Melody Crust - Fiber Artist: Easy Blocks for Sharing

Melody Crust - Fiber Artist: Easy Blocks for Sharing
What a super cool thing to do with 9-patches. I can see it for making quick and interesting quilts from all my charm squares.

100% Quilty

The above picture looks kind of quilty, doesn't it? It's the top layer of my ornament box after putting away my Christmas ornaments. I've used only purple ornaments for some years now. The purples shade from blue-violet to violet-red. This year I decided to widen the spectrum a little bit and add red, which you see represented in the top right corner with a red glitter ball. And, no, I'm not a member of the Red Hat Society.

Speaking of quilty, one of the things I love about making quilts and being a member of a quilt guild is how very supportive the world of quiltmaking is. I started thinking on this topic after having lunch today with my husband. We were listening to a political news story and arguing about the validity of the acts discussed. While not at polar opposites politically, we disagree about certain things. I was adamant in telling him that he was wrong and I was right. I am 100%, positively, absolutely sure of my rightness. As is he.

But in the world of quiltmaking, we all agree that there is no 100%, positively, absolutely right way to make a quilt. You can have a perfect quarter-inch seam or your personal quarter inch. You can hand-quilt, machine-quilt, tie, tack, button or fuse your quilts. You can use cotton, wool, polyester, bamboo, or silk batting, or no batting at all. You can sew twigs between two layers of plastic wrap and call it an art quilt if you so desire. And you are not wrong.

The world of quilting, at least in my guild, is all-encompassing, accepting and forgiving. We love your very first yarn-tied one-patch quilt and we love the blue-ribbon, award-winning, 3000 hours of hand stitching, whole-cloth quilt. We applaud your choice of muddy browns and grays and taupes and we cheer your rainbow in-your-face colors, too. We are just happy that you, too, decided to join us on our quilting venture. It's so good to have you.

Happy quilting, everybody.

All Kitted Out

I received the Winter 2010 Connecting Threads catalog in the mail yesterday. Browsing through the catalog and promising myself that I'm 'just looking', I'm struck by how popular complete quilt kits seem to be. When, and if, I buy a quilt kit that includes both pattern and the matching fabrics to complete the top, it's solely because I can't get those fabrics any other way. To me, understanding the mind of the quilter who enjoys putting together quilt kits is comparable to understanding the mind of the male species.

Don't misunderstand me - I love kit quilts. Just look at the two gorgeous kit quilts shown above (the left one is from Connecting Threads, the one on the right from EverythingQuilts.com) . My mom sent my sister a quilt for Christmas - one that was made by my great aunt Ida Belle Combs - and it is a rather well known iris applique pattern that was sold in kits during the 30s and 40s. I've put together lots of Block of the Month kits while I was teaching quilting, but somehow those blocks never actually made it into a quilt - no surprise there.

So what do I personally have against kitted quilts? I think it goes back a knee jerk, rebellious reaction to years of being a 'good girl' and doing what I was told, seeking everyone's approval. I'm not exactly tearing it up out here with my head-banging, hard-rockin' ways, but I certainly do resist being told what to do, and that includes in my quilting.

For example, for a Christmas gift exchange with my mini-group friends, I decided to use Martha Stewart's pattern for 'homegrown' tomato pincushions. I glanced through the pattern instructions, then ignored them and went my own way. I ignored the fact that you needed to cut the fabric on the bias, that you first needed to sew a tube before hand-stitching the bottom closed, and ignored the suggestion to use cotton batting. Luckily I had only cut out 1 of the 12 I had planned to make.

Back to the beginning - re-cut the fabric (on the bias), stitch one side only, turn, baste, stuff and close. The 'test' model I ended up keeping. I had stuffed it full of polyester fleece scraps and it's so hard you can barely poke a pin in it. Who knew polyester fleece was such tough stuff?

So my hard-headed mulishness got me one rock hard pincushion as a souvenir. Then my quick learning resulted in eleven lovely cushy 'homegrown' tomatoes to share with my friends. Would I ever make a kit quilt by following the instructions to the letter? Well, it's not likely. Would I appreciate it if someone made me a quilt from a kit? Oh, you betcha.

The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen!

I finished a quilt! I finished a quilt! So what, you say? Well, it's been years since I actually completed a quilt project that wasn't small enough to hide in my purse. I had called myself Queen of the UFOs (Un-Finished Objects) but I now will have to relinquish the crown. Maybe now I'll call myself Queen of Everything (acknowledgment to Mary Engelbreit here.

When my mom offered to ship gifts to my sister and nephew if I had them ready by today, I thought about going shopping. However, I was inspired by my friend and neighbor who is making all of her Christmas gifts and getting them all finished prior to having surgery on the 17th. She inspires me often. So I dived into the crate of UFOs and came up with a sofa-sized one-block quilt top I made as sample for a class I taught years ago. It still needed borders, quilting and binding, but I was sure I could knock that out in a few hours.

Oh, how the proud are humbled. I managed to make the quilting more complicated than necessary by doing in-the-ditch quilting, 1/4 inch outline quilting and decorative stitching. Then, trying a time saving tip using white glue to baste together binding, I unintentionally used 'fusible' glue, making permanently fused stiff seams in my binding. I can promise you they'll never un-sew! I ended up spending about 12 hours total finishing this quilt.

On the plus side, I was lucky to have enough fabric for the borders in my unsold fat-quarter stash. And I got creative in my binding fabrics by using 2 1/2" wide strips from my recently cut strip stash. Rather than sew on a label on the back, I inked a Christmas greeting with a Micron .03 pen right on the front of the quilt. It's barely noticeable within the 1/4 inch outline quilting.

I'm so happy to have this project finished. It lays flat (mostly) and came out square (relatively) without my trying to hard. And the fleece fabric quilts beautifully, showing the quilting on the back in relief.

While searching for an image to use for Queen of UFOs, I encountered a lovely blog from a quilter from the Netherlands who makes the extra special effort to write in English. Brava for her! Take a look at her wonderful projects at Dutch Blue.

P.S. I promise to post a picture soon. I'm waiting for the sunlight to move across the living room floor so that I can take a picture without a bright spot in the middle.

Attention, please!

May I have your attention for an important annoucement! (drumroll please)...........
My scrap bin is EMPTY!

The cleaning-out process was inspired by my quilt buddy Cat and her daughter Beth who had come over to peruse the bin for scrap quilts they were making. Watching them have such fun going through the goodies reminded me of how much fun it was to collect all those scraps. So I decided to start going through them myself and breaking them down into workable parts.

I cut 10" and 9" squares out first for big block quilts. After that, I cut one each of a 5" and/or 6" square for my charm square collections. Then, from longer pieces, I cut strips 2 1/2" wide (jelly rolls) down to 1" wide. Narrower strips and selvages got thrown into a ziploc bag. All others scraps were set aside to die cut into 4" and 2" squares or equilateral triangles.

As I dug through the box, it was great fun to remember where the fabrics came from. "Ah, here's Cheo's Spiderman shorts." "These are left from the first block-of-the-month class that I taught with my friend Patti at Hancocks." "These are from the bag of scraps that I won at our guild's Chinese Auction." "Here's the leftovers from Laurel's Crazy Strip class." "Here's a big chunk from that pink, blue & purple Western shirt I bought for Pedro that he wouldn't wear." and "These are all from the Dollar Bag Day at the thrift shop."

One of the greatest pleasures of a scrap quilt or a charm quilt are just these; touching the fabrics and recalling the special memories that go along with each piece. It may be nothing more than, "Oh, this was a great deal at the quilt shop." or "I bought this on that Road Trip to Tampa." These are good memories to be sure; to me the even more special are "This hot pink print is from the dress I was wearing the first time I felt my baby Cheo move inside me" and "This Looney Tunes print is from the shorts and vest outfit Cheo wore on his first day of first grade."

Now my 32 gallon scrap box is empty, waiting to be filled with fresh new fabric or UFOs or orphaned blocks - who knows. I've enjoyed the pleasure of all the memories passing under my ruler and rotary cutter as they transformed into the building blocks of new projects. I look forward to the new memories yet to be formed.

Waxing Philosophical

I had a TP emergency in the bathroom today. I'm one of those people who likes to have something to read while I'm in the bathroom and I was reading a book from the series "Conversations with God". This particular passage touched on the ideas of being One with God and the nature of how that appears in daily life. It also touched on the quote, "Ask and you shall receive." I set the book down and reached for the TP and there just wasn't enough there for my needs. I frantically looked back over my shoulder to see if an extra roll was on the tank and saw nothing. Since I was alone in the house, no one was going to come to my rescue.
The thought popped into my head, "Well, if I had total faith, a roll of toilet paper would just appear." A very facetious thought, that. I looked back over my shoulder one more time, and there it was - a new roll of toilet paper!
Now I'm assuming that the roll of toilet paper was there the whole time and, in my panic, I just didn't look back far enough to see it. But even so, aren't the smallest of miracles sometimes the most marvelous.

The Excitement of Travel

Today is our third day in New York City. Day one was a travel day, which is inevitably tiring, but we still managed to pull off a hike around central Manhattan, seeing Radio City Music Hall, the big retailers on Fifth Avenue including Macy's and Bloomie's, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Yesterday we saw the Yankee's victory parade from Battery Park, shopped a little, went to Staten Island on the ferry and managed to get stuck there due to a riot at the ferry terminal on the Manhattan side. Eventually back to Manhattan, on to Ground Zero, then subway and bus to Greenwich Village for my birthday dinner at Veselka, an Ukrainian restaurant that's been there for 44 years. After that we rode the bus around Greenwich Village and the East Village, hopped off to change buses and ended up back on the subway for the trip back to Queens.

So, are you worn out yet? I am. Today we stayed in Queens (today two of the places I wanted to go to in Manhattan are closed for the Jewish sabbath). We went to Jamaica Center, a shopping area much like a glorified flea market, with lots of cheap shoes, clothing and jewelry, mostly faux in some way, but we found a few bargains. No place to eat, though, except McDonald's and Subway, and we have vowed to stay away from chain restaurants during this trip. So, back to Queens Boulevard and a tiny little hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant for General Tso's and Garlic chicken. Mm-mmm.

I love this neighborhood. It's called Briarwood, and is a combination of small businesses, attached multi-family homes, skinny little single family homes and apartments. The streets are tree lined and quiet. It hardly seems like New York. Of course, our hotel is on the main thoroughfare and not as quiet, but a great deal for us.

We got back to our room and, sadly, it was not made up, so I tucked down here to the business center to blog while our bed gets made and towels changed out. I am worn out and its only 4:45 p.m. My dogs are barkin' as my dad would say.

Here's a secret - don't tell Pedro! A few days ago, a cute little dachsund puppy was born with Minnie Mouse ears in black on her back, and brown spots on white. She just happens to be designated for me in 8 weeks. A little spotted long-haired doxie!

Almost out of time, $2.00 for 20 minutes, so I'd better hit PUBLISH and get this posted.