More Quilts - A Flannel One For My Dad

After a long hiatus from blogging, I hope to catch up and resume with a fairly regular schedule .  I have done many quilts since I last posted. 

The quilt below is a twin bed size.  I started it using stash fabrics, most of which I bought in thrift stores.  When I was sitting outside our fifth wheel trailer under the awning, hand quilting this quilt, a lady quilter came over to our campsite to chat me up.  She wanted to know where I source my fabrics.  This quilt was all flannel pieces.  I proudly informed her that I purchased nearly all of it from thrift stores, estate sales, or repurposed it from old clothes (like most original quilters did).  Her face changed to thinly veiled disgust.  I guess it's not for everyone.  I have become a fan of Cas Holmes who recycles or upcycles (whatever word you prefer) into fiber art. She has gypsy roots. I really relate to Bohemian lifestyle, traveling (wandering) and living small, reusing things, being content. When I read about Cas and viewed her work I loved it. I keep finding  more and more of us out here and there in the world who work with found or existing items and fabrics.  

The quilt below was made for my dad who had had a major stroke and ended up in a nursing home. He was a tall gentleman, 6'3" and over 200 pounds and also had initial signs dementia so home care was not going to be an easy option and my mother who was relatively healthy at the time opted for nursing home care.  She and my dad had nursing home insurance that was so good that its not offered anymore as an insurance choice.  

Dad was hurt and very angry, fit to be tied, to be put in a nursing home.  He was hard to be around. It seemed even as if he was being tortured, so great was his distress. He had been a successful farmer and was locally involved in government and education for most of his adult life.  He had put seven kids through school or saw them launched in houses and careers.  It has a sad way to wind up what was an almost 92 year life, with the last couple in a nursing home.  I had trouble seeing him and I know it was a cop out not to spend more time with him at this stage of his life. He was in a nursing home that one of my sisters worked in as well as a sister-in-law so I knew he was as well cared for as possible outside of being in his own home.  

I loved him so much and thought of him though I was not there often.  We were traveling in our fifth wheel a lot and did not stay in Iowa full time to visit him as I'd done a couple years before with my sister who was dying of cancer.  Maybe because of the toll it took on me being the primary care giver to my sister during the day for almost a year, that I couldn't be around my dad all that much in his last years. 

So I felt a strong urge to do something for him.  Something that was within my capability and that took a lot of thought and a lot of my attention.  I made this quilt to go on his bed, to cover his body and provide him warmth and love, whether he was aware of it or not, and I don't think he was aware of that fact by the time I was finished with it.  After he died, I gave it to one of my sisters.  At the viewing for his funeral, she had it covering a table holding photographs.  

I look at the pictures of this quilt and remember laying it out on a bedroom floor in a friend's house in Maryland. I remember planning it, piecing it, layering the finished topper and the sandwiched batting to the backing, all of it carefully taped with painters tape to the clean, wooden floor and carefully crawling around on top of it to baste the layers together. This took several days.  I remember getting a couple calls from a niece reporting on my dad's condition as I was carefully moving over the top of this quilt with a curved needle and long stretches of thread.  

So this quilt was stitched with love, carefully planned, neatly done.  It is one of my favorites and I'm really proud of my work. 

                                            

Latest Projects

From the Ellicott City Sew-Vac Sew Fair in November, I learned to make fabric bowls using the stiff and tough kind of interfacing.  The lady demonstrating these showed how you can use machine quilting to make the texture more interesting.  I thought it would be a good way for me to practice machine quilting.  They say if you practice machine quilting for even just ten minutes a day for six months you will acquire the desired control and skill.  Or begin to.

Here are some projects.  I did though I only quilted one and didn't get pictures of it after having quilted it.  Forgot.

It was fun piecing this together inside the bowl, cutting strips of different widths, fitting them together, finger pressing seams down before sewing, working the fabric, establishing rapport with it as I made it curve up and down the sides yet link to it's mates.  One of the fabric artists at the Sew Fair called this making the fabric "mind" like making children mind.  That was cute and we all laughed.  But I prefer to think of it in the win win model of establishing rapport.  More Zen-like for me.

So the basket above got quilted in the pebbles style but I forgot to take pictures and gave it to a friend, filled with examples of my first two batches of homemade soap each individually wrapped up with rustic brown bags and tied off with either twine or vintage fabric ribbons I'd bought at thrift stores over the last couple of years during my travels.

And the baskets below I haven't quilted yet.  This blue one in the picture below needs to be reworked before I quilt it.  The small circle on the bottom is a little off center.  I plan to pull those threads and re-attach it, then quilt it with the machine using wavy, swirly lines inspired by the fabric on the outside.

And this bowl, below, was the first one I did and actually probably turned out the best.  I liked it as it was and was afraid to ruin it by quilting it.  I didn't trust my beginner skills and this is ironic but probably not that uncommon among other budding artists, or any other new endeavors.  How do you learn if you don't try?  And the whole reason I started working on these fabric bowls was just that it would give me fun, small projects where I could practice machine quilting rather than just doing pieces of scraps in a quilt sandwich.

 This one I'm leaving in my friend's condo in Ocean City, MD.  I am putting some of my homemade soaps in it for her as well.  Over the next few years I hope to make more of these bowls and more different kinds of soaps.  They will all make nice gifts.  I have to stop worrying about whether people will like them, whether the soaps will just get thrown away unused and whether the bowls will end up in the trash or at a thrift shop.  I see so many homemade items in thrift shops.  Most deserve being there.  I keep telling myself not to worry.  My stuff may end up there too but I'm still on my journey of creation.  I am evolving.  My work is evolving.  What do I care what happens to the steps along the way? It's OK if they fall away after I've moved on.

Sew Fair

Three days of lectures and demonstrations at the Ellicott City Sew-Vac - that's a lot of education, a lot of exposure to techniques, machines and materials. Here's some pictures of the event, some of the finished creations and some of fabric artists.

I sat beside a lady, Lori, or Lauri, I'm not sure which, who taught me a lot just in her whispered comments during the presentations and explanations during the breaks.  She has seven machines but that includes a couple of vintage ones.  It seems most fabric artists have at least a couple of vintage machines.  I did too, when I had a house.  But then, I didn't have the time that I do now, to go exploring  in fabrics.  I wish Lori and I had exchanged contact information.  I think she could use a friend.  She lost her only child, a grown son, around this time last year.  She is having a tough time.  She asked me for a hug as she dropped tears when the story came out to me and a lady in her late 70's.  I was honored to be asked and delivered that hug with the warmth and empathy that I had in me, having experienced some losses of loved ones in the last few years.

But as our other conversational companion, the 70-some year old lady, commented, losing a child is the worst thing and thankfully I've not been through that hell.  She lost her husband a few years back and had a friend who'd lost both husband and child.  Losing a child is worse, she told her friend.  We all agreed there could be nothing worse.

Lori said she is pretty much a hermit except for work.  She owns an Indian motorcycle and occasionally rides with a group but hasn't ridden much in the last year.  I don't have my motorcycle anymore.  I gave my big Harley cruiser to my son and am living in an RV and travel the country, so that is part of why I didn't take the extra step to make contact with Lori.  Still, I come back to this area a lot. It is home to me.  We have kids here.  I should have reached out more permanently.

It was a good three days of education and exposure to the subculture of fabriholics.   

Taking Lessons

It's time for me to increase my skills in ways besides looking at You Tube and reading fabric arts books.  I bought my Baby Lock Tempo from the Ellicott City Sew-Vac and they have lessons on site.  I signed up after taking my machine in to get cleaned and serviced and to ask questions about why I was having troubles with the canvas and thread to make backpacks for a friend's church charity effort (sending school bags to children in Africa).  I learned so much just from the five minute discussion with the staff that I was convinced I needed to participate in some of their training events.  I'd looked on line trying to figure out why I was having trouble but didn't find the correct answer.  I spent more time researching this on line then the time it took me to drive to the Sew-Vac and talk to them.

So I signed up for the machine quilting beginner and intermediate sessions, each about two hours of time.

Here are my practice sessions.  The little circles are the "pebbles" and was taught in our first session. The swirling things are "Wonder Woman's Hair" but is called McTavishing.  Karen McTavish created this and it's now named after her but she called it Wonder Woman's Hair, from what our instructor said.  He said she reportedly got bored with the stippling, AKA the "wandering around" pattern.  I could see why someone would get bored with that.  I don't particularly care for it.  It seems to have no imagination.  Maybe it's just because I see it too much, and see it on quilts where there is little evidence of creativity, just following someone elses pattern as if they have no ideas of their own.

So below is more of my playing around with the McTavishing, which I think was better named Wonder Woman's Hair.

 Below is more fabric doodling from the other side of my quilted block. .

 I got bored with the McTavishing/Wonder Woman Hair and started making a sun burst but the instructor came by and apparently thought I was having trouble understanding what McTavishing looked like and how to do it.  He politely asked me if he could sit at my machine and demonstrate.  They he began patient reteaching me how to McTavish.

I get it that I need to work on my skills.  But I don't want to stay on topic for too long because I fear becoming one of those quilters who only does what they are told, who follow the rules, who don't think of quilting as art.  Or maybe they do but they like what we think of as "Annapolis Art" which to us is paintings of sailboats and beach scenes.  Not that those aren't nice.  They're real nice.  But I like what we think of as "Baltimore Art"  Edgy.  Creative.  Pushing the boundaries, breaking out across the borders.  Going rogue.

I bought machine quilting gloves.  Now I can channel Michael Jackson.  Ugh.  His musical talent evidenced genius but his predilection for little boys made me sick.  I can never get passed that.

Recovering Couch and Chaise Cushions at the Beach

Recovering cushions is pretty easy.  I literally deconstructed the old ones and used them as patterns to sew the new ones.  I even reused the old zippers.

Here is the couch.  All the cushions are reversible in that you can flip them over (not turn them inside out).  All the back cushions have loose stuffing in them and two covered buttons on the front and the back.  The only thing I worry about is the metal part of the button separating from the cloth outer part.  I should have "super glued" them into the metal shells.  One has already popped out.  I did a bunch of extra covered buttons but it would be a drag to pull all that loose stuffing out and reattach the button since the front and the back ones are tied together inside the stuffing in order to pull them inward.  Maybe I need a class on upholstery to learn tricks of the trade on things like those buttons. 

Isn't the sign above the chaise lounge cute?  "Peace, Love and Sandy Feet".  The furniture I recovered is in my friend's oceanfront condo in Ocean City, Maryland.

And last but not least, I recovered two small pillows.

There is lots of extra fabric on the bolt.  It is good quality, two layer fabric, attached with the stitching of the nautical designs and was beautiful to work with.

Below is what the furniture looked like before I recovered them.  This denim-look fabric wasn't in bad shape except that it had little balls of piling from wear like a sweater. 

 You can see the piling in the picture below, as well as the little side tucks that the back cushions had.  Cute.

Some buttons were missing on the upholstery when I started so that is why I recovered several extras.  But when I recovered, the only thing I did differently was to not add buttons on the bottom chaise lounge cushion.  It seemed to me that with the wear and tear a bottom cushion get, especially since the condo is a rental half the year, that buttons would probably get popped off again.  If Retta wants them attached, I can still do it.  I'll wait and see what she thinks. 

And here's a view of one of the many sunrises I enjoyed while working on this project. 

And another.

40 Book Bags for School Kids

A friend of mine does volunteer work for Lutheran World Relief.  Last year she committed to doing a few hundred book bags that were to be shipped off to somewhere in Asia or Africa.  She had called me asking for advice because here Bernina Quilting Edition machine was clumping thread underneath.  She was pulling her hair out with panic trying to get some traction on the project.

I was on the other side of the US at that time and after talking her through some steps she could take such as tension settings, making sure she was using the correct thread and needle for the project and had a new needle, checking the bobbin area for gunk, making sure she was correctly threaded and the bobbin was correctly wound, she ended up taking her machine to a Bernina dealer for service.  After that she was OK.

But this time I was at her house when the project kicked off.  She had committed to sewing 40 book bags this time.  The others had been farmed out to other ladies.  I offered to do the 40 book bags for her.

They are of a simple design as you can see using canvas with ropes inserted into the casings and loops.

But the thread my friend had selected, as well as the needles, weren't correct for the project.  She'd initially insisted they were what she used last year so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I couldn't get her Bernina or my BabyLoc to work right. In total frustration, after going on YouTube and Googling issues, and reading and reading our machine manuals, I took my BabyLoc to be serviced and learned that the thread and the needle were inappropriate for the job.  The thread was too thick, and not best quality brand.  They recommended a high quality medium weight thread with a denim-purpose needle and to use the triple stitch which sews over the same line three times and does this in small segments. It takes a ton of thread, is a little slower, but holds nicely on heavy weight fabrics and looks nice like a top stitch.

I'd never used a triple stitch before and I liked the feeling of learning something new.  While in the Sew Vac Shop in Ellicott City, MD, picking up my machine and talking things through, I decided to sign up for their introductory machine quilting session, just two hours, followed by an intermediate machine quilting session a few weeks later.  I will do both this fall.

I like the zen of hand quilting and dislike the look of many machine quilted quilts but I like the really artistic work of some quilters who work both by hand and using their machines.  I want to be able to choose the right method, the right skill for what I want to create.

I feel good about this decision to get some training besides my books and YouTube.  

Even though I got my machine serviced and learned how to complete the project with the correct thread and needles, I used my friend's Bernina when I got back since it was already set up.  

Mise en place.

Bags ready to be roped.

So I am excited about heading into a new phase of my sewing.