Faye

Faye

72” x 72”

Years in the making. Like her namesake. A fearless woman, tenacious, and patient. She knew her time would come. Moved to New York with a dream. Moved through New York with relentless energy. Meeting people, making herself just that much more, ignoring the naysayers. She persevered and found her beauty and her success.

Faye, the quilt, began life in the follow-up to making the Alturas quilt. Carolyn Friedlander’s book, Savor Each Stitch came out and I fell in love with the graphic pattern. She’d already got me hooked on needle turn appliqué so this seemed like a logical step. I started the first block back in the fall of 2014. This finish is indeed a long time coming.

One block led to two and then I might as well do four, right? The initial pattern in the book calls for one block and a great use of negative space. I never follow a pattern anyway. So over the course of a few years I worked on the blocks. Looking back, it took me about 6 hours to baste each block, then who knows how many to stitch. Appliqué is not for a quick finish. Then again, nothing is a quick finish for me.

The finish for Faye come very recently though. Our family wanted to gift a quilt to celebrate a wedding. The gift was long overdue and we decided that this quilt top matched the couple’s personality. I will admit, I had a moment of selfishness for her. Then I realized that my love for her came in the making more than anything. It was time to set her free and share that love.

I always have a hard time with quilting an appliqué project. It’s a battle between accentuating the appliqué and ease. At least, it feels like a battle. In the end I went for a straight line quilting pattern. For one, Carolyn has done this a lot in the past and it works. It provides texture and security without taking away from the graphic design. Secondly, I am hoping this will be a loved couch quilt so I wanted dense quilting to help keep her strong.

The whole quilt is divided into quarters with an X through the middle. Then I echoed that line between each triangle. I chose a pale yellow/cream Aurifil thread in 50W (2311). It isn’t harsh on the backing but disappears for the most part on the front. It might seem odd to use a creamy colour when there is so much bright white, but the reduction in contrast on the coloured fabrics makes it worthwhile and you don’t even notice it on the white.

You know me and my love for a contrast binding. This bright yellow might seem like a funny choice, but almost all of the blocks have a bit of yellow in them. Black, my other thought, seemed too harsh. I had just purchased this yellow Spectrastic by Giucy Giuce from Keystone too. It was meant to be! Such a fun pop to finish this off.

The whole quilt really is a collection of some favourite and treasured fabrics. I started the whole thing with Samarra Khaja’s amazing New York illustrated fabric. Combined with a much loved Charlie Harper print that first block set the tone for the rest of the combinations. I stuck with the New York fabric when I realized I had enough of it, then paired it with some hoarded Heather Ross unicorns, the Stendig calendar print, and a gorgeous purple from Carrie Bloomston. On the back I shared another Charley Harper treasure.

Hopefully I will get to visit Faye in her new home.

September Morning Make 2021

September is always the new year in my books. And this year it felt particularly monumental. Kids in high school, junior high, and elementary; a return to in person sports and activities; and trying to get back in a routine when, mentally, I’m still needing lazy afternoons with a good book. I knew that choosing a slow, meditative Morning Make would help me with the transition.

This month I chose to doodle mandalas. Well, these are officially mandalas. Let’s call them mandala inspired. I committed to the circle shape but obviously played around.

These, perhaps, could have been a bit more challenging. I will admit to getting a bit bored by the end of the month. It might be better for me to pick a theme rather than a specific technique to get through the month. Although, it is good to push through that boredom, to force creative action, in a way. The struggles are as important as the successes. Just because something is easy doesn’t mean it is without struggle. That struggle could be about the pursuit of greatness/perfection, it might be about forcing yourself out of a comfort zone, and it could be about accepting that not everything has to be hard. Either way, it is a win to sit and make on a daily basis.

Rediscovery Brings Joy: An Old Quilt Block Becomes a New Quilt

Periodically I will clean out the stash, the started projects, even the scraps. Like Marie Kondo, sometimes you have to let go of the things that are no longer bringing you joy. But then you have to actually move them out of the house, not just the laundry room. The laundry room where they sit, untouched, only to fall off the shelf when the Covid chaos spills into the space. Then, when you bend down to clean up the mess you realize that this block looks quite cool and very cheery and it might be exactly what you need to work on RIGHT NOW. So you pick through the scraps bins and hunt through the stash, you play around with sketches and do some math, you hunt down the right kind of freezer paper, and then boom! A new full size quilt starts taking shape.

Generally when I make a quilt I get an idea and start sewing. I make a pile of blocks or components, play around with options, then decide what else I might need to make or start layout at the design wall. This project is a bit different. To match the seeming randomness and play with contrast of the original block I felt the need to lay it out, to design it in advance. It doesn’t mean it won’t change, but I felt I needed the guide. The circles aren’t on each half square triangle so sketching it out to get the right balance in layout gave me the math for cutting and piecing.

This cutting everything at once is a very different way to work than my norm. I can see why people do it though, because then you get to just sew, sew, sew! In my improv work I often tell students to front load as much of the decision making as possible so they can embrace the process of sewing, this is the same idea.

So here I am: everything got cut, all my half square triangles are sewn, and I am about half way though the circle prep and appliqué. My sewing opportunities come in fits and starts over the week, usually in the evenings when everyone has retreated to their corners of the house. I have a few projects I am actively working on at the moment, this is one of them. The colour combination is full of energy and that springtime glow. The sewing is not hard but it has great impact. This project is giving me such joy.

A student recently described her own Quilts Under Construction as Somedays and I just loved that sentiment. I’m glad that this particular Someday returned to me, just when I needed her.

Itty Bitty Improv Curves - A Quilt Top

No one prepares you for the emotions of making a quilt. The thrill of picking fabric. The boredom of cutting fabric. The thrill of sewing. The boredom of pressing. The thrill of finishing a top. It’s a roller coaster journey for sure. And this is not counting the therapy contained within the emotional journey. Quilting can often have me working through some stuff, processing and feeling the feels while making a quilt, to have the release at the end.

Sometimes, though, the opposite happens. The quilt making gives you all the thrills and makes you smile with each stitch, no matter the work. Then you finish and there is a let down. There was so much joy in making that when you finish you are sad. I want to keep going! Don’t make me stop.

Alas, I’ve run out of fabric.

I started this quilt with some scraps, a stack I grabbed for the initial class with the amazing Chawne Kimber at QuiltCon. Once I embraced the itty bitty curves I made in her class I eventually augmented the selection - more from the recesses of my stash and a trip to a local shop. I tried to match the colours of the vintage pieces (I think some of these purples came from my Baba’s house) and samples as best I could. With no real plan in mind other than to make blocks I made blocks until I more or less ran out of fabric.

Okay, there is a bit of fabric left, but not enough to make a random assortment of blocks. If I continued on I would have a big pink section somewhere. Yes, I could buy more, but I can’t replicate all the fabrics so, again, it would look less random. It pains me a little to not have this be a giant quilt, but so be it.

So with not enough fabric left to make it bigger I’ve stopped the sewing. It measures into a generous lap size (73’’ x 66’’). Considering the smallest blocks are finishing at 3/4’’ that amounts to a lot of piecing. Not once did that piecing feel like work or drudgery. It was addictive. Better than eating M&Ms, although the let down kind of feels like a sugar crash.

The whole quilt isn’t square and I’m not sure exactly how I will deal with that, but for now, let me wallow in it being done. And count the number of blocks. 1,2,3,4,…1000, 10001, 1002…

Chawne warned us about going small, that the high from it was glorious. That only means the low of finishing is that much so. That’s okay, I’m not done with itty bitty curves yet, even if this quilt top is finished.