Quilt, Gifted

My Mother in Law, MaMa, is here, and we’ve been having loads of fun.  She’s an excellent cook, so we’ve been spending all of our spare time in the kitchen. Of course, that leaves no time for my craft room…but it’s a small price to pay for all of the delicious food she’s teaching me to make! (At this point, she’s over her shyness, and doesn’t even bat an eye when I pull out the camera every time she pulls out pots and pans. Heh.)

 

Her first night here, we all exchanged Christmas gifts. I wanted her to use her gift from me right away…and was really excited to see what she would think of it.

She liked it. *grin*

That Quilt I Mentioned Once or Twice

Yes, I’m dragging this out. It’s what I do! Here’s the quilt, all quilted, and waiting for my fabulous peeps to come over and help me sew the binding on. (Seriously, quilting bees are just one of the coolest things I can think of right now. I machine sewed the front of the binding on, and then a friend, a sister, and my mom helped me hand sew the back of the binding. Amazing.)

Not Just an Ordinary Quilt

(I am going to push myself this year and use LoLo Craft to participate in NaBloPoMo. Christmas is coming, and I HAVE to get my rear in gear! Hopefully, this will give me the push that I need to get busy!)

They’re just scraps of fabric, like any other scraps of fabric. They’re cut into shapes…diamonds, squares and triangles. I found them in my UFO (UnFinished Objects) box, bound up with a rubber band.
And yesterday, I was ready to tackle them. Ming Wai was my side-kick, busily scribbling away in her coloring books.

I laid out all the pieces and tried to figure out what goes with what, and where, with whom.

I can kind of picture it…a starburst, edges filled in with triangles, and then ringed by rows of square patches.

None of the fabrics are ones that I would choose to go together. They’re not even the same weights of cotton, most of them thin to the point of sheer.

None of the points match up completely. I don’t think the diamonds were cut completely straight.

I don’t care though, as it wasn’t me that cut out the diamonds. Or the squares. Or even the triangles. The edges are worn and frayed from years of bundling and unbundling. I can only guess at the original quilter’s pattern, or even if they were meant to go together. Judging by the quilter’s other work, they are meant to go together in one big quilt, but the cutting was never finished.
  
These pieces represent, to me, what quilting ought to be about. I’m sure they were all cut from cast off clothes or bed linens. Years of memories, cut apart and sewn back together to give it one last shot at life.

My Great Grandmother Susie, I believe, cut these out when she was alive. She was a quilter, but not like the Quilters of today. She made quilts because she needed quilts. I quilt in her memory. I have never bought $12-per-yard designer quilting fabric, and I’m not sure I ever will. I prefer to keep on in the Todd style, and use what I have on hand, the more memories the better.

After Great Grandma Susie passed on, her daughter (my Grandma Mary) started piecing these together. At least, I think this is the quilt I remember her working on. I remember her sitting in my parents living room, during a week-long babysitting stint while my parents were vacationing, and trying to put these together. She worked with a needle and thread. I work with a machine. I hope to piece together enough blocks to make a pillow each for the women of the family. The ones who remember Great Grandma Susie, and the ones who miss Grandma Mary the most.

The corners, no doubt, will be wonkier than I mean them to be. The pattern, no doubt, will be nothing like Mary or Susie envisioned. But, it will be ours…to remember them.

QIP: Hedgerow quilt, arranged!

That? Is one. large. quilt. Each block is about 12” square.

I finished half of the vertical sashing today. More pictures later! (Sorry for the weird lighting. I roped Lo Gung into helping me arrange it all after the kids went to bed on Monday night. He has a great eye for color and mixing patterns! Besides, we both knew that if I did it on my own, and he didn’t like the end result, I’d throw a major hissy fit. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. *grin*)

QIP: A Nine-Patch Sort of Thing

It’s a start. I went out and bought the sashing material for this quilt yesterday…and then realized I couldn’t NOT pre-wash it. My blocks are all made from repurposed bed linens (i.e. – fabric that has been washed DOZENS of times and will never shrink again). And the sashing? Is brand new cotton. That will shrink. A lot.

So…that quilt is on hold until I do laundry again. It could be a while. Laundry me no likey. Heh.

In the meantime, I took all the scraps left over and started work on a new quilt! What do you think? (That block up there is approximately 4”x4”. Hello, Itty Bitties! ) I’m totally winging this one. I took all my scraps and sewed them into long strips. Those strips were cut into 32” lengths, and then sewed together into random groupings of three. Those groupings were sliced up to make the rows you see above…which were then put together to make blocks. After I counted it up, it looks like I have enough to make 126 of those little 4” blocks. So, maybe a lap quilt? This is my favorite way to create – just take what I have in front of me and start putting it together!