Throwback - A Digression

I'm not a quilt history expert, I'm just pretending to be one right now. After a week of browsing the quilts and exhibits of Quilt Canada I am very tempted to stand up and declare that there is no such thing as modern quilting.

Hold on, so far I only said I was tempted to say it.

Let's take a few steps back. You've heard me say before that I don't like to believe that I have a style in the quilts I do. To me a style meant that you could look at one of my quilts and instinctively know it was mine, or a rip off. I'd like to think I am adventurous enough to try lots of different things and that I can't be pinned down. (Pardon the pun.)

My first observation in having a quilt hung in the Invitational Show at Quilt Canada and seeing it up there next to some 500 or 600 other quilts is that I do kind of have a style. Or at least what I did was markedly different from 99% of what was there. It isn't that this makes me unique, just unique among participants at the show. It forced me to step back and examine the bulk of my quilts and realize that while you can't pin me down on colours, layout, or techniques, you can accuse me of bold, simple designs. Repetition of shapes or construction methods (improv) is quite common in most of what I do. So, maybe after all, I do have a bit of a style.

It pains me to admit that and my rebellious nature means I am aching to do something precise and varied in design. That will have to wait until I finish this thing.

The next observation I made is that I am not likely to ever, or at least in the near to mid-term future, likely to show well in a big, conventional show. I'm not saying I won't enter, I just doubt I would show well. There was one Gees Bend inspired quilt in the National Juried show, but that's it. The rest of it demonstrated some phenomenal quality, but only about 1% of it was something I would love to try. Just like machine quilting was a big deal when it started entering in shows in the 80s, it might be a while before a quilter like me could show well.

And I am really only referring to design here because - not to toot my own horn - I think my technique is pretty close in comparison. Except for maybe hand applique and some details, but I'm okay with that. Most people are intimidated by a big show, but I found it confidence inspiring that, barring quilting the life out of my pieces, my skills are pretty good.

So I crutched around the show - admiring quality work, intrigued by the crazy use of layering techniques, blown away by teeny tiny stippling - but I didn't get overly excited by much. There was an incredible 3D piece that resembled a diorama that was absolutely incredible, but that was it. Here I was, in the face of the current show quilt world of Canada these days and I was kind of bored. It was as if I'd met my good-on-paper- guy and realized that we had nothing in common. Pretty to look at it, but nothing to talk about. And certainly no chemistry.

Lest you think I am being disparaging of the artists, let me say that I have nothing but great things to say about the artists, teachers, and quilters I met. They were the inspiring ones, as people.

My last stop on the quilt show tour was an exhibit that was displaying antique sewing machines, furniture, and quilts. And it felt like I was kind of entering a comfortable place, even in a convention center. It should be noted that I am a mid-century modern girl, so it wasn't the antiques. Rather, it was the quilts. Simple, bold, clear colours (despite their age), repetitive designs, and almost exactly what you see being made with newer fabric all around the blogosphere of modern quilters.

Seriously, this display could have almost been a display of quilts from many a popular blogger today. And here we are on the internet flogging modern quilting like it is something we just made up. Yes, the importance of history and tradition is acknowledged, but people often come to modern quilting as either an evolution or rebellion from traditonal quilting. Well, I would now argue that modern quilting is actually just really, really traditional quilting. Before people got caught up in intricate pieced patterns with a million different templates and detailed quilting.

Oh, and just because you throw the word wonky or improv in front of it doesn't necessarily make it modern.

Did you know machine quilting is not an invention of the last 20-30 years? People were doing it over 100 years ago. You just don't see many examples of it because most of it was grid quilting and those quilts served as functional quilts, likely loved and used to death. Thank-you Sue Nickels for this tidbit and example. Okay, none of us think straight lines are new, but it may be argued that the prevalent use of straightline quilting is on the rise among self-described modern quilters (and almost non-existent at the show).

What else is on the rise? Easy, fast quilts. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but I got a great kick out of Mark Lipinski commenting that if the world came to an end but the quilts made it, the next inhabitants of the planet would think our arts were limited to Turning Twenty patterns! He pushed for quilters to return to a little complexity, to take the time on our pieces, to savour the process.

I would add that blogging might make the churn worse. We all want content, right? I don't know many who quilt for the sake of blogging, but ask yourself if you pick simpler projects just to have something to post? At least every now and then? Or, ask yourself how some of your favourite bloggers manage to finish so many quilts? Lifestyle aside, look at the quilts and the detail of the quilting they post.

So, this whole modern quilting thing. I can say for sure that I have a new perspective on it. And I don't think it is as revolutionary as some think it is. It really is a throwback to the traditional, traditional quilting, as this post also mentions. Just with prettier fabrics. (Although, really, so many of the popular designer fabrics are very vintagy, but with modern colours.)

I'm not coming down on the movement. It really is a movement, fueled by the internet. That's why the Modern Quilt Guild is so fascinating to me. From the internet grew a community that is now spreading like wildfire into the traditional guild model. This is awesome because no matter how much we share online (too much, at times) real connections with real people matter. Without it would be like doing nothing but designing quilts on the computer and never playing with fabric.

Beyond that, I think one of the best things about the movement is that it, and the proliferation of such bold fabrics, is bringing younger quilters to the sewing machines. And trust me, after a week with a whole bunch of 50-60 something women who complain their daughters and granddaughters don't want to quilt, this is a very good thing. And who knows, in time, we may be the ones winning ribbons? One day there may indeed be a Throwback category.

Artists, in order of appearance:

1. Forgot to record this one, apologies.

2. Donna Clement

3. Me, in front of Grass

4. Mary Sullivan Holdgrafer

5. Cheryl A. Bock

6. Annette Johnston

7. Forgot to record this one, but it is a Heritage Park Quilter of Distinction

8. Sharon Stoneman

9. Various Antique quilts

10. More various Antique quilts

11. Forgot to record this antique one as well.

12. Flossie Douglas

A One Track Mind

It might be because I spent a week seeing the award winning quilts from the National Juried Show, but I was in a mood to quilt. And someone how I got it in my head to really quilt this quilt.

Seriously, this sucker is going to be heavily quilted! I won't be going to the extreme of stipple less than 1/8 of an inch big, but I am motivated to do some serious needlework now. I'm not complaining though, I think it will be just perfect.

Remind me, however, not to put my tea next to my pin box next time.

That's A Lot of Thread!

Wow, I finally finished the grass quilt.  And I can tell you that I lost count of how many bobbins I used but I went through five spools of 100 metres and two half spools on 500 metres of thread! That's a lot of thread!

Speaking of the thread, I used my new favourite kind of thread for quilting: Presencia Mercerized Egyptian Cotton.  I've made a few quilts with this thread now and I'm hooked.  It doesn't break, the lint isn't too bad, and the colours are wonderfully saturated. For the grass quilt I used three different greens and alternated colours for each row of grass that I quilted.

The binding still needs to go on, maybe tonight.  It will be another multi-pieced one.  First I need to sneak into the closet in the girls room and grab my bin of green fabrics.  Smilosaurus was having a rough day and went to bed early, early tonight.  Hmm, maybe I'll skip the binding and head to bed myself because I feel an early morning coming on.

PS  Stay tuned for one of my announcements later this week...

Can You Quilt the Grass?

Generally, no two quilts of mine are quilted the same.  Honestly, I don't think I've ever even stippled the same sort of way twice.  Many times I am inspired by a certain fabric in a quilt - flowers on a quilt with flowered fabric, for example.  Sometimes I am inspired by the graphic nature of a quilt and choose to reflect or accentuate it with the quilting design.  And sometimes, the original inspiration brings out the quilting design.  Such was the case with my Grass quilt.

I wanted the quilting to look like blades of grass.  There is all that white that was begging show off some cool quilting.  Really, the quilt top was even designed with this quilting idea in mind.

In order to pull off a new idea effectively you can't just throw some thread in the machine and see what happens.  As anxious as I usually am to start quilting the second I've closed my last pin I do like to do a bit more prep work before the needle hits my quilt sandwich.

The first thing I do is sketch.  More than once a quilt pattern comes from some random doodle done in a fit of boredom.  Last week I was on a conference call and my mind was wandering to exactly how I was going to quilt blades of grass without actually sewing a bunch of vertical lines down the quilt top.  I have no idea what was said about feed-in-tariffs that day, but from my first doodle on a sticky to this full sheet sketch I knew I had a good pattern. 

It was important to me to capture the randomness of growing grass and the movement you see when you get down on the ground and actually look at the grass.  I also didn't want it to look like a whole bunch of scratches stretching horizontally across the quilt.  I think the full sketch captured what I had envisioned in my head.  On to testing.

An old quilting friend of mine once gave us some really good machine quilting tips at a retreat. One of the tips she passed on was to create a binder of machine quilting samples.  Take note of thread, tension, and tips to make a pattern work.  That way there will be no second guessing when you want to do that pattern a second, third, or fourth time.  It also works well for testing a pattern and working out any kinks before you tackle a big quilt.

This was the sample I made to test my sketch.  In this case making a sample was a very good idea.  On my machine, when I do more curves I have to have my tension set quite light. That did not work on this pattern.  Problem corrected I also realized that this pattern was going to require some good speed control.  In just a few minutes I worked out my frustrations and was able to develop some rhythm for quilting.

On to the quilt.
Holy crap, I'm in love with this.  I still worry it is a bit to flame-like, but it really is exactly what I wanted. The amount of thread this is using is phenomenal - one bobbin doesn't even do two horizontal passes of the quilt.  Really, I could care less about the thread costs (I am so not doing that math at all).

Now, just to finish.  I'm only about a third done. Sometime in August...