful work & no sewing. I have learned that when I can't sew -- I tend to shop. Now that I have some time & energy for sewing, the shopping should stop. :-}


Addendum: I had been working on this post for a while, but after the events of week's end, it seemed silly & frivolous. But I decided to go ahead with it. If every time something awful happened in the world, the latest display of how cruel people can be to each other, if every time this happened we stopped thinking about & doing things we enjoy & sharing with people who share our enjoyment, then there would be no pleasure in life at all.
Love one another.

We now return to my regularly scheduled life.

My weeks of frenzied activity at work were followed by a half-week of intense & long-overdue cleaning at home. Then came the arrival of friends from overseas & 2 days at the Quilt Festival, followed by sight-seeing with the friends. Quilt Festival was fun. The exhibit hall was a mess -- construction inside & out, but that didn't hurt the beauty of the quilts. Inspiring -- and exhausting. The pedometer on my phone said I walked more than 13 miles over the days I was there. I didn't just walk, I also bought an insane amount of fabric. Trainers, forget the medicine balls & free weights, do you know how heavy fabric is!?! I'll say I bought the fabric to increase the efficacy of my walking workout.
You're buying this, right?
No?
Well, I can't tell you why I bought so much fabric. 'Because it was there' is the best I can come up with. Alluring stacks & bundles of pretty colors, all now trying to find a place in my bursting stash.

I also got another quilt top -- very cute & cheap -- my main criteria for vintage quilts & tops. A bright, cheery wagon wheel made in the late 50s to early 60s. It is small & I am thinking of finishing it up with big-stitch hand quilting. Across the aisle from my cute, cheap top was a finished quilt that was beautiful & not exactly cheap. It was slightly older than my top, probably mid-50s, a log cabin all made in cotton sateen solids with a few sateen prints added in, hand-pieced & hand-quilted. With the seller's permission, I took some photos, hoping images of this beguiling quilt would be enough. But I kept finding myself in the neighborhood -- just visiting, you know, admiring it. Then I found myself asking the seller if she would take any less.

Now, a chance to catch my breath. And to enjoy my purchases.

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.

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?

An embarassment of riches

Recently, I did a fabric pull for a secret, surprise quilt I am thinking about. The recipient-to-be is fond of country colors & antique-style prints -- not my usual thing, but of course, I have those fabrics in my stash. What I did not realize was how much of those fabrics I have in my stash! There is enough of these rich patterns & colors for several quilts! So several quilts I am planning.

These traditional fabrics brought to mind traditional patchwork -- I am envisioning giant spools, tiny bow ties, little 4-pointed stars, pinwheels, maybe some checkerboards with 9- or 16- or 25-patches, a log cabin & then, because I am a contrary sort, maybe something modern with these not-at-all-modern fabrics -- maybe something improv with lots of negative space?

My eyes are probably bigger than my sewing machine -- but, come on, I have 11 -- sewing machines that is, not eyes! Silly!

Creatures from Deep in My Stash -- Out-of-Date Colors

Everything new, well, it just gets old.

Those on-trend colors & prints that make quilts look so hip & modern today will eventually make them look old & dated. Harvest Gold & Avocado Green, Dusty Blue & Dusty Rose, Gray & Aqua, Gray & Tangerine, Gray & Gray.

Sad, but true. 

The good news is that, if you wait long enough, those colors will become retro & vintage & will again be hip -- but you'll have to wait a while for that. In the meantime ....

In the early 1990s I worked in a quilt shop. At that time the very trendy colors were deep blue-green grading into reddish purple. I liked these analogous colors, I liked them a LOT -- evidence: the yards & yards of fabrics I own in these colors. I have to say they aren't yet old enough to be Retro Chic, they're just a little old-fashioned. So what to do with them? Can I diminish their stodgy-ness?

You've already seen me using some of these -- the painterly floral was in Constellation Wonkulae & the daisy-like print is in my winged squares. I've used the blue to green watercolor-y one in a donation lap quilt or 2.

The leaf-y, frond-y one I'm making into old-school applique block -- though I won't be doing old-school applique -- machine zigzag & fused leaves will make it fast & fun. I found the block in one of my oldest quilt books -- a Better Homes & Gardens book copyrighted in 1985. They call it Ohio Blue Leaf. An internet search yielded nothing that looked anything like this, but really old applique patterns, especially outliers like this one, tend to be hard to find.

I've been thinking that a smart thing for me to do with some of these creatures would be to experiment with something I've never done before. A quilt with words has been on my mind, so I'm starting to build some letters. Stay tuned!

Creatures from Deep in My Stash -- Containers

I'm as surprised as you that there were enough of these fabrics to be a category -- containers: vases, pots, baskets, cups, teapots.



Where did they come from?

I think the richly-colored abstract vases & the odd magenta & turquoise pots were purchased in the late 1980s, in the early days of my new-found love of quilting. I probably got them from either So-Fro or Cloth World -- do any of you remember those stores? In those days it wasn't easy to find anything but dusty-pastel calico prints, so whenever I found something bright & bold, I got it. The big bands of flower vases & fruit came from France. I remember my difficulty in trying to convey how much I wanted -- lots of finger pointing. It's home dec weight, but I think I had plans to make a skirt from it. Hmmmm? The wicker baskets are a half yard cut -- kind of a rarity from the early days, I tended to buy big -- & I got them just because they're cute. And talk about cute, the teacups & Mary Engelbreit teapots are that; they are probably contemporaries of each other from the early 90s.

So now what?

The vases could save a failed project I began with a roll of deep Kona solids. I'm thinking an Orange Peel block.



The magenta & turquoise is weird & oddly appealing. The large print might be interesting cut up into narrow strips so the pots are not so recognizable. For some reason -- there is no green in the print -- I like it with a celery solid. Do you remember the antique quilt I saw at last year's Quilt Festival?



I've obsessed about it ever since; then recently a Blue Underground pattern showed up in American Patchwork & Quilting, very like my obsession, but with an interesting twist. I'm going there!



The baskets I had already lined up to make a re-usable shopping bag. The pattern I use is great for conversation prints & it doesn't take much fabric. I have made dozens of these bags -- great to have on hand for gifts, great to keep in the car to use. But my bit of baskets was too small for a whole bag. Not to worry though, I of course had a wicker-looking print to go with it!



I think the obvious way to go with the giant flower vases is a medallion quilt! I've been wanting to make one for a long time, especially after I got Gwen Marston's book, Liberated Medallion Quilts. Now all it needs is lots of borders.



The teacups & teapots? I have no plans for them right now. Do you have any suggestions?

Creatures From Deep in My Stash

Cue scarey organ music.

Unfortunately/fortunately, I've gotten rid of some of the uglier & more embarrassing pieces from my stash, but I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the ones I've held on to -- for better or worse. I won't show you them all at once, my creatures will be a recurring feature we'll come back to from time to time.

First, some real creatures: fishes, bunnies, ponies, owls & wild things from the American West. (I'm not including my cat fabrics -- that's a topic on its own!) How did these come to be in my stash? Well, the ponies & national parks critters were from the remnant bin, both about 1yard cuts -- I don't know why I bought them other than they probably didn't cost very much. The fish & rabbit cut-outs I probably planned on making up as pillows -- whimsical, right? The owls are a fairly recent purchase; I was making reusable shopping bags for everyone on my Christmas list one year & one friend has an especial fondness for owls. I found them on sale, asked for a yard & ended up with 2 yards.



I still like these fabrics (she said sheepishly (no creature pun intended)). I think I can find time to use them. And, most importantly, I think I can have fun making something fun with them.

So, let's see.

I think the owls could be interesting cut into strips, just their little eyes peeking out. They combine nicely with the stack of browns I got a few years ago. So maybe log cabins, maybe simple string blocks? Or! Maybe a teetering stack, inspired the Totally Tubular technique in Tula Pink's first book. I LIKE it!



The ponies with dots & swirls are kind of fun  -- what about wonky stars with pony centers? (Is it just me, or does that sound like a children's breakfast cereal? Wonky Stars with Pony Centers! Now with MORE Ponies!!!
No? Just me? OK.)



Hmmm, the fish & bunnies? I've seen real make-do quilts, the Gee's Bend quilts for example, that use these cut-out panels as just another piece of cloth. But I've cut around my pieces, so can't do that. What about using them as applique -- trout swimming on top of patchwork, rabbits with some garden-y fabrics?



And the big game? My inclination with a fabric like this is to highlight the fabric with fussy cutting, maybe a square as the center of a medallion quilt. But I think it would be too easy to let this fabric look too lodge-y. One of my favorite things to do is to try to make something "modern" with very not-modern fabric. So what about something inspired by a painting from the 1940s by the artist Leon Polk Smith? Still very much a work-in-progress, I'm having a good time with this one!



And who knows, maybe the trout will show up on the back!

What's the quilting equivalent of burpees?

In a recent post about my fabric "problem", I & several people who commented to the post, made a parallel between fabric acquisition & usage to health & fitness.

Easy -- if you want to diminish your amount of fabric/lose weight, use more/burn more fabric/calories than you buy/eat.
Well, easy in concept.

I've been wishing for a quilter's version of Jillian Michaels, someone over my shoulder at the sewing machine shouting, "Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me!" to help keep me on track with piecing & quilting. (Not really. That wouldn't be stressful at all, would it?) These days I'm having real trouble sitting & focusing for long on anything, that includes my patchwork. I've been making the effort to spend time each day on my Physical Fitness. So to attain Fabric Fitness, I need to dedicate a similar amount most days to cutting/piecing/quilting.

After my workouts with dvd Jillian (which do include burpees) I'm trying to get together with a sewing machine, iron or rotary cutter & spend serious time plowing through fabric. This weekend I added to my pile of self-made quilt kits -- strips, squares & triangles for donation quilts. I also cut some strips for a project to keep. And I basted 2 quilts (one is already quilted!).
Not too shabby!

"Intention! Power!! Push yourself!!! Don't phone it in!!!!!"