"conversational geese" finished

When I finished this quilt top and posted it on Instagram and Facebook a while back, an old blog friend of mine in Oregon asked if it was for sale! :)

Well yes!

So I finished quilting and binding it today and will send these geese off to their new home with her next week. She plans to hang this on her bedroom wall. I think that is SO COOL.

I AM EXCITED AND HAPPY!

Almost all the fabrics are either from Nancy's stash or mine. Only recently I purchased a few of them, like the Charley Harper cardinal print, which I love. The red with white dots was a dish towel in Nancy's stash.

This blue print is nostalgic and cottage-y. So sweet.

The goldenrod in the meadow is happy for the geese to fly nearby. 

"Gertrude" quilt top is done

Books are interesting. I have collected expensive photo books for years. I just gave away a gorgeous set of Carolyne Roehm flower arranging and lifestyle books. Now I'm collecting quilt books. For Christmas I received a $200 Amazon gift card from the faculty in the English department where I advise undergraduates. It has paid for several quilt books and other things besides. That was such a perfect and generous gift.

One of the books is this one by Jane Brocket.

Her floral sensibilities and preferences are similar to mine. It makes me happy that all these floral fabrics in my stash can be put to good modern use. The quilt I imitated is one she calls "Hydrangea." So lovely!

I collect postcards for bookmarks. This one of Picasso is from the Art Institute in Chicago.

I wasn't sure I was going to like the fuss of cutting all these squares and precision piecing. After all, I've gone improv, and one of the great things about that is not measuring or worrying about matching seams.

But this quilt was one of the most pleasurable I've ever pieced. Good to know that I still enjoy measuring, cutting, and piecing like this. 

The real trick in Jane's design is combining the fabrics in good and interesting ways. I spent a lot of time arranging and rearranging fabric rows on the design board. But wow, what a satisfying process. I used a trick I learned while sewing Olive's quilt, which is that you can combine almost any fabrics if you juxtapose them with at least one color the same.

"conversational geese" top done

I told you last post about the method I used to sew these flying geese. I loved the process.

This sweet Maywood Studio floral in blue, red and yellow makes me happy.

Find at:

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Etsy

Pinterest

"ships & sails" baby boy quilt finished and listed

This has been a fun project. The strips of stripes (from a dust ruffle) were narrow, and I enjoyed letting that guide the design.

I've had the anchor fabric forever (from Nancy?) and felt happy and relieved to finally use it, for the backing.

The triangles are from my old stash, and from Nancy's old stash. Some are left from pillows she made for her beach lodge condo.

The quilt measures 39" x 48"

all cotton

cotton batting

machine pieced and quilted

Etsy listing here

stash placemats and a baby boy quilt "ships & sails"

Stuff for Etsy. Placemats from my stash, which is big enough (thanks to Nancy) to create a thousand combinations.

The pink and yellow polka dot is left over from Casey's "sugar sand" baby quilt. Some of these fabrics I've had since the 1980s, some I've bought more recently, and some have been given me by my stash sister Nancy. There is even fabric from my mom's old doilies, the ones I made coasters with.

* * *

This blue and white stripe was a dust ruffle. I am trying to remember if we used it in one of our houses or if Nancy gave me this too. Besides that fabric, many of these triangles (flying geese) were fabrics she gave me which are shirting. I have always loved quilts made from shirts. Anyway, this will be a baby boy quilt to [hopefully] sell in my Etsy shoppe. I've quilted one small section. I think I'll straight-line quilt the triangles and free-motion quilt the other panels in swirls to resemble wind and waves. The quilt is called "ships & sails," which rhymes with "snips and snails and puppy dog tails." I'll post when finished.

totem quilt finished

This quilt has been on the down low because it's a surprise for someone's birthday. Since I don't think that "someone" will come here, I think it's safe to post this. I simply need the satisfaction of posting photos now that it's done.

I did not know about "totem" quilts until seeing one recently. Simple, right? The pieced parts are down the middle, like a totem pole.

It's a lap quilt, and the back is flannel. Cozy for Michigan winters!

As always, I used lots of fabrics. I just can't help myself, though "sugar sand" was an attempt at a more minimal design.

I did choose a simple tan linen for the sides. Not sure I would use such a lightweight linen again, because it snags. I like how it puckers, though.

This section of the quilt was pieced first. I was designing a pillow for this same recipient, but I felt it was too much for her space. I couldn't abandon it and eventually built this totem from it.

I used the same oriental toile linen in some of the pieces for the binding. The tan is the perfect shade to match the side panels.

For the quilting on the side panels, I imitated the swirling pattern of the black fabric with white dots.

I was with my stash sister, Nancy, on the weekend, because of the baby shower for the mother-to-be who received "sugar sand" — Nancy's granddaughter. Nancy gave me more fabric!

She also gave me these hankies. I had just been thinking I wanted to stop using boxed tissues, because I use so many for my nose that never stops. So here goes using hankies again! Haven't done that since I was a little girl. It takes some getting used to.

almost finished "jonquils & crocus" quilt top, Gee's Bend, and Korean Pojagi

Some quilts flow out of and back to the heart with more joy than others. These twelve log cabin squares have been in process since daffodils and crocus broke in 2013. It is pieced with cherished fabrics from a favorite early 1980s skirt, curtains from our late 1980s kitchen in Istanbul, a favorite farm skirt that I tore, fabrics from my earliest stash and new ones I used in Olive's quilt. These were actually the first free form wonky squares I made getting back into quilting. Since the '80s I haven't wanted to make a traditional quilt again, but when I discovered the modern quilt movement, my passion for quilting was rekindled. (I think the free-cutting without templates reflects the personal freedom I've cultivated since those days.)

In this closeup you can see the 1980s skirt, which is the muted purple and sage on beige that frames the big square. You also see the bright red ethnic print that was my thrift store farm skirt, torn in some sort of farm work (not that I do much of that), also the center of the small square right bottom.

I've kept seeing the pile of these squares and asking my designing mind to choose a background fabric. Should it be plain muslin, or what?

A couple of months ago Don and I were in a local store that used to be a dime store, now refurbished with beautiful homey things, but retaining lots of original features like the old wood floor and candy counter. It's nostalgic fun buying Easter candy there. This shop has a corner with sewing merchandise and some of the most charming fabrics I've seen anywhere! This is just 10 minutes from our farm. Don watched with pleasure as I devoured the fabrics in that "oh-my-god look what I've discovered" frenzy. This brown Moda Glamping Miss Daisy Dark Chocolate caught my eye in the sale bin. When I got it home, I thought it might work for these squares. I had not pictured busy fabric, but it somehow works for me. 

Gee's Bend

I wanted the quilt to have the feel of one made decades ago by a farm woman, or maybe by a woman of Gee's Bend, Alabama. I love what Alivia Wardlaw said of Gee's Bend quilts: 

"The compositions of these quilts contrast dramatically with the ordered regularity associated with many styles of Euro-American quiltmaking. There's a brilliant, improvisational range of approaches to composition that is more often associated with the inventiveness and power of the leading 20th-century abstract painters than it is with textile-making," writes Alvia Wardlaw, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts [Houston]. (wiki)

See many of their quilts here. Below is one example. There are beautiful brief stories about some of those quilts there. I can't tell you how much these quilts and their stories move me. I ask myself, do I feel more connected with Afro-American aesthetics than Euro-American ones? Maybe the answer is not yes, but both and. There are several YouTube videos about the Gee's Bend quilters. A 10-minute one is here.

"Bars," ca. 1960 quilt by Gearldine Westbrook of Gee's Bend, born 1919. cotton, wool, printed terry cloth, 79 x 70 inches.
I think it is incredibly beautiful. Gee's Bend quilters used whatever they had, especially old clothes that weren't worn any more. One story is about a woman whose husband died, and she made a quilt from his clothes to keep her warm at night.

Yes. The "modern quilt movement" is not modern at all, or should I say it was not invented by Euro-American women in the 2000s! After all "modern art" started in the 1860s with the likes of Van Gogh and Cezanne. However, folk art has existed for as long as humans have, of course. I love that folk art from any century and continent seems modern, contemporary, timelessly appealing.

The upper left square has the white, yellow and gray floral mini-print from our Istanbul curtains. Oh that was quite an adventure, finding a huge shop full of imitation Laura Ashley fabrics in the old part of Istanbul. We had curtains made for all the bedrooms and kitchen with different "Laura Ashley" prints. So affordable and beautiful. In the rest of the Istanbul apartment, we used the Turkish style, notably in the salon where we welcomed Turkish friends. This meant that the curtains were embroidered sheers and satin drapes. I guess our apartment was both and.

As I said, one of the reasons I love this quilt is that it is my first compilation of improvisational squares. Back in the days of traditional quilting, I loved designing the square, but then to recreate it again and again to fill out a quilt was a monotony I did not enjoy. I could have done samplers, in fact I probably would have gone that route if I'd continued then.

And now for the "almost finished" part. When you quilt improvisationally, you never know how the edges will turn out. One of my questions is always, "Should I square it off, or leave it wobbly, like those old Gee's Bend quilts?" But in this case, as you can see below, the right bottom corner lost a good bit of its brown daisy edge when I began the "first draft" of squaring off. So I will add a strip of brown daisy to the right side and extend it. I may extend the whole border by a couple of inches. Since I have no more of this fabric (one yard finished all this piecing!), I found it online and ordered more. Hopefully it will arrive by next Saturday quilting day.

Korean Pojagi (or Bojagi)

These next pictures are of the quilt top turned around, facing the other direction and backed by this morning's rising sun.

You can see how the seams become part of the design, like stained glass.

I discovered the beautiful ancient craft of Pojagi on Pinterest recently and decided I need to make a Pojagi curtain for the front window, which faces the road. I don't mind the bay window uncovered.

Here's the studio.

I am stoked to have this room for a studio. The light is gorgeous, and before, we just walked through it to other rooms. We will move the furniture out, and soon, soon (I hope), Don will make a long wooden farm table, which will serve as both a workspace for me, and a dining table for larger groups than our kitchen table for four, maybe five, can accommodate. We have no dining room. When this room has storage in place, it will be lovely for dining, I think. I'll be sure to put the machine away. :)
We have cabinets with books and dishes that will become fabric storage for the studio. The whole house is shifting.

In the meantime, fabrics are piled on the floor. You can't see them all because of the table.

Back to the window. Here are examples of Pojagi, sewn and posted by Victoria Gertenbach at The Silly Boodilly (a true idol of mine). It is a single layer of usually hand-pieced fabric, no sandwiching of batting, no quilting. The seams are finished similarly to French seams. Held up to light it looks like stained glass. The first time I saw it, it knocked me out. These by Victoria Gertenbach were the first I saw, on Pinterest. She does not hand-stitch the way Korean Pojagi is done, and neither will I.

Pojagi panel by Victoria Gertenbach, and posted at her blog The Silly Boodilly here;
I hope she will not mind me using these images without permission

Pojagi panel sewn by Victoria Gertenbach, and blogged at The Silly Boodilly here

I would love to make a muslin one for that front window. If I made a colorful one, it would fade, as the sun shines in full on through that window in the afternoon until sunset.

But look at this one, also by Victoria. She posted about it here. She used shot cotton in peach and magenta, and what a stunning result. I only recently learned about shot. Constantly learning! Shot cotton is the result of two different color threads being used for the warp and weft. It gives a subtle sheen that is lovely.

Pojagi panel by Victoria Gertenbach at The Silly Boodilly

Isn't it extraordinary how much there is to be learned about the world? How many piecing and quilting crafts will I discover before my end? I absolutely love it all.

There is a nice video tutorial on Korean Pojagi here, and Victoria Gertenbach has a good tutorial blog post here.