Ripples - A Water Inspired Quilt

Ripples

52” x 68”

Next in the landscape series of quilts. (First there was Mountain Meadow, then Names for Snow).

Completely inspired by the deep blue landscape of Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Whether it was the morning sun reflecting off the calm ocean, or the hidden blues of the spruce trees in the rain, or even the rolling fog covering the community like a quilt, they all found a home in this quilt.

Simple improv curves, the repetition of blocks and colour an homage to all that I saw that long weekend on the coast. A way to capture the energy of the community and the creativity of all the people I met. This is absolutely Improv With Intent.

Quilted with concentric circles to emphasize the Ripples. Kind of like the ripples on the surface when you toss a handful of rocks into the water. Or the ripples when the seals poke their heads up to see what you see. Or when the fish bubble up, trying to hide from the seals and the herons. Or, as I see more often than not in our life on the Prairies, kids jumping in a pool!

The quilting was done on my Bernina 820 with an Aurifil 50W in teal. It blended with the front and the fabric on the back.

Backed with a gorgeous loon print from Mark Anthony Jacobson, an Ojibwe artist. Bound in grey, one of my own prints, to remind me of the fog, the logs, and the weathered wood of the docks.

To see more of the inspiration, check out the original post.

Contentment versus Happiness in Life and Quiltmaking

Where do you find happiness in your quilting? Is it is the process or a specific part of the process? Or is it in the finished quilt?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between contentment and happiness. Here is what I shared with my newsletter readers last week:

So many of us are always on the look out for happy. We think happiness is the ultimate goal. We are wrong, I see now. Contentment is what we should seek. 

Think of it this way. When you have a baby the exhaustion level, physically and mentally, is high. So is the amount of stuff and drudgery in your day. But then the day comes that they genuinely see you for the first time, the day they roll over, the first night they sleep for 6 hours straight, pulling themselves up at the coffee table, crawling, walking, the first word. These milestones are all the happy we desire. They are excitement and pure joy. But they aren't really enough to get us through the day to day, the repetitiveness, the mess of parenting a baby. Unless, of course, we can embrace the naps on our chest again, cleaning the favourite toy of spit up again, the screeching, and even the diapers. Contentment is when we can look at all of that and still smile.

Happy is an exclamation point. Contentment is a smile. 

If our lives are filled with nothing but exclamation points it will be fun, sure, but also exhausting. Here's another way to think of it. Imagine your last good vacation, if you can. Was it all adventures - zip lining, horseback riding, spicy cooking classes, the tallest building in the city, surfing lessons? Probably not. But maybe you did one or two really exciting things and then otherwise enjoyed strolling the beach or city streets, reading a book, a delicious bakery where you lingered. If it was all the adventures - the exclamation points - it would be a lot of fun, maybe a bit stressful, and very, very tiring at the end of the day. But those quieter moments, the ones that make you smile and sigh are delightful.

Regular life needs to be a combo of both. However, instead of seeking happiness, we should be looking for what makes us content. More importantly, we should be looking around us and realizing that what we have is good and brings us contentment. You might be surprised at what you see.

Then I was speaking with a lovely lady in my neighbourhood this week, also a quilter. She spoke about how she will look at a finished quilt and wonder just how she got there. Like suddenly it is finished and the making of it has slipped away. Yet the making of it is where her peace is.

Contentment = enjoying the quilt making process.

Happiness = the finished quilt.

So I suppose that now that I’ve thought of it this way, I see my love for the process in an even better light. And it explains my defence of unfinished quilts. I would much rather have contentment, a smile, in my life on a daily basis than the energy of an exclamation point. Don’t get me wrong, happiness is awesome, finished quilts are awesome, but finished quilts only come around a few times a year. Why hang all my joy on sometimes success when I can have peace everyday in the making?

To that end. I did finish a few quilts recently so I was happy to pull out an old, favourite project. I’m jazzed for it and sneak in to the sewing room in spare moments to put together just one more string of Itty Bitty curves. The piecing makes me feel joyful, the work growing gives me all the smiles, and the daily making is 100% about contentment.

Solid Scraps Make a Quilt Party

Take one bin of solid scraps, sort them by size, sew them together. See what happens.

In prepping for those doodles I pulled out my solid scrap bin. I dug through it for the first few blocks, picking any oranges or darks for the project while the rest of the fabric looked on forlornly. After the first two doodles I realized that there were going to be a lot of stops and starts and I might as well be efficient. The solid scraps stepped up and volunteered for duty.

Sorted by size they sat patiently until their turn came up. Bit by bit, pair by pair, I sewed them together. The party grew with each seam. Pairs became four, sometimes three. Then four became eight, and so on. Not so much duty as celebration.

Eventually, the party required a little organization. I didn’t want anyone to feel left out while, at the same time, I had to make sure they all fit together. So what start out as nothing but sewing two pieces of fabric together at the end of a seam on an entirely different project required a bit of dedicated attention. I puzzled the groups together to make the most effective shaker. This is a party to end all parties!

Well, it was supposed to be a party to end all scraps, but that never actually happened. That’s because we all know that scraps multiply when you aren’t looking! Not so much party crashers, more like the condensation rings left on the wood furniture - they never quite go away. But nearly all the scraps made it in. And the bin is much, much lighter.

I wasn’t intending to start another quilt. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I have. My original thought was to float this piece in another fabric to serve as a quilt back.

Or I could make that idea into a quilt top?

Or I could turn what it is already into a stand alone quilt, a wall hanging?

Or I could wait until the solid scrap bin fills up a bit more and add to the party?

Or this could become pillows?

Or…

So many options. Right now, however, I have no clue and need a different leader and ender project while I sew my doodles. So this party is going into the stack of quilt tops to reflect upon its awesomeness.

More on this sewing machine next week…

Solid Triangle Play Quilt Top

In a way, it makes perfect sense to finish this quilt as summer ends. Although I started it a few years back, only as a class sample, it symbolizes the play of this past summer. And the stress relief that comes from play.

A bit of a loose plan - the rules of the game:

1. Each block to be made from only two fabrics.

2. Fabrics must be high contrast.

3. Piecing is improvisational.

4. Use the triangle and the many ways to make it, manipulate it, shape it to piece together the blocks.

That’s it. The rest of it evolved as it went, like kids making up new rules as they play the game. Square up to similar sizes once I’d made a few blocks. Oh look, I like it in rows so it goes in rows now. And then it was big enough and the game was over. Actually, the game was over and I just made it big enough.

(It finishes at about a lap size but I don’t know the actual measurements.)

As I shared the blocks over on Instagram I had some people mention different shapes they saw. How cool, like watching clouds! That completely changed my plan for quilting. For now, though, it gets added to the pile of quilt tops and moves places on the list of quilts under construction. Soon enough.

Now, as our brief moment of fall starts to pull back the curtain and as I ready myself and the family for our active schedule I will hang on to this spirit of play for it did me a load of good!