Making Progress

This quilt has 18 rows.  Each row has 15 pieces.  Each row has a grouting row in between.  So that's - well, you do the math and figure out how many pieces.  A lot.  This quilt top is now in 6 pieces.  More importantly, I've made some decisions about the borders.

Once the sides and top/bottom have a row of grouting, I will add an inner border of this stony granite light fabric and then an outer border of a blue stone/brickish fabric.To the left of the quilt are some strips of bricks that will be a part of the backing.  Since this is a wedding present I keep think about brick walls and marriage.  However, no great analogies are coming to mind.  I may have to give up on writing a meaningful note to accompany this quilt...

Under Construction

My Brick Wall is coming along. Most of the horizontal rows are complete. Now I just need to "grout" between these rows. My deadline to get the top pieced is next Thursday, and I think I'm good! The missing row is in my sewing machine. You can see the lines of my blue painters tape on the floor, marking a 60" x 80" outline.

Taking shape

I'm making a wedding quilt for a couple I don't know at all, and the wedding is in August. I'm working on these two words: traditional and neutral. And I know that blue is good. So here's where I am so far. My white and neutrals have been cut into 4.5" x 8" bricks. There are two blues I'm using for mortar. This rough layout definitely suggests brick wall. Now I'm ready to work in earnest!

For Nancy with the Pretty Feet

My friend Nancy is on her way to Telluride where her grandson is getting married.  After the wedding all guests will walk a path to a gondola which will take them to the top of the mountain, where the reception will be.  And guests have been told to bring comfortable shoes for this walk.  I asked Nancy if she had an appropriate bag to carry her shoes, and she didn't.  So we matched this fabric to her outfit, and I made a Mors Bag.

Nancy is a small woman and this bag is only for her shoes, although I did insert a little interior pocket in the lining, just big enough for Kleenex and lipstick.

My husband met Nancy a few summers ago at a garden party. Later John referred to her as Nancy with the Pretty Feet. And so she remains.

Percolating...

I'm ready to start a quilt top that must be pieced by the 15th.  The palette is neutrals and a few blues.   And the recipient is traditional.  So I'm thinking.  And thinking.  I'm thinking a disappearing 4-patch might be fun and still give me the traditional look I'm going for.  But I'm still thinking.

Thursday was the deadline for my guild's informal mug rug exchange. Eileen and I swapped in person. What I love about Eileen's mug rug is the zig zag design, the neutral border, the bright binding, and the colorful backing. What I love about the one Elaine made for me is that it's her interpretation of Trip Around the World. I was so touched that she went to my blog to see what designs and colors I like! What a lovely gesture. And I love her "modern" spin on the design. This mug rug swap was great fun. A big thanks to Ebony Love for organizing it!

In addition to starting the neutral/blues quilt, I need to focus on my fabric shelves. Erika Sews recently linked to a fabric organizing tip, and I gave it a try. I LOVE THIS TECHNIQUE! I'm using a 12" ruler for larger pieces and a 6.5" ruler for pieces of fabric less than a yard. Look at the difference on the two shelves above.

Grandson Brandon is coming over Tuesday morning to begin the rest of the shelves. Look for more "before" and "afters."

Rules - Follow? Break? Discuss...

I've been thinking a lot about rules and quilting and guilds and have been aware of the disdain from traditionalists for "modern quilting."  And I've wondered why anyone would impose their quilting rules on anyone else.  The word "modern" implies to some a haphazard approach of mixing anything together and careless workmanship.  And that is so not true. 

I'm crazy about my Chicago Modern Quilt Guild and what I'm learning from these women. I'm learning I can be as precise - or as wonky - as I want to be.  I'm learning to appreciate different color and design esthetics.  I'm learning I can work large or small.  And I'm still learning when rules need to be followed and when they need to be broken.   I'm learning to take some risks and work outside of my safe zone.  Most of all, I love sharing this passion for quilting with them.  There's a palpable energy at our meetings.

We are currently doing an informal "mug rug" swap, thanks to that cute little Ebony Love.  Fun, eh?  Small little doable projects, June 30 deadline, and I am only making two.  Despite telling myself that this exercise isn't a competition, I did think about the women in the group who often work small - I mean teensy tiny - and those who have an eye for design and those who have a sense of the organic.  And the pressure was on. 

I started with a charm packet and loved what I was doing but not for the mug rugs.  Former CMQG treasurer and current program committee member Sue has a thing for fish, and a couple of these fabrics feature fish, especially the eyes.  And I decided I would create something for her.  Sue has a great sense of whimsy and is a spontaneous quilter.  Knowing I was creating for Sue allowed me to play.  I used one of the pretty stitches on my machine.  I found my couching foot and gimping thread and played with that.  And best of all?  I tried the rat tail binding that I saw demoed in a you tube video  Thank you, Carolann Waugh!  This technique is a keeper.  These squares are 8" x 8". 

Then I moved on to Wayne's beautiful batik scraps and began to play with couching, stippling, and a fusible metallic bias tape.  Check out the rat tail binding - again it worked!  But these look puny.  They are only 5" x 8".  And while I was working I thought about one of my favorite designs - Trip Around the World.  And I spotted my stack of beautiful fabrics with metallics. 

So I cut two 1.25" strips from each fabric and went to work.  This picture above has both the right side and the wrong side.  My piecing, while not perfect, isn't bad.  But here's a great example of a time when a rule is meant to be broken. For the most part I've been ironing all my seams open.  And for the majority of what I do, this change from pressing seams to one side has made better quilts.  BUT not with this pattern.  The success of lining things up depends on wiggle-matching seams.  Next time I do a Trip I'll remember to break the "pressing rule." 

Here are my two finished mug rugs.  They are a bit bigger than I would like (it's always something), but I honored my instincts by not trimming and disturbing the pattern.  Also the rat tail binding wouldn't work for these - too many seams around the edges.  Besides, I had two wonderful already-made bindings from others projects.

My Trip Around the World mug rugs are ready for the mail.  This is an American design made with fabrics that read Asian, and backed with a white that features a metallic map of Africa. 

The best part?  I received a mug rug today from Elaine, who took the time to look at my blog to make me something I would like.  And she used a Trip Around the World design.  Thoughtful - perfect - modern.

I love my quilt guild girls and that I'm learning new things about rules.



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Nathan's Quilt

Here's my mom helping to hold Nathan's quilt. We talked - several times - about this quilt being the last of the high school graduation quilts for my nieces/nephews and thus my mom's last grandchild to graduate from high school. My dad is hiding behind the quilt. Mom seem pleased to be able to help hold this quilt.

This look at the back of the quilt shows not only the quilting but also the tidy binding, done with just one machine pass around the whole quilt - the method explained in Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's books.

Trying not to get chocolate on...

Tomorrow is my dad's 86th birthday, and he's requested a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I love to bake. I love to taste. And I tried very hard - and succeeded in not getting chocolate on my new fabric. Friends gave me a gift certificate to Spoonflower.com. It's a site where you can design your own fabric. That something I thought I always wanted to do until I began working at this site. It's hard! and overwhelming. Instead I looked at fabrics that others have designed, and here's what came in the mail. At $18/yard I won't use this site often, but it's fun to know it exists.

I also didn't get chocolate on the binding for Nathan's quilt, which I picked up from T and F Quilting today. This quilt is big - 82" by 102". That means 12 strips of 2" fabric that needed to be joined, run through the bias tape maker, and then ironed in half. Thanks to QFF Ebony I now know to wind the binding on an empty roll of toilet paper - so much easier to use and keep track of.

A Day Without Eletricity...

How dependent we are on electricity. Storms came through the Midwest Tuesday night. We, along with thousands of others in Cook and DuPage Country, lost our power. Our cellphones were sort of charged, and we do have one phone in the house that is hard-wired. John did some reading on my Kindle (Les Mis) with its handy-dandy night light, and my iPad was freshly charged so I was happy to continue with my reading. And clever John not only knew where the flashlights were but also knew where the extra batteries were. Our stove has electronic ignition, but I was able to light a burner and make coffee the next morning - of course I now have no hair on the knuckles of that hand. Because I had no Internet access that morning, I headed to the studio where - of course - I couldn't sew or iron. Instead I did some organizing and putting away and planning. John was able to get both cars out of the garage. The LaGrange Library was jammed with people like me using their wireless network. I also heard that local Starbucks were jammed for the same reason. Despite hearing we'd be out of power for days, it was restored late the next afternoon.

This whole experience took me back to Kathmandu and parts of Kenya where electricity is on for only four or eight hours a day. In Kathmandu we saw a student revolution protesting the ruling Communist party policy of 4 hours of eletricity a day. The hotel we stayed in had its own generator. That was also the case on a couple of the nature conservancies we stayed at in Kenya - places that had their own generators and posted hours when electricity would be available.

As Americans we are terribly spoiled. And our dependency is a bit scary...

A Play Day

There have been a couple of things I've been wanting to play with, and today was my play day! There was a charm packet of Asian fabrics from Moda, including some fish fabric. The rest is all from scraps from my QFF Wayne. He was working on this quilt and packaged up his leftovers. Somehow I talked him into giving me these, and today I joined them together. Here is a Mors bag on its way to a blogger friend in Florida, and I have enough fabric left to make a second bag. I think there are also the beginnings of a couple of mug rugs here, part of an informal swap in my Chicago Modern Quilt Guild. I'm still deciding what I want to do. What a luxury to have a day to experiment and play!