needles (the other kind)

Nesting

A quick shot of the disappearing nine-patch blocks I'm making using Tula Pink's Nest:

This is going to be a lap quilt just for me, just because. I saw a handful of Nest fat quarters at my local quilt shop and snapped them up in an attempt to convince the owner that there are at least a few of her customers who actually like and seek out contemporary prints. Mostly she stocks Moda florals, which are soft and muted and lovely and not at all my cup of caffeine-free Diet Pepsi.

I took the project to an evening quilting event the shop hosted and worked on my blocks there. Polite astonishment ensued: "You mean you're not using a pattern?" "You just...cut it?"  "Wow, those colors!" "Ohhhh. [Silence, not especially approving.]"

It's loud, it's scrappy-looking, it's spontaneous, and I love it. Next step: fussy-cutting a whole flock of Tula's birds and arranging the whole glorious mess into something resembling coherence.

Project Improv

I've signed up to participate in Project Improv. By working alongside other better more experienced modern-style quilters, I'm hoping to stretch myself beyond my own rather narrow comfort zone. As many of my quilts show, I tend to be a planner. I'd like to feel comfortable with a more spontaneous approach.

This block is a contribution for one of the project's charity quilts. Brief: to make an improvisionational Log Cabin block in blue and green. Just facing my stash I felt semi-paralyzed. I realized, looking at the blues and greens on hand, that that section of my stash is populated with really dull, muddy colors — very few ultramarines and hot greens, and an awful lot of olives and gray-blues. Maybe this is why I've never been able to get excited in the least about working on a quilt in blues: the blues I have mostly suck.

By way of stretching myself, then, I think my approach to Project Improv is going to be fourfold:

1. Work from my stash. This will be a challenge because my stash is a fairly traditional one — lots of tone-on-tones, not many eye-catching or modern-looking prints.  But I have far too much fabric to justify buying more for every project.
2. Use the blues. By committing to using the blues I have, I will either deplete my stash so that I can buy better ones, or become more comfortable with what's there. Either way is a win.
3. Don't plan so much. Stop being quite so square.
4. Get inspired.

That last is the easiest. I mean, come on, how could I not?

Mythbusting

Oh, and that Amish thing?  Totally not true.

Stick a fork in it. Or, uh, wait. Don't.

Finished and sent.

I did a few things differently with this quilt than I normally do. First, I starched my fabric after washing and before pressing. This made the cotton nice and crisp to work with. Probably more trouble than it was worth, given the simplicity of the piecing, but I'll do it again in the future when I have something more complicated going on.

Next, I mostly used prints from a single line. I guess I was feeling lazy uninspired. Oh, they all look great together, just as they're designed to do, but I don't feel there's much of my personality in the quilt. That's all right on this one, I think, since I didn't invest a huge amount of time in it and it's not a gift I'm giving directly to a loved one. But I don't plan to do it again.

Third, I pieced the back. Didn't take a picture of it, but I inserted big 8" blocks of the Pop Garden prints between the large panels of the backing fabric. I like the effect, but everything does need to be aligned just so before quilting to assure a straight column when finished.

Finally, this is just so much simpler a quilt than I usually make. I had a lot of reasons:

• Wanted to make it quickly
• Wanted to showcase the big prints without hacking them up into tiny bits
• Wanted to use up a lot of fabric
• Wanted not to think too hard during construction
• Liked other quilts I've seen that were comparably simple

And I'll certainly go the simple route again. Although I wouldn't call this quilt technically challenging, I really enjoyed just making something, and it was a real pleasure to go from inception to completion in what was, for me, a pretty short time.

See also a closeup of some blocks and the label.

Home stretch

Tonight, we bind.

Brett's mother's quilt top, and an irritating myth about the Amish

Brett's mother's quilt top is finished.

Although it's composed almost entirely of prints from Heather Bailey's Pop Garden and Bijoux collections, I think my favorite part are Tula Pink's four birds from Nest.  They give the whole thing a touch of whimsy.  (I was going to type "a touch of the avian flu," but then I worried they'd get offended and peck out my liver while I sleep.)

Biggest mistake of this quilt so far has been what I like to think of as my Amish block.  Some quilters believe that Amish craftspeople intentionally introduce errors into their work to promote the idea that only God is perfect.  I for one don't buy it: I think the presumption that one would have to try to make mistakes is kind of, well, uppity.  And I haven't met too many uppity Amish.

But as for my sad little block, it only proves that even without trying I make more than enough mistakes to keep a whole damn pantheon of gods feeling smug and superior.  When I was sewing the blocks into rows, I noticed that one had a little nick in it from careless rotary cutting.  It would only worsen, I knew, with quilting and washing, so it had to be replaced.  But I had only scraps of the floral print left, and no patience with trying other combinations that would work in its place.  So I pieced it, clumsily.

And it's fine.  If that's the most noticeable mistake I make on this quilt, I'll trade in my Elna for a butter churn.

Things I want to make, #1

Just as I was pondering the huge collection of scraps I've amassed, I came across this quilt at crazy mom quilts.  "Like little gemstones," says a commenter.

Blocks for Brett's mom

This is the first batch of blocks for Brett's mom's quilt — mostly Pop Garden and Bijoux, but with a handful of other prints, notably a few from Tula Pink's Nest collection.  (The birds just speak to me.  Uuuuuse me, they say.  Shut up, I answer, and bang my head against the wall a few times to drown out their unholy racket.  And then, resigned, I fussy-cut a whole damn flock.)

Waiting on the arrival of a few additional pieces of fabric before I make more blocks.  I only need 24 to make the quilt as sketched; as of now I have 20.   Got a little enthusiastic.  I'll probably increase its size, and I'll certainly have leftover blocks.  The better to line the cages of my tyrannical avian overlords, I guess.

I've created a monster

I've finished quilting Elvis, and, man, is he pissed.

Years ago my sister-in-law gave me some Elvis Christmas fabric as a gift.  This winter something — perhaps an abrupt descent into madness? — moved me to take it out and make it into a quilt at last.  I alternated the various Elvis faces with disappearing nine-patch blocks in Christmas prints.  When the piecing was complete, I thought, Huh.  This looks better than it has any right to.

And then I quilted it.

I used an allover meander, since this was to be little more than a novelty quilt that would see a month's use every year.  I didn't take into account, though, the sad fact that the stitching would run all over the sacred printed countenance of the King.  By the time I realized it, it was too late to care (or, if the truth be told, I was too lazy to rip out the quilting I'd already done and start fresh).

So all over the quilt, Elvis looks a little...Frankensteinian.

I look at the King, reproduced in 18-plicate all over the quilt, and I lovingly murmur, as Homer Simpson once did to a prized football...

You will be called...Stitchface.

Word to your lovely mother

My friend Brett has asked me to make a quilt as a gift for his mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's.  I know her only through Brett's words, but he's always spoken so warmly of her that I was pleased to be asked and eager to do it.  (Can't help but think of my own grandmother, who has Alzheimer's, and owns several quilts of mine already.)

I'm using fabrics from Heather Bailey's Pop Garden and Bijoux lines, as well as a smattering of prints from my stash.  It'll be a simple lap quilt, letting the gorgeous fabrics do the work that I normally expect intricate piecing to carry.

Here's a quick sketch of the layout:

...naturally subject to a great deal of tinkering as I make blocks and see how they work together.