And Now For Something Completely Different: My First Three Quilts

Last year, quilt designer Pat Sloan participated in a quilt along series with the Fat Quarter Shop called "The Ultimate Beginner Quilt".  To  kick things off,  Pat and the other designers showed their first quilts --- check out her post here if you'd like to see hers and access links to all the designer's first quilts.  Today, in Pat's YouTube Quilt Challenge/Topics video she is again asking her viewers to share their first quilt.  I don't have all of my early quilts posted here on the blog --- up to now I had only posted a few things as far back as 2007.  I figured I might as well start correcting that by adding my own first quilt story.

While I made my first rotary cut in 2002, my relationship with quilting had actually started decades before.  In 1979, an Aunt let me "borrow" a booklet she had recently purchased.

I don't remember what it was about that booklet that appealed to me so much but it did.  At that time, I was graduating high school and was primarily a clothing sewer with occasional other craft projects in crochet, knitting, embroidery or macrame.  However, I remember sitting in her kitchen and pouring over it, completely drawn to the images in it.  Back then, I thought Quilts were only made for beds.  So I guess the first appeal of the booklet was that it contradicted that idea --- it showed that you could make other quilted items, like pillow covers, hanger covers, bibs, table mats and even a skirt!  

My aunt said I could take the book home since she didn't see herself making anything in it any time soon.  We lived near each other so if she wanted it back at any point, it would have been easy for me to return it to her.  Well, I guess she forgot about it because she never asked for it back!  Over the years (no, decades!), I kept it with my sewing books and magazines where it stayed through two later moves.  I would occasionally pull it out and look through it but didn't make any specific plans to make anything out of it.

Then in 2001, the year I left my job to be home full-time with my two sons, I happened on the TV show "Simply Quilts" on HGTV.  

This new encounter with quilts really blew my mind because not only did it reiterate the fact that "Quilt" did not only mean making a "Bed Covering" but that even a quilt made for a bed could be hung on the wall like art!  Since I had never read the project instructions in the Simplicity booklet closely, I had never noticed that it also said that the fabric for the projects could be purchased (What? Quilts aren't only made from scraps?!?) or made completely on a sewing machine.  Simply Quilts taught me all of that and that rotary cutters (in contrast to the scissors I used for clothing making), specialty rulers and piecing shortcuts were the "tools of the day" to make traditional blocks simple or easier to make.  

The whole process was immediately fascinating!  I watched the show every weekday (and back then it aired twice a day) for a whole summer before seeking out my first quilt books.....

.... and a couple of months later, I went to my first quilt exhibit.....

However, it took until the start of the next year to work up the confidence to make my first quilt!   

My first project came from -- where else -- the Simply Quilts show.  The episode was #605 titled "Quilting 101".  While I still have (and occasionally watch) the loads of videos (on VHS!!!) that I recorded of the show, that is one of the few episodes I don't have on tape, darn it!  Marianne Fons showed viewers how to make a four block quilt called "Ribbons" (and I didn't know then just how famous she was until much, much later) .  It was constructed of Friendship Star blocks and pieced to make the blocks tesselate.  At the time it seemed like a simple (all HSTs) yet visually complex design which I thought was the perfect challenge for a first project. 

Since I didn't know if I was going to like this "quilting thing", I didn't want to buy fabric for it if I could help it --- although even then, as a fabriholic from way back, I was very tempted!  So I dug through my clothing fabric stash to see if I had any cottons.  I found three that just happened to coordinate even though they hadn't been purchased to do so.  The colors were a little out of the ordinary (turquoise, orange, light blue and beige/tan) and I needed a fourth fabric to complete the design.  I found that in a strange place!

I had learned from Simply Quilts that in addition to hundreds of quilting books there were also many quilt related websites.  On one of those I saw a tip that said if you were new to quilting, on a budget and lived in a city with a garment center (check, check and check!), you might be able to source free fabric from cutting room discards.  

Fortunately for me, my husband was at that time a package driver for UPS and was often assigned to the garment district in Manhattan.  I asked if he had ever seen them throw out fabric and if so, could he get some.  When he asked me what to get, I told him to just bring me anything that didn't look like suit fabric, since I knew he could distinguish what that was.  I figured I could sort through whatever he bought home and see what I could find that would be useful.  A few days later a huge black garbage bag of stuff was deposited into my then very small quilt space!  While 90% of what was in it was of no use to me, I found a bunch of things that were and that I have put to use over the years.  Best of all, the perfect fabric to coordinate with my own fabric stash pull was in the bag!  The polyester floral print that came from that bag was the last puzzle piece I needed to create the quilt.

The only fabric I purchased was the batting and the binding/backing which was a Jinny Beyer print.  I got it from the City Quilter store (no longer a brick and mortar store but they are still selling online) which was my first foray into a dedicated quilt shop.  I was very proud of that little quilt and thrilled that one of the lessons I learned from the Reader's Digest book --- about varying print scale within a quilt design --- got successfully put to use in this project.  I hung this one over my night stand.

Well since I made one to hang over mine, of course I had to make one to hang over my husband's night stand.  That was my third quilt:

This one was the product from Lesson One of Gai Perry's book "Color From the Heart" (1999).  It was a lesson in random color selection.  Those little squares were from fabric sample mailings I used to get from a mail order fabric supplier in the clothing sewing days.  That quilt was updated in 2016 to become the background for a (hand) embroidery project and currently hangs in our downstairs bathroom.

Note that the backing/binding for this quilt is more of the same tan solid fabric I used in the first "Ribbons" quilt --- see, from the beginning I learned to use up my leftovers and scraps!  The plaid border for that quilt came from (what I now know were) a full set of plaid fabric samples from the Garment Center Discards bag.  The rest of those plaids were later used to make  this quilt in 2008:

It's the "Point of No Return" design by the Country Threads ladies.  It was in the very first issue of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine which I had purchased as a back issue on eBay.  I still love Connie Tesene and Mary Etherington's designs and have since purchased more of their patterns and books.  I also used just a bit of the leftovers of one of the plaids from that project to make the tackle box applique on a gift quilt in 2014 for my neighbors who like to go fishing

To complete the record, since I've shown you my first and third quilt, let me present my second:



This little mini was also made that first year for an aunt who collects dolls.  When I started quilting,I had vowed to only be a machine quilter.  As noted earlier, one of the big things that had attracted me about quilting as I watched Simply Quilts was that although people still did do hand stitching, it was possible to make quilts totally by machine.  

My favorite clothing making story was when I learned that you could hem pants and skirts (which back in the day was half of what I made) completely by machine.  I was taught that task had to be done by hand so finding out you could hem by machine was the greatest day of my clothing sewing life!  For me, hemming was like what hand binding is for quilters --- the one thing that could cause an almost completely finished project to come to a compete halt and sit unfinished for weeks!  

So when I learned about quilting, I swore I would never 1) Hand Applique, 2) Hand Piece and 3) Hand Quilt.  However, I saw and appreciated the beauty, versatility and skill of applique so was excited when I found this book:

I wanted desperately to try it and then as now, it helped to have a project with a definite purpose to push me to start something.  In this case it was realizing that since my Mom would travel to visit another Aunt of mine (who is my mother's sister-in-law and best friend from childhood) every Fall in Virginia, I could make something for her to take to her.  Well, I didn't finish it in time for it to be ferried by my Mom as courier but I did mail it to my Aunt when it was done.  This was not the last doll quilt I made for her either:  I made two more in 2010 which can be seen here and I was just thinking this year that it may be time to make her another one.  Of course I also had to eat my words that year when I did finally succumb to all the hand worked beauty I saw around the web and learned to Hand Applique and Hand Quilt.  I climbed over the last hand work mountain when I was forced (because of ailing sewing machines) to Hand Piece a project in 2015!

Lastly it should be noted that I did finally make one of the quilt projects from that early Simplicity booklet.   It was a quilt for the second grandchild of the Aunt that gave me the book!  

The booklet version:

What I made:

You can read more about that quilt in this post.  So that's it for the earliest of my early quilts.  Hopefully over time I will get a few more early projects posted and extend the story of my "quilt journey"!

More "On Ringo Lake"

The color scheme for Bonnie Hunter's latest mystery quilt -- “Ringo Lake” -- is Chocolate browns, Turquoise, Corals and Neutrals.  Since a lot of my home is decorated in brown and early in my "Quilt Career" turquoise was one of my favorite quilting colors, she had me at hello!  Even better, I was able to find a few good things in stash to start me off.   Digging for turquoise led me back to some “oldies but goodies”. For instance, I still had about a fat eighth of this Jinny Beyer print:

That was used in my very first quilt project from 2002:

 

The Jinny Beyer fabric was used for both the binding and the backing and was the only fabric I purchased for that project -- the rest came from my clothing sewing stash and the floral was from a garment district dumpster dive!  I didn't want to invest a lot of money in this venture back then because I wasn't sure if I was going to want to keep doing this "quilting thing".  Guess that question has been answered!

I was also able to re-purpose parts of an old UFO that I have long debated about either going back to or abandoning.

I started this so long ago, I don't even have any notes of when I did so (a rare thing for me).  It was to have been my first mystery quilt project and was from the Fall 1999 issue of Quilt magazine. At the time I didn't have a good 1/4 inch foot and after sewing a bunch of triangle squares realized they weren't the size the pattern said they should be. Back then that was enough to discourage me and I put the project aside saying I would go back and fix them “at some point”. Yeah right!  Needless to say, since then I've done a lot of projects and more than a few mysteries but this one never moved from its position at the bottom of the “To Do” list.

However, I did remember this project when it came time to look for fabrics and in fact both the turquoise and the neutral fabric I had used in it are now part of the “Ringo Lake” story.  After taking into account what I moved over to the mystery project,  I saw that I still have a lot of the HST units that had already been attached to plain squares:

Hmmm, they look good like this.  I'm going to also keep these pieces handy and see if I can maybe incorporate them into Ringo Lake somehow --- maybe a border or for the back?

I also did a dive into the "Scrap Users" bin for strips in the project colors:

I didn't get a lot from there but at least these were already cut so ready for use.  I was also able to pull some more stuff from the big stash of fabric I won from Vicky over at the LA Quilter blog four years ago.

Even with all of that and a few other browns and corals from  stash, I still needed to do some "stash enhancement".  I guess that's another good reason for Bonnie to start these on the day after Thanksgiving -- "Black Friday" sales are a big help in the stash enhancement department!

So all the gathered stash is in the box on the right.  So what's in the bag on the left?  Why it's my (now old) "En Provence" stash!  And why is it out you ask?  You didn't?  Well I'm going to tell you anyway -- in the next post that is!

Project Archives: Baby Quilts

This week's topic for Val's Quilting Studio: Tuesday Archives is "Scrap Quilts and Projects" and I've linked this post to the "Projects" section.   However, last Tuesday when I clicked over to Val's blog to see what the Tuesday Archive topic was for that week, I landed on this post.   I thought it meant that the Archive topic was Baby Quilts.  

While I do have a long overdue one that I need to start and made one last year, I did realize that this would be an opportunity to create a new Archive post about some "pre-blogging" projects that haven't been featured here before.  So I spent a lot of time looking for the old pictures of these projects and researched and gathered links and other pics of some of the background information for the post.  

When I had it just about finished, I clicked back to Val's blog and found out that the real Archive topic for that week was "Selvedge Projects"!  Unfortunately, while I have done a Selvedge project (seen here), since it wasn't in a stand alone post and the actual post was pretty long, I didn't link it up this time.

However, since this post was already written I figured I'd publish it anyway.  So the story goes:  I've only made three Baby Quilts, although one was technically a toddler quilt.  This post is about the first two of those three (the third one, the one I made last year, can be seen here).  My cousin has two children, a boy (the oldest) and a girl.  Back in 2004 when my cousin announced she was pregnant, I had only been quilting for two years but just knew I had to make a quilt for the new baby.  The quilt I planned to make eventually became this one:

This is an old Mountain Mist design (#33 for any of you that have one of their old "Blue Books").  In the original design it is made with a solid blue background and white appliqued bunnies.  It can be seen in the back of the picture below which is from County Living's "Country Quilts" book (Hearst Books, 1992).

I got the pattern from "Simplicity Quilts & Patches", a magazine style book on quilting that belonged to my cousin's mother and that she had let me have back in the late 70's when I was a teenager!  Back then I only sewed clothing but I had held onto the book all these years because I found the projects so charming.  So when I came across the book in my things, I just knew I had to make the quilt for her first grandchild from it.  

At the time, my cousin and her husband did not want to find out the gender of the baby until it was born, so I decided to do the bunnies in different pastel colors to keep the quilt "gender neutral".  What can't been seen in the picture is that the background fabric is not just white but a white ditty print with very small pastel letters (in the same colors as the bunnies) sprinkled all over it.

This was my first big, formal applique project and needless to say I was so nervous about doing it that I procrastinated starting it until after my cousin gave birth to what we eventually found out was a boy.  Even after he was born, I still vowed to make and gift the quilt but the procrastination continued right up until his first birthday!  It turns out that stalling was a good thing because at his party, it was abundantly clear that this little boy, even at one year old, was not a pastel bunny type of kid!!  The good news was that my cousin also announced that she was pregnant with her second child and already knew this one was going to be a girl.  So my plans promptly changed and I decided that the bunny quilt would (when it was finished) now go to the new baby!

However, that meant I still owed my cousin's son a quilt.  Fortunately, they bought and moved into a house shortly after that party.  When I went to see it, my cousin had already started decorating her son's room.  It was painted a bright blue and had a fish theme ("Finding Nemo" was the big thing at the time).  Voila!! Room theme = a new quilt theme and I now knew what his overdue quilt had to be.  The quilt I eventually finished for him was this one:

It was my interpretation of a quilt that was in Quilters Newsletter Magazine called "Gazing Into Clear Water".  It originally appeared in QNM April, 2006  (# 381) but has been offered as a free pattern with their subscription offers in recent years.   I changed the design in an effort to make use of some novelty prints I had found that had a fish theme.

You may have noticed that I said "eventually" finished.  I didn't get both quilts done until Christmas 2007 when the little girl was about a year and half old and the little boy was now three.  I actually finished up the quilting on the bunny quilt on Christmas Eve that year!  They did make great Christmas presents though.  

The sad part was finding out two years later (when I made and gifted the kids new "big kid quilts" for Christmas that year, seen here and here) that after I gave them those first quilts, my cousin had  promptly put them up in a closet and wouldn't let the kids actually use them because she didn't want them to mess them up!  

Another interesting story about these quilts:  while I was in the process of making them, I had decided to make special labels for the back of each.

I had planned to quote poems I had seen in Quilter's Newsletter and on each quilt, give credit to the respective authors of the poems.  For the daughter's quilt, I had planned to use a verse from the poem "Little Bits Of Fabric" by Sue Mullane that I had seen in the December 1996 (#288) issue of QNM.  

A few months before I finished their quilts, QNM had published an article in the October 2007 (#396) issue called "Small and Smaller".  At the start of the article they too quoted the same poem but attributed it to "Anonymous"!  I promptly emailed the editor letting them know that the poem had actually appeared in their magazine.  

I got a very nice email back saying that even they hadn't realized that the poem originated in their magazine because most of the staff at the time of the article publication had not been at the magazine when the poem was originally published.  When they had researched the poem, they found it listed in numerous places (including on the Department of Justice's website) and since it was always attributed to anonymous they had accepted that as so.  True to their word, they printed a correction in the Bulletin Board section of the January/February 2008 (#399) issue.

So I hope you enjoyed this special Archive post of the "Journey of the Baby Quilts"!  Oh, and BTW, I also later found out that after my cousin's mother saw their quilts, she started quilting too!

Slow Sunday Stitching 2/22/15

I spent the weekend at a friend's house in New Jersey.  Her husband threw her a surprise birthday party and we had a great time celebrating with family, neighbors and friends.   Even better, since I stayed over, we were able to sit and chat for most of Sunday before I had to make the return trip home and during that time I got to finish this:

The stitching for my little Redwork piece depicting Presidents Lincoln and Obama is now done!  The next phase for this project is to add it to this old quilt of mine that is currently on display:

I made this all the way back in 2002 in my first year of quilting.  It was the third quilt I had made and an attempt to make a quilt using the "paper bag method" of scrappy color choice following the "Spontaneity" exercise in Gai Perry's book "Color From the Heart".  I want to place the Redwork in the center of the quilt and maybe embellish around it with trims or something.  We'll see what develops over the course of the week. 

Updated To Add:  To see how it was finished, check out this post!
 
For Slow Sunday Stitching, a finish means I can now turn (back) to working on a Quilt-As-You-Go project started many years ago:

I'm linking up with Kathy over at Kathy's Quilts and going to take some time to check out what everyone else was up to yesterday.  Hope to see your project there!

My Quilting Bucket List

I love that all quilters tend to do and think about the same things even when we don't know each other. Last year, I read posts by Pam at the "Knitnoid" blog (note: the link is for her old blog on Blogger, her new blog is on Wordpress) and Jen at "A Quilting Jewel" about what quilts or techniques they have on that "list of quilts I want to/always wanted to make".  Most of the quilts on their lists were also on mine.  Now, we are not talking about the "latest love" projects -- these are the quilts you feel you must make to "really be considered a quilter".  

Of course, as we progress as quilters, things get added to the list as we become more confident about what we actually can accomplish.  After reading those posts I did a quick review of the quilts I've said I wanted to make since I started quilting and was surprised to find that many have already been done.  So here is a pictorial review of the Bucket List items I've already accomplished:

Irish Chain

This quilt is Eleanor Burn's "Quilt In A Day" version called "Bits 'N Pieces".  I finished this in 2008 and it was also the first bed sized quilt I completed.  

Edited to add:  you can see the first one I attempted here.

I've always been attracted to the Irish Chain design and have seen many variations involving using two to four different blocks (one version called for some of the squares to be appliqued on!) to achieve the chain design.  I was attracted to this particular version because it only required one block (!) and the block was completely strip pieced which made them easy to construct.  

I really like this design and hope to make another one in a three color format with a seminole border, a design I saw in an old issue of QUILT Magazine.

Amish Quilt and Trip Around the World 

Sorry For Picture Quality:  For Some Reason This Picture Got Stretched Out in the Upload

Like many people, Amish quilts astounded me when I first heard about/saw them.  They seemed so simple yet were so graphic.  Also one of the things I've learned about my own quilt color preferences:  since I started quilting I've always been attracted to "shaded" color tones (colors mixed with black) so the darker palettes of Amish quilts also were a big draw for me.  My first in depth introduction to Amish quilts was Rachel Pellman's book "The World of Amish Quilts".  The "Trip Around The World" quilts in that book (especially the cover quilt) were beautiful in the way the colors in some of them radiated. 

Another reason I began quilting was when watching the old "Simply Quilts" episodes on HGTV, I learned from the beginning that there were shortcuts galore to achieving many "old-time" block patterns and I was always fascinated by that.  When I realized that "Trip" quilts could be strip pieced, it immediately became one of the must do's.  I also love when one project can check off two things on the Bucket List.  This was made in 2006.

Log Cabin (Courthouse Steps Variation) and Miniature Quilts

Once again an old picture that got messed up in the Upload.

Although I like all the variations of Log Cabins and do hope to make a few, doing a log cabin was not a must do until I saw a quilt done in this "Courthouse Steps" Log Cabin variation.  I was intrigued about how the little lantern like shapes were formed and when I found out (careful placement of colors in adjacent log cabin blocks), I really wanted to make one.  

I finally did so after my mother died and I took possession of a Featherweight machine that had been her boyfriend's (a tailor) who had died two years before her (and unfortunately I never got to have a conversation with her before she died about why she had it since she did not sew).  I had always dreamed of creating a sewing themed display in my quilt space and I was able to do so when I got the machine.  When I put the display together, I immediately realized that the machine would look even better with a quilt displayed on it (the old iron belonged to my great-grandmother).  

After long debates about what would look good hanging on it when only about half the quilt would show, I saw an antique doll quilt made in this style hung from a shelf the way I planned to display a quilt from the machine.  BINGO!  When I measured the machine, I determined that I only needed a quilt about 12" square for this.  So this also became my first miniature quilt even though making one was not, per se, a must do for me.  This was made in 2006.

Strippy and Flying Geese Quilts

The details on this one were covered in this recent post so a picture here will have to be worth a thousand words!  This was another "two for one" on the Bucket List count down.

Bargello

Once again, sorry for picture quality, these are pictures of pictures taken BD, before digital 

This little project was made in 2004 as a gift for a friend.  It comes from Kim Ritter's "Quick Quilting" book.  I do hope to do a larger bargello project in the future and recently bought this book when Connecting Threads had a sale earlier this year.  But this gave me a nice taste of it and come to think of it, it was my first experience quilting clamshells.

Feathered Star

This was made in 2003.  I saw Marsha McClosky on "Simply Quilts" and she demonstrated the Radiant Star block.  It looked to me to be one of those blocks that looked a lot harder than it was to make.  

This is the "Joining Star" from her book "Feathered Star Quilts" a book that was really tough to get.  This was one of the easier blocks in the book (they are rated one, two and three stars for difficulty) and I was nervous about making it until putting it together.  Accurate cutting is the key -- if you cut right, the construction is a breeze.  

I originally made this to be a one-block wall hanging and hung it to go above a bookcase but then I wound up putting a chair where the bookcase was supposed to be so I added the bead fringe to fill in the blank space that was the difference in the heights of the two furniture pieces.  This was also a chance to try the "focus fabric color scheme" theory about choosing quilt colors, something that was a big concern for me back then.  All the colors in the center were picked out from the fabric in the prairie point border (and making those was also a first!).  

I hope to make a whole quilt of Feathered Stars and just this week purchased a set of Marti Michel's templates that were on sale at Keepsake Quilting (less than half price!) and also hope to get Marsha's new ruler in the future as well.

Still To Do......

So those are the Bucket List quilts I have done or at least "tasted".  But there are still some I haven't tackled (or at least finished) yet:

• Double Wedding Ring (in progress and blogged about here) 
  
  
  
• DONE! String Quilt (also in progress and blogged about in the same post as the DWR above) Finished two Bonnie Hunter quilts here and here.  
  
  
  
• DONE! Lone Star Quilt (I have fabric already purchased for two different versions and had considered doing one for the Liberated Amish Challenge but I don't think that will didn't happen.  Started Finished a one block wall hanging in 2022 2024 
  
  
  
• DONE!  Dresden Plate quilt (already have fabric for one to be done in Civil War Repros was completed in 2013) 

  

  
  
• A "complex" Applique Quilt (I've done a few simple appliques but a really complex one is still in the "dreaming of" stage)
• A Baltimore Album quilt (currently in the "collecting ideas and designs" stage)
• ....and the mother of them all -- to do a white whole cloth quilt to be quilted BY HAND!  I do have a quilt-as-you-go hand quilting project in process but and I think doing the wholecloth is still many years away was started in 2019.

So there you have it, my Bucket List.  So of course, I ask you, what's on your list?