Thrice Thanked

I received my first thank you note via blog the other day. My friend Jonathan posted a picture and some lovely thoughts about the quilt I made for his daughter. This thanks was on top of an email and a post card. Thrice thanked! Makes me want to send his family a You're Welcome quilt. Instead I shall put that energy into completing more quilts to send out into the world.

Gamelan Quilt Completed

Remember that pink and green quilt that I used to demonstrate self-binding back in April? The one based on the Gamelan pattern from Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's book The Modern Quilt Workshop: Patterns, Techniques, and Designs from the Funquilts Studio? Well I finally mailed it to its intended owner, so I can finally post more pictures of it. Clearly I was battling the shadows on my porch when I took these, but you get the idea. And I think the low angle of the sun really shows off all the quilting, which was a key part of this experience.

Pretty much every technique I used on this quilt is a first for me - piecing circles, free-motion machine quilting, quilting from the back, self-binding. I learned a lot making it. I used the Bernina Stitch Regulator to free-motion machine quilt.

First, I quilted from the back following the outlines of the large scale print (the pink fabric you can see in the self-binding pictures). I didn't quilt-from the back in the area where the pieced circles were on the front.

I quilted from the front for the circles, following the designs created by piecing symmetrical patterns together. All of the fabric is from Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's fabric line except for the yellow print which is from Luana Rubin's Joie De Vivre line. Ironically, Rubin's symmetrical print lined up more easily than the two Ringle & Kerr prints, which were designed specifically for use in this pattern. I'm a huge fan of Ringle & Kerr's 813-411, the green small scale print that I used as the background on the top. You can piece the heck out of it and not see a single seam line.

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Underground Railroad Doll Quilt Completed

I finally bound the Underground Railroad Doll Quilt. I used a Bernina Binder Attachment Accessory #84 and Foot #94. Well, technically, I borrowed my friend Bridget's and hers are a bit older and don't look exactly like the ones Bernina currently sells, but it's the same idea. Basically the accessory and attachment fold a strip of fabric as you sew it around the edge of the quilt, ostensibly sewing through the front and back of the binding at the same time. Bridget isn't a fan of using this on a quilt with corners; she finds it much easier on quilts with rounded corners. But taking the information I gleaned from a demonstration of Martelli's Kwik Bind Sytem at the Glendale Quilt Show, I thought I did a pretty good job on my corners for a first try.
This is the part where the end of the binding overlapped the beginning. I didn't try to do anything to fancy, just folded over the tail, lapped it, and sewed right over it. I hand stitched closed the folded over end along with the miters in all the corners.
I wouldn't say this results in contest entry worthy binding. But it certainly did a sufficient job for charity quilts or, with a little practice, gift quilts for non-quilt snobs. It was certainly faster and less time consuming than a traditional binding. Probably took about the same amount of time as self-binding, and might result in a more durable binding since you can use bias strips.
I don't know if I'll be shelling out the big bucks for a binding attachment set up any time soon, but I will certainly borrow Bridget's again.

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IQF Long Beach

I didn't experience my first IQF Long Beach nearly as intensively as I took on IQF Chicago a couple of years ago. I didn't take any classes or attend any events. Mostly I did the good ol' walk around the quilts and vendors. Following are a few close ups of the three quilts that I found particularly inspirational.

Spring in Japan by Akiko Kawata of Osaka, Japan. Machine and hand appliqued, machine pieced, and machine quilted.

The Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., inspired me to translate the overwhelming beauty of cherry blossoms into a quilt. That quilt is still in the development phase, but Akiko Kawata executed a beautiful, abstracted rendition of the subject matter that is certainly along the lines I am considering. In particular, I am fascinated by the idea of representing the cherry blossoms with either single circles or circles for each petal. Here the maker used single perfect circles in a variety of fabrics to represent cherry blossoms.

Homecoming by Marlene Shea. Hand appliqued, photo transfer, hand quilted.


I find photo transfer problematic in quilting. When it is good, it is very, very good, but when it is bad, it is horrid. Here Marlene Shea used transfers of antique portrait photographs to fill the windows in traditional house blocks, which she then alternated with traditional primitive appliqued willow tree blocks, all made with reproduction fabrics. To top off the "traditionalness," she hand pieced, hand appliqued, and hand quilted the piece. So the photo transfer technique is the only contemporary aspect of the quilt. Shifting this technique out of its usual context and into the milieu of reproduction quilting made this quilt stand out from the rest.

People's Park, Nanning China by Martha David of Spencerport, NY from the Hoffman Challenge.

I'm a sucker for fish, particularly koi. This block from Martha David's entry into the Hoffman Challenge is no bigger than 8 x 10 inches. She captured the movement of a school of fish as well as the shapes of individual fish in amazing detail on such a small scale.

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Self-Binding

I have a confession to make. I hate binding. Not like I hate doing my taxes (i.e., so much that I pay someone else to do it), but it is my least favorite part of quilting. I have heard people who extol the virtues of binding, equating it with the final stretch of a marathon or tying ribbon on a package. I don't run unless chased and I use gift bags for a reason. My relationship to binding is best summed up by this quote from Yoda,

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

To face my fear of binding I took a class at IQF Chicago 2008 with Kathy Kansier called Quilts with Great Edges. We covered at least fourteen different binding techniques or edge treatments, including the humble wrapped or self-bound hemmed edge.While the wrapped or self-bound hemmed edge may seem humble it is nothing if not logical. When non-quilters come into my studio and see a quilt that has been quilted and is waiting to be bound, many have spontaneously said, "So you're going to wrap the fabric from the back to the front, roll it over a couple of times and sew it down?" Knowing nothing about quilting or sewing, they can see the logic of self-binding.

But the fact that it is logical does not mean it is simple. I discovered this when trying to self-bind my Gamelan quilt, based on the pattern from Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's book The Modern Quilt Workshop: Patterns, Techniques, and Designs from the Funquilts Studio.
The trick with self-binding is that your quilting determines the edge. If you were doing a standard binding, you'd just hack off any quilting done beyond the squared up edge. But with a self-binding, if you didn't stop quilting at the same place all along the edge, then you'll have some unsewing to do. This issue is compounded when you quilt from the back. Quilting from the back is quilting with the backside of your quilt facing up usually in order to follow a pattern on the backing fabric. That's what I did on the Gamelan quilt. I used a large scale print on the back (the pink fabric - which is from Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's fabric line, as were almost all the fabrics in this quilt), so I could outline quilt from the back.

My backing (the pink fabric) was about four inches larger on each side than my quilt top (the green fabric). And, despite my efforts, was not particularly evenly aligned with the front during the basting process. So on some edges I'd quilted beyond the edge of the top and on other edges I barely made it to the edge of the top. I ended up making a chalk line on the top where one would normally cut if one were squaring up a top for a traditional binding. Then I ripped out the quilting stitches outside the chalk line.
At that point I could trim the backing and the batting to the edge of the quilting by laying a ruler along the edge of the quilting and folding the top back over the ruler and out of the way. [Can you tell I took this picture after I had already trimmed what needed trimming? Can you tell I need a manicure? That reminds me of a hand piecing class I took with Jinny Beyer in which she used this neat enlarging projector so she could put her hands underneath it and the projector would enlarge the image onto a screen. She said this was great for showing a classroom full of people how to hand piece, but it was not so great the day after she'd been working in the garden. So the next time you're envious of Jinny Beyer's quilting talent and fabric empire, just take solace in the fact that she too is in need of a manicure.]I trimmed the top to an inch wider on all sides from the back and batting.I did a test run on a scrap of paper to determine how much I could cut off the corner to reduce bulk without leaving raw edges exposed. Then I trimmed the corners of the top, so when they're folded over to the back they form miters. I folded the edge of the top in half and ironed it. Then I folded the corners toward the center and ironed them.
Not having the greatest of confidence in my ironing, I basted down the corners so they would be more easy to form into miters when I got to them. This worked well and the basting stitches came out easily after the binding was sewn on.
I folded the edge of the top to the back of the quilt as I sewed the edge down. Finally I hand sewed a few stitches in each corner to secure the miters, which is a heckuva lot less hand sewing than the standard binding method.

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Diane Ricks at 2009 Glendale Quilt Show

Yesterday at the Glendale Quilt Show I examined the quilt that won First Place for Innovative Quilt and found it was done by Diane Ricks. I took Microwave Dyeing for Cotton and my cousins took Needle Felting with Diane Ricks at IQF Chicago in 2008. In fact, all the non-sparkly hand dyed fabric in my Gwen Marston Liberated Stars is from that dyeing workshop. We even did shibori in the microwave!

Ms. Ricks just happened to be passing by, so I took her picture with her quilt. She was so proud! The quilt is named Ghost Dance. Ms. Ricks described it like so:

The book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee inspired me to make this series of small quilts joined into a triptych as honor to their memory. It is dye painted, free hand drawn, and screen printed on rusted cotton with free motion quilting featuring images of the fallen warriors in the quilting.

I wonder if she intended the complementary color scheme of the orange from her quilt set off by the blue of the background drapery. Genius!

Gwen Marston Unleashed

A few Fridays ago I took a fun class on Liberated Stars with Gwen Marston, a quilt historian and renowned quilter in her own right. She has to be one of the most prolific authors on the subject of quilts with both popular and scholarly publications.

The workshop was put on by the Flying Geese Quilters Guild. Gwen's name on their schedule of presenters (along with Katie Pasquini Masopust's) was one of the reasons I joined this particular guild. As always the guild members were friendly and interesting and just so darned fun to spend a day with. Also as always, the workshop took place in the lovely large classroom at Material Possessions Quilt Shop. Think global, sew local: support your local quilt shop!

Unlike Katie Pasquini Masopust's workshop, in which every moment was accounted for and there were exercises and group critique sessions, Gwen Marston's class was almost entirely unstructured. Recounting the instructions given would make the class seem much less interesting than it was. Really it was about spending the day picking Gwen Marston's brain.If you want to make a Liberated Star quilt, get thee to the library and pick up Gwen Marston's out of print masterpiece Liberated Quiltmaking. It is also part of The Parts Department section of Collaborative Quilting. She mentioned that a forthcoming book, possibly Freddy & Gwen Collaborate Again: Freewheeling Twists on Traditional Quilt Designs, would have updated instructions for many of her previously published design/methods including Liberated Stars. My friend R.J. recently wrote that she found the previous book's precursor Collaborative Quilting inspiring.I must admit, I checked Liberated String Quilts out of the well-stocked Monroe County Public Library in Bloomington, Indiana, last year and found myself vaguely dissatisfied. I didn't understand Gwen Marston's approach. I wasn't open to the idea of looking at a series of historic quilts and developing axioms about their creation. I guess I struggle with the idea of reducing these historic quilts to "patterns" for the modern quilter. This is not a reflection on Gwen, but a reflection on the quilting-industrial complex's obsession with kit-able units. Her current book Ideas and Inspirations: Abstract Quilts in Solids, which she published outside the traditional quilt book publishing establishment, seems to be the truest to her sensibility - no "patterns," no "lessons," no "projects." Just images of beautiful quilts intended to inspire. The product description on Amazon (which I believe is in Gwen's own words) sums it up nicely:

This is a book for grownup quilters. It's a book for the many accomplished quilters who are not looking for yet another project book with pages of detailed elementary instructions on how to make someone else's quilt.

Seeing Gwen Marston in action and hearing her stories addressed my concerns and converted me to her fan club.While piecing our liberated stars we talked about Gwen's favorite quilters. Of course she discussed Mary Schafer, about whom Gwen has authored two books Mary Schafer, American Quilt Maker and the currently out of print Mary Schafer and Her Quilts. Additionally she mentioned Susan McCord and Emily Adams (I might have written down the latter incorrectly - but The Quilt Index does have a number of quilts under the name Emily Adams Hubbell). She talked a lot about Susan McCord's work, noting that it is housed in the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan. She was especially taken by McCord's use of four unique applique borders on one quilt as well as her use of three, two, or even one border. She specifically mentioned a turkey tracks quilt by McCord with one applique border with sensational, exquisite, detailed applique that probably could not be sustained for four borders. She liked the idea of exerting the same amount of effort your might put into all four borders, but concentrating it all on one amazing border.Her favorite style of American quilts are folk art quilts. She started making pieced traditional quilts. She said, "As most young quilters do, I thought I knew a lot about making quilts." [As a young quilter I don't take offense, particularly as I don't think I know much at all about making quilts -- not to mention my whole Buddhist beginner's mind approach, but this isn't about my issues.] Through extensive research into actual early quilts she discovered that quilts didn't conform to the 1970s ideal of the traditional quilt. Real early quilts (as opposed to idealized traditional quilts) had borders chopped off, borders that were not the same, points that didn't match, fewer than four borders, and all sorts of characteristics that "traditional quilters" would categorize as flaws.In studying folk art traditions including but also beyond early American quilts, Marston noticed some universal folk art characteristics including lack of set patterns, frequent color substitution, and the free placement of elements. She specifically focused on the transmission of design elements among craftspeople, the appearance of design elements across cultures and media, and the transmission of wisdom through folk art. For example, the traditional design elements in kilims from Anatolia were passed down from weaver to weaver the same way traditional quilt block designs like churn dash were passed down from quilter to quilter. People then interpreted these design elements as they saw fit. Some design elements appear across cultures and media. For example, she found flying geese designs in a kilim as well as an Uzbek ceremonial horse blanket. Folk art tends to convey wisdom from one generation to the next. For example she has an example of Ghanaian applique which conveys parenting advice, "Don't tell a child not to eat hot peppers. He will find that out soon enough." Another Ghanaian applique depicts a man on the ground lying on top of a gun with a leopard on his chest. The moral of that story, "If you shoot the leopard and do not kill the leopard, it would have been better not to shoot the leopard."

She admonished the collected quilters that Picasso wasn't worried about coloring within the lines. In other words, precision does not equal artistic success. A good lesson for quilters, young and old.

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