Life Lessons in Quilting

About 8 years ago, not long after we bought our house, I selected a big stack of plaid flannel fabrics at my local craft store, with the intention of making a throw quilt for the living room. That stack of plaid flannel fabrics has been moved around the house as we've adjusted over the years, switching rooms with me when my craft studio moved, testing out various storage spaces for me. It was not alone. There are other stacks of fabric chosen for very specific things, still lingering in their places on my shelves.

This is Plaid Explosion

I decided I wanted to do something about this, so on January 31st, I gathered the plaid flannel and started ironing. I set out when I began this quilt with two somewhat specific goals - do my best, and don't let it linger. That was 18 days ago, and tonight I finished it! (draft originally written on 2/18) I see places where I want to continue improving my skills, but overall, I believe I met both goals. More importantly, I learned a few things in the process.

Bias Tape Maker Smooths the Process

New Walking Foot Helps Move Things Along

Experience has taught me when to adjust my sewing plans, such as adding that patchwork strip along one side of the backing when I realized it was just a few inches too narrow.

Mistakes Become Design Features

 A few years ago, it would have really burned me up, and I would have kicked myself for messing up the measurements or completely resewn the back to keep to the original plan. Sometimes in life, things don't line up quite the way we expect or wish them to. We can bust our butts trying to backtrack and make things "right" or we can check our resources and skill sets and find a way to adjust. Yeah, when applied to a quilt, it might not seem like an important lesson, but who ever said I would apply it only to quilting? :)





I admit to doing a couple little happy dances as I finished certain stages of it, and again when I could snuggle underneath the completed quilt.

  

Connecting the Blocks

Bad Math Means 2 Quilts!

Snuggled around my legs

I was thrilled by the stacks of completed blocks, even after I realized they were three times as big as they needed to be (the stacks, not the blocks). Now I'm that much closer to one more quilt. I have enough blue plaid to do the backing, too, and maybe I'll even measure it correctly this time. Anything's possible! But those leftover blocks - it's an easy metaphor for finding the silver lining. I made a mistake, but it only resulted in getting more work done than I thought I was. Not so bad.

When Craft Plans Go Wrong

A few days ago, a facebook friend posted this image:

That statement, that simple little lesson, was suddenly very important to me on many levels. Oh sure, there's a bunch of psycho-self-analysis and inner growth happening with this new look on life, but today I'm going to apply it to crafts. Specifically to yarn. This yarn is lovely, don't you think?

I thought it would make a nice scarf or cowl, and I was looking for a crochet project because I like to mix up my crafting from time to time. I picked out a pattern and happily started that first chain of 120 stitches. Let me just say now that it's much harder to "be sure not to twist" when joining a chain than when joining stitches on a needle. At least with the needles, there's something to help guide you.

I haven't done a lot of crochet work before, and had never done anything with chevrons. This cowl is made of a circle of zig-zags, and was an easy to learn pattern so I didn't have to worry about a printed version. I was please at first, but by the time I hit the 4th row, I was starting to worry a bit. I started the 5th row and my concerns became more obvious.

If I completed this thing, I would look like I was wearing an afghan from 1977 around my neck. And like I belonged in that photo shoot with the men wearing crocheted shorts. Oh, you haven't seen that? Well here, it's great for a laugh.

So... I'm frogging those 4 1/2 rows of crochet chevrons and will find another use for the "1970s appliances" colored yarn. Despite the time I spent on it - I won't hang on to this mistake. :D

Bella's First Quilt

My baby cousin Ella, first quilt I made completely alone

Baby Quilts - is there anything more awesome to Make? They're adorable, and relatively quick, and have endless possibilities, and they're fantastic gifts for the new baby and parents, they show love for a new person, and there's always a charity, hospital, shelter, or NICU that can take them as donations as well. I've made a number of baby quilts over the past eight years, but today I want to tell you about the very first one.



Shortly after I learned to quilt with a little hand-stitched potholder at a resort in the Smoky mountains, I learned that a couple dear friends of mine were expecting their first child. I knew several other members of our mutual community were also crafty, so I posed the idea that we join together to make a quilt for this baby. 

Dot's Quilt - A Community Gift

We had a color pallet based on a request by the parents - red/orange/yellow. We had several willing participants. We even had a couple people with actual quilting experience! (Yeah, sometimes I jump right into projects and figure them out as I go.) Unlike Ella's quilt, which was a simple nine-patch, I went with the "please contribute your choice of quilt block at x inches square" option.

 

        that middle square is a pocket for teeth & tooth fairy gifts       tote bags are always handy when you have kids!

I got quite the collection of quilt squares - more than I could possibly use in a baby quilt - which allowed us to make it a full crib-size quilt, and give a coordinating tote bag and tooth-fairy pillow. Some of the people involved had never done any quilt piecing before, but they were willing to jump in with both feet and learn on the fly with me so we could present our friends with this bunch of love.

Of course, no matter how lovely the finished product was, there's a story in the process we went through to get there. You see, most every "how to quilt" blog or website will tell a newbie quilter to prewash all their fabrics. Well, I read on one of these sites that if you don't prewash, then once you layer and quilt, the fabric will shrink and the batting won't and - well, it made it sound like that would completely ruin the quilt (turns out it won't, but it will give it a slightly more "wrinkled" look). I decided I would prewash the front and the back before I quilted it all together.

Thankfully I learned my lesson before future quilts, like this one for my niece, Lucy

I ended up calling my dear friend and quilter, Kade, and honestly I'm amazed she could understand what I was saying because I was crying so hard about how I had ruined the quilt. You see, with nothing to reinforce all those seams both within and between the blocks, some of them came undone. Worse yet, some of the fabric raveled. A lot. What came out of the washer, well, I wish I had a photo of it to show you, but I was so distraught at the time I couldn't bear the thought of photographic evidence of my royal sized screw-up. It was a tangled mess of partially connected quilt blocks and lots of knotted threads.

 

Kade was awesome, and when we had a chance to get together so she could perform triage on the quilt top, she helped me get it back together and suggested the sneaky addition of extra fabric for those places that frayed. See these black bits that beautifully coordinate with the embroidery details? Yeah, that's where we fixed the holes. I felt especially sad about those blocks being the most damaged because they were so special with their messages and extra detail. They'd been an obvious choice for the four corners of the quilt (and I was floored to discover that my friend Love had never does this before!) Still, thanks to some creative thinking and a skilled quilter sharing some of her secrets and experience, it all came out in the end and as you can see, it became a beautiful quilt!

 

The child in question is now about to turn eight, and I still see and hear stories of both she and her nearly six-year-old sister sleeping and playing with this quilt. As a toddler, it was declared "her favorite" and every time I see it, I think of all the love and hopes and dreams for her that went into every stitch of it. Some of the participants watched as the hand stitching was done along the binding, and learned enough to do some of it themselves, even if that was all they could do. But each and every bit of it was done with the express intent of sending love and happiness to the recipient, and that's the magic of handmade items. That's the wonderful thing about crafting, and it's just more wonderful when applied to babies. Because... babies. :D