First Quarter Finish-Along "Serendipity" Quilt Finished

I started this quilt over a year ago and had pretty much given up on it until one of the women in my quilt group encouraged me to finish it.  It was the first item on my 2016 Finish-Along list for this quarter. And was the only thing I finished.

I took the best of my blocks and put them together.  This pattern yields a bunch of leftover half-square triangles that have two fabrics making up one half of the HST's. I sewed many of them together to make the border, then cut it off 1/4 inch past the end of the small triangle to get the alternating square/HST pattern, then took the leftover block components to make a piano-key border. The quilting is my first attempt at doing something other than stitching in the ditch.  I used a walking foot for all of it.  (So

Improv Quilt Along Floating Squares Quilt

I joined Sherry Lynn Woods of daintytime's Facebook group for an improv quilt-along, using the scores from her book The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters.  Well, the book is in February's budget, so I don't have it yet.  It's on order.

The score for January was Floating Squares.  I watched the Facebook group as quilters posted their amazing creations.  I was and am inspired!

One of the challenges of caring for people who have predictably unpredictable special needs is finding a way to feel safe embarking on any venture, knowing that a crisis could and probably will arise at any minute and throw everything into another whirl.  I learned to color my hair only when my son is already home after having to make an emergency trip to his school to talk him down with dye coating my roots.  Schooling him at home this semester has halted the near daily school crises.   It takes a lot of time, but the energy goes into more positive things than racing for the school or having yet another IEP meeting.  My mother-in-law has severe dementia and broke her hip right before Christmas.  Her recovery was difficult, with lots of services to coordinate and appointments to take her to.  She had to relearn how to eat as well as walk and still needs a wheelchair for anything farther than a hundred feet or so.  Her memory care unit is great now that she is back there, but she had a rough trip through rehab.  I dreaded the phone ringing.

Creativity expressed through quilting and interacting with others in the various quilting communities are among the ways I keep my equilibrium. I am the only one in my family with an interest in sewing and textiles.  (You have to go back three generations to find any quilters and I'm the only one who wanted their now antique quilts and embroidered linens.) While I can follow a pattern, I feel a persistent urge to experiment--to get off on my own.  In addition, my best-laid plans are so frequently thrown into chaos. Thus, the draw to the Improve Handbook group.

Not wanting to get too far behind while awaiting my copy of the Handbook, I sat down yesterday to improvise on the theme of Floating Squares.  First, I got out a bag of fabrics I bought long ago because they were inexpensive and I could afford them at the time.  I didn't even like these fabrics well enough to store them with the rest of my stash.  Mustard is not my favorite color and yellow is the one color that really doesn't look good on me, regardless of shade.  Perfect for improvising, since, I reasoned, I didn't have any idea what I would end up with.  Surprise no. 1 is that I actually like the yellow in this quilt!  I'm okay with all of the fabrics in this application. There is a place in the world for colors I don't generally like.

I cut some squares and rectangles without measuring and some randomly sized strips of yellow and started piecing.  I almost never work with true solid colors, so this was an adventure in negative space.  I chose to focus on the negative space and allowing there to be lots of it--much more than I felt comfortable with at first.  Only a few of the blocks had fully framed prints.  Others had one or more unframed sides.  My original thought was that they would all be fully framed, but after awhile, it just felt like it as time to lay them out and see what happened.

The challenge from here was getting the blocks to go together in a way that could be sewed.  I discovered that I could spot adjacent blocks that were close enough in size that I could augment with more negative space to get blocks that I could sew together into larger blocks.  When I got stumped, I rearranged and even added the bright blue blocks and a couple more of the Byzantine-looking blocks to get the color distribution to feel right.  I made dozens of trips between the design bed (not a lot of space for sewing at my house) and the sewing table in the next room and eventually ended up with this.

This quilt is wheelchair-sized for my mother-in-law, and not so far out in design that she won't appreciate it.  The unconnectedness of the prints with each other reminds me of the way her thoughts and words are no longer connected by memory.  That, I feel satisfied by--that the creative process that started off without clear direction, found its way to express what I feel about my mother-in-law.  Though memory no longer holds things together for her or for us together, she remains a whole, cohesive person, beautiful in her unconnectedness.

The only dissatisfaction I have with this quilt is that it didn't live down to my expectation that I wouldn't like it!  Now, to quilt and bind it.

Serendipity Lattice Quilt Top Finished

After much anguish over its numerous imperfections, I took the encouragement of one of my quilting class cohorts and finished this "Serendipity" lattice quilt top.  The inner border was made from the half-square triangles I cut off of the snowballed corners of the batik blocks, cut off 1/4 inch above the small triangles.  I took this opportunity to learn how to do mitered borders, even though the corners turned out to have a lot of little pieces in them.  I would rather try out and learn something new than have perfect quilts.  I am pleased with the quilt overall.  The Spring Mode II batiks and Whisper Prints background turned out the way I envisioned they would--a big plus, since This was only my second class project.

Here are closeups of the fabrics and the borders.  The mitered corners weren't sewed yet and the whole thing hadn't been pressed.

It's nice to be done with the top and ready to sandwich and quilt it.  I plan to bind it with a scrappy border of the colored batiks.

Scrappy Improv Mini Quilt

I ran across the notion of improvisational quilting on someone's blog a while back.  I wish I could remember whose it was so I could give credit.  That led me to a FB group by Sherry Lynn Wood based on her book of improv quilting scores.  I don't have the book yet, but the idea of just starting to piece and seeing where it leads is very appealing to me.  I have a hard time envisioning a whole end project, but often have a strong sense of what should come immediately next.

Having recently finished a postage stamp quilt, I had a bag full of rejected four-patches and component blocks, along with a bunch of scraps left over from my bordered squares and serendipity quilts.  The postage stamp quilt used some new and a lot of scraps from the log cabin quilt tops I did last year.  I started off sewing and slicing and ended up with three "blocks" that ultimately went together like this.









From there, it continued to take shape until I got here.

I think I am just filling in negative space now, but who knows.

2016 First Quarter FAL progress - Serendipity

We had a quilting day at church this week, so I made progress on two of my Finish-a-Long projects. I completed the top of the Serendipity quilt.

Serendipity Quilt top. 

I also worked on my bordered squares quilt, unseeing the blocks, squaring them, and putting them back together. I've got a ways to go with this.

Bordered Squares squaring up in progress

It's supposed to be extremely cold tomorrow--sub-zero F temps, so I hope to make more progress.  Caring for my mother-in-law slowed me down this week.  She is always a higher priority than quilting. 

2016 First Quarter Finish-Along Projects

My first quarter 2016 Finish Along projects (edited to add photos):

1.  Serendipity

1.  "Serendipity" lattice quilt using Robert Kaufman Whisper Prints charms and Artisan Batiks Spring Mod II jelly roll strips.  This was the spring 2015 class project at church quilting.  All the blocks are done and two rows of 5 sewn together.  Two more rows to go, plus backing, quilting, and binding.  Deadline is 1/16/16 for the church quilt show.

2. Bordered Squares

2.  "Bordered Squares" quilt using Benartex Burlap and Lace charms and Robert Kaufman Whisper Prints jelly roll strips.  I started this in January 2015.  All of the 64 blocks are complete.  I need to finish squaring them and sew them together, plus borders, backing, quilting, and binding.

3. Red Log Cabin

3. "Log Cabin" using yardage in red/maroon and yellow/gold started December 2014 for one of my twin nieces. Pattern is all sevens.  Quilt top is complete.  I need to back, quilt, and bind it.

4. Blue/Green Log Cabin

4.  "Log Cabin using yardage in greens and blues started December 2014 for the other twin niece.  Pattern is barn raising.  Quilt top is complete.  I need to back. Quilt, and bind it.

5. Disappearing Pinwheel

6. Unequal Nine-Patch

5.  "Disappearing Pinwheel" friendship star layout using yardage in black, white, and gray with turquoise piping.  This was the fall 2014 church class project and was my first quilt.  Quilt top is complete.  I need to back, quilt, and bind it.

6.  Unequal nine-patch quilt.  I don't know the name of the block pattern.  I used Flight Patterns by Tamera Kate for Michael Miller layer cake and yellow dragonfly yardage from Joann.  It is our Spring 2016 class project.  I started it in November 2015.  All of the blocks are completed.  I need to do the sashing, borders, backing, quilting, and binding.

I got the pictures loaded, though I'm not happy with their placement. Live and learn.

Beginning in the Middle

I have been doing some kind of handwork for the last 45 or so years.  Sometimes sewing.  Sometimes beading.  Sometimes painting, or crocheting, or building things.  I started quilting about 18 months ago, when I realized that I had been so busy taking care of my children and elderly relatives and making an interstate move that I hadn't done anything that felt tangibly creative in way too long.  My beads were boxed up, I couldn't find my paintbox, and my sewing machine was buried in the garage, along with my boxes of fabric, fripperies, and notions.

I started looking through our church website looking for some kind of class to take.  Anything to take my mind someplace other than whether my disabled eleven year old would make it through his school day or my mother-in-law would be making another ER visit--things over which I had no control and nominal influence.  The first listing was a quilting class that, providentially, was starting its first session in an hour.  I ran through the shower, jumped in the car, and registered online from the church parking lot before dashing inside.  I had always assumed that quilting would be far more complicated and difficult than it is.  Doing it really, really well is difficult.  But I quickly learned that a finished quilt is always better than a perfect quilt and that the wonderful group of women I would be spending my Mondays with--most of whom had been coming to the class for many years--just wanted me to love quilting as much as they did.  Not one person was critical or discouraging.  Many encouraged me to reach for artistry and to consider altering my path on that first quilt.  I made lots of mistakes and learned a lot about the "why" of the rules.  My first quilt won't win any prizes, but it was a good effort and my daughter likes it.

Since then, I've made six more quilts and have two in progress.  I've also made 12 ER visits, built, planted, and harvested 400 square feet of vegetable garden and filled a freezer with homegrown produce.  And I'm back to homeschooling my now 12 year old.  The transition to middle school was too much for him.

I used to sing opera.  Quilting is like the opera of sewing.  Instead of having the plot, the libretto, the music, the singers, orchestra, the acting, the ballet, the set, costumes and lighting, you have the block patterns, the colors, the prints (or lack thereof) the layout, the sashing and/or piping, the borders, the backing, the quilting, the binding, and the label.  There are so many ways to be creative--all of which are significant factors leading to the final outcome.  Change one thing and you have a very different quilt.  Do one thing poorly, such as forego squaring up as often as needed, and the whole quilt is affected.  When it all comes together just right, the satisfaction is enormous.

This year, I am looking forward to trying some new ways to be creative with my quilting.  I intend to work on improving my skills while following the rules, but I also want to step outside of the rules and use those skills to do some things that are outside of the block.  I have nothing to lose but some thread.  Even if I don't like what I end up with, I can always cut it up and sew it into something else until I do like it.  So here goes . . .