Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

The above quilt was the best of all the double four-patch quilts I have ever made, which is probably more than 20 since 1965, when my mom gave me her old Domestic sewing machine when she got a new Singer "slant-o-matic?" or something. I was already hogging her machine sewing a wardrobe for my college attendance anyway, and she needed something to sew the younger siblings' clothes with. A family of 5 that lived on a shoestring back then required a sewing machine in the household. Today's households often do not have sewing machines because factories in China produce clothing with Americana names on them cheaper than we can buy the fabric over here in the USA. So people ask themselves, "Why buy a sewing machine for $4,000 when I can spend $400 a year per child (or less) for the school year?

It's such a different world than the 50s world of my elementary school years. They came out with two-piece bathing suits most people in the south would not let their daughters wear except in circles where wealth was in the part of town whose greatest traffic was maids, cooks, lawn maintenance hands, and butlers going to work.

To make a long soliloquy short, I delivered the quilt and one I found that was missing from my stack yesterday when I took 9 quilts. So my March goals were met--11 quilts to the Quilter's closet. I also took 10 more crocheted dishrags sewn at sundry times since my crochet pics were added 3 or 4 pages ago here before I got going on my quilt goals for March. And 2 more homemade pillowcases got taken, too. I really need to hit that stack of pillows. Yesterday, one of the gals said she had enough stuffing to stuff 10 of my quilted pillows if I just brought them. Sounded GREAT to me.

Stuffing pillows is a lot of work. It's as hard as quilting, except you can hold one in your lap while you stuff. Quilting takes large muscle work all over the place, and you have to be in top physical shape practically, to machine quilt a quilt.

 

[freedombecki]

Today's sewing goal of completing a stack of 30 on-point Texas windmills was met. Now I just have to join them with some kind of sashing and a set. I'm thinking Bubble gum pink with a blue and red/pink rose print that came from a shirt factory. I have a stack of at least 60 rectangularish pieces that coulc be cut down to 3" squares for 3" sashes, more or less. It's hard to say until I get my cutting ruler and equipment out and put my money where my mouth is.

I made a list of quilt starts I never quite got around to doing. Some of them could be quilts in a couple of hours if I'd just get my darn act together and focus on it.

When you make 199 same squares, and you only used 120 to make a quilt, a lot of times, you're just sick of the entire color schema, set leftovers aside in a polybag and move on to another project to teach a class people are asking about. That was the story of my life for 23 years. So I really should go through my 200 boxes of stuff, pull out the starts, and do some quick time quilts. Some day, I'll challenge myself to a contest to see if I can finish 30 quilts in 30 days. First, I'd have to get all my boxes in the same room. I tried, but it ended up with a narrow path between two doors, and when we put shelves up, there were 2 paths, but you could access all the boxes, well, almost all the boxes. I'm laughing to keep from crying.

 

[freedombecki]

This morning, when I got up, I placed the new squares against the older squares and noticed they were smaller. Sure enough, I had cut 4.5" squares when I should have cut 5" squares. I have to rip and redo 36 seams and cut and prep 9 fabrics to make 4 triangles each from 2 5" squares per fabric.

So, I picked up the remainder of the 4 patch squares and decided that'd help me make my goal of doing 3 quilt tops this week. Sure enough, after 8 hours of trucking, I had that 40x50" square that needs now 2 borders, saving that for tomorrow.

Something happened on this 4-patch not seen on the other--a perfect set of small white and light red and light blue diamonds forming around each of the squares placed on the quilt. I felt like I had flown when I saw it after the last square was added. I'm not sure my scanner picked up the whole effect, but on a small scale...

Good night and say a prayer for our troops, all. They still need our help and good thoughts.

Love,

freedombecki

 

[freedombecki]

When I was looking through a box underneath the ironing board by the bird feeder window out front, I ran across a small green quilt started who knows when? Anyway, it needed a border, so I added 3" of piano keys in different greens to the top and 4" of green textures in the same manner to the lower edge. It's a small piece of high contrasts, but with a few streaks of lime to add interest. I thought, well, the outer border would have to be such a special green, it would have to be a one-of-a-kind, off-the-wall knockout to improve my mundane little horror of contrasts (although neat in arrangement, too). So, I went to the quilt store, and I couldn't believe my eyes--there it was, in the front window. Then I thought, nah, it's never the first thing you see that is best. I traipsed all over the store--nothing, nada. The perfect fabric was in the window, and when I arrived home, there was no time to do anything. So now, I think I'll just go back down to the sewing machine and see if I can do anything with this magnificent fabric. The scale is terribly large, and the logs are only one inch wide. Also, the spaces between the jaded florals are gross, so I won't know if I did ok or not until the right pieces are in the right places. Back in a bit.

 

[freedombecki]

This morning, first thing, I attached the borders, after spending a couple of hours picking up around my sewing machine and sewing odd bits together. One of them was a partial 3-inch square of a little girl sitting on a bench enjoying childhood. When I added little squares all around, I had to laugh. The little sitting girl's head was too close to the edge of the material, so all that's showing of her head is her jaw. I just said to myself, well, life ain't always fair. So I think I'm going to go through my character fabrics that have whole birds, people, or creatures cut out for other projects--there's always a top or a bottom on the cut edge of the fabric, and I will make them into 3" squares that look like well, not good. and then make the "life isn't fair" quilt as a tag along project. Who said quilts can't be humorous? Life certainly is!

So, here's what the quilt parts look like from the scanner:

 

[freedombecki]

Border makes this sad little green quilt effort sing. The remainder of the scans from the quilt top ready to go to the charity bee closet:

 

[freedombecki]

So it's Wednesday here, and I'm 1/3 of my goal toward finishing 3 little tops this week.

Here's someone elses' green quilt top that is fashioned log cabin style:

credits
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[freedombecki]

Another green log cabin:

Credits
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[freedombecki]

I looked everywhere for a green star log cabin quilt. I just couldn't find one today. I did, however, find my quilt brag book that has about 300 pictures of my earlier quilts prior to 2009, and I didn't find a green one, but did find a blue Squad Car Quilt I had donated to the city police department as part of my annual show called Jewels of the Platte. It seems like forever ago, but I think I did 6 or 7 shows sometime between 1996-2003. After I got fibromyalgia, the simple task of hanging a quilt show became a nightmare of pain, cramps and rawboned annoyance, so probably to everyone's relief, I never did another one after that. The year this one was done, I offered one as a silent auction bid to help pay for costs. The people could bid on any one, but the highest bid took their own choice. It was won by Mayor Kathleen, and she took one that had sunflowers on every piece in the blue and yellow quilt. She was born in Kansas before coming to Wyoming, and she still loved sunflowers, the Kansas State Flower. The money went to good charitable causes.

But for example's sake, I just picked one of the star quilts most like the green one I could just show bits and pieces of with the great difference, I don't think I was putting piano key borders on my charity quilts back then. The quilts were saved for putting one in each squad car, so the police could give a poor child a quilt if they stumbled onto freezing newcomers their first winter, or if not, could be used to wrap a person suffering from shock at the scene of a terrible car wreck. They are not allowed to tell donors anything about how the quilts wound up, but it makes me happy just knowing what great people cops are, at least that our cops were in Casper, Wyoming for all those years. Between them and the Firemen collecting money at stoplights for Jerry's kids every year, I don't think I've ever met a better group of men and women in my life than our community's long line of blue.

Anyhow, here's what log star quilts I make look like, I'm just sorry I don't have a green one to share and that I'm too much of a dullard to run a decent camera to take pics since my dear one got dementia, he doesn't either, bless his sweet head:

 

[freedombecki]

Where are my manners? I should have just gotten the picture of Mayor Dixon's win, but didn't think to do it until after the fact. Anyhow, from that same Jewels of the Platte Show, the one that had all log cabin quilts made for squad cars of the police department, except for the one that placed the highest bid for a quilt to go to a charitable cause.

Seems either the pictures turned out a little dark or darkened with age. But it's all I have left of the show, because I took nothing home with me that year, since the rest of the 24 quilts that weren't friend contributions, went to the police for their squad cars.

Mayor Kathleen's high-bid quilt:

 

[freedombecki]

Oh, that little quilt center I finished April 2nd? See here

Now has a border, and it's finished measuring about 54x69. Yea, I'm free. I'm calling it the Minnie Mouse quilt, because Minnie always used to wear red and white polka dot dresses in Walt Disney's cartoons from many years before Disneyland or Disney World opened their doors.

The Minnie Mouse quilt border

 

[freedombecki]

That's an officially finished 2 out of 3 for this week's goal, and it's only Wednesday. Well, doh, it usually takes me a couple of days to take quilt parts started earlier to get them out. All truth be known, when I was working on the Squad Car Jewels of the Platte Quilt show for City hall, I made 24 bed quilts for squad cars in 6 months of 80-hour-a-weeks at my business. I used a dilapidated, makeshift mezzanine floor in the back upstairs of the shop to quilt while helpers dealt with customers. I was working before employees showed up and after they closed the doors and went home. Now, I can still do tops, I just can't quilt them on any consistent basis. The good thing about our charity bees, is that we have many kindly ladies who have quilt machines and the goodness to use them toward charitable ends. They're such a gift from God. And I love 'em.

 

[Dabs]

Log Cabin in the Round by June Ryker. This dear lady came to a shop in Wyoming years ago to teach classes, of which I took two--flying geese and a round log cabin. June went on to write several books and patterns, but she used bias strips, not straight-grained ones, to make the curves come out right. She is/was a master at her art. I've never seen another person take a stab at her technique, but her quilts are truly remarkable in that there was nothing like them before nor after her gift of the round (really rondelay) Log Cabin.

The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, June Ryker, Logs in Flight
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This is very pretty.......but I am partial to blues/teal......nice *smiles*

 

[freedombecki]

This morning, I was digging in my stuff underneath the dining room table and fell into 32 frame-and-patch rectangles that would make 16 squares for a small quilt. Then, as I was assembling them together, it struck me that 4 on each side and 4 at top and bottom (16 in all) was exactly the numbers of squares I had and would make a good child's frame, although the squares are generally darker than I care for most children's quilt. Opposite the dining room table is an encased french library shelf I found at a going-out-of-business used furniture company in a nearby town. It is some kind of yellow hardwood that grows in Europe, I was guessing, and likely was a very old antique, sturdy, well-made, perfection, and ten times what I could afford at its original tag. Somehow we got it on the back of our new truck and got it home. My nephews came the next day and lifted it into the dining room. Whew, what a job! Anyway, there on one of the shelves (the china never made it to the shelves because my fabrics got there first) was a little pony I had designed for a child's quilt years before in my shop, and I'd made and given 5 or 6 of them to various charities that needed childrens' quilts. Anyhow, I still had one sewn at least 5 years ago, and may have been leftover from another project, though I saved a yard or so of the calico the pony's body was made of. I decided I could do something with it, it's very childlike, even though it incorporates the color black, that I seldom use when doing children works. The dull frame, the little pony, and a few things between will make a quilt that measures about 38x57" prior to putting a border on, which is just perfect size for our shelter children. anyhow, I sewed a couple of hours but only have this to show thus far, and you can see there are some edge issues. That's why I decided to do a frame--it's easier to conceal errors by way of the addition of another border to double-stitch underneath (see middle construction photo)

 

[freedombecki]

And the rest so far. There is a busy afternoon ahead, imho. I't almost noon on Thursday here, and my goal was 3 quilts by the end of the week. Oh, I love this little silly quilt, but measuring odd things to go here there and everywhere inside the frame will take a ruler, a measuring tape, and a lot of parsing and piecing. I'm excited about the project. Didn't expect in a million years that I'd be getting 2 UFOs out of the way instead of one. Hallelujah! (A UFO in quilter talk = UnFinished Object.

 

[freedombecki]

Dabs, I just ran across a picture of one of my 24 squad car quilts used in one of my Jewels of the Platte quilt shows at City Hall, which was donated to the purpose of going in one of our polices' squad cars, and got it put in my pictures just now. This teals-and-turquoises one has touches of hot pink and dominant aqua light blues in the light areas. I've made two others in teals--one is on my fibromyalgia (soft) bed I use when I can't stand the pain, and I sold another to an online friend once. He insisted, and I was still quilting back then, and he was generous. At least, I can sleep at night on a soft conforming bed with a comforting mattress. Here's the picture of the donated one. I think I made another zig-zag log cabin quilt, but think it got donated to our wounded soldier project, and I think it may have been in reds and pastels, or was it blue..? Doh, no picture, no memory. I'm so screwed. lol

 

[freedombecki]

Finally! After promising a dozen times to get them going to my sisters at the charity bees, I worked some pillows up, and they're ready to stuff. I quilt the shells so the bits of fabric and soft leftovers our mothers (and I) used and use to make pillows is not disclosed as lumps poking through the smooth surface of the quilt. In the next 4 posts, there are parts of 6 pillows. It would be so much easier if I had a lick of photographic talent and a decent camera to show the whole project in a setting. They're six works I'm proud to give to people who gave good lives to this nation for all of us, but are now encumbered in a care facility that deals with the ravages of aging or war wounds so severe, we can't wrap our minds around them.

Today's pillow stuffing is poly fibre, which if ignited in a housefire, creates toxic fumes that cause people to die of smoke inhalation. I've come to the conclusion that our cotton scraps leftover from quilting make better stuffing materials as a consequence, at least they're not so fatal as poly resin ignited poison gives people exactly 20 seconds to live before being poisoned to death, from what I've read in old firemens' manuals back in the 90s, when I first started wondering just how safe polyester is ignited in a house fire. People who make and manufacture goods for home use should FIRST check things out to see what their products would do in someone's house if it burned up. When you hear of firemen saying "...died of smoke inhalation..." my personal interpretation is "hmmm, somebody figured out a cheapie way to makje houses at the expense of anyone who dies in a fire. Are the objects I am putting in my home objects, that when ignited, would or would not give my family and pets extra time to get the hell outta there?"

Later on the fire marshall told me that people die anyway in fires, that even age-old materials that ignite can cause smoke inhalation issues. Even so, the stuff I was reading on polyresins was speaking in seconds, not "a few minutes" before death on the ignition toxicity of such products. It doesn't hurt businesses serving homes to read a fire marshall manuals to determine what materials will be used in the business serving other people's home interiors, and how fire safe is it? Just sayin

Here are my goods for the past week, Since putting a stuffed pillow into the scanner is out of the question, I scanned the outer quilted cases that will be the outsides of the pillows to show here:

 

[freedombecki]

More yet:

 

[freedombecki]

I liked doing the next two pillows, but when I looked, I noticed how badly I screwed up on placement of stripes. It was made by a figuring math error that I made all by myself, and I'm sorry, but I had already finished BOTH pillow tops when I noticed that the top 7 stripes were not coming from the stars area, and instead of having red-white-red-white-red-white (6) stripes at the bottom I had 7. I was so annoyed by my mistake, I placed them aside overnight. This morning, when I made a decision to go ahead, I decided it was a good teacher for me to count first and be sure rather that start the fun of sewing before engaging the cerebellum material.

So, here is my first goofy flaglike quilted pillow top. It measures more or less 20 by 23 inches, give or take a couple of inches.

I just can't believe I didn't count the 7 stripes up top before deciding the size of the blue star material. I just can't believe it. *sigh*

Oh, thanks to the mods who developed usage pixels, if you place your arrow or other pointer atop any of the images below, I have left a summarized description of what you are looking at in my constructions.

 

[freedombecki]

And I hope this is the last flaglike quilt I ever do weirdfully:

At least there ARE 13 stripes.