New Hampshire-Themed Pillows

I found the fabric for these pillows while we were in New Hampshire in October, during the glorious peak beauty of fall colors on the mountains and reflected off the lakes. We had stayed at the lake house belonging to Dave's brother and wife. The house is On Golden Pond.  Actually, it is called Squam Lake, the location where the movie, On Golden Pond, was filmed.  The loons had not migrated south yet, or at least some of them had not.  There is not much more charming than hearing the operatic calls of loons at night.

When I saw this particular fabric that I used for the pillows, while out perusing fabrics on a rainy day, I knew it was going to be transformed into pillows to line the two large and comfy couches facing each other in my sister-in-law's warm and cozy lake house family room.  I was excited about making them and would have done it right there in New Hampshire if I'd had my sewing machine with me.

Once I got back to Maryland where our RV was parked (on a friend's farm), and I could access my sewing machine, I got to work.  It was the first time I'd used the trim technique of piping.  I'd read about it in one of my sewing books, one of what is now, literally, dozens of books on fabric arts.  Most of them are on quilting, but my interests are branching out into embroidery, repurposing fabrics for other purposes besides quilting, dying fabrics, and hooking and braiding rugs...  I have a growing collection not only of fabrics, but now of trims and laces and embroidery threads, and of wools, burlap, silks, varying textures and weights.  I also just happened to have collections of old piping that came off of upholstered items.  I bought those in a fabric warehouse in North Carolina a few years ago, thinking I'd use them on the slipcovers I was going to make for our RV.  I didn't end up using them until now.  I pulled the cords out of the fabric and repurposed them into the pillow piping using the new fabric I'd purchased for the pillows.

I'm glad I found a purpose for the remnant piping pieces.  I knew I would. You might think that buying the cording would be as cheap, maybe, (I haven't priced it) and certainly easier than pulling it out of old upholstery piping.  Maybe so.  But I like repurposing stuff that could have ended up rotting in a landfill somewhere.  I like giving life in new ways to old things.  I like the adventure of it all.

I made seven pillows all told.  The backs have a solid green.  The piping is a contrasted plaid.  I just cut the seven pieces for the fronts going from left to right on the long stretch of fabric, content to have each one of the pillows show a slightly different view of the repeating design and not realizing that one of the pillows had only the two buttocks of moose, one on the left and one on the right, as the images faced off of the pillow, literally.  My husband noticed that and we had a good laugh.  His brother was the first one to notice it when he and my sister-in-law opened the box of pillows, sent to their Connecticut house (to be transported to their lake house on a future weekend).

I bought the pillow stuffing, the internal pillow forms, at Walmart.  I know, Walmart is not exactly a place I proudly call my shopping roost, but after finding Jo-Ann's Fabric prices at around $17 per pillow, and learning the hard way that stuffing the pillows with foam or batting-like wads just made them look lumpy, I knew I had to buy the pillow forms.  I found them at Walmart for $3-$7 dollars a piece, depending on firmness.  I bought some of both.

If you are wondering how I can drag around so many fabric arts books and a growing collection of fabrics and trims (and now some dyes), well, yes, it is kind of becoming a problem. Our friends in Maryland who host us and or RV a couple times a year when we come back to see our kids and grand kids, and to do our dental and medical appointments, indulge us as well, by letting us store stuff in their attic.  I have bags of varying sizes of Ziploc-type baggies filled with fabrics and piled in the attic.  And dozens of boxes of books.  Truth be told, none of those boxes of books have my fabric arts books in them.  Those are all still in the RV.  I like being able to peruse one or another on a whim.  I want them with me.  When I'm not actively sewing or blogging or hiking or eating, I am into a book, and often that book has to do with fabric arts of some sort.  Life is good. 

Progress on Sun Bonnet Sue Quilt

Progress report on the Sun Bonnet Sue quilt I am rebuilding for my friend, Lesley.  It is a quilt made by one of her grandmothers for her daughter when she was born.  The only thing that could be saved on the quilt was a few of the little Sun Bonnet Sue's.

I now have it all pinned and am ready to start the hand stitching, following the same patterns as Lesley's grandmother used.

Here is a series of pictures as I progressed through to the point of pinning the backing and batting to the topper. The hardest thing is to do quilting within the confines of a 28 foot 5th wheel RV, where 12 feet of that is a garage.  That doesn't leave me with much space to work, so I have to get creative.

Here I'm laying the Sun Bonnet Sue's on our bed in the RV, and looking at the pictures I'd taken of the quilt before I took it apart, so I could try to put it back together as closely as possible, to the original design.  In the below picture, you may notice that the two Sun Bonnet Sue's down the middle of the quilt were very similar.  That is how the original one was.  But since I had to rebuild some of the Sun Bonnet Sue's due to tears and stains, it through off the color balance a bit, so I rearranged slightly to balance, but still trying to stay true to the original intent. The rebuilt Sun Bonnet Sue's were done using two button down shirts, a blue one and a pink one, that had belonged to Lesley's father.  He died this last summer and when I offered to make Lesley a memory quilt, she asked me to rebuild this particular quilt instead.

The blue and pink Sun Bonnet Sue in the foreground was almost totally rebuilt, using a blue shirt that had belonged to my friend's father.  The pink sleeve, hand, and pink booties were saved from the original. With this particular blue Sun Bonnet Sue, I didn't put on the little left hand, which is a tiny detail of a hand that sticks out on the front side of the dress.  I can't remember if this one was missing a hand or not, but I chose to have it as my "mistake" to omit it.  

 Here is the Sun Bonnet Sue with the pink squares placed in between the Sun Bonnet Sue's.

Here I am sewing.  As you can see, I have a folding table set up alongside me in the center of what passes for our living room/dining room/kitchen.  Tight space.  I am so thankful for a husband who humors me while I take over all the living space in our RV.

This folding table doubles as an ironing board and work space for my sewing.  I store it underneath our bed.  My husband used to store it in one of the outside RV storage bins, but I wanted it close so I could get at it without dragging all his guys stuff out.   

Here is the Sun Bonnet Sue topper all pieced together, ironed with seams facing towards the pinks.

Here is the quilt pinned with the batting and backing.

As you can see, a corner of this quilt touches the floor.  Each day before I start sewing I vacuum the rugs and sweep and wash the floor.  Probably all fabric artists do the same, unless they have all kinds of table work space.  

I haven't progressed further than this yet because I switched to other projects. When living in the RV, I have to choose my project timing around what we are doing. For instance, if we are going to be stationary for a while and not having friends or family in, I can set up and take over the living space to do the cutting and measuring.  I get as many projects ready as possible for the hand stitching phase.  I can do those anywhere, such as while riding in the truck going places, or I can take them to family events and sit stitching as we talk.  So right now in the RV, I'm trying to take advantage of the stationary, non-visitor time to get as much measuring, cutting, and piecing as possible.  

Also, I'm trying to reduce bulk before we head south to Key West for the winter.  I'm "harvesting" old jeans by removing the pockets, cutting the fabric into squares, and cutting out the zippers.  I don't know what I am going to do for sure with all the zippers but stay tuned.  I have ideas bubbling up.  By cutting up the jeans like this, they take up much less space.  I can put the squares into Ziploc baggies and squeeze out the air.  They take up much less space that way, stay nice and  wrinkle-free, and are easy to find.  (I store most of my fabric supplies in the RV shower so initially it was difficult to find specific things without taking everything out.  But I've been evolving a system that is efficient and bagging separate things in Ziploc baggies is one of the things I've found that works for me.   

Quilting: Woman's Labor of Love For Family & Friends

Over Labor Day weekend, I taught my dear friend, Lesley, how to quilt, or at least what I know about quilting. That took all of two days. I love that I learned to quilt in April, taught by one good friend and am already sharing what I know with another good friend.

The Zen of quilting. Quilting is such a wonderful womanly past time. It is so embedded in our feminine culture in the U.S. I used to think that quilting was old-lady work, done by women who had few choices in life but to sit at home and sew. And maybe that once was true, not the age part but the choice part. Today I celebrate that these women who had few opportunities outside their homes used their skills, vision and patience to make beautiful functional art to benefit family and friends.

Quilting is such a nurturing family thing too, and what better way to spend a life than to do the best you can by those you love? For generations, women made quilts for their families to stay warm under or to be sold for money to help feed their families. They gave gifted quilts to friends that they'd made with their own hands and time. These quilts were not made from brand new bolts of fabric purchased at Walmart or Jo-Anne's fabrics like many are today. They were made repurposing old curtains, sheets or clothing. Any scraps of fabrics that could be reused were kept and built into future quilts or other items of clothing. Not much got thrown away like it does today. Quilting makes the environmentalist in me happy. And as a woman with choices in life, I am glad that I can now celebrate skills such as quilting that have traditionally been woman's work.

A good problem to have. Both of Lesley's grandmothers were quilters, so she comes from good quilting genes and picked up on everything very quickly. And she has a good problem, especially as a new quilter. She has several quilt toppers that her grandmothers never finished. I'd learned from my quilting friend and teacher, Karen, that many quilters sew the toppers but never finish the process of sewing the batting and backing to them and then hand-stitching through the layers. You can sometimes find toppers at second hand stores or yard sales. If you are lucky enough to find them it saves you half the work, and as Karen says, she feels honored to finish the work that a "fore-mother" started. She wonders about their life, their thoughts, their goals and loves, as she finishes what they started. I like that idea too.  Lesley pulled out pictures of her grandmothers and set them up on the buffet next to the table as we got started with the topper. We studied the pictures. We honored them with our efforts.

Getting supplies. Of the unfinished toppers, Lesley and I picked the one that looked the simplest as a starter project, a version of the nine block square. Then we went to Jo-Anne's Fabrics armed with discount coupons. Les picked out the backing, batting and other basic quilting supplies such as a rotary cutter, mat, quilting needles, quilting pins, thread and thimble. When we got back to her house, we began laying out the layers: backing, batting and topper, and pinning them together, using the backing as side hems.

My friend, Les and I, laying out the quilt topper before pinning it to the backing and batting.

Rebuilding a special quilt. While at Jo-Anne's, Les also selected and purchased batting, backing and quilting thread for me to rebuild one of her quilts that was very worn, torn and stained. This project morphed out of an offer I had made this past summer to make a memory quilt for Les when her father died.

Instead of a memory quilt, Lesley had asked me if I could repair a pink and white quilt that one of her grandmothers had made for her oldest child, her only daughter, when she was born. This daughter is now an adult and has a daughter of her own who is just starting middle school. Neither of them know about this secret quilt project, which is half the fun for me in accepting this project.

Rebuilding this quilt is such a labor of love for my friend and her family, and such a wonderful project celebrating motherhood, grandmothers...and yes, fathers and grandfathers.  At my suggestion, Lesley kept a couple of her father's shirts which I am now using to rebuild parts of this quilt.

When I first examined the quilt, I saw that it was in very bad shape and would basically have to be rebuilt. The only parts that can be saved are the little girls with bonnets. Even with the little bonneted girls, a couple have to totally be remade and a couple more have to be partially remade. I am using the material from the two shirts of Lesley's dad to rebuild these little girls. Lesley's daughter was very close to her grandfather so she will cry when she sees this quilt finished. I know it.  I am so happy to do something that will have such an impact.

Stretching and Obsessing, in a good way. This project is stretching my skills, a good thing. It is the perfect project because I feel comfortable to figure it out, knowing that Lesley has faith in me. I am no professional, but I am dedicated, excited about the project, and am finding that once I start a quilt, I am obsessed with finishing it. I find myself spending time thinking about it when I'm not actually working on it. This is the way I was when I sewed each of the five memory quilts for my sister's kids when she died.  This is how I was when I sewed the two rag-denim quilts that I made, one for a niece and one for the top loft in our RV. And this is how I am with rebuilding the quilt for Lesley and her daughter. I think I will be finished long before winter is over.  I could even, conceivably, be finished before we leave for Key West in mid October.

Quilting on a beautiful day. While Lesley and I worked on the quilts, with beautiful sunlight streaming in the windows, we sang along to familiar oldies playing in the background. We gossiped a bit, we laughed a lot, and we caught up with each other lives, we shared secrets. 

Adding to the warmth of the ambiance, Lesley started making bread in the afternoon, multi-tasking between that and the quilting, and giving us wonderful smells.  I love when I'm working an artistic project and several of my senses are being fed. The fabric feels so good to my fingers.  The colors are gorgeous and delight my eyes.  The music was fun and singing together was even greater bonding for our friendship.  Then the smell of bread cooking, it just doesn't get any better than that. But yet it did. In looking out the glass doors to Lesley's backyard, I could see a few objects I'd given her from my backyard when we got ready to sell our house a couple years ago. It makes me happy that things I've loved are now loved by someone I love.

What a great couple of days working with Lesley on these quilts.