My Evolving Bedroom

 Years ago, maybe 2013, quilt sisters Holly and Sarah turned me on to Marcia Derse and her fabrics.  Three in particular caught my eye,and I made a bed quilt that I had long armed.  I used a big block design and have loved the result.  It has been washed over 50 times at least and perhaps could use new binding.  But it remains a favorite.

But the need for change occasionally strikes.  This all black and white quilt was a fun experiment, and I also had this one long armed.  I’ve used this for maybe three years, and it’s been washed maybe 20 times. 

But here’s the latest bed quilt.   Finished the top in the fall and had to wait until the temps dropped before I started to hand quit this one.  This was my December-January project.  And it’s on this quilt that I learned how to be an ambidextrous hand quilter.  

I love my quilts, and I love sleeping under them.  Luckily, so does John.  

All Quilt Projects, Great and Small

 The end of the year means two things: wrapping up current projects and planning projects for 2024.  Sew Powerful purses are at the top of the 2024 list.  But I cannot stop myself from starting new quilts.  Look at this pattern by Robin Pickens.  The first real modern design I did was Double Plus Good by Rossi Hutchinson, back in 2009.  And look where I am today with Definite Plus, another plus quilt! Its hard to see the jelly roll next to a cream and grey, but these are the fabrics for this quilt.  It's snowy and a major football day.  I may go ahead and get started on this!

This scrap quilt is one I just finished quilting.  I started it as a kind of throw away project, just to use up scraps.  But as I began to needle it, I kind of fell in love with it.  Once it was completed and washed and the textured emerged, it is now one of those quilts that will need to find a very special home. so now I am moving on this this one using an off-center spiral.

 

One of my hand quilting tricks, and I know so many others do this, is to load several needles at once.  This little rug mug is my needle holder.  and if I'm working in multiple colors, this little basket made by quilt member Janette is perfect for keeping those various balls of Perle cotton.

But here's a quilt I would never attempt to hand quilt.  It is for my stepdaughter Jen and is a king - 116" x 116". The backing required 12 yards.  The pattern is Weighted by Alex Hoffman and called for 17 fabrics, not including the background.  The top starts with greens and folds into grays and develop into purples.  I love this pattern and am eager to have it long armed by Sarah Evans.  Below is my Christmas present from Jen who gave me a gift certificate to Quiltagious, a pretty neat little shop in Mukwanago, Wisconsin.  Three absolutely unique prints and a pattern that will show them off nicely without cutting them into bits. 

I'm looking forward to 2024.  2023 had a major sadness, the death of my little brother.  Even before Doug died, but especially afterwards, Ive been keenly aware of two things.  One is how good I have been feeling.  My health allows me to do everything I want to do, and I am able to do the things without pain or difficulty.  The second change is that my life rhythm is changing.  For a long time I have been a kind of maniacal sewer:  "get this one done and start another" was the unspoken mantra.  Now?  I'm finding pleasure in each step of the process:  the planning, the gathering, the preparation, the execution, the completion. I'm content to work on a new project without an old one being complete.  Yes, Red Door, I know you need to be finished. It's more than ever about enjoyment.  And I'm thankful for each day that I have and sad Doug didn't have the luxury of these kinds of days.

I'm a bit fearful of 2024 and what it holds.  What I want it to hold is another autumn and another winter.  I have always loved winter, but I especially love it here in this condo.  I hope for continued health for both of us.  And I do know that I will continue sewing.  As Doug was dying, my sister and I read "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End" by Atul Gawande.  It should be required reading for all of mankind.  Dr. Gawande asks the reader to identify what makes life worth living.  One guy in the book said as long as he could eat chocolate ice cream and watch baseball games, life was worth it.  For me it is the ability to sew and create.  That I can do this with the support of my life's partner?  I am content.  

Mid December

  

This wall hanging is 3' x 4' and intended to be the first of a four seasons series for the dining room fireplace.  I do think this is a lovely tribute to autumn but will also admit it's odd. The hand quilting has created a wonderful texture.  But as I thought about above the fireplace, this just wouldn't work there yet.  But look how great it looks in the kitchen.  That wall has been pretty bare, so I've taped this up just to see whether it belongs here.  And I think it does!

Meanwhile during the day I've been working on purses.  It's December 18, and here are eighteen purses.  Because John does all things Christmas, it's been pretty easy to find the time to sew.  And because we think we have finally sold our LaGrange house, there are less distractions!

This year it's Ben's turn for a quilt.  This isn't exactly a Christmas present.  It's just a good time to give him his quilt.  I used a Japanese canvas which has a very manly look.  It's a heavy quilt - hope his rooms are cold and that he needs this warmth.  I quilted this quilt on my domestic machine.  Even though this machine has a large harp, there was still much quilt wrangling that went on - I could only work on this for maybe an hour a day, and only after I finished my purse sewing.  But it's finished, and I'll be happy to hand it off.  Unfortunately we photographed this quilt on an excessively windy day and were lucky to get any decent shot at all! I love doing log cabins.  The backing for this quilt is a fabric of 8" measures.

Now back to more purses!

A Low-Volume Hand-Quilted Finish!

 

A bundle of low-volume Japanese imports are the basis for this quilt, with a couple of additional fabrics from my stash.  It is backed with an Art Gallery fabric (so soft and slidey), batted with wool, and hand-quilted with Nol. 8 Perle Cotton.  

 I started quilting this February 19 and just finished it March 29.  It takes 6 - 8 weeks to quilt something like this.  It is 70" x 80".  

As I started quilting with an off-center spiral and did a couple of rounds, I decided to throw quilter's caution to the wind and just quilt this willy-nilly, changing directions whenever I wanted.  I like this sort of random quilting.

Occasionally I used a strand of a dark grey - for no particular reason.  

Without measuring, my rows are about 1" apart.  I have had to mark quilt lines, like for a Baptist Fan.  But this quilting just is.  

My guild has had an on-line discussion about wool batting.  And it is my favorite, especially for hand quilting.  The picture below is after washing and drying the quilt normally - no special soaps or temperatures.  I love how the texture has deepened, and the one-inch spacing between my rows become little pockets of puffiness.  

I used to make quilts and figure out the quilting when I was finished.  This new phase of my quilting means creating quilts and knowing exactly how I want to hand-quilt them.  Quite a change for me!

Hand-Quilting Tools: What Works For Me

 

This quilt has been my nightly companion since December 11.  I think in another two weeks it will be finished.  I am loving the texture.  I am loving the sound of the thread being pulled through the three layers.  It's only been the past 6 years that I've been hand-quilting, and now it seems my day is missing something if I don't hand-quilt for a bit.  Let me share with you what I have found works for me.  I am left-handed and do things differently from others.  

My thread of choice is No 8 Perle Cotton.  JoAnn's is not a bad place to get the basic colors.  And you have to be careful because sometimes the No 8's and No 5's get mixed up.  No 5 is, in my humber opinion, just too thick to pull through the three layers.  These are usually $2.99 a ball.

There are fabulous colors of No 8 available, but going on-line has worked best for me.  See that cone of variegated red?  Evans brought that back from QuiltCon for me, and I do love it.  It specifically says Sashiko on it.  The way I learned to quilt was with beige Sashiko thread - think thin butcher's twine.  It's perfect for a primitive look, but it doesn't come in colors.

On to needles.  And Jen BB gave me the best tip:  No 5 Milliner's needles.  They are longish so that you can load 4 or 5 stitches on them.  The eye is just the right size for threading - I've become of master of this, with a lot of patience.  But they are hard to find.  Ordering from Amazon works best.  The packets at Joann's contain sizes from 3 (too large) to 9 (too small).  4, 5, and 6 are all compatible with my hands and skill set.  

On to finger protection.  By trial and error, I have learned that I need to keep something strong on my thumb for pushing and something grippy on my index finger for pulling.  Since my thumb both pushes and pulls, the protection has to be firm but also pliable.  My protection of choice are the black leather cap thimbles (Joann's) used in conjunction with the pink finger grips.  I keep one grip on my index finger and layer a pink grip and a black thimble on my thumb.  It is what works for me.  

Depending on the thickness and the layers, I may also add some little stick-em dots.  For the hand that is under the quilt helping with the tension, I wear nothing.  I have however developed a callous on my middle finger, the one that feels whether the needle has gone through all the layers.

Last but not least, bandaids.  Sometimes for gripping. Sometimes for stopping bleeds.  All I'm saying is keep them handy!  Next time?  maybe we'll talk about the actual process!

Surprise No. 1: For Cristina and Joe

 

You know how you want to do something so special for someone and sometimes get a bit paralyzed in getting started?  I knew Cristina and Joe were getting married at some point, and I knew I wanted to make them a "I'm thrilled you found your life partner" quilt.  And then paralysis set in.  What helped me to break through was this fabulous assortment of peppered shot cottons.

I wanted to do something featuring equally all the colors - so saturated and so bright,  I even went to one of Cristina's favorite artists, Robert Motherwell , for inspiration.  I eventually concluded that if I wanted to give her a quilt in this lifetime, that perhaps I needed to stay within my comfort zone.  So I reverted to some basic 9-patches which then I could perk up with some circular hand quilting.  

I started with an off-center spiral on October 5.  Eventualy I added a second needle and then a third.

As I began making the 9-patches and adding them to the design wall, I knew immediately this horizontal design wouldn't work.  It was fun to play around with arrangements, and I'm happy with the one I settled on. 

Its difficult to explain how much I love hand-quilting.  For so many years I palmed my hand-work off to my mother.  Guildmate Mirielle very slowly modeled the importance of handwork.  And as my parents were dying, I finally got it.  Yesterday I put in the last stitches and made a label.  As much as I love Cristina, I'm pretty crazy about Joe, too.  For a while I wasn't sure if he was good enough for her.  But he is for sure.  One night out with them as judges for a local Moth story-telling competition convinced me of that.  

I've known Cristina for almost 20 years. Despite the 41 year age difference,  we truly are friends.  There's a mutual love and recognition of how lucky we are to have this friendship.  

There have been several projects in the past year that I have been working on but haven't been able to share.  I'm thrilled that this quilt is in Cristina and Joe's hands and want to think it will keep them warm starting with their first year of marriage.  And of course I'm eager to reveal other surprises.  Soon...

Baby Quilts: Get Happy! and Two Little Koalas and Bright and Sunny

Baby quilts are one of my favorite things to do.  They are small, fairly easy to quilt, and - most importantly - keep me focused on possibilities of the future. My nephew Chris and his wife are having a little girl pretty soon.  Pink was the color of choice.  Guildmate and current Chicago Modern Quilt Guilt president Laura McDowell Hopper posted this quilt, "Get Happy!" on the We All Sew website.  There's a second Get Happy! quilt in the works for my niece who is having her baby a month later!

Two Koalas, an Elizabeth Hartman pattern, is complete.  I struggled with how to quilt this and finally took a tip from Lady Macbeth:  be bloody, bold, and resolute.  I dropped the feed dogs and free motioned the background.  And I must say it is spectacular.  The wool batting makes the quilting pop.  A word about Elizabeth Hartman patterns:  they are terrific.  I was a bit taken aback when friends with a pregnant daughter in Perth, Australia, asked for a quilt with an animal on it.  I wanted to say, "Wait, I don't do cute."  But then I found this pattern and have fallen in love with the cuteness.  So I guess I do do cute!

Evenings I am working on this beautiful log cabin.

And another baby quilt!  I'm quilting it right now - it will be for Helios's new little sibling.

Third Hand-Quilted Finish of 2019

Who have I become?  After years of begging my mom to do my handwork - hemming and binding - which she always graciously agreed to do because she liked doing handwork, I have become a handwork maniac.  I twitch if I don't have a quilt to hand-quilt in process.  I now plan my hand-quilting by the season.  If it's cold, I'll do a big,heavy quilt.  If it's hot, I'll quilt blocks and then join them together later.  This amuses me.  I good-naturedly would chide guildster Mimi about her hand-quilting years ago, suggesting she'd get done more if she used a machine.  It was Mimi who turned me on to Renate Hiller - and her video -about the importance and nature of handwork.  Watch it here. 

I had a charm pack by Gingerber called Catnip, which actually has nothing to do with cats.  Just lots of black, white, and taupe in interesting designs.  The sashing is my attempt to create a woven look. 

The backing is from two different fabrics that feel good.  And I have finished this just as the weather is really warming up. It is 70" x 88", and I have a friend who is interested in being the caretaker of this beauty.  Finishing a quilt, while a good thing, is always a bit sad.  It's a matter of changing gears and deciding what is next.  I think I know.  But picking it up and actually starting to lay in those wonderful stitches is always a bit daunting. 

The Winter of My Content

These two quilts have much in common.  Both are Trips Around the World, both are hand-quilted, and both have the tail ends of favorite fabrics.  The peppered shot cotton one (on top) was my evening companion throughout January and February.  The bottom one was quilted in March and April.  And there was some sad satisfaction as I finished each one.

 These fabrics are from Janet Clare's Wordsmith line, which is no longer in production.  That green-grey-beige color?  It is perhaps my favorite of all and very hard to match.  It's almost the color of my studio walls.  The pattern is a bit difficult to discern since I was using up bits, most evident in the border.  I usually try to make quilts on the larger side, but I simply ran out of fabrics for additional borders.

Front detail

Back detail

Panic set in as I finished up this group of fabrics, so I began to do some Internet searching.  And through ETSY and EBay, I found some more fabrics from this line.  I don't know what I am going to do with them - yet...  But I am thrilled to have found them and am working on other fabrics to combine with them.

I'm totally out of these peppered shot cottons.  And I have loved quilted them - the hand feel and weight is so perfect, especially during the Polar Vortex.  The wool batting is a perfect for these fabrics.   I may have to investigate Cherry Wood fabrics, an almost sueded-cotton, as replacement fabrics....

Front detail

Border detail

 With the warmer weather I have to carefully choose hand-quilting projects.  Here's my current one, just started.  It has a poly batting and is not so heavy - I think I'll be able to finish this one before it gets really hot.

And here's the one I'm saving for those hot months - each block is 27", batted, backed, and marked. When each is quilted, I'll join them all together. When did I become a handquilter? I mark the beginning when my parents were declining. And immediately after my mom's death, as welcome as her death was, quilting was my solace. Now? It's what I have to do.