Issue #21 Quilting Challenges
I have made exactly two quilts in my life.
The first took me about a year on and off.
The second took me about 20 years on and very much off.
I have been known to be overly optimistic in my time management.
Just a teensy, weensy, itsy, bitsy, bit.
OK. Massively overly optimistic.
I also tend to tire of the projects I’m working on and pick up different ones. And sometimes I decide to try a new skill.
Quilting was, once upon a time, an art form I thought I might like to dabble in.
So I decided to make what is called among quilters (you know, those people who actually know what they’re doing when they sew stuff together and make a fabric sandwich out of it) a “pieced-top” quilt.
Not only did I decide that my very first quilt ever would involve a lot of cutting out little bits of fabric and sewing them together in cool patterns, I was determined to make a “scrap quilt”. That’s another one of those technical quilting terms that means that you are repurposing old clothes and other fabric items that have outlived their usefulness and turning them into a bedspread.Think of it as the original “upcycling”.
Only, guess what - scraps of material from lots of different sources also, it turns out, have different weaves, textures, weights, drape and a lot of other fancy fabric terms. What that boils down to is that these fabrics all behave differently when you cut them up.
Especially if you are just snipping away in whatever direction gives you the most triangles per piece of cloth. (Apparently “cutting on the bias” is a thing and is different than other kinds of cutting. Who knew?)
This higgeldy piggeldy assortment of triangles also behaves quite inconsistently when you sew everything together. And, if that weren’t enough of a problem, it turns out you are supposed to use a template and be super duper extra careful that every triangle is exactly precisely completely the same dimensions.
My attention span didn’t really allow for all that precision.
So my pinwheel quilt, instead of turning out as a nice rectangle, was more of a trapezoid.
A pretty trapezoid.
A warm trapezoid.
But still, a trapezoid.
Which is why I never made another pieced-top quilt.
Instead I got the ingenious inspiration to make a quilt out of a single top piece, batting, and a single bottom piece.
And, since I was still fond of repurposing things, I chose to use an old white damask tablecloth and a green bed sheet.
To keep from having to dream up a pattern for the stitches I decided to follow the existing pattern on the tablecloth. It turns out this is NOT such a brilliant idea. The pattern is almost impossible to see unless you have just the right kind of lighting and the proper angle of the material. And all the stitching has to be done by hand.
In a fit of terrific optimism I began this quilt as a present for my then three year old daughter.
You can see where this is going.
I think I imagined I’d have it finished by the time she was six. Or maybe eight.
Then I just hoped I could get it done before she left for college.
I gave it to her for her 21st birthday.
Better late than never.
If you would like to read more about all the specific mistakes I made in that first pinwheel quilt click here.
For more pics of both quilts click here – you will notice that the pinwheel quilt does not look like a trapezoid. That is because I concealed my ineptitude with a sneaky border attached all around the edge.
Copyright© 2023 Anne Morse Hambrock All rights reserved.
Tiger Lily Public Service Announcement
My grandmother used to have a ton of Tiger Lilies in her garden and one of the first things she taught me about them was that, if you wanted to bring them inside and put them into a vase, you needed to cut off the pollen covered bits at the end of each stamen first. The pollen from a Tiger Lily produces a stain that almost nothing known to modern man will take out of your clothes and tablecloths.
As I was walking with a friend the other day we admired some local lilies and I shared this nugget of wisdom with her.
Wrong person. Wrong place.
As I was imparting the pollen warning to my friend, my husband was working in our garden next to these beauties. And, unwittingly, ruining one of his favorite shirts.
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I appreciate the feedback and knowing how often I have struck a chord with your lives.
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