I have quilter's block, a syndrome I made up where you can't decide on a project, to make, can't decide upon what fabric to use, can't get off your rump and do something productive. It's a lot like writer's block. Join m
The book, A Perfect Match: A Guide to Precise Machine Piecing by Donna Lynn Thomas, is one that I bought early in my quilting career. It taught me lessons which I use every time I quilt, lessons which I have tried to pass on to others in my articles and patterns. Besides sections on how to match corners, which is what I remember most, it also covers basic rotary cutting, pressing, strip piecing, chain sewing, and so much more, giving innumerable tips to make the work faster and easier. I thought of this book while I was sewing my 210 six inch heart squares together. As I pressed each row of hearts I thought of how I was going to sew all the rows together, and pressed the seams toward the side with the pink block on the end (I alternated pink and white background blocks.) Each row was pressed in an opposite direction, making the corners so much easier to match up precisely. I so recommend this book to beginning quilters. It is still available to buy on Amazon, but must be out of print, because you can only get it from resellers. I am including the link even though I won't get any money for it, because I think every quilter should have a copy. About my heart quilt: it's too big and I haven't even put the borders on yet. I'm going to take a row off of the top and the side, something that's difficult to contemplate. I have ripping out stitches.
Machine Quilting Made Easy by Maureen Noble is a book I consulted for the the last block I made so I decided it should be the next book I made a project out of. I looked for it on my bookshelf, an obvious place considering it's a book. However, I hadn't put it away, so it wasn't there. Next I looked on my desk, another obvious place. I spent quite a while putting things away on my desk - papers, greeting cards, books and old receipts. My desk looks much better, but I didn't find the book. I tidied up my sewing table and my cutting table too, but it wasn't there. So I decided to make a machine quilting sampler such as the one in one of the exercises I remember from the book. I used designs that I had used before when machine quilting other small projects. I drew four inch squares on the wrong side of a piece of white print fabric as I couldn't find a piece of muslin without a big search. I didn't want the pattern on the fabric to distract from the quilting designs. I sandwiched the top with a batting and backing. I went to my sewing machine, put on my darning foot, and threaded in some gray thread in the top and bobbin. When you use a darning foot the pressure is removed from the fabric between stitches, so it's easy to move the fabric in different directions. Unfortunately, I am out of practice doing machine quilting, so I couldn't do a straight or smooth line, but I didn't let that distract me from the enjoyment of doing this project. I have always loved machine quilting, and I loved making this sampler. To my surprise, Machine Quilting Made Easy is still available to buy on Amazon.com. This must be because it is such a wonderful, informative book. As well as basic instructions in how to machine quilt, it has a series of exercises that go from easy to more difficult. I did these exercises back in the days when everything was new in quilting, and learned skills that I still use today. This is one of the most often consulted books in my quilting library, and I heartily recommend it. The price is good, too. I found my book a few minutes ago. It was on the recliner, under a stack of fabric that I had put there while looking for the book.
Up until now I have chosen easy books with easy projects in them - paper piecing, patchwork, simple appliqué - things that can be quickly finished in a day or less. But hey, I'm an artist. I quilt difficult stuff, because I love the challenge. I also buy difficult books with harder projects because I like to learn new things all the time. If I'm going to do this project right, I thought, I have to get to the more complicated books, rather than leave them all until the end of the project when I'll have to do them all at in a row. So I pulled out one of the more demanding books, Free-Style Quilts by Susan Carlson, subtitled A "No Rules" Approach. I bought this book after attending a Quilt Show in Castlegar or Nelson two or three years ago. I was very inspired by the featured quilter there. I don't remember her name, unfortunately, and I can't find any of the pictures I took at the time which would be helpful in writing this post. Anyway, the Free-Style Quilts book was for sale at the show and the style was similar to the featured artist’s. I studied this book at the time and I did make some quilts using that style, but I have decided for the purposes of this blog I had to make something from a pattern in the book. So I reread the book. The pictures are very beautiful, mostly of quilted fish. The quilt style depends a lot on the fabric, with fins made of leaf prints, gills of flowers and scales of interesting multicoloured prints. Now, if you had ever seen my fabric stash, which is enormous, you’d know that it is mostly tone-on-tones, my great love. This is because I bought fabrics that called to me, without any thought to future projects. And here was a future project which required multicoloured flowers and interesting patterns. I took a quick look at my stash and pulled out some blue fabrics which would go together, but weren’t what I really wanted. I then proceeded to waste five precious days off playing online games and net surfing. This is how I manage to avoid most things in life, and what I’m trying to get away from by blogging. Somewhere in here we took a trip to Vernon to look at a Craft Fair (which was disappointing) and spend money we don’t have, while not finding any suitable Christmas presents. Eventually I forced myself to get my act together and have another look at my stash. I found a nice piece of fabric that I acquired at last year’s Quilt Club Christmas party. It was a piece that someone had said was her ugliest fabric, and didn’t want. I thought it wasn’t all that ugly, and had potential, so I took it. It has sunflowers on it, another weakness of mine. It also has lots of thin stripes, some of which had flowers on them. This would make a good stripe for the center of my fish. Unfortunately, it was purple and gold, nice colors, but ones that didn’t go with the blue fabrics I had already chosen. (Did I put all the blue fabric back at this point? Don’t be silly.) I started looking for purple and gold fabrics. I found a print with small tigers which would be a good stripy fabric for fins. I found a purplish-reddish fabric with gold stars. Suddenly there were lots of multicoloured fabrics which would go well on my fish. What was that long funk about? I made two copies of the fish pattern I wanted to follow, both enlarged to the size I wanted. One was for putting on the counter to put the overlapping fabric pieces on so they would come out looking like a fish, instead of a mish-mash of jigsaw puzzle pieces. The other pattern was to use as templates. I did use a few of the templates to cut out pieces for the center of the fish; then I just started cutting them out without a guide. I found flowers which were the wrong size for the gills, but when two were layered together, were perfect. I used the original fabric as a center stripe and for the tail. I was going to use more, but found other more suitable choices. I ended up not using much of the original fabric at all, but it was a good starting point. When the pieces were all cut out, I laid them on a piece of muslin, glued them down using clear drying glue and then placed my fish on a suitable background. The instructions call for a tulle fabric over this. I have several colors of the meshy fabric which I found on sale soon after buying the book and had never used. I chose a purple. This veil was so I wouldn’t have to outline each tiny fabric piece with thread to secure it. I put a darning foot in my machine and did some free-style quilting over the fish, drawing in scales and fins and outlining the entire fish. Then I did some swirly watery outlining on the background. That was the only sewing this entire project saw, except for the binding, which I haven’t done yet. This is my favorite wall hanging technique, and I learned it all from this book. There are a myriad of examples of quiltlets made by the author and her students. She shows how to make up your own patterns from photographs, something I have done many times since. Here are some examples of quilts using this technique: http://www.quilterscrossroads.com/index.php?page=photos§ion=album&per_id=100001&pho_id=100001 and http://www.quilterscrossroads.com/index.php?page=photos§ion=album&per_id=100001&pho_id=100195 . The flower quilt was bought by my sister. The person who delivers water to our house bought the cat quilt. She saw it and had to have it as she has two cats those colors. These are the only two quilts I have ever sold. This book is still available from Amazon.com.
This block is kind of cheating in that I set about making it first, and then I realized that it would fit in with this blog project very well. You see, my quilt group has a year long project going - we each picked a theme and a fabric or two to go with it. Each month each person makes a block for one person's theme. At the end of a year each person will have a bunch of blocks made by a bunch of people that should go together because they have some of the same fabric in them. (The project is done for the Christmas party next month. I can't wait to see my blocks. My theme is pond life. I hope there's lots of frogs. I love frogs.) Anyway, Ruth's theme is stars so I made a star block for her. I chose the Century of Progress block because she got a lot of patchwork stars, and I thought it would be nice for her to have an applique one. This block is partly patchwork, and partly applique. You sew the stripes of the tail together, and then sew the star part and the tail down to the background by hand. It seems that I can't cut out fabric from templates. I cut out pieces for the star's tail over and over again; sometimes I cut them out using the wrong fabric and sometimes I made them the wrong size, but most of the time I cut them out so they would be wrong side up. Then I did it all over again, making the same mistakes again, because I didn't like my first fabric choices. I wasted some of Ruth's fabric. I'm used to wasting my fabric. I second guess my choices all the time, but I don't usually waste other people's fabric. Sorry Ruth. If you're waiting to see how this ties into my Quilter's Block Project, here it is: I realized that this block is in my book Encyclopedia of PIeced Quilt Patterns by Barbara Brackman, subtitled Includes Over 4,000 Patterns. I bought this book as a reference back in the old days when I though I would be able to make my living designing quilt patterns. (silly me). It really is a good book if you have a traditional quilt block and you want to figure out its name. The block patterns are divided into chapters of similar blocks, and there is a section at the beginning of the book which sends you to the right chapter according to the characteristics of the block you are trying to find. It worked for me many times. The book also has information on where each block originated whether from a particular designer or more often from a particular publication - newspaper or magazine. I found it interesting as I am interested in quilt history. (Did you know that the earliest surviving quilted object was found in a cave tomb in Mongolia and is believed to be from the 1st century BC? Did you want to know?) This book was made into software by The Electric Quilt Company to make searching for a quilt block even easier. You can also use it to print out templates, rotary cutting instructions, and paper piecing patterns. Oooh, I see that Barbara has a new book called Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Applique subtitled 2000 Traditional and Modern Designs. I want a copy, really, really, really badly. Maybe when the current crisis is over, if ever. Anyway, I'm putting a link to buy it on this post. If enough people click the button and buy it, maybe I'll be able to afford my own copy. Once again, I only get 33 cents per book sold through my website. The Google ads are even less, and I'm not allowed to encourage readers to click on the ads, and I'm not allowed to click Google ads on my own website, even if I want to buy something. So please don't think I'm encouraging you to click on the Google ads.
I was disappointed when I finished all the wonky hearts (see the picture below on this page) because I was enjoying making them so much. I had wanted to sew them all together in my two days off, and get the quilt top basted quickly so I had another hand project to work on. Then yesterday afternoon I realized I didn't have enough hearts. I was 14 short! How did this happen? Maybe I shouldn't have counted them while watching tv. Anyway, I was so disappointed I quit doing any quilting at all for the rest of the day. What I did do was sit in front of this computer and play games for hours and feel disgusted with myself for not doing anything more productive. I wouldn't have been able to get all that done anyway; I had a lot of other things to do on my days off: finish two blocks for the quilt club exchange, exercise, have coffee with friends, get a haircut and go shopping among other things. Nobody noticed my haircut. It's shorter than it has been in a long time, and curlier. I think it looks very different, but apparently nobody else does. I did get all those other things done, and I also finished another block for this project. Quilting with Japanese Fabrics by Kitty Pippin is a really nice book. It has lots of Japanese style quilt patterns, called sashiko, which would make nice applique patterns. My only complaint is that the book shows lots of quilts Kitty and her students made, but doesn't have patterns for all of them. I would like to make one or two of them sometime. But I did make a very nice applique block. It looks so pretty, I almost feel another large project coming from it. I searched through my Japanese style fabrics for two coordinating fabrics, but this was difficult because I bought them all at different times. The fabric I finally chose for the background was too small, so I ended up sewing two sections together, something I don't usually like to do. The narrow band around the center block was a bit difficult to applique on the inside curves. But it is quite an attractive block. I had to buy some more Fray Check. I clipped a lot on those small semicircular curves, and I don't want the fabric fraying. Fray Check will keep it from raveling. (Isn't it strange that unraveling and raveling mean the same thing? Like flammable and imflammable.) I had a bottle of Fray Check for a long time, but when I wanted to use it a week or so ago I couldn't find it. I bought another bottle, and used it and promptly lost it too. My husband very kindly helped me search for it all over the house, and we found the first bottle but not the second. The first bottle was very thick but still usable, so I used it until it was gone. I was hoping bottle two would show up, but it didn't, so when I needed Fray Check again I bought a third bottle. Maybe bottle two will show up sometime soon.
I have finished making my Wonky Hearts (see the picture of one below on this page). I made 210 of them in a relatively short time. I'm kind of sorry they're done, as I enjoyed making them so much. They are each on a six inch square pink or white background. I started sewing them together today - ahead of the project I should have been finishing first because I started it first. It's a nine patch, and I only have 10 more squares to make. I know I could finish them off in an afternoon, but it's my third nine patch quilt this year, and I feel that if I have to sew another nine patch I'll puke. (For a picture of one of my nine patch quilts, click on http://www.quilterscrossroads.com/photos/95/db/80/95db80718899446.jpeg .) Most of my projects take forever to finish, sometimes years. I get tired of doing the same thing over and over. Don't ask me why I made so many nine patches. I have no idea any more. It seemed like a good idea at the time. So I've run out of hand sewing projects; this is sad because I've decided that hand applique is my favorite form of quilting. And I need a hand project to take to Quilting Club on Monday evenings. I love to go to Quilting because we sit around a large table and talk about quilting and other interesting things while stitching and looking at quilt magazines and books. (If you're ever in Nakusp on a Monday evening come and join us at the high school. We're such a nice group of people.) I kind of think I'm going to hand quilt the Wonky Hearts project, so I don't want to start anything big right now. I looked through my quilt books to find something small to do, and you know something? I don't have hardly any books with applique. I did find one though. It's Quilting with Japanese Fabrics by Kitty Pippin. It's about using Asian style fabric with large scale prints that wouldn't be as nice if you cut them up into small pieces. I always wanted to make something from this book. I'll find a small project tonight after work. I'll keep you posted.
It's been a while since I worked on this project. I'm already behind, and I've just started. I have to get my act together. My son came for the weekend, and I felt that I must clean up the house a bit (but not very much) for his visit. And then I felt that while he was here I should actually sit and talk with him. Silly me. I did do a bit of sewing while he was here: I put some hanging loops on a full sized quilt I made him a while back. It was too warm for him and he wanted to hang it on his wall. I've been meaning to do it for quite a while and he asked me to finally finish it. Then there was the colonoscopy. There’s lots of colon cancer in my family, so I need one every five years. I had to do a clear fluid fast for a day, while I drank some stuff that purged my bowels. That was the worst part of the whole thing. Every time I was hungry I had a glass of juice or pop. At least I got to drink a lot of sweet drinks without feeling guilty about it. Luckily, my colon is still healthy. I came home feeling sleepy but cheerful, and got to work. The book is Petal Play the Traditional Way by Joan Shay (hey that rhymes). I bought it because I like quilting in three dimensions, and wanted to learn her technique (what's traditional about that? I don't know.) This is a fusible webbing technique: sandwich fusible webbing between two pieces of fabric and fuse them together, then make flower petals out of the resulting fabric. You don't have to sew the petals down all the way as they are fused. I did use this method to make flowers for another project, but never actually made anything directly from the book.
I decided on the water lily project, mostly because I always have thought water lilies are special. All of the projects in this book are very appealing and it was hard to choose. One of the things I enjoy about this book is that the flowers are set on pieced blocks whose names go along with the type of flower – for instance, the water lily is on a traditional block called Lady of the Lake, and the shamrock is on a Double Irish Chain. It’s very charming.
The petals and leaf are cut out of the prepared fabric, and then stitched down to the background block. The author suggests using embroidery thread to hand stitch the flower in place, adding details like veins to the leaf and a flower center to the lily, but I like doing machine embroidery so I decided to do it that way. Machine stitching would have been quicker, too, if I hadn’t had to clean off my sewing table in order to find my darning foot mixed in with all the scraps of fabric and thread. I added a lot more details than suggested, such as veining to the flower petals. This sewed them down more securely, and still left the edges free for the three dimensional effect.
After everything is secure, you heat the petals and leaves with an iron and bend them into realistic shapes while they are still warm. I used my mini iron for this so I could heat each petal one at a time. I am very pleased with the finished look. My only complaint about this book is that the finished block size is 13 inches. I can’t add this block very easily to another project because of the odd block size. You need to have all the block sizes divisible by the same number such as three or four to do that. However, this wouldn’t have been a problem if I had made the whole wall hanging instead of just one block. I’m going to make the block into a small wall hanging for a Christmas gift.
I do recommend this book for a delightful, easy project that makes a nice present. It is no longer available new, but Amazon.com has several used ones for sale.
I have been working so much lately that I have been waiting to have my normal life back before I start to work again on this project. However, I realized yesterday that a few hours in the morning before I go to work is probably the only time I'll ever have to sew. I have no normal life; there's no use in waiting for it to start. So here I am writing again. The book I am working from is called "Stitch and Split Applique" and subtitled "12 Raw-Edge Projects". It is by Jayme Crow and Joan Segna. This is a great book, and I am so glad when I went eenie meenie that this one came up. I actually have made some projects from this book - not whole quilts or wall hangings though. I made a bunch of potholders using the split and stitch technique last year to give away at Christmas time. This is the easiest applique you can do, because you don't bother to either turn under the edges or use fusible webbing. You stitch about a quarter inch from the raw edge of the applique. When finished the edges look similar to the flannel rag quilts that were so popular a while back, or they would if you washed them. The people I gave the potholders to have all told me that they put them on the wall to enjoy. I chose a small project (finished size 8" x 23") called Tug at Your Heart. It has a striped background with a row of hearts (my favorite motif). I changed the colors because I wanted it to have a Christmasy look. Instead of blue and white I used yellow and green. The hearts are split and then resewed so that they end up two shades of red. It came out very cute, but now I'm worrying. I should have used a red and gold background and made green Christmas trees instead of hearts. Why didn't I do that? Because I wanted to actually do something from the book for this project. I'm so silly; I always second guess my color choices. I'm trying to stop doing that. I have enough background stripes to make another little wall hanging. I wonder what I'll put on the front. Red Christmas trees? Maybe I can find a print with red and green for the Christmas trees. Anyway, I am donating the thing to the residential care where I work. They can put it in the raffle basket they always have at Christmas time. Everybody I have shown it to has liked it. Either they have no taste, or I don't. I am putting a button that you can press to buy the book from Amazon.com if you want it. I don't know why I bother. I get thirty-three cents per book. Maybe someday thousands of people will read this post and have a sudden desire to own the book. Here's hoping. Anyway, this book is well worth having. The instructions are clear, accurate, and easy to follow. And here's the button:
I can't believe the number of days you can work without getting overtime in my job. I used to work 12 hour shifts, and had lots of days off. Now my job is 8 hours, and I work almost every day. I hate working this much, but we need to live. My husband is retired with a small pension, and we have a big mortgage. But there are things I like about my job. The people I work with are pleasant, I like my boss most of the time, and when I work night shift it is very quiet, so I can sew. I like to bring hand sewing as I don't enjoy lugging a big, heavy, noisy sewing machine around. The project I'm working on now is a wonky heart on a white or pink background. I get to use up scraps for this, which is good for my thrifty heart. Each square is 6", and when I get 210 of them I will sew them all together for a full sized quilt. I have about 50 to go. The project is going relatively quickly, for me, as I really like hand sewing. I do it watching tv sometimes. Preparing the hearts for applique is quick too. I use heat resistant template plastic cut in the shape of a wonky heart. I spray a bit of starch on the edges, and then iron the edges up around the template. I can get three or four of these done in the time it takes to sew the edges onto a paper template. Of course, sitting and sewing is more relaxing than standing and doing fussy ironing, but I have to go for speed; without speed I wouldn't get much done, I'm afraid. With the ironing I also get the satisfaction of having done enough in a short time to have prepped hearts that I can work on all night long if I want. Unfortunately, motivation to sew on night shift doesn't happen every night. It depends on how tired I am, or how discouraged I get at being at work when I would rather be in bed. Sometimes I just want a good escapist book to make the night pass quickly. With this project I am also using up a lot of orphan blocks. I have a lot of blocks that I made too much of, or some where I know I will never finish the project. These look quite cute cut up into hearts.
I spent two pleasant night shifts working with my friend Freda, who also quilts. We both brought projects to work and passed quiet shifts pleasantly sewing after our work was done. Too bad night shifts aren't all like that. The second book from my quilting library that I made a block from is 101 Foundation-Pieced Quilt Blocks by Linda Causee. I bought the book early in my quilting career, but never made anything out of it. It has a lot of things that I like to sew: several charming bird houses, cute birds, pleasing pets, pretty butterflies, lovely houses, appealing tea cups and tea pots, and attractive flowers among others. It also has a lot of ordinary blocks that I would rather rotary cut than paper piece. Why would someone paper piece them? For greater accuracy. If you're having trouble getting those corners to match, paper piecing is a good way to go. I used to really like paper piecing, but since I became so good at applique I prefer that to paper piecing; I hate picking out all of those tiny pieces of paper. It's silly, since hand applique certainly takes longer than tearing off the paper, but it is more relaxing. I don't get as uptight as I used to taking out the paper; now I will leave tiny bits where they are. Before I learned applique I used to do quite a bit of paper piecing, which is why I bought this book. And it is a nice book. As usual, I had a hard time choosing which block to make. There are so many that I like. This stops me from quilting quite often of late, which is one reason I decided to do this project. But I have committed myself to this, so I forced myself to choose. I picked a Sunbonnet Sue block to make. I also made a Blue Jean Sam to go with her. (I've always called the boy with the large hat and no face Overalls Bill, but Blue Jean Sam is what he is called in this book.) The sewing went well - I only had to pick out stitches a few times for the usual reasons. Once I folded the fabric while sewing it, and didn't notice because of courses the fabric is under the paper while you are sewing. Once I positioned the fabric wrong, and once I sewed wrong side up. About par for the course for me. I wish I could just once sew everything perfectly, but I seem to take out stitching far too often. Thank goodness for stitch rippers. When paper piecing I like to set up my mini-iron and a folded tea towel on one side of my sewing machine and a small cutting board and rotary cutter on the other to speed up the work. I have one of those add-a-quarter rulers which makes it much quicker too. When I have to rip out stitches I first pull that line of sewing away from the paper. I repair the paper with tape to continue sewing on it. Now that my blocks are done I don't really like them. I really prefer applique to paper piecing now. The arms on these Sunbonnets don't stick out past the bodies, and this looks stiff and unnatural (as if Sunbonnets are ever natural - get real here, Rebecca.) Anyway it bothers me. I should have made something that naturally has straight lines, like a house. That would have pleased me more. The patterns all seem to be easy to intermediate with no more than three separate pieces to sew together. There is a good description of how to paper piece. This is actually quite a nice book. If you want something that's not a regular patchwork block, and you don't have the time to applique, paper piecing is the way to go. For an article on how to paper piece and a free block (a really cute fish), click here: http://www.quilterscrossroads.com/index.php?page=articles&art_id=42 By the way, paper piecing and foundation piecing are interchangeable terms.
Well, I couldn't sleep after working an evening shift, and at 3:30 am I decided to get up and do something else for a while. I went to my sewing room to make another block to go along with the cat I made yesterday. I got out the book, and tried to decide which block to do next. Then I got stuck. All of the other animals looked like fun to make, and I couldn't decide upon one. After a while I thought this was ridiculous, I'll just start at the beginning and do them in order. The first block is a sheep. I started on that one. Then I had to decide which colors of scraps to use. This is harder in the middle of the night than it should be. Finally I pulled scraps out of my basket almost at random. Luckily pretty much all of my fabric goes well together, and for a scrappy look you don't have to be too fussy anyway. This is when I found out the instructions in Folk Art Quilts leave something to be desired. Although the general instructions are good, there are little details in each block which are not explained well. For instance, the sheep on the quilt in the photograph has a rectangular tail. The sheep in the drawn instructions has a rounded tail. The instructions say to cut a rectangle of fabric for the tail, but don't tell you what to do with it. I ended up folding it in half, rounding the corners, and sewing three sides together. I turned it inside out and made a three dimensional tail. My sheep came out very nicely, but I think if I had been an inexperienced sewer I would have had more trouble with those instructions. In spite of this the block went together quickly. After sewing for an hour I felt tired enough to go to sleep, and I did that.
Today we are celebrating Thanksgiving. It comes a month earlier in Canada than in the US. For those of you who live in a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, it is our excuse to invite company, make an elaborate meal, and eat ourselves into a stupor. We have no company this year, as my son is going to his Dad's in Kelowna. The rest of my family lives too far away, although they are welcome to come whenever they want and we can eat too much then. It's only me and Norm this time, but we are going to have our turkey, stuffing, gravy, yams, Brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, and Saskatoon berry (similar to blueberries, but wild) and rhubarb pie anyway. If we had company I would also make potatoes and homemade bread. Somewhere in the middle of the meal we like to tell each other the things we are thankful for.
The first book is called Folk Art Quilts, a fresh look, by Sandy Bonsib. I originally bought this book because I wanted to make log cabin blocks that are skewed for the quilt I was making for my granddaughter, and there are some on the cover. (Duh, why did I need instructions? Just make the block too large and trim it at an angle.) I didn’t really need to spend $41.00 to learn that. But this book has an excellent section about what constitutes a folk art quilt, and gives hints on designing them. It also tells me I don’t have to be perfect if I make a folk art quilt, something that appeals to me, because I’m so anal about my quilting.
There are lots of great quilts in this book, but I have never made any of them. I chose a quilt called “A Duck with Lips and his Friends” because I love animals, and these are very appealing. I loved making the block. It’s a cat, and it has all the elements that I love in quilts, but rarely use. It has patchwork and appliqué (the tail), three dimensional ears, embroidered face and legs, button eyes and a scrappy look. The tail and ears poke out into the borders, which I also like. I decided to just use fabric out of my scrap basket, which cut down on agonizing fabric decisions and also avoided adding to the fabric stored on flat surfaces in my quilt room. I so enjoyed making this that I think I will make this block the start of a full sized bed quilt. Hopefully it will be finished before my new great-granddaughter, who is not yet born, is not too old to enjoy it.
For some reason I can't put pictures into this blog, so I have to put a link to the block. Here it is:
I have recovered my sewing machine. I only had to drive to Winlaw to get it, an hour and a half drive, as opposed to two hours to Nelson. I had to wait around at the coffee shop for the repair guy to show up, so I had a coffee and a chocolate cheesecake brownie, blowing my diet for the day. It was very yummy. The coffee was so strong I vibrated for two hours afterward, making it live up to the name of the coffee shop: Sleep is for Sissies. Now my sewing machine both zigs and zags, but the tension isn't as nice. The bottom thread shows through when I top stitch now, and it didn't before. I don't feel like driving back twice to get it fixed again, so I'm going to have to break down and use matching bobbin thread when I top stitch. This means I will need a lot more bobbins. Husqvarna bobbins are not standard bobbins; in fact Husqvarna bobbins are different for different Husqvarna machines, as I found out when I bought some once. This may be a problem. I still haven't started on my book project, but I worked on the block exchange for our quilting club. I belong to the afternoon Nakusp quilting club that meets Monday evenings at the high school. If you are ever in Nakusp, please join us. We are doing a block exchange, and I have been informed that I need to have them done by Christmas, so we can look at all the blocks at the Christmas party. I was a couple months behind, so I have been working hard to catch up. I made Lorraine's star block, and some a tea cup block for Nicole. I liked the tea cups I did, but I hate the star block, so I made a second one for Lorraine. I don't like the second one either, mostly because I don't like my top stitching, but that's it - I'm not doing a third one. She'll have to live with it. By the way, my kitchen sink is fixed - draining properly again. After fixing it, my hero husband filled and emptied the dish washer twice. What a guy. We did not go out to dinner yesterday. Feeling poor, we ate grilled cheese sandwiches off of paper plates. Don't tell me how fattening these are. I don't want to know.
Since I can't yet sew, I am getting started on this project by sorting out my quilt books. These are the books I have:
3 books on piecing curves by machine
7 books on embellishment
17 books on patchwork - some of these were given to me, but I must confess I bought most of them. Two of them are encyclopedias of block patterns.
2 books on landscape quilts
7 on different applique techniques
4 on paper piecing
1 on using Japanese style fabrics
1 on Japanese manhole covers
1 on quilted jackets
4 on general quilting
1 on machine quilting
1 on hand quilting
5 on art quilting
3 on three dimensional quilts
2 on color theory in quilting
This is a total of 59 books. I have others which I have decided not to include - the books I have on making fabric bowls, boxes, bags and other presents, and others on one aspect of quilting (for instance making a perfect hand quilting stitch) that don't even have any interesting examples that I could copy. I have been collecting these books over twenty years. I have a lot of fabric, and I wanted to cut down on the amount I brought home, so when I went to a quilt shop for thread or rotary blades and such I started looking at the books instead of the fabric. I want to make one block from each book and end up with one or more quilt tops by the end of a year. I would like to get started on something today, I could do a hand project after all, but the kitchen sink is stopped up. I have poured drain products down without any result, so Norm wants to take the sink apart underneath. I have to clear out everything that is stored down there. Things that used to be easy for us are no longer so when you are older and overweight and underexercised. This is a big project for us. I hope things are fixed before supper time. We will have to eat on paper plates, or go out to dinner, or something. Ha! that's an idea!
There is one little problem to starting this project: I don't have a sewing machine. My sewing machine is at the repair shop right now. It has been for over a week. I miss it. It's funny that I'm missing something that I rarely use lately, but there it is. I made a wall hanging for my granddaughter's soon to be arriving baby (due in January 2010). (Am I excited? Yes! Yes! Yes!) I had been working several night shifts in a row, and had no energy to do any sewing. The party - I refuse to call it a baby shower with the baby not yet here - was the next day. There is no shopping for baby things in NakuspBC where I live. Nakusp is a very small town. So I had 24 hours to make a present. All was going well. I made a cute little teddy bear wall hanging. I had searched online for a free baby wall hanging pattern, but couldn't find one I liked. If you wait until the last minute you don't have time to buy a pattern. Web surfing is something that you can easily do on night shift. I figure that if you work night shift, showing up and staying awake all night is all they can reasonably expect of you - although I do do the minimum of work - which gives me lots of time to surf. So after several hours of fruitless searching, and looking through books for a suitable pattern, I looked in Electric Quilt, a computer program that allows you to design your own quilt patterns. It also has quite a large quilt block and applique library. I love Electric Quilt. I recommend it for those of you who like to design. I find it a piece of cake to use. Anyway, I found a bunch of teddy bear designs, including one I liked. My favorite quilts are a mixture of patchwork and applique, so I wanted a patchwork background. But it had to be quick, because I had such a short time to get it done. So I fell back on my favorite pattern: Log Cabin. It is so easy, you hardly have to measure. I made some 3 inch yellow center blocks and started adding 1 1/2 inch strips to them, yellow on one side and blue on the other, until I had four blocks measuring nine inches. Sewn together so that the yellows are all in the center, they make an 18 inch background block. I like the way it looks with the yellow center. It kind of seems like sunshine emanating from the center applique (if you have a good imagination). Then I made the teddy bear. Using Steam-A-Seam Lite, a fusible webbing that isn't as heavy as some of the webbings and suitable for anything that won't be laundered often. It doesn't feel so much like a layer of cardboard between the layers of fabric, only a layer of paper. I cut out all the pieces and ironed them to the background. So far, so good. Now comes the part about my sewing machine (there is a point to this story after all). This wall hanging was going to be the possession of a small child who may or may not one day have hands-on contact with the hanging; after all, I've seen her mother as a toddler using another wall hanging as a comfort toy. It was kind of endearing. Anyway, I knew the hanging would be more durable with an edge of zig-zagging around the applique. So I got went to my handy dandy Viking Lily and proceeded to put a blanket stitch around the edge of the applique in black thread. Unfortunately, my sewing machine zigs, but doesn't always zag. I knew this was so, but it never has done it so badly before, so badly, in fact, that it spoiled my enjoyment of the finished project! I was very disappointed. I vowed never to ruin another project, so my sewing machine is at the repair place being fixed, and I can't work on the Quilter's Block Book Project yet. For a photo of the Teddy Bear Quilt, try this link: http://www.quilterscrossroads.com/index.php?page=photos§ion=album&per_id=100001&pho_id=100183
Did you see the movie Julie/Julia? In this movie, Julie Powell writes a blog about how she cooks every recipe in Julia Child's French Cooking cook book in one year. The movie is very funny. Julia Child is wonderfully played by Meryl Streep, one of my favorite actresses. I came out of the movie thinking: I could do that! I can write. I can't cook, but I can quilt. There must be a blog in this somewhere for me. You see, I have a problem. I have Quilter's Block, a syndrome that I just made up that is similar to writer's block. I love quilting. I have boxes and shelves and drawers full of fabric, I have a very nice sewing machine and every sewing and quilting gadget known to man (almost). I have dozens of books on quilting. The problem is that I can't seem to get started on a project and stick to it until it is finished. I look through my books and patterns and can't decide on any one thing I want to make. Or I decide on a project and can't decide on what fabric to use. I choose some fabric and then it doesn't seem right to me. So I change some of the fabric to a different choice, and that's not right either, so I change it again. Pretty soon it looks so bad I can't go any further. Or I'm working on a project and it gets half done, and then I don't like what I have done any more. Does this ever happen to you? Sometimes I don't do any sewing for weeks. I have Quilter's Block! It seems to me that the only time I get anything done is when I have a deadline. So I'm giving myself one. So my challenge is this: To make a block out of each of my quilting books within one year. I have over seventy books, so doing the arithmetic (fingers, toes and chair legs) this makes one or two quilt blocks per week. An entirely doable thing, one would think. Did I mention that I have an almost full time job, a great-grandchild on the way, a house to fix up so we can put it up for sale, and all of life's normal problems of daily life to solve? Stay tuned for updates. Please comment if you like this blog, or if you have any ideas, or even any questions.
by Donna Lynn Thomas, is one that I bought early in my quilting career. It taught me lessons which I use every time I quilt, lessons which I have tried to pass on to others in my articles and patterns. Besides sections on how to match corners, which is what I remember most, it also covers basic rotary cutting, pressing, strip piecing, chain sewing, and so much more, giving innumerable tips to make the work faster and easier. 
by Maureen Noble is a book I consulted for the the last block I made so I decided it should be the next book I made a project out of. I looked for it on my bookshelf, an obvious place considering it's a book. However, I hadn't put it away, so it wasn't there. Next I looked on my desk, another obvious place. I spent quite a while putting things away on my desk - papers, greeting cards, books and old receipts. My desk looks much better, but I didn't find the book. I tidied up my sewing table and my cutting table too, but it wasn't there. 
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