Agathe - October Morning Make Finished

Agathe

66” x 74”

Agathe is a German women. She grew up running the fields of her family farm, hands trailing in the grasses as she eyed the woods ahead. She wasn’t allowed in the woods, bad people could be there. The same bad people that loaded the trains they sometimes saw. The same people who knocked on their door at night demanding food. Agathe was still allowed in the fields though, even if her parents insisted she be in their sight at all times. Not until she’d moved to Canada did she really understand their fear. By then she also understood that they gave her freedom from fear by still letting her run the fields on sunny days. All her life she knew to take pleasures in the feel of flowing grass under her hand, of good pastry, of daily sunshine. Even if life isn’t good around you, to look for the simple pleasures.

October 2020 Morning Make is finished. I named her Agathe.

One improv block a day for the month of October. Composing as I went, playing the entire time. Some days the block related to the day before, some days the connections were harder. Each day was about finding a bit of joy, a respite from the daily slog of life in 2020. And at the end of the month I had a finished quilt top!

Fast forward a few months, one afternoon with my girls helping me baste and 8 spools of thread later and I have a finished quilt.

To quilt her I used my walking foot and creating a map of parallel lines. In spots I followed the lines of piecing, in others I went against the flow. There was a lot of starting and stopping, a lot of threads to bury. (This time I was smarter and buried them in spurts as I went while we watched Brooklyn 99.)

It is no secret that I love a contrasting binding, but this time it didn’t feel right. She got the same black binding used in piecing. It’s actually a tone on tone from my Tag Fabric collection. The other two fabrics are a cream solid that I think came from my Baba’s stash because it smelled like her when I pressed it, and a random white solid I found in the closet. The cream is actually more like a pale yellow, which I didn’t realize until the whole top was done. That’s what happens when you do all the sewing in the dark of morning.

Making this quilt really was an escape. From the piecing to the quilting to the binding. It was a respite from daily life, a moment to give myself where the rest of the world melts away. The grass isn’t green here yet, but the hares are giving us smiles. I even had one check things out as I was snapping pics. Life goes on. Life is beautiful. Finding the simple pleasures.

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.

Pocket Squares - Improv Applique with Tag Fabrics

Pocket Squares

40’’ x 50’’

So many of my quilts start with random ideas. Some times the ideas come to a full quilt, other times not so much. Happy to say that after a few years this quilt is now fully done.

It started with mini charm packs of my Tag Fabrics that I cut for giveaways. I had one left over. Enter the need for a hand work project. The mini charm pack made friends with a charm pack of Kona solids sitting on the cutting table. I snipped a corner off each minicharm and appliqued it to the charms. Each one has slight variations - improv in hand applique!

After finishing all those I decided that I would do another layer of applique, bringing Tag fabrics back in to it. Each fabric in this collection of mine is represented in the quilt twice - once small and once as the background.

NOTE: This is why I am no good at promoting fabric collections. I started this quilt 2 years ago when my first collection came out and I am only just finishing it.

It isn’t a fancy quilt. I’m not breaking any design barriers either. But it sure was fun to make! Another great example of the process being as important, if not more so, than the finished quilt.

Because it’s been a long time since I quilted anything myself I got back into the swing of things with some straight line quilting. Originally, I thought I might do a grid, but at first pass my lines are 1/2’’ apart. That would have been a tiny grid! With chronic pain plaguing me these last 9 months I didn’t want to push it too much. I was just happy to have got through basting the thing. The Aurifil thread in this purple ended up perfect.

If you’ve ever seen me talk or paid attention to my quilts you know how I love to throw contrast into the whole thing. In this case, I introduced a completely different colour with this teal and white binding. Which brings me to my first finish of 2019 and my first finish since May of last year.

Oh, and full naming credit goes to my friend Sharon at Color Girl Quilts. Every time I posted a picture of this quilt on Instagram she said it made her think of pocket squares.

Quilts Under Construction September 2018

It was time.

I counted up all my Quilts Under Construction again. I haven’t actually done it since my QuiltCon lecture a year and a half ago. A lot has come and gone, mostly come since then.

So many metaphors come to mind but I find them all negative. And I don’t see this as negative at all. Every single quilt or project on this list represents creative action. It’s all about process. If all I cared about was a finished quilt I would go to the mall and buy one. Nope, I would rather make, getting lost in the process and the mess of creativity. It’s all awesome. All positive.

I divide my list into 3 categories: Being Quilted, Quilt Tops, and Blocks. Those categories work for me. Once I have something quilted I am usually quick to bind, so it would only go on a list to get crossed off within days. (Okay, there is a certain satisfaction in that.)

Being Quilted

1. Low Volume Circles

Quilt Tops

1. Orange and Servil

2. Ripples

3. C’est La Vie (Improv Curve Sampler)

4. Names for Snow

5. Single Fabric - Tula Pink Stripes (Mighty Lucky Quilting Club)

6. Tag Fabric Improv Applique

7. Park Quilt

8. Amanda Jean Made Me Do It

9. Morning Make II

10. Y2K Quilt

11. Arkison in Australia

12. Mindbender

13. Mod Christmas Tree 2

14. Solid Sunday Morning

15. Red Oh Canada

16. Circle Lattice

17. Improv Sampler

18. Giant Slab Hexagons (It is a completed top, I promise.)

19. Checkerboard

20. Heather Ross Circles

Blocks

1. Tie One On version of Lilla Quilt

2. Gremlins (Little Log Cabins)

3. Firefly

4. Mighty Lucky Year of Colour

5. Itty Bitty Curves

6. Solid Triangle Improv

7. Euroa Quilt

8. Splendid Sampler

9. Hand Pieced Diamonds

10. Small Wonders Flying Geese

11. Bronco’s Blocks

12. Places I’ve Taught

13. Desks

14. Evil Genius Triangles

15. Kid’s Cloths/Gee’s Bend

16. Neutral Values

17. Studio Slash/Edges

18. Mid Mod

19. X Plus Blocks

20. Pink Pinwheels

21. Screenprint Log Cabins

22. Pink and Black Broken Logs

23. Respite

24. Meadow Quilt

25. Water

26. Liberty Circles

27. Sherbet Stars

28. Beach Grass II

29. Morning Make III

30. Mila’s Name

31. Bookof Negroes quilt

32. God’s Eyes

33. Pastel and Grey Slab

54!

Whew! Biggest number yet. And I still love absolutely every project on this list. It just depends on the day for what I feel like doing. If I could function without sleep, tea, feeding my family, carrying on our family business, or generally anything else I could get a few of these further along. I’m good, though, making in the moments I can and doing all the other stuff too. You only ever make a quilt one stitch at a time.