Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

This morning it was a blitz. No 3-hour postage stamp borders to do with a preprint "squares" in red and white footballs and helmets. It was considerably faster, and some shelter kid who loves the grid iron will hopefully enjoy it.

 

[freedombecki]

Today, the Sunflower child's log cabin star was begun with cutting an inner border of a sweet yellow flower fabric, plus I found my old stash which I had taken a couple of yards of sunflower fabric that I really loved when collecting my items from my store last trip 3 years back. The Sunflower material is not on it yet, but there was also a situation in the entrance to our home, where I had about 8,000 1.75-inch squares cut. They filled a box that was about 12" x 15" x 8"high. I found the box soaking in water that for some unknown reason, comes up through the tiles in the entrance to our new home. I guess that goes with the territory of being 500 feet from a floodplain, and this has been a very wet year. All of the fabric was damp to wet, depending on its proximity to the bottom of the cardboard box that had been reinforced with clear tape.

Anyway, I spent the morning drying out the squares by taking 10 minute turns in the oven after getting rid of the soaked box. I had forgotten all about the water issue since it never arose again after the first year, and none of last year with the drought we had. Thank heaven, no mold! (whew.)

And I decided I'd better find a way to use every single square, so I started on making 4-patch, 16 square blocks, and needed 24 to do around the yellow sunflower quilt.

I'm not going to talk about that any more, but all the squares are now dry and on baking sheets after spending tours of ten minutes in the oven. I'm just going to show pictures of the Sunflower child's log cabin quilt and its postage stamp border so far (it's not finished, too much work!)

First picture is two of the 24 4-patch, 16-square blocks. Then I'm showing the inner border around the ends that now have the inner border of postage stamps (of which there will be 384 squares when done) around a 24-inch center of the hero log cabin star I've done so many of lately.

 

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More from the ends of the Sunflower log cabin star quilt.

 

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Yet one more end area, the center of the log cabin star, and one of the pairs of star points (there are 8 in all on each log cabin star 24" center)

 

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Though my stars that are 24" have 5 rounds of logs on them, I did find online someone's larger log cabin star that has 4 rounds of huge logs on them (see below) going around a huge center, and I was enchanted by her colors and the fact that she can use larger textures and get a striking look by using the wider cut strips. However, once you start making those 1/2" strips, it's like a fever that doesn't go away, you just have to finish it out.

From Bury the Knot Gallery

And her whole quilt is stunning in and of itself.

​

 

[freedombecki]

Wow, what a lot of work, but how much fun. It's like putting a puzzle together, then when it's time to join sides to the ends, it's like putting a second puzzle together, and the 4 rows of postage stamps instead of 2 takes an extra 3 or 4 hours. This quilt may have 20 or even 30 hours in it. The logs are a challenge all their own, but I did them 2 years ago, at least, so the further away you get from the time you did, the less you think of it. I've put less time in queen-sized quilts than this one. Here are the side shots showing the lovely sunflower print I put onto the outside after all the postage stamps were in place. I hope a poor child gets this quilt and remembers he or she is just as good as everyone else, because he has a decent-looking quilt with sunflowers on it.

Shots of the right side of the quilt (depending on which way it is turned):

 

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Right and left sides

 

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A final 2 shots, then I'm going to hunt something else for the last shot. Think I'll show the Eagle done from my book, Aesthetics of a Southwestern Applique Album Quilt, a book of patterns I made up for my students back around 1992-1995, this one came from the second edition, because people wanted more than 30 patterns, so the second edition contains at least 42 patterns, plus a dozen wallhangings. My purpose was to try to help people get creative with their use of someone else's patterns.

 

[Truthmatters]

You do beautiful work girlfriend

 

[freedombecki]

Woo hoo! My May pile of quilts may hit 10 unless I hit the wall. Sometimes that happens. Right now, I'm thinking about a quilt that is still in parts from a couple of years back. A lick and a promise plus a border, it will be a nice child's quilt. It's the windmill pattern, except this one is all crazy and mixed up colors, as I recollect from the other day. (8 am this morning left computer to find and work on quilt. It's huge compared to the star quilts of late.)

...

Well, back from the fabric room, spent an hour and a half ripping stuff off and rearranging it, then found a spritely little border left over from the seahorse and blue quilt made a couple of pages back. I may add a border, "froggies" if I can talk a certain someone into having it quilted and distributed to a frogman hero. They are another one of our special forces I gather. If not, it goes to the HEARTS museum quilters, their choice.

 

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Thanks for the kind words, Truthmatters.

 

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Today's quilt is called "Baby Pastel 5-patch Quilt."

Yesterday, water came up through the floor in the entrance, where I had stored thousands of small squares, and everything was from wet to damp, so I baked them for 10 minutes on 3 trays to dry them out. It worked, with no damage or smells in the fabrics! Yea!

Today, did what I had to do--cut white strips into small squares and divide out the pile of 600 different prints in just one of the stacks into color groups, then divide those out into pastels suitable for a baby quilt.

I didn't quite finish 6 squares like I'd hoped, but in 7 hours, three of the pastel squares sewn into 12.5" blocks and 3 didn't quite get to that point before one o'clock. *sigh* It was total fun, though. Each block is like putting together a puzzle. It didn't start that way, but in the green fabrics, I noticed there was an Irish derby right dead center on in the square, so I decided to place it in the center and the rest just came together. Nothing much special about the lilac and yellow bordered squares, except that I had a lot of "unsewing" that needed to be done when squares didn't match up just so. That went on until I finally got the hang of doing a better job.

It always pays to do one sample block first if you haven't done a certain square for a long time or if it's your first time with a certain pattern. It gives you a ballpark idea of what to expect, and the mistakes you make are ones you will surely avoid thereafter. Quilting is good for your math. It makes you a mathematician, whether you wish to be one or not. That seems to me to be why a lot of quilters who visit quilt stores are mathematicians and women in the sciences--math teachers, lab technicians, physicians, and nurses, not to mention rancher women who have to prepare formulas for sick animals, measuring exactly; cooks, statisticians, and bookkeepers. It's all math sometimes. It just is. Of course, some people like color so much and are so right brained it's "hooch and scooch city" to make blocks match. This crowd is the one that jumps in the water first without looking, and winds up in a cast all summer, the one who runs the fastest around the track first day out, then doesn't want to do track anymore, because she busted her buns, and the artist that hates math, just wants to do their own thing, oh, well, if things don't match, do a picasso with the damn thing and turn it into a canvas.

People quilt for a lot of reasons, but those who piece and try to match corners, they are the faithful of the math community, and their quilts generally take "judge's choice" for excellence, when a frivolous artist who breaks all the rules and comes up with the most unique quilt anyone ever saw, does not enter for some reason.

Oh, yeah. The "I haz a happy" Baby pastel 5-patch Quilt, blocks 1, 2, and 3:

 

[freedombecki]

It took so long to get my act together, the fastest ones were the last 3, but they didn't get any sashes on them yet. This is going to be a quickie quilt to help me finish 10 quilts in May. So far, there are only 7 tops in the pile, and I was shy by 3 last month, so I may use any time I save on making up for April's dismal turnout. I crocheted 60 washrags for the charity bazaar, and that took most of my zip out of my quilt progress in April, I think. If it weren't for the sheer joy of doing the 3 military blue quilts, There would have been less yet, so God bless Daveman for giving me a reason to start some wounded warrior wheelchair quilts.

Oh, yeah. the sashless blocks.

The blue one has a cupcake in the center.

Blocks 4, 5, and 6

 

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It took almost as much time digging around looking for the right fabrics in my fabric-filled storage room as it did sewing, but I found also some fabrics when they asked me to take home stuff from the Church closet that was perfect for going around it. I don't do pastels very often, but it was lovely to see the different squares of fabric I've cut through the years going into the quilt, then getting it finished. The quilt has 86 fabrics in it, and it measures about 30 by 50 inches, which I think looks too narrow. I just hate to put too much more fabric around it for fear no one will want to quilt it if I do. I sewed 6 more squares to be used in a darker hue-colored quilt. The tints were fun, but it's the variety of it all that makes quilting a great visual art.

A leftover sash strip (from fabric from church cupboard a few months back)
It seems old could date back from the 60s when they first started making cottons 45" wide. It's thin, too, but not quite sheer, so the fabric was probably made for a cool summer cotton dress or baby clothing item:

 

[freedombecki]

Well, yesterday I got six more blocks done. I have no idea (yet) what the sashing will be or if I just make more squares (shudder) I think I'll work on a border or something. This one needs to be a little wider and a tad longer than the baby quilt for growing room for a child, plus the colors demand a different border situation, likely. I have a lot of rainbow pieces in my stash, but the reason I won't use them is because none of them ever include brown, which tends to change the overall appearance. One of my tricks is to either use what God did in nature--green, or use the rainbow color omitted, which in this case is yellow, and , yes, green. Not sure yet what I will do. ~mulling~

Hues 1 - block, and block sashed in red

 

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Hues child's quilt, block 2 - brilliant oranges

 

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Hues child's quilt, block 3 - neutral browns

 

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Hues child's quilt, block 4 - in turquoise

 

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Hues child's quilt, block 5 - the blues

 

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Hues child's quilt, block 6 - purples