Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

From the XXX Arts thread, I quickly did this one:

It later occurred to me, it would make a good "sampler" work to make a small sample of my work in order to gauge the time it takes to do a small quilt, and on that basis, calculate a minimum wage + social security benefit I would have to use as an asking price to sell this particular size of postage stamp quilt work. I used uneven numbers in the makeup on purpose because to get a point, you have to have one square. If the piece were symetric and you tried to use an even number, you would be headed for trouble or a nonpoint work, or one so large, you'd have to make it the size of a football field to get the point effect. Honest.

uneven number to center postage stamp object:

X
XXX
XXXXX
XXXXXXX
XXXXX
XXX
X

Even numbers have their place, too, particularly when you are trying to make your square conform to the quilter's 12" finished square idea for group project items whereby the newest quilter is required to put the blocks together, since she doesn't know that not every quilter will produce a square that measures an exact twelve inches when she is done.

OK, just for illustrative purposes, here's a square that under the right given measurement might equal twelve inches finished at the end of the day:

XX
XXXX
XXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXX
XXXX
XX

See? You may get 12" if you play your cards right, but akkkk! There's no sharp point in the second figure. And even in the second figure, you're using flattened squares if you even come close to 12 inches finished, which would exacerbate any thought of having a point, except perhaps horizontally

Now, I'm gonna go try and eke out the first illustration in postage stamps, to see if it comes out okay on the printer to get the visualization out to the people who read this thread occasionally but do not say anything.

Ok, the first one is 7 high and 7 wide. So let me do a little math on my 'puter's calculator to get answers for
a 1.25" x 7 (width) = 8.75 inches
b 1.25" x 7 (heighth) = also 8.75 inches.

12 - 8.75 = 3.25 inches
So I will need 3.25 + .5 = 3.75" strips to accommodate a seam allowance all the way around the 8.75 + .5 = 9.25 theoretical unfinished size
This makes it a perfect unfinished 12.5" size to finish out at 12" in an overall quilt.

I'll try to make a sample that measures the 9.25" size. Hey, that's a potholder or a miniature wallhanging!
​

 

[freedombecki]

In review, the "square" I said was 7x7 but looked like a 60-degree diamond, more or less? )

X
XXX
XXXXX
XXXXXXX
XXXXX
XXX
X

It' looks longer than it is tall, because as shown in the XXX Art thread, the X's require 5 Xs to equal in size horizontally 9 "."s. Vertically, space is added between already-not-square Xs, which if blown up, you could see they are based point-by-point on a rectangle that is taller than it is wide. That said, see the square below which corresponds (with a lot of textures of quilt fabrics thrown in, roughly to the "graph" above:
​

 

[freedombecki]

In Log Cabin form, light and dark rows around a center square are called the "Courthouse Steps" block. A similar block is called "Steps to the White House." In the square below, I have taken the steps using postage stamps. Ergo, I'm calling it "Steps to the Post Office." in honor of those who have worked hard through over two centuries delivering mail for not only the colonies, but for our beautiful America:

 

[freedombecki]

Here are back and front versions of the 7-patch postage stamp quilt square in potholder form. This morning, I gathered batting, backings, and old washed turkish towel center layer for making my 7-layer potholders that are as close to impervious to heat as I can get from using all-cotton materials.

 

[freedombecki]

This week, it's log cabins. They're lots of fun. Just cut center squares, and work your way around using strips. Try to make them all the same size or not.

 

[Samson]

I hope s'bones posted in this thread: Practically the entire income of Appalachia depends on the patchwork quilt and rusty clothes dryer industries.

 

[freedombecki]

This week, it's log cabins. They're lots of fun. Just cut center squares, and work your way around using strips. Try to make them all the same size or not.

The pictures are from a good online tutorial, the cover of an antique quilt book cover, "In Love With Log Cabin Quilts" by Linda Baltzell, and an antique quilt from ebay that was selling in 2009(?) or something.

 

[freedombecki]

Anyway, the one I'm working on is a quickie with strips that are 1.75" and are 1.25" when done. The strips were leftover from all my postage stamp projects. I just kept cutting them, and they kept accumulating in bags. Monday morning seemed to be a good day to do something with the strips. lol! I'm going to finish some more this morning, so I probably will be cutting and sewing today.

Yesterday was a disaster. After sewing all morning, we hopped into the car to find a suitable border. We drove for 2 hours to a quilt store where I thought I saw some pretty stuff, only to find the door locked saying "closed Mondays." lol. So we drove another hour to Bryan, TX, where I went to JoAnne's and found one and only one fabric that would "do. It's a pretty blue contemporary leaf with electric blue leaves on navy ground, arranged like table settings in a posh store (far from the antebellum reproduction navy fabric with little florets on it I'd put off buying). Oh, well, the blocks are so huge, I'll have to put one on the printer that doesn't have the outer row on it. (the blocks measure 11" when sewn, showing 6 lights and 6 darks around the red centers.

The red is the color quilters used in the nineteenth century to tell their friends their life was happy. Black in the center told their friends "the fire has gone out." I just like the red centers. They say "happiness here."

 

[freedombecki]

Since the completed raw-edge squares don't exactly fit my printer in their big size, I am showing a small raw-edge square that doesn't have the outside strips sewn on (2 light and 2 dark need to be added). The larger square is placed on point to show all outer strips, which don't look right when you put them on the standard paper printer.

As you can see, my work is cut out for me today.

 

[freedombecki]

Finally found the image of George Washington on one of the Purple Heart Quilts. A friend of mine who served as a frogman in special services sent me the purple heart website. From there, I could see the beautiful purple heart medals and designed this block. My Dad won two of them in WWII and Korea, not sure which or where since he didn't talk about it much, but anyway, it took a long time to locate it. The quilt is at the bottom of page 4, post 115 as of 11/24/2011.

I can't remember whether the quilt went to Senator Craig Thomas, a year before he passed on, Rep. Barbara Cubin, or Senator John Barasso, all of Wyoming, for distribution when the Purple Heart Quilters were going at my shop. A couple of boxes went directly to the Chaplain at Walter Reed Hospital, back when it was still there.

I so love our troops. They're the finest in the hearts of their fellow countrymen!

Just like George Washington who was described as "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow countrymen." What a wonderful man to take a request for tokens to the Continental Congress for their sacrifices in the Revolutionary War where a wound could take you out or cause you an amputation if things got ugly. I'm so sorry our troops were so terribly wounded recently, and I'm so grateful for the ones who get on those prosthetics and wheelchairs and inspire others to stay in life by running races, just like people with everything intact do.

God bless our dear troops.

 

[freedombecki]

Sometimes, I find a fabric company that brought a beautiful new fabric in for quilters to make into their quilts. I'm especially pleased when I find one like that of Windham Fabrics in their "Heart of a Nation" collection. I had to blow theirs up to show it better. I'm so inspired. And it's what America needs now, as we get into the upcoming political season where hot and cold air can crack pavements. Just look at the balm for us all:


If you can't read it, the inscription says:
"Love Unites Us"

The rest of the collection can be seen at the link.

 

[freedombecki]

Oh, yes, since I forgot to bring the single motif here, the "blowup" (you will have to click on the thumbnail to see it in the bigger size I blew it up into), and it is credited to Windham Fabric Heart of a Nation collection:

​

 

[freedombecki]

I hope s'bones posted in this thread: Practically the entire income of Appalachia depends on the patchwork quilt and rusty clothes dryer industries.

Well, you could use your charms as a forum hunk to tell her to come on over, then, Samson. Strollingbones may have a good story or two about quilts everybody would enjoy.

Today's progress (mundane as it is):

Leftover twosies from sacks of strips I sewed together at some point long ago to make postage stamp quilts are put in a sack and used for various quilt projects for charity. I have over 40 sacks, each filled with way more than 1,000 sewn twosies (2 thousand pieces)

Some of these leftovers are usually scattered around my sewing area because they were set aside for one reason or another: some are 2 lights that have no contrast and upset the vital light-dark properties of a traditional 4-patch, which look more like puss in the corner if you use them with other balanced-looking 4-patches.

I sewed twosies with annoying mid-tone strips, well sometimes, (too dark to be light, and too light to be dark) for a border to make the quilt a little longer to cover sweet little toes in cold weather an extra year tacked on to childhood use, hopefully, and will probably put a corresponding one on the other end. That will add 5 inches with two borders of small squares with strips between. I scooched 2 ends onto the screen of my printer/scanner and here's the result, along with a piece from the middle of the border and the log cabin square (in case the page gets changed):

​

 

[freedombecki]

Oh, yes, this is going onto the log cabin quilt. I only used 12 of the 48 squares mentioned in an earlier post somewhere, adding 4 squares of all-light squares sewn around a 4-patch squares that had, somehow, no contrast as planned. Instead of tearing them up once I realized how bad they were contrast wise, I just saved them for other purposes.

Anyhow, using them in the scrap border along with other unused strips, also remind us of our mothers and grandmothers, who used everything up making utility quilts when times were tough. It's like everything else in history that gets forgotten.

Our society became successful on the backs of now-nearly-anonymous mothers and homemakers who cooked, cleaned, swept, and did all the thankless jobs that make a house a home for others to have the time to learn to read, write, do homework, paint, grow up, and learn from their mothers the give-and-take of family and friends, good manners, speech courtesies, and social interactions.

Without them we couldn't have come to be a society that could determine winners in WWI, WWII, etc. where men knew obedience accomplishes objectives.

It's no wonder we are losing and will continue to lose world prestige by displacing child bearers into other fields of interest in which children are considered a burden. In 20 years, people treated like burdens in youth continue to think that's what life is--being a burden, so they live down to the low expectations their upbringing required, with everybody being away and too busy to answer their need for appreciation that home-bound mothers gave Americans through the 60s. Then women began getting college degrees or doing office work, sometimes part-time and sometimes, full-time, to meet economic demands children learned on tv sponsorships as "needs" they were told would make them more important among their admiring friends.

Now our lives are practically ordered by commercials that teach young, gullible children what their parents must provide for them to make them American kids. And when older, they learned signals from admired television and theater icons who used their beauty and the artifices of thespians to convince people to dress this way or that way using "in" colors of this year and throwing the lime green wardrobe of last year away in favor of wearing the pink wardrobe of this as shown by the icons of the screen, paid to wear what the wardrobe department was given by manufacturers in return for showing off their artists' tastes in clothing and having millions of similar items for sale across the land.

So that's why I try to add leftovers--in honor of a time when our nation's mothers, facing tough economic times, used up everything they could lay their hands on to make warm blankets for cold winter nights when fuel could be scarce for one reason or another.

Somehow, our nations bumbles along trying this and that out, but we're here because in the building phase of our country, people used what they had. In the 30s, they had a little saying everyone knew (and my mother taught it to me when I was young and expected me to respect it):

"Use it up,
wear it out,
make it do,
and do without.
​

 

[freedombecki]

And here some of it is:
Also, in the first picture, you can see the tip of the star that is formed by the log cabin dark and light blocks one of which is shown above.

 

[freedombecki]

On the log cabin top of this child-sized-to-be quilt, I made additionally 4 light squares to be used between the star points at the corners. I've made over 50 log cabin quilts, and I got to liking the star format that uses 16 squares. I might see if I can find one again on my computer in case it's on the preceding page and add it below with the light square. Sorry I don't seem to have one of the pictures. I have to do that one of these days--get my quilt album out and show you some of my real life's work. Tonight, though, I'll just make do with what is already saved in my pictures and downloads files. And also found an antique fan quilt in one of my searches a year or so ago. Below, the light log cabin square has an orange center, and in my kitchen the orange competed with an adjacent blue square:

 

[freedombecki]

This morning, I ran into a really pretty patriotic 4-patch assembled from leftovers in the last couple of days (I hoard rw&b prints like a miser hoards money). heh.

Anyhow, I started looking through stuff and started sewing some more last night and this morning. I had quite a pile of fabrics next to the sewing machine in the kitchen, so it took some serious hunting and searching, but I have some squares I wanted to record while I was saying my prayers for American and allied troops everywhere this morning. They faithfully discourage monsters from wiping out whole villages of people who are citizens of their own country. The monsters use toxins which if unleashed on the world, would only leave a few thousand souls scattered to the 4 corners. Thank God for American and Allied troops who eliminate that kinda stuff. Here's the menagerie of squares arranged onto the screen first with spaces, second on point, and third scooched together to get all 9 4-patches on the scanner glass:

 

[strollingbones]

you do beautiful work......i love quilts .....i would love an amish quilt...but cant afford it.....quilts are time consuming and you never get paid for the time

 

[freedombecki]

you do beautiful work......i love quilts .....i would love an amish quilt...but cant afford it.....quilts are time consuming and you never get paid for the time

Thank you, Ms strollingbones. I've made a few Amish style quilts--can't remember exactly what I did with the one resembling a centennial quilt someone put on the cover of a quilt book (or something), and I loved it. Not sure the outcome of the quilt except to say it was one of my favorite pieced quilts, though I am an applique artist in general. I only became a proficient piecer to help other quilters who needed to learn to deal with accuracy which helps the overall look of a quilt.

I'm pleased you showed up, Ms. strollingbones. Mr. Samson was pretty sure your part of the world has a love for quilts like no one else's.

I had such a good time playing with the red white and blue squares this morning, I decided I'd better knuckle down and finish up the top border at least, so I did two photographs on the copier of the lower border which wasn't even started this morning, and the outer red was just a plus. Proportioning out an inch here and an inch there to lengthen the quilt paid off by the addition of the top and bottom 2-patch 1-strip pieced border, and the second shot is of the funky colors in the center. It doesn't take much to do a scrappy quilt that's a little funky and fun when it's done.

 

[freedombecki]

Sometimes, it seems like no progress is made although you cut as many strips and sewed as many things together as ever, or you just tackled an in-your-face unfinished project to the point where it looks like something that's hurrying you on to the finish line by saying, "finish me!" Well, all that happened this morning between 4:15 am and 9:15 (or within a quarter hours' range), which is pushing 5 hours. I'm having to mop the kitchen tiles down every day to insure that when I place the quilt down as a final check to make sure the pieces are facing the correct way, they can be immediately pinned and sewn with more ease than sewing them on the wrong way, and losing half an hour to rip 24" of 2 mm stitches. Such is the life of a quilter, oh, yes, and pinning when piecing is as essential as taking a vitamin daily to help you resist bugs and vermin. (Thiamine makes you untasty to mosquitos and they will eschew your flesh if you take it). If you hear someone say "the mosquitoes love me," you're talking to a B1-vitamin deficit person, most likely.

What was the subject? Oh yea, I worked me little buns off this morning, and all I have to show for it are these 4 tiny, begging to be added to the pile four-patches, which I sewed in honor of the founders and Declaration of Independence signers, whose families were made to suffer harsh consequences by the bloody Brits of 1776.

God bless them and us all.