2013 Challenge Quilt — Solids!

Bright color camouflage! Can you find the hidden child?

Once again, part of why my blog went dark in the latter part of last year was that I couldn’t show you what I was primarily working on. This year’s challenge was announced in May and was solid fabrics, at least six different shades/hues. My initial reaction was very negative:  basically, “eww, I’m not doing that!” After all, the fabrics I love are prints and batiks, and I have a houseful of them. Doing a solid fabric challenge would entail buying new fabric at a time when I’m desperately trying to use up my stash, as my stash decidedly lacks solids.

Finley helped me assess my feather coverage partway through the quilting.

However, when I told my mom about the challenge and how much I was NOT inspired by it, two things happened. First, she reminded me that the first quilts I fell in love with, the quilts that inspired me to start quilting, and indeed my first several quilts, were all made of solid fabrics. And second, she gave me a bag of twelve solid half-yards for my birthday. I subsequently added some neutrals, and the game was afoot. Besides, in retrospect, if my reaction to a challenge is “eww!” then that suggests that it really will be a challenge, not just an excuse to make a quilt I would’ve made anyway.

Early on in the process, I decided that the biggest advantage working with solids would give me is how well quilting shows up on solid fabric. Therefore, I wanted to keep the piecing simple. Since I love pinwheels, and have been planning for years to make a quilt that incorporates different sizes of pinwheels, I settled on the idea of making a quilt similar to this one of Kaffe Fassett‘s:

From _Country Garden Quilts_

I started the cutting at my mini-retreat in late July with Rhonda and Diane, and didn’t really work up a strict plan. I decided to just run all the solid fabric through my Accuquilt GO! cutter (after all, I really wasn’t looking to start a solid stash) and make the quilt however big it turned out. I had a lot of fun cranking out all those triangles. I then paired them off into blocks using my standard concept of quilt entropy, trying to get the colors as mixed up as possible. I don’t know whether I will ever be capable of leaving things up to chance sufficiently to make a “brown bag” quilt, but I did have fun free-associating about the various bright color combinations:  green and purple is the Hulk, orange and fuchsia is the beach, red and brown is a robin, yellow and purple is Easter. The colors all coordinate with one another because there are so many of them; as Alex Anderson says, if the colors in your quilt aren’t going together, add more colors and they will.

You know you’re really chain piecing when you can barely see the baby

I sewed all the large 12″ blocks together and had paired up the triangles for the 6″ blocks when I realized I’d goofed. In the original quilt, the smaller blocks are 1/3 the size of the larger blocks, not 1/2. Oops. Time for a new plan. I liked the idea of keeping the center of the quilt set on point, so I just sewed the large blocks together and planned on making the smaller blocks into a border. And that’s when I got seriously sidetracked with other projects (they’re in the next post.) That’s also when I fully internalized just how large a quilt (84″ x 84″!) I was ending up with, which hadn’t really been in the plan.

Just the center

The primary problem with having the challenge meeting in January is that I didn’t get back to the challenge quilt until after Christmas:  even though we actually had more time between the announcement of the challenge and the meeting, I would have had to have the quilt virtually finished before Thanksgiving to have truly been on-time with it, and my brain doesn’t work that way. I very nearly packed it in and turned it into another UFO, but Dan was my cheerleader and encouraged me to finish it. Fortunately, the rest of the quilt top went together smoothly and the children more or less cooperated to get me some sewing time.

Some days, this is what cooperation looks like

I wound up working in Danville, PA for a military dental event the weekend before the guild meeting, so I made certain I had the quilt basted and the quilting started before I left so I could get some dedicated quilting time in my motel room. I made the most of it and had the entire outer border and 1/4 of the center quilted by the time I got home. Once again, working under deadline really helped me make decisions as to what quilting designs went where. Feathers are favorites of mine to stitch without a great deal of marking and they always look fancy, so I put Patsy Thompson-style soft heart feathers in the outer border and Kimmy Brunner “twirly whirly” feathers in the center. I was able to get away with only marking the spines in all cases; the seam lines for the borders and the X through the center gave me all the other guidelines I needed. This was definitely not a project for subtlety, so I used neon green Brytes by Superior Threads for all of it. I managed to get the remainder of the center quilted and the outside edge zigzagged and trimmed in time for the meeting, so even though it wasn’t finished, it was finished-ish.

Before and after hyperquilting

The inner border was reserved for my fanciest quilting, since it would show the best there. I think it also helped me finish this quilt, as I was really looking forward to quilting that border; otherwise, I probably would have lost momentum once the meeting was past and I no longer had a deadline. I rewatched Patsy Thompson’s Free-Motion Fun with Feathers Vol. 4 DVD again for inspiration and quilted a hyperquilted, symmetrical border flowing from corner motifs that started as Quilter’s Rule Dragon Scales template and evolved from there.

Detail, corner quilting design

I used orange Brytes for the original feather and hyperquilted it with Superior Threads Metallic in variegated gold. I also shook up my standard machine binding protocol to add a little more embellishment by trading the stitching in the ditch for a decorative stitch in a variegated King Tut:

Detail, binding stitching

What would I do differently? Well, much as I love wool batting, it definitely increased the difficulty level on this quilt. I think as long as I’m quilting on my home machine, I need to reserve wool for the smaller projects. It doesn’t spray baste as nicely as the cotton blends, and I got more pleats and tucks on the back than usual. I didn’t have any problems with skipped stitches or shredded threads (even with the Metallic! That stuff worked like a charm and I will most certainly be using it more often from here on out) but I had more “nests” on the back than I normally do. I’m not sure why. I didn’t let it stop me (another benefit of being on a strict deadline) but I will be keeping my eye out for future problems along these lines and possible causes/solutions.

For a happy dance, I’m mining the classic movie musicals again. The bright colors in this quilt made me think of the old movies that would advertise being shot “in Glorious TECHNICOLOR!” including “On The Town.” Enjoy!

Did I Just Make A Modern Quilt?

I made this quilt for my youngest sister’s baby boy, who is expected any minute now:

Eleanore isn’t a quilter, but she has a very good eye for color and design; the fact that she’s decorated the nursery in mushroom gray with accents of orange testifies that the standard blue, green, and cream baby quilt wasn’t going to cut it for her. I found the big border stripe (aptly named “Big Stripe,” from Michael Miller) at Smile Spinners‘ booth at Quilt Odyssey and used it as the source for the overall color palette. The solid orange, the gray and aqua ant farm print, the border, and the back were the only new fabrics purchased for the project; the rest were all pulled from my stash, demonstrating that a) I have a fantastic stash, especially where orange, taupe-y gray, and cute little animal prints are concerned, and b) that I have wa-a-a-ay too much fabric.

It wasn’t till I finished the top that it occurred to me that this quilt, moreso than any other I’ve ever made, looks an awful lot like the quilts I’ve been seeing in books and magazines described as “modern” quilts. Which leads me to a bit of a sticking point for me over the past few years:  I’m not exactly sure what a “modern” quilt is.

[From this point forward in this post, I’ve decided to capitalize the word Modern when referring to this concept because part of my problem with the term up to this point is the ambiguity of it:  no matter what my quilts look like, I myself (and all my quilting contemporaries) are modern quilters, in that we are definitely 21st century women who choose to participate in a fiber art form that dates back several hundred years, but we do so not as historical reenactors, but as full participants in our culture as it exists now, using the tools and technologies that would have been science fiction to our foremothers. I realize this is a matter of semantics; after all, some “modern” art is now well over 100 years old, yet we still use the term. But I admit it rankles me to potentially exclude myself from the umbrella of modernity because I choose to make quilts, albeit on a computerized sewing machine with all the latest in gadgetry, that follow a more traditional structure. And using quotation marks makes me look snarky or sarcastic.]

In search of a definition, I went to the source. Here’s what the Modern Quilt Guild has to say on the subject:

“Modern quilts are primarily functional and inspired by modern design. Modern quilters work in different styles and define modern quilting in different ways, but several characteristics often appear which may help identify a modern quilt. These include, but are not limited to: the use of bold colors and prints, high contrast and graphic areas of solid color, improvisational piecing, minimalism, expansive negative space, and alternate grid work.”

From this definition, I get the impression that even self-described Modern quilters tend to differ a little bit in what they call Modern.  I definitely recognize that Modern quilters may somewhat be separating themselves out as a generational or attitudinal divide, especially as Modern Quilt Guild chapters spring up around the country. I’ve heard enough horror stories about quilters who are younger or new to an area that has a very rigid, insular quilt guild being frozen out or run off by Quilt Police types; if the solution to that is to start your own chapter of quilters who share a wish to breathe some fresh air into that environment. then more power to them.

But ultimately, I guess I’m too much of a quilting generalist to want to limit myself to one label, whether it be traditional, Modern, art, etc. I guess I’m a big tent quilter:  I believe quilting is big enough that there’s room for whatever you or I like to do, even if we wouldn’t want to trade projects with each other. I’m reminded of the saying, attributed to Louis Armstrong (among others), that “there are only two kinds of music, good and bad.” So while I’m not willing to place a label on what I like, I know when I like it.

And I like this quilt, that I made for my nephew. It has some Modern elements, with the solid orange. negative space, and large graphic prints, but it uses the Tumbler shape, which is very traditional. I used my Accuquilt Go cutter with the Mini Tumbler and Baby, Baby dies, which definitely sped up both the cutting and piecing process. Those precise shapes and engineered corners meant everything went together beautifully with very little pinning. So far, the cutter continues to live up to its “better cuts make better quilts” hype and I continue to be very pleased with the purchase.

I got a little fancy and fussy with the Big Stripe border. I knew I wanted those gorgeous mitered corners, but with a rectangular quilt, it took some doing to make the same spot in the repeat show up in the corners. I had to very precisely measure and invisibly piece the stripe so the corners reflected properly, but it was worth the effort and I get a little thrill of pride looking at it.

The quilting was fun:  I knew nothing would really show up in the pieced areas, so I just used Wendy Sheppard’s Jester Hat texture. Considering this was the first time I’d stitched it, it flowed very naturally and I only got “stuck” a few times. I used Superior Threads Rainbows #812 Western Sunset, which coincidentally contained most of the colors in my palette, for that and for the little serpentine/sine waves I quilted into the colored stripes of the border. I used orange Bottom Line to quilt the solid orange section behind the duckies in waves and circles; I wanted it to look like a bubble bath.

And I had the quilt finished for the baby shower! It almost made me look like one of those organized quilters who thinks ahead. However, I’m not quite done with the baby quilt for my sister-in-law’s baby girl who was born last month, so I don’t have to worry about that reputation sticking.

For a happy dance, here’s a ducky video I shot at the York Fair a few years ago. It seems apropos:

Finished! Denim Rag Quilt

The way we get around, we need rugged quilts!

This was a fun little project.

Denim rag quilt, 40″ x 40″

My mom and I had taken a class, probably ten years ago, on flannel rag quilts at Ladyfingers. I’m not even sure where that project bag is at this point. Suffice to say, I was not a fan. The instructor kept emphasizing how this was a quilt for people who didn’t care about accuracy, that “anything goes” with rag quilts, and if things didn’t line up, don’t worry because it wouldn’t matter. And while this approach may set some beginning quilters at ease, it was simply not what I wanted to hear at that stage of my quilting journey. I was just starting to feel like a decently competent piecer, achieving a fairly consistent 1/4″ seam and matching my intersections most of the time. The last thing I needed was a project in which precision was not only NOT a goal, it was a liability. (The ridiculous stretchiness of the flannel I was using meant that nothing stayed square, straight, or remotely the same size, even with a walking foot.) Throw in the fact that I was really not looking forward to clipping all those seams once the darn thing was finished, and this was a project born to become a UFO.

*Little bit of a tangent here:  although the instructor for the flannel rag quilt class was very nice and very competent as an instructor, it was clear she and I were not on the same quilting wavelength. While we were working on our squares, she talked about how she designs quilts for fabric companies, incorporating entire lines of fabric for them. All well and good and very interesting. However, she then went on to say that she plans everything out in advance for all her quilts, not just those, and that she has NO STASH. Let that sink in for a minute. In fact, she said she had recently purchased 3 yards of a fabric that she planned to use as a border, and when it became clear that it would not indeed work as the border for this particular quilt, she was very upset because “now what am I going to do with it?” I absolutely could not relate.

After that experience, I can confidently state that I had given absolutely no thought to ever making another rag quilt until I started researching the purchase of my GO! cutter. Accuquilt makes rag dies that precut the fringes on the edges of the squares so that all you have to do is sew the blocks together and then wash the quilt:  no hand-crippling, mind-numbing seam clipping to do! I still was in no hurry to work with flannel again, but I knew I had a stack of Dan’s worn-out jeans in the basement that were guilt-tripping me and making me feel like a hoarder, and the wheels started turning.

A stack of die cut squares, 8.5″ jeans and 6.5″ batting

I had started saving the jeans after seeing a show on DIY or HGTV in which they discussed sustainable building practices including the use of recycled denim to make housing insulation. On the show, they promoted a recycling program that was doing drives throughout the country to collect the jeans. However, by the time I had any to contribute, the website said that drives were temporarily suspended for the year, and would I like to get on an email list for when they restarted? I did, but that was an email that never came. Since then, the only comparable program I’ve been able to find is Cotton: From Blue to Green, which only accepts mail-in denim donations. And they’re in Phoenix. I can’t imagine how expensive it would be to ship a big cardboard box of jeans to Phoenix, and I can’t imagine the carbon footprint of that decision would end up being particularly sustainable. So the jeans sat in my basement.

I had seen a magazine photo several years ago of a large denim picnic quilt, but had dismissed the idea for my own projects because the denim would be so heavy and difficult to work with. The die cutting definitely solved part of the problem; I had initially envisioned making the quilt much larger, but I only had six pairs of jeans to work with. (I think there are more in the basement somewhere, but these were the ones I could put my hands on.) In the event, I was fortunate to have the size limited by the amount of materials, because the 6 x 6 block quilt was heavy enough that my arms felt fatigued after putting it through the machine to join the last rows together.

I love the idea of a denim quilt for outdoors. I don’t scruple to take my regular quilts outside; I made them for my kids and I would rather they use and enjoy them, even if it means the quilts occasionally get a little dirty or abraded. However, a denim quilt is durable, HEAVY (having trouble keeping the child in bed? Lay one of these puppies on top of him!) and only improves with washing and wear, so it’s a natural for more rough-and-tumble settings. We really enjoyed attending some of the free outdoor family movies shown in Farquhar Park this summer, and quilts always came with us.

This one got to make its useful debut as a roll-around quilt for Finley as we ate our picnic lunch at Knoebel’s:

As to the actual construction of the quilt, I “deboned” the jeans, cutting each pair with dressmaker’s shears into two leg fronts and two leg backs by just cutting along the seam lines. I then removed the fly and the back pockets. (I had wanted to keep the pockets on the squares and thus have some blocks with usable pockets on the quilt, but the pockets on these jeans were too large and too close to the back yoke seam for that to work on this project. A future quilt made with different jeans, perhaps some of Ronan’s, will have pockets.) I then fed the resulting long denim pieces through the die cutter, only cutting one layer at a time since the fabric is so heavy. While cutting the squares individually and having to pull denim threads out of the die after each cut made this process much more time consuming than the typical die-cut project, it was still orders of magnitude faster than cutting all those fringes by hand. I was able to get 14 8.5″ squares (6.5″ finished due to the 1″ seam allowance), or 7 blocks, from each pair of jeans. Although there were plenty of oddly-shaped scraps that couldn’t be utilized for this project, I was also able to save 4 pieces (including the 2 back pockets) from each pair big enough to cut a 5.25″ rag square from once I purchase that die.

I was able to die cut the 6.5″ batting squares as well; this is a perfect project for using up those long odd leftover pieces of batting. I also cut 6 squares of the orange batik, and then  die cut the Funky Flower out of the corresponding denim squares for a raggy reverse applique. I used a cute primary variegated YLI Jeans Stitch I’d had for years for the quilting, simple X’s in the plain blocks and echo quilting around the flowers. I used the walking foot for the quilting, but I found I had to switch back to my regular foot for joining the blocks because I skipped too many stitches otherwise. All those layers of denim are no joke:  I even broke two #100 denim needles on this project.

The amount of lint when I washed it was ridiculous. I had heard that you should always clean the dryer lint filter mid-cycle when washing a flannel rag quilt. However, even pulling this one out of the washer involved handfuls of wet lint and a moment of panic that the whole quilt might have somehow disintegrated in the wash cycle.

This is not even all of the denim lint.

Now to wrap this post up on an appropriately bizarre note, my sister Eleanore sent me the following text yesterday morning:

And some people think quilting is a boring hobby for mousy little homebodies. I like to think I’m keeping them guessing.