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.

Finishing Things Left and Right

...and it's not even February, yet!

Last week I finished up a pair of mitts for me, a scarf that was busy knitting, and an embroidery lotus from my chakra wall hanging project. Not only did I finish all these things, but I did the button sewing, end-weaving, soaking, blocking portions of things as well!

I'd love a photo of them on my hands, but I didn't have another photographer at the time.

These Felicity Mitts were started as a sort of Yule gift to myself, though they got put on hold when I started hitting crunch time on the actual gifts for other people. This yarn was leftover from the Dragonfly Tam, and I thought it would be really cool to have a pair of coordinating fingerless mitts. I've even thought of buying some plain cream gloves to wear under them on really cold days, so they'll match even better.

Sadly, this tam seems to have gone AWOL since last winter. :(

I finally realized I was ridiculously close to done and spent a couple evenings of knitting and catching up on old Castle episodes to finish them. After a soak and a day on the drying rack, I tried them on and literally clapped my hands and bounced around like a five year old. I'm so excited to have them done, and just hope I can find the hat to wear them together eventually!

I could have finished them earlier, but once the holiday rush was over and I had officially gifted the last knitted/crocheted gift, I cast on a simple scarf with some beautiful Mini Mochi yarn. It was a simple stitch pattern that worked really well with the color changes in the yarn and turned out beautifully (imho).

I just love the colors in this!

And last, but not least, I completed the third in my chakra embroidery series. They will eventually be pieced together in a quilted wall hanging, but for now, they are serving as a learning tool. On each lotus, I've been doing a different embroidery stitch, practicing the technique. It's working out well, and I can actually see improvement in my stitching when I look at where I started and ended each lotus.

Third Chakra Lotus

Sunday is the first of February and I hope to be finishing lots of things and posting on them throughout the month!

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

I'm Bella. I Make stuff.

I've pondered this "first blog post" for far longer than I care to admit, wondering if it should be about a specific project, or set some sort of goals for the blog, or follow a certain format that I would use in every post. (Seriously, I claimed this url back in December. It's honestly a bit ridiculous how much I debate these kinds of things internally.) Anyway, I've ultimately decided that I would take the swimming approach to this - dive in and hope I figure it out. At least if I don't "figure it out" in this case, it'll just result in yet another dead blog out there in the internet world.

So, I'm Bella. It's a name I chose, to remind me to see the beauty in everything and everyone. Like the Doctor says, "The name you choose, it's like a promise you make." (The Name of the Doctor)

I like to make things. I don't limit myself (okay, I wouldn't know how to limit myself if I had to) to one or two types of creation; I prefer to use any and all means available to me. In fact, one of my very favorite quotes ever is “Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE.” from Joss Whedon. (yes, you might be picking up the fact that I'm also a TV/Film junkie)

Sometimes I Make things in the kitchen - I love to cook, and many of my favorite recipes still have some throwback to the meals my mom taught me as a child. I often cook for community gatherings, spiritual events, celebrations, etc., and my friends and family call me a "kitchen witch," a title I was honored to have bestowed upon me by some very wonderful friends and some very skilled kitchen witches in our community.

 

Sometimes I Make things with sticks and string - I learned how to knit in early 2005, started knitting "backwards" as soon as my teacher left my apartment, but was still creating knitted works. Eventually, I re-learned how to knit the "right" way (there's much more story behind this, but I'm willing to bet most of the people who'd care, were living it with me) and also discovered that I knew how to crochet. I don't think I learned it, and I don't remember anyone showing me, I just picked up a hook and started crocheting.
  


Sometimes I Make bigger things out of little pieces of fabric - I learned how to quilt in the fall of 2005 during a family vacation to East Tennessee. We were spending a timeshare week at a mountain resort, and I took a quilting class. I was the only student, but for about $25 or so, I got 2 hours of instruction on how to piece a block (hand stitching) and layer, quilt, and bind a potholder. I now teach quilting classes at the local Joann's.

Sometimes I Make things with my sewing machine - Yeah, I do a lot of my quilting on the machine, too, but this is different. I sew... most anything that comes to mind or is requested by a paying customer. I've done curtains, purses, tote bags, clothes, roman shades, altar cloths, ritual robes, Halloween and cosplay/convention costume pieces and accessories, clothing alterations, custom pajamas, and more.

 

Sometimes I Make pictures with thread - I like to embroider and cross stitch. I've done much more of the latter and am currently practicing several embroidery stitches to learn more. In some ways, I'd love to have an embroidery machine, but for other things, I just don't think a machine has the right... feel. I'd love to do more with cross stitch, like landscapes or something. I'd like to try needlepoint sometime, the stuff that looks almost like a tapestry or something.

 

Sometimes I Make jewelry - I first started jewelry-making back in 1999-2000ish. I used to make a LOT of jewelry, even set up a little "business," did a few craft shows, some custom orders, some sales to co-workers. Eventually I decided that I prefer making custom pieces with someone specific in mind or for a commission, but I just can't give up my love of beads completely.

  

Sometimes I Make things with everything! I recently did seven multi-media collages including fabric, cards, jewelry, beads, embroidery, ribbon, shells, and all sorts of other objects, and I hope to eventually do a post (or a few posts) about them, especially once I manage to finish the 8th one in the series. (I'm saving photos of those for that future post)

Sometimes I Make things with words - I've been a writer for as long as I can remember (maybe longer, considering my memory loss when I was ten), which is really part of the reason for this blog. Oh sure, I want to show off the pictures of my projects, and I'd love to gather a little interest in my work and get a few sales or custom orders from it, but also, I just like to write, and I love to talk about my projects, so what better way to combine all my loves?

Sometimes I Make things with herbs and oils - After several years of casual interest and aromatherapy use, I spent a couple years in intense self-directed herbalism and aromatherapy study, and I now regularly use (and make to sell) all natural herbal bath soaks, herb & rice/flax filled pillows, aromatherapy oils and sprays, and sometimes custom orders in these categories as well.

So, that's the things I Make. When I'm not Making something, I'm reading, watching movies and TV shows, listening to music (and dancing around to it if no one is watching), decluttering my home and garage, spending time in various social setting with my amazing family and friends, and continuing the study into who I am. Welcome to my blog!