Older Quilts - Bowties

Because I'm working on the quilting for that huge Field of Tulips--it's 90" X 100"--there's really nothing new to show.  So here's what used to be one of my all-time favorite quilts.

 All the blocks were hand-pieced with center rectangles.  It hung in several of my homes for many years.  Unfortunately, it was made in the 1980's when fabric manufacturers were insisting that as long as fabrics held their colors for 14 to 18 hours of exposure to light, that was long enough. Not!

Here's a detail of hand piecing and hand quilting:

 

That little beige inner border was once printed with beautiful little rose-colored flowers.  They're barely visible now.  Most of the time, when I take the quilt out to look at it, it just makes me sad that all that work was done with full-priced fabrics that were such low quality.  When I was making this quilt, I carried the pieces everywhere and pieced every time I had a couple of minutes.

I made several more bow-tie quilts in the years following this one--one was given to my baby sister and the rest were given away as baby quilts--and they were pieced with two corner triangles next to squares so that although they looked like bowties, they weren't this old, old patchwork pattern.

I do so little hand work now that I doubt I'll ever manage to produce another bowtie quilt like this one.

Tulips

This is such a huge field of tulips that I didn't have a lot of confidence about how to quilt all this white!

 

I thought about outlining the tulips with a green that matched the tulip leaves.  Or perhaps a blue to pick up the blue in the setting triangles and border.

I did phone Karen to see what she might prefer.

She didn't phone me back, so I just went ahead and started laying in the swirls with white.

It's slow going, so I'll have plenty of time to think about how to quilt the setting triangles.  Right now I'm thinking of using yellow thread for partial feathered wreaths and then quilting feathers in the borders using gold thread.

We'll see.

More Fil-Tec Glide Thread

I've had a few struggles lately while choosing thread for quilts made by others in our Victory Quilt Group.  So. at our last gathering, I looked at some of the tops others were working on and some of the fabric they were choosing, looked at some of the fabrics I'm planning to use and some of the quiltops I have waiting, and then placed another order for Fil-Tec Glide threads.  The person from whom I'd bought these threads for a couple of years stopped stocking them to make room for other merchandise, so I did a web search for Fil-Tec threads.  They are available at www.bobbincentral.com, a site from which many threads as well as machine needles and disposable loaded bobbins can be purchased.  (They also have a Facebook page.)

Why would I do a post about this thread?  While this thread was designed for machine embroidery, I use it for quilting.  I love the range of colors (free color card with initial order if you let them know you want one).  I really love the way it glides through my machine and needle.  I love the size of the spools and the fact that it works so well in the bobbin too.  I love the way this thread glistens on the quilt top. More than any other color, I use one of their beautiful golds that is even better than the metallics  I used to use.

Furthermore, Fil-Tec/Bobbin Central has a special for February for 10% off  Glide thread.

They have an extremely high level of customer service.  They fill orders rapidly.  (For me the only downside is the time it takes for UPS to carry it across the country--so I need to allow a week from the time I order.)

I have no financial connection with them at all (except for sending them money when I order from them).

I keep telling myself I'll take some pictures of quilts I've made over the last few decades and post about them, but time has been so crunched that I haven't managed to do that--yet.  I'll get to it.

Happy quiltmaking.......

Field of Tulips and More Snow Photos

Alexandra and I pin basted Blanche Roberts' Tulips yesterday.  I remain amazed that she was able to applique and embroider this many tulips.  I do wonder how long it took her to do it.  I admire the fact that she was able to create so many of these blocks.
We just couldn't get a good enough angle to get the entire quilt and borders--but I love the effect from this angle:

 

I'm slowly working on  the stitching that will hold everything in place for the major quilting.  Still haven't decided how I'll quilt the rest of it.

Here are a couple more between storm photos:

 

  

The storms just keep coming--but we were glad to see some bare earth yesterday.  I'm sooooooo looking forward to the end of winter!

Eccentric Border

 

I first saw this border on a red, gray, and black wool quilt from the early 20th century.  I think it's quite possible that that early quilt was made by someone who planned a three-strip border and then didn't realize until too late that the corners were going to be a bit awkward.  But there was something about them that was appealing, and I knew one day I might want to make a quilt using something similar.

This top was pieced about 2 years ago and has been waiting for a border.  It isn't as bold as on the antique quilt, but I think I'll like it.  I really am going to try to get this layered and quilted soon.  (The backing is ready.  I just don't have a comfortable place to pin baste it.)

White Again

Looks sweet, doesn't it?

 

But looks can be deceiving--and in this case, they are.

When my morning class was excused, I checked the weather and NMRoads.com (because snow was predicted, and where I was, we'd had rain and snow flurries). I learned I-40 had already been closed.  When that happens, the only alternative for 40+ miles is Old Route 66.  I left work as soon as I could, but I still spent well over an hour going just seven miles.  Apparently, Old Route 66 was also closed at least for a while.  However, there were a lot of people trying to get home to their kids, who had been dismissed from school much earlier, so eventually they let us through! (I learned later that there were buses that had been forced to return to schools because the roads were impassable in places.)
I always think of my home as being on the plains east of the mountains.  But after that trip home, I recognize that while "East Mountains" doesn't quite apply out here, we have way too many steep hills to claim we live in a flat area, even if it does seem that way after having traveled through the mountains. There was some evidence NMDOT was trying to clear the highways, but they weren't able to keep up.  Seeing a snow plow sliding all over the road was kind of scary too.  Oh, my! I prayed my way up every hill, knowing that if I didn't make it on the first try, I'd end up in many more inches of snow in a ditch!  My town looked like a parking lot for semi-trucks.  Someone said the reason they worked so hard to get the interstate open again is there were no more motel rooms left in our town. Really? Our city road department was working valiantly to keep the streets passable. (I did call the city to tell them how much I appreciated how hard they were working.)
After nearly three hours in transit, there is a whole new meaning to "home, safe and sound." However, I'm getting pretty tired of snow and ice caused closures.  Even Alexandra was upset that school has been canceled for another day.
No chance of school being closed where I teach--it will take a miracle for me to able to drive there.

Split 4-Patch and Post Storm Pictures

Members of the treadle sewing machine group introduced me to the split 4-patch.  I was interested in it because it has much in common with my split 9-patch windmills.  Above is my first attempt.  I began with 6-inch strips and squares.  Once they were assembled as 4-patches, I made two parallel vertical and horizontal cuts 1.5" from center seams.  I then moved each "double bar" patch clockwise to the next position.
Here's a closeup of one block:

 

I sashed the blocks with a blue print and set aside more blue for the binding.

This prayer quilt will be for the Victory Quilt ministry; we have to make an effort to make quilts that will be acceptable for men; we all love making the pretty, flowerdee, feminine quilts.  These take a bit more effort in the planning.  I thought the butterfly/feather print and the leaf print worked well together, and the blue picked up the blue in the feathers.

Now to layer and quilt.......

The bonus in this post consists of two post-storm pictures, both from last Saturday.

We awoke not only to the left-over snow, but also to fog.  I find it fascinating that the camera apparently "sees" through some of the fog.

 

Everything was coated in ice, but apparently the camera doesn't pick that up very well either.

 

I tried to get pictures of a lot of other bushes, even weeds, but the ice disappeared in the photographs.

We're expecting more snow today.  I do hope  NMDOT manages to keep the roads clear and safe......

Appalachian Baskets

I love basket quilts.  I recently posted the violet and white bed-sized quilt I finished this month.
Above is another quilt--a small one--I began back in the 80's.  I spent months and months searching for violet and yellow fabrics--those were definitely not in abundant supply in those days.  (Those were the days of peachy pinks and blues; about the only colors that couldn't be found were violets and yellows.)
I had taught several classes on basket quilts for a chain of fabric stores in the Southeast.
Somewhere along the line a woman brought in one of her family basket quilts or tops, and I fell in love with it because of the things it said about the maker; and I decided I wanted one with those idiosyncratic patches.
The maker had used a basket from another quilt, a basket on a five patch grid.  For the top of the basket, the "flower" part, she had used one half of an 8-pointed star.  Although her blocks were slightly larger, I drafted mine for six-inch blocks.
The stripe around the center was cut from a gray striped print.

Amazing how dated this quilt became in about 25 years.  Doesn't fit into my house anymore.  I'm no longer teaching quiltmaking classes.  It became a Victory Quilt--I would love to know who ends up with it.

Over the last several decades I've made quite a few basket quilts from a variety of baskets.  I might need to make another one--but I'll need to narrow down my choices quite a bit first.

Happy quilting......

Smooth Joinings on Quilt Bindings

Heather Finnell of Burning the Midnight Oil Quilts has a great tutorial for binding quilts that includes instructions for how to finish the beginning/end of the bindings so that spot looks the same as the other joins in the binding.  You'll find it here:

 http://www.burningthemidnightoilquilts.com/pdf/binding.pdf

I admit that because of the idiosyncrasies of the sewing machines I have in my home and because of the relatively thin batts I prefer, I usually subtract 1/4-inch from one end of the binding so that the binding is stretched ever so slightly over those joining inches.  However, I don't measure the quilts to be sure their sides vary by no more than one millimeter, and I'm not entering most of the quilts I make in competitions, so no one is going to get too picky with them; most of my quilts are prayer quilts that will be laundered countless times over the course of their existence.

Happy quilting.....Happy blogging.

My Daughter's Dream House & Winter

Mu daugher mentions almost every day that she wants to live in Illinois.
The other day she took a picture of her "dream house."

 

I asked how that might work, since this house is just east of Albuquerque.  She replied, "Oh, I think I'll just have to figure out a way to airlift it to Illinois."

Unlike my daughter, I miss all the wooden farmhouses from the early 20th century.  I seriously doubt that I would be  able to afford either an early 20th century home or a reproduction.  It's mind-boggling how with all the burst bubbles of the housing market, those homes still have astronomical price tags.

My daughter also snapped this picture of the west face of the Sandias.

 

Although that mountain might not look a whole lot different right now, the eastern slope of the Sandias and the eastern plains received a battering.  Areas of our little town have received as much as eight inches, according to one of the TV stations--so I suspect there are areas that have received even more.  We received plenty, but given the winds, it's impossible to measure.
This is turning out to be a long, cold winter, but the snow probably protects us from the below-zero temps we had a few years ago.  (Good thing, since we've had 50% increases in natural gas cost.)
Hmmmmmm, I think I should go look through some cookie recipes......or soup recipes.....

Sewing Machine & Chickie O, Cherry-Oh, Cheerio, Baby

 

 I offered to take a look at this for someone who lives near me.  It belonged to her aunt. She was hoping someone had an unused machine she could use. She said this one stopped working several years ago.  I changed the needle, took out the hand quilting thread, cleaned and oiled it, and rethreaded it with sewing thread. Adjusted the thread tension slightly.  It works great!

I know there are thousands of wonderful vintage sewing machines in closets, garages, nooks, and crannies which need no more than a little basic attention in order to be working well again.  Countless machines have ended up in landfills because they were "old" or "old fashioned" or needed the tiniest amount of attention.  It's heartbreaking.

I'll return this to its owner when our storm has moved on to another state.  I hope she gets another 50 years' use from it.

Here's Chickie O, Cherry-Oh, Cheerio, Baby:

It's for a young friend who loved spending time with my baby and who will soon have her own.

 

It's such a happy little quilt! Hope it makes her baby happy too!

And, lastly, here are some of the plump little birds who enjoyed cubes of bread from the whole wheat loaf I made last week:

 

I watched them from my treadle as I put the binding on the quilt.

I did spend a half hour on the treacherous roads yesterday morning, thinking I'd make it to work.  I decided it was better to take a personal day, and then spent a half hour returning home on a slightly different route, thinking that if I went skidding, I'd have a better chance of regaining traction on the two-lane than I would along I-40, much of which closed by the end of the day.

Quilting Group

Once a month our prayer quilt group gets together in person.  Sometimes we work on similar thing or even the same type of thing.  More often, we all work on something different.

Often I feel I've been terribly non-productive at our gathering, but I love the time for us to be together and enjoy the camaraderie every bit as much as quilting.

Below are some shots of the prayer quilt I was working on.  I've used most of these fabrics before, but they're not out of my system yet.

I love putting things together in unexpected ways, but I think I'd do it even more if I could learn how to make EQ6 Custom Layouts work in the way I really want.

This is what I finally chose, but haven't finished sewing yet.

Ah, so little time.  Soooooo many quilts I really, really want to make!

Birds and Breezes

The front of our house is an L-shape, and it contains what most people around here call a "trash tree", a Chinese elm, one of the few trees that seem to sprout naturally across New Mexico, frequently where little else will grow.  It was here when we moved in, and although I've pruned it, I've not replaced it--a "someday" project.  However, that little tree (which isn't so little any more), is often a haven for birds.

Because of where we live, we frequently experience high winds that have tumbled down from the Sandias or Manzanos that make even moderate temperatures seem frigid.

That L of our house makes for great collections of tumbleweeds when the winds are just right.

In fact I showed them in a blog post just about a year ago.

Frequently, the winds that follow storms, enable our "trash tree" to be a welcome haven for birds.

 

I think I should make a quilt in honor of these hardy creatures.  However, as much as I love the fact that our tree provides a shelter for them, and as much as I love Birds-in-Air blocks, I don't enjoy making half-square triangles.  Over the last 3+ decades, I've tried every method anyone has told me about.  I just don't like to make them! I love them when they're finished and are in quilt, however.

I do love looking up from my 66-treadle and seeing that these fluffy little creatures have found shelter from the winds at least for a while!

Sunshine and Frost - Another Quilt

Here's Sunshine and Frost, another kaleidoscope quilts that was years in the making.  Sometime around 1997, when I was teaching and living on the Zuni Reservation, I made a blue and yellow quilt for a friend who frequently invited me to stay at her home when I had to be Albuquerque.  It was perfect for her bedroom, and I fell in love with blue and yellow.  However, I did not start buying these fabrics until 2000, although I had already begun dyeing a lot of my fabrics.

Here's a smaller section, just a little closer.

and closer:

Before I left for my retreat to the Appalachians last summer, I ordered thread for this quilt, but only part of it arrived before we left.  I did start some of the quilting in the mountains, but the rest was done over the course of several weeks whenever I could squeeze in some time to quilt for myself.

Here's one section of the back:

I pulled it out at the beginning of the month, thinking I still needed to finish quilting it.

But all that was left to do was trim and bind it.  The binding is now on, and I have another finish!

Now I think I should start another blue and yellow quilt; do you agree?

Something Old and New

A couple of decades ago I could not imagine that [with the exception of Nine-Patches] I'd ever use the same pattern or block twice.  About 15 years ago I figured out how to cut identical patches from several layers of fabrics.  That was about the same time Bethany Reynolds was developing her Stack'n'Whack method.--But we lived on opposite ends of the country and had never heard of each other.  She usually worked with eight layers of fabrics; I worked with six.

I've lost track of how many quilts I've made with this method.  I still have some I've made, and I've made several for gifts for others.  I've always used my own hand-dyed fabrics for the triangles between the kaleidoscopes, and have used several variations of sets.

In fact, I recently finished the binding on a blue and yellow kaleidoscope quilt that I had begun quilting in Tennessee last summer.  (That will be the subject of a later post.)

I remember that the Hoffman print in the photo above was purchased on a trip to Illinois in 2000.  I don't remember when I began cutting and piecing the patches.  They've been sitting in a plastic box for several years.  (Hey, at least they weren't a PIG [project in grocery sack]!)

Now I'm working on getting them sewn into strips and am thinking about how I'll set the strips together.  This will be a lap quilt--good for reading or watching TV. I need to get some of these quilt tops finished and quilted or they might be confused with aging wine or brandy!

Using Cone Threads on Domestic Sewing Machines

I do have a thread stand--it's often on a different sewing machine from the one I want to use for a particular task.  So today I'm going to share some hints and ways I use the cones.  I'm very grateful to other sewers and quilters who have shared little hints that have made it easier to use.

The first photo shows the cone stand behind my treadle, the thread coming up to the top of the stand, back down to the sewing machine and under the spool of thread, then on through the normal thread path.

When I was sewing fast, I used to have problems with the thread jumping off the top of the holder and then breaking.  A couple of other sewers shared their solutions to that problem, so I'll pass on what I have found works for me. Because the Fil-Tec Bobbin Line thread I was using here is so fine that it's barely visible, I used some yarn to show the path a bit better.

When I bring the thread up to the top of the cone holder, I twist it once so that as it moves the twist helps keep it on the ""hook of the holder. Then I bring it down to the spool holder on the machine, bring it to the front of the spool holder, and set a spool on top of it.  Because the Bobbin Line (and Superior's Bottom Line) thread are so fine, this spool of Mettler cotton works fine.

When I first began machine quilting, I often used Sulky Rayon thread.  I've always loved variegated thread, and they had one of the few that were widely available.  Because of the way the spool is wound, the thread needs to come off the end of the spool, so using the machine's spool pin caused some problems.  At that time I sat the thread in a skinny, empty olive jar on the back of my sewing table.  That worked well for those skinny spools of threads.  When I began using the large cones of thread, I preferred the cone stand.  However, when I was piecing and quilting, the cone stand seemed to always be in the machine I was using for piecing.  Below is a photo of what I now do with the machine where I quilt.

The cone of thread sits in a somewhat larger plastic jar on the back of my machine table, comes up through the top of the clothespin on top of the handle of my Ott lamp, forward to the spool pin, under a heavier spool, and continues along the normal thread path.  Here I just used an empty King Tut spool, but an older wooden spool of about the same size would have worked as well.

At the base of the spool pin to the right of the empty spool, you may be able to see a closed safety pin.  I used to use the hole created by the twist at the bottom of the safety pin as a loop for the thread (and that's why it's still there), but I think just running the thread beneath the heavier spool works even better.

Happy Quilting!

Another Judy Quilt--and an "ooooops!"

Here's another "Judy" quilt for our Victory Quilts prayer quilt ministry.The blocks are comprised of two 4-patches and two hatchets. Again, she used a variety of fabrics spanning over 20 years in manufacture date.

Here are closeups of some of the blocks so the quilting can be seen:

The previous two photos above show the two quilting designs I used in the blocks.  If you wish, you can right-click on each photo and open it in a new tab, which will give you a larger, more detailed view.

The second block is that "nut-cross-section" variation that my friend Bobbie and I copied from a 1903 Triple Irish Chain back in the 80's.  It's gone through a few variations as I've adapted it to make it more friendly for machine quilting.

Because the border was so busy and so narrow, I decided it was time for me to create something simple for narrow borders.

 

It's kind of a twisted cable, and as I stitched it, I envisioned a few variations for the future.  As it stands on Judy's quilt, it's extremely similar to narrow cables I hand quilted back in the days I had time and space to handquilt.

The oops is, in part, that I almost didn't realize that I hadn't published a blog post this morning.  It's been a crazy week.  Just the fact that we had a school holiday on Monday should have enabled me to predict that the week would seem long.  A couple of storms that led to school cancellations/late starts for my daughter (but not for me) added complications.  But the most serious and unexpected complication was that on Tuesday on the way home from work, when I stopped to make a purchase my daughter needed, I also stopped for a diet soft-drink.  At the time I did realize it tasted a bit different, but I just attributed that to the likelihood that the mix of soda water and flavoring was off a little.  By the next morning, I realized the "off-a-little" was really off a lot! That was the second ooops. In the middle of the night my joints swelled up to the extent that I could barely move the next day.  About 30 years ago, an extremely bright young internist realized that my body was depositing antigens in my joints.  A couple of years later I figured out that it happened only when I consumed products containing corn and its derivatives.  At that point, a trip to the grocery store became as much about sleuthing and avoiding those products as about buying food.  (The positive aspect of that is that I cook a lot "from scratch" since I know almost any product containing any form of corn will set off the reaction.)
In the intervening years even more products have substituted HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) for sugar, and corn-geneticists discovered they could genetically modify corn so that instead of needing pesticides to fight corn-borers, farmers could plant a genetically modified corn that would cause the intestines of the corn borers to explode, thereby decreasing the population of corn borers and increasing their corn yields.  They swear it has no effect on the intestines of humans. 
Unfortunately, what I've experienced over the last several days suggests otherwise.

Now I'm moving slowly and once again will be very, very careful about what I buy and consume !