My Next Big Project

Barbara Brackman, who authored the Civil War Block of the Week series I followed last year, is starting a new block of the week, this one following the struggle for women's right to vote in 1913.  She's calling it "Grandmother's Choice."  I knew immediately I wanted to make this quilt and turn it into a family heirloom.  My maternal grandmother was married in 1913 and she was an excellent needleworker, so I want to dedicate it to her.

The series will begin on the first of September, but my first issue was to decide who in the family should get the quilt.  I had not made a quilt for anyone in my brother Carl's family and so I thought one of them should be the recipient.  Because the quilt will have this historic context, I immediately thought of my niece, Dana, because she majored in U.S. History, and she agreed - commenting the project sounded intriguing. 

I emailed her to ask what colors she might like her quilt made from.  She studied the suggestions Barbara Brackman had made on her blog and chose the Green and Gold color scheme that was used by the women of Australia.  Green and Gold appealed to Dana because they are the colors of  William and Mary, where she earned her degree.

I checked the William and Mary website to be sure my green and gold fabrics would remind Dana of her Alma Mater - and to pick up other cues that can tie her to her great grandmother, Faye. Well, the colors alone make a good start because my grandmother's living room in the house I remember was green and gold. The gold is a bright yellow gold, and the green is a dark hunter. I have pulled fabrics that I believe will fit and took a photo yesterday.

There's quite a range of greens and golds, with a lot of off-whites and goldish light tans, in all kinds of prints and handdyes and even a few solids.  The group of greens fanned out in the middle are a hand-dyed gradient collection I have had for some years.  The darkest are the basic W&M hunter green.  I may not use a few of the prints I chose that don't blend.  But sometimes a not-quite-right color is a good choice - it can create a spark of interest.

Even though I have many fabrics here, I will have to buy more.  I would like some prints that mix the green and yellow without adding any other colors, so I'll have to be on the lookout. I think I should be able to find florals or leaf prints to suit.  But sometimes, Ms. Brackman has such a compelling story behind a block, you almost have to use a special-themed print to do it justice.  Some people printed illustrations on fabric for those - there might be a few photographs in the family collection that will have to be included in Dana's Grandmother's Choice.

The edges of Christmas

No longer Christmas in July, I'm still working on the quilt.  There is a lot of piecing for the main border.  I slapped the quilt on the design wall so the effect is visible on the left side - but it's not all straight and smooth.

Some of the nine-patches are set with their triangles, but in the photo, many are just laid out in position ready for piecing. The little red and green squares are in sets of four red and five green, waiting for their turn.

a brighter look

I finished the four central setting blocks for this Christmas quilt.  I took the picture just now and it was a little dark, like the last one I posted.  So I brightened it up to show the fabrics a little closer to reality.

I've pieced the diagonal rows.  For the photo, I overlapped the seam allowances (where I will sew the rows together) in order to show the circle created by the Glorified Nine Patch blocks. Sewing these curves in a nine inch block was nice and easy.

I thought I knew what I was going to do in the setting triangles.  But I'm re-thinking my design.  I had not originally planned on open spaces for fancy quilting.  But maybe I really want fancy quilting after all.

More Christmas

Yesterday I finished up the star blocks for this quilt -

Dorry asked about my fabric usage - there is no system.  As I often do, I cut numbers of pieces from a given fabric randomly depending on the length of the strip I cut.  Some fabrics are used in one block, some are used in three or four.  No two stars are identical, but some have three fabrics in common. 

Now I have to try stitching one of my alternate blocks together, and figure out fabric for the borders.  I may not have what I want on hand and this was supposed to be a way to use up fabrics, not an excuse to buy more.  But when I buy I don't usually buy enough for borders and backs and do wind up spending new money.  This won't be a huge quilt - maybe 50x50 inches, so it won't be too much fabric.

Christmas in July

I started a new quilt a couple of days ago.  Norris saw the block on the right and immediately recognized this was a Christmas quilt.  It will be a medium sized wall quilt for our dining room.

The block is one from the Civil War block of the Week series, Right Hand of Friendship, which was week 43, late October last year.  When I made the block for Roger and Laurie's quilt, I commented it would make a great scrappy quilt.  So I'm making a scrappy quilt with it now, though I'm going to use the same background swirly green and white print for all 9 star blocks to unify them. And I'm making it at 9 inches so the cutting math is far more standard than when we made all the blocks at 8 inches for that series.

I have a plan to use a block I've never made before for the alternates in my on-point setting.     Accidentally and on purpose, I managed to collect a lot of these themed prints over the years I've been quilting.  I made one quilt probably 10 years ago that is too simple a design for my current taste and abilities. And then, while working on these stars, I chose several prints from my collection that are not "Christmas" prints - so it's not going to make much room in the fabric drawer for anything new. I'll still have enough Christmas prints when I'm done to make a king sized quilt I think.

The Christmas fabrics obviously have some aging on them.  The current Christmas prints all seem to use a yellow green that I'm not crazy about.  I prefer my muted blue-greens and sage greens so it's just as well I bought them when I did.

Update? maybe this is a downdate....

I haven't posted in a while - I got a new computer and spent an entire week learning my way around the new operating system. loading up all my software running, and getting frustrated trying to get things working the way I wanted them to.

I did not turn on any of my sewing machines.  But I have been working on my Tapestry sweater which now looks like this -  approaching the point where it would split under the arms, it's probably one third complete:

 

A few rows back I had an error and had to rip out several rows.  While I had it off the needles, I could spread it out and realized it's just not big enough for me. While I reknit the rows I removed, I  contemplated whether I could block it larger or should plan to give it away.  I have decided there's too much work in this to give away and besides, I wanted to wear it!  I could take it apart and try knitting on larger needles to get my size, but I like the density of the fabric I'm getting so, this morning, I ordered more of the yarn and when it arrives, I'll rip all of this out and start over.  This would make some knitters cry, but I know it will be worth it. 

What Are Little Boys Made of?

A couple of years ago, when we were going through my mother's things after she died, my father found two items that had no identification on them. 

A very ordinary looking, well-worn flannel receiving blanket.  The flannel was thin, and the edging was coming unraveled.

 

And less mysteriously, a slightly stained flannel baby jacket with a hand-crocheted edge.

The jacket still had three of four ties attached - and the sewist had used blue thread - so this was a jacket made for a boy baby.   

I had several white flannel baby jackets of this same style, with crocheted edges and ribbons for my doll-babies, made by my mother's mother.  So, it's just my guess, the jacket was made by Grandma and the blanket in the cedar chest must have been one of the first Mom had for my big brother Jeff.  Now, they may also have been used by any number of the subsequent babies - at least my other two brothers, but I suspect they were saved because they were gifts for Brother Jeff, the "experimental model" as Brother Roger likes to call him.

As we divided up, and saved or gave away many of our mother's items, these two baby things, in their then nearly 60 year-old condition, had  no value other than sentimental.  I brought them back here with the idea that I might make something of them if Jeff's son, married the year before, ever had a son.  And since he is expecting one of those in August, it was time to make these over.  

Modern parents don't allow much of anything with ties around their infants, so I sewed a row of snaps to the jacket, and trimmed it with a bias strip of a green and blue striped fabric, which also became the binding for the newly lined blanket.  I hope Grandma would approve of my signalling the baby is a boy this way.

 

 

The blanket's new green lining fabric is a licensed Golden Books print - which goes both with the 60-year-old theme, and the shower invitation's suggestion for signed children's books for the baby in lieu of cards.   

Here's a closeup of Grandma's crochet - this would be the new baby's Great Great Grandmother's work.  I don't expect his Modern Mom Katy will take this baby out in the old-fashioned jacket, but perhaps when he's teething (it's not a new-born size) he can use it when he's drooled on everything else in his wardrobe, and he will feel the love of the previous generations.

(the greens of the stripe are not really olive and do not clash with the lining in real life, as they do in these photos)

I guess I have to call this quilting, but there's no batting. The flannel layer is just to preserve the blanket for a little while but the blanket is still thin. I chose to use a Patricia Ritter design called "Ribbit" because well -

 

"... frogs and snails and puppy dog tails".   And it was fun to trace out all those little toes!  The frog is maybe the size of my hand.  

Don't worry, this baby will be getting his own brand new quilt, the white one with blue and yellow zigzags. And now I get to go book shopping!

In Joyce's hands....

The final chapter on my quilting of Joyce's quilt went out in the mail on Friday.  The post office in Cary says her carrier has it out for delivery so she'll have them today.

Above is one of the placemats and below is one side of the runner.

 

The hardest part of the project was getting all the batting fuzz off the black fabric.

The photo above shows the backing - I took the pictures on a dark and cloudy morning, just before sealing the box and sending these off. It's really a bright and beautiful batik, but the pictures that show the fabric don't show the quilting. Now Joyce, you can pick out a coordinating napkin fabric - two yards!

small version of the big quilt

Last week, Alice came by with the completed Shindig quilt so we could photograph it for an information sheet that can accompany the quilt when they have it out for ticket sales.  I set it up with the photo stand and special lighting...

 

but taking the photos inside is not ideal.  The flash really obscures the quilting detail.  I took a few closeups

 

but after all that, for the quilting detail, I sent Alice two of the photos I took on the driveway because the sunlight really makes the best of the 3-D aspect of my thread work.

On Monday, Alice, Ann and I met with Linda from the Folk Heritage Committee to hand the quilt over.  Ann surprised me with this pot-holder!  She used the leftover fabric pieces and pieced half-size Sawtooth Star blocks just like the big quilt's, as a commemorative of our cooperative efforts. Maybe in this photo you can see some of the design features of the fabrics.  Both the blue and yellow fabrics are subtle floral prints. The cream has a sort of swirling design.

 

Ann used a thermal-insulated batt for our pot-holders, but I'm not sure I can use it to move hot pans - my potholders tend to look grungy in no time and this quilt-lette deserves a more special place in my life.

What I'm working on...

Joyce's placemats are quilted and are in process of being bound.  Meanwhile, I haven't shown any knitting for a few weeks.  In early May, I started on a sweater called Tapestry by Carol Sunday - the link will take you to a photo of the finished model on the designer's website.

 It's a complicated pattern that keeps changing, which makes the knitting challenging.  Progress doesn't seem as quick as with most sweaters I've made because the yarn is fine and I'm knitting the fronts and backs at the same time. It's especially interesting that the background texture created by the seed stitch and reverse stockinette changes as the cables cross and travel up the sweater.  It gives a quilter some ideas about quilting designs.

At the same time, since I knit with a group on Monday nights and want to be able to socialize, I also started this project, by Swedish designer Elsebeth Lavold.  The detail that appears at the waist (this is the back) was the one exception to the "easy knitting" aspect of this shell.  I took several days off working on Tapestry to get that part done and I'll probably have to do the same thing when I do these same knot details on the front.  The front and back on this sweater are the same except for a v-neck opening, where the center cable splits and travels up to the shoulder in the front.

 

I'm knitting both of these sweaters with the designers' yarns, something I have never done before.  The main trouble with knitting is it doesn't go very quickly and there are so many designs and textures and colors I want to work with.  Some people make hats and socks - but I don't wear hats and I rarely wear shoes, so I wear my socks out too quickly. Sweaters it is!