Quilt in Instagrams

I have returned! After a week in Guatemala serving at Casa Bernabé, a Christian orphanage outside of Guatemala city, it's good to be home. I do miss the peacefulness and the summer weather, though, as well as my lovely teammates. Driving to Antigua, the old capital city, on Friday I was inspired by the many different gratings over the windows and may use the designs for printing fabric or free-motion quilting, but since I arrived home at 2 am this morning, I haven't had much time to make use of these new ideas.

However, my quilt is almost finished! I have quilted it and bound most of it. It was my bright, cheery companion to class and chapel the last two days before spring break and helped me to push through the last days of classes before Guatemala. I hope to add the finishing touches this week.

Picking out binding fabric
Trimming the edges and cutting the binding tape

Binding during class

{Check out some precursors to this stage of the Broken Dishes quilt

Best Day

Today has been such a wonderful day! First, the cover for my couch finally arrived from my Dad in China. Not only does it make my apartment feel so wonderful, it also makes me feel classy just sitting on it (and gives me a strong desire to sew lime and red pillow covers). Then, Printing by Hand by Lena Corwin arrived at the college library through interlibrary loan today, and if the first five pages are indicative of the entire book, I am definitely in love. Third, my mother and sister brought me Ethiopian black tea from the lovely TeaHaus in Ann Arbor that I am sipping quite contentedly. And lastly I had the afternoon off from classes, so I was able to get ahead on homework and have time to quilt tonight!


Yesterday began the quilting process. Susie lent me her iron since my bitty iron is about the size of one square and was not wanting to flatten the quilt very well. Next I spread the layers across my rug and pinned the sandwich together. Unfortunately, after sewing several seams, I spread out my masterpiece and found wrinkles... However, not to be dismayed, I pulled out some seams, taped it nice and flat to the kitchen floor, and repinned the heck out of it. Tonight I am sewing the lines perpendicular to yesterday's (and thoroughly enjoying the double act of Tom Hardy and Chris Pine in This Means War). Then I will be able to take binding with me tomorrow to class!! Well, perhaps not tomorrow, since my only class tomorrow is Synthesis and Analysis lab. But Wednesday, for chapel and physical chemistry, I will be happily blind-stitching lime binding around my baby quilt. What a lovely day it has been and what fun lies ahead!



{Check out some precursors to this stage of the broken dishes quilt
(laying out, piecing, and more piecing), progress (binding), and the finished product}

Simple Screen Printing

Today was an adventure.

I read a tutorial by Lotta Jansdotter about screen printing fabric with simple supplies and picked up the needed supplies last night and. So, after church today, I set out to print my own fabric. During the sermon, I had doodled Jerusalem crosses, the details on the organ, and the patterns on the lights hanging from the ceiling. Once home, I sketched a little more and vectorized some of the patterns in Adobe Illustrator. The first pattern seemed more suited to block printing, so I switched directions and went for teetering rows of semi-circles.

Here is a simple tutorial:

Materials
organza
embroidery hoop
acrylic paint
fabric medium
masking tape
paper or acetate

First, I stretched the organza across the hoop and masking taped it to the edges.


Next, I printed out the drunken circles and made a template. The paper ripped at the little spots between the semi-circles, so I put a layer of masking tape across the back. 




Once they were cut out, I taped the template to the organza. After the time intensive template cutting, I realized why Lotta used acetate instead of paper. That way you can easily rinse it off and re-use it. 



After creating my screen, I thinned some white acrylic paint and tried out my new stencil on gray paper. I scientifically globbed the paint onto the bottom edge and squeegeed it up to the top with an old student ID. Each try was more successful than the last. Tips: Only squeegee across once. Keep the ID at a 30˙ angle with the screen. Make your template small enough so as to easily squeegee in one stroke.


Then it was time for the fabric. I wrapped one of my handy dandy design boards in a grocery bag as a padded surface to stamp on, laid out the fabric under my hoop, and went to town. I printed a fat quarter, and learned something each time I printed it.




As you can see, my stencil is a little too tall to squeegee evenly to the top, and slightly wider than my student-ID. However, I have now printed my first fabric design, and I am über excited to try again!

Quilt Top!

I finished the quilt top! It is a little wrinkled, but I am happy. I am excited to quilt it this coming week. I have decided to quilt it simply with straight lines on either side of the seams, just like Erica quilts her half-square quilts over at CraftyBlossoms. Today was spent printing fabric, and I am looking forward to sharing that process with you later this week or next week.


{Check out the precursors to this stage of the Broken Dishes quilt (laying out and piecing),
some progress (quilting and binding), and the finished product}

Hand-Printed Fabric Swap

If you look to the right of the screen, you will find the short list of the blogs I like to read. This week I was so excited to read Leslie Keating's blog Maze and Vale and discover that she is hosting a hand-printed fabric swap. I have been wanting to try my hand at fabric printing for awhile now, and this is the perfect opportunity. You simply sign up next weekend, print four quarter-yards of fabric, and send them out to the other four people in your group. Then they print four quarter-yards of fabric, and each sends one to you. I now have encouragement, camaraderie, links to many tutorials, a fun Pinterest board, and a deadline to motivate me towards printing my own fabric. I am so excited!


Two-Fifths of a Broken Dish

This week was full, not so lovely, with more than enough homework to accomplish. This weekend, though, has been great. Hubbard Street 2 Dance Company visited Wheaton yesterday, and we were able to meet some of the dancers, dance at a master class with the artistic director, and watch a rehearsal, as well as attend the performance last night. It was incredible. A small part of me wants to simply drop out of college and dance full-time so that I can move like water across a stage with strength and grace. The rest of me is pretty sure I still like being a chemistry major. And the tiny bit that's left is intimidated by the phenomenal senior art shows that were on display in the art building during the "meet the dancers" hour. However, the show must go on...or begin...or start to be sewn or something, so I worked on the broken dishes baby quilt today, and two-fifths of it is pieced!

Working on a larger quilt, I'm finding that corners are even more persnickety with being lined up, and fudging the seams makes for a quilt that doesn't lie perfectly flat. I'm also bemoaning the fact that my iron does not seem to reach as high of temperatures as the iron at home. But alas, my iron is mini and cute and fits on top of my dryer sheets and under my umbrella on the shelf. This next week I hope to finish piecing the top of the quilt and perhaps experiment with a whole-cloth sampler. The anglican cross on the pastor's robes this morning intrigued me, so maybe I will use it as a motif to sew. I'm also fascinated by tin ceilings, like the one in Blackberry Market (the adorable new cafe in Glen Ellyn). Whole-cloth, tin ceiling stitched quilts could be pretty sweet. Or not, but I guess I get to find out!




{Check out the precursor to this stage of the Broken Dishes quilt (laying out),
some progress (piecing, quilting, and binding), and the finished product}

Broken Dishes Baby Quilt

This weekend has been lovely with fresh snow, an adorable new restaurant at which to study, and a delicious new banana bread recipe. With the snow drifting down outside and the beautiful winter sun I just want to curl up with a good book and a cozy quilt. More than curling up, though, I was excited to have time to lay out and piece a new quilt. Last weekend I decided to try a half-square triangle quilt, which I learned is affectionately called an HST quilt. I cut my squares 5.25" wide, traced a line diagonally across the middle (during physical chemistry, I might add), and sewed a quarter inch seam on either side of the pencil line. It was so simple to just cut squares, and with each one I sewed, I made two blocks! Plus, working on a quilt during the week was fun and a nice change of pace from so many chemistry labs.

Today I finally was able to lay out the quilt. I pinned my batting to the wall as a makeshift design board and put up all the pieces. Initially I laid it out just like the Broken Dishes Farmer's Wife Quilt block. However, it seemed a tad boring, so I twisted some of the squares around to change the little triangles into parallelograms. Now it has interesting geometric movement and is, in Susie's words, "mesmerizing." I like it. This coming week I will continue to piece it, and once the backing fabric comes, begin free-motion quilting. Right now I'm leaning towards free-motion quilting in a geometric almond pattern, like this quilt over at Sew Katie Did. The simple straight quilting of Crafty Blossom's HST quilts intrigues me as well. We shall see!




{Check out some progress on the Broken Dishes quilt

Pinterest on Paper

Quilting has been stressing me out recently. The idea of needing to plan a huge cohesive quilt and then make seven more that all have some sort of conceptual tie with each other feels overwhelming. Paired with the fact that professors will be critiquing the quality of my quilts composition-wise, my creativity and excitement for quilting has ground to a halt. My mom has been really supportive, brainstorming with me through long and sometimes tearful phone calls, but I still just don't know what I should be doing. In order to turn over a new leaf today, I decided to start Pinterest on paper. I love journals and sketchbooks and the feeling of bound paper under my fingers, so I thought perhaps a hard copy of some of my favorite quilt inspiration pictures would help me to get past quilter's block.

From this new inspiration sketchbook, I am leaning in two directions, both baby quilt size, just to get the ball rolling. Maybe I will try a whole cloth quilt. Maybe I will try a white and turquoise right triangle quilt. (Right triangle quilts are not as difficult as chevron quilts; I will not allow a repeat of that situation.) Then to take a break before I dive into Joann, I am writing some Christmas thank you notes on my typewriter. In the spirit of "thank you"s, I have some to offer to you. Thank you, Mom, for talking to me on the phone for hours and always encouraging me to keep blogging; I never used to think you liked talking on the phone, and maybe you still don't, but thanks for putting up with me. Thank you, Mary Dekker, for being one of my biggest fans, pinning me on Pinterest, and asking to see all my squares. Thank you, Susie, for spending countless weekends with me knitting in slow, quiet contentedness.





Back in the Basket

I apologize that it has been so long since I have posted! The past two Sundays I was in China visiting my Dad with little time to sew and less time to blog. However, after hiking the majestic Great Wall and exploring the peaceful vistas of the Summer Palace, I am back and quilting. The first day back from break, I decided my living room needed a decorate update, so I took down my collection of black and white prints and mini-clothes-pinned up all of my Farmer's Wife Quilt blocks on the display wires. Although it is not quite as sleek and modern as black and white prints, it adds a fun sense of color and accomplishment to the room. Yesterday, I finished a block but with a twist. The flower basket block felt quite country and kitschy, so I edited it slightly. I forewent the handle. The block is now a geometric, asymmetric, modern little block that suits my sensibilities nicely.

This semester, I am also exploring the figure, specifically related to dance, and how it can be portrayed through mixed media, thread and fabric studies. Yesterday's attempt was an icebreaker that is not worth displaying on my blog, but hopefully in weeks to come, I will be able to share some of that senior show process with you.

This Week's Block:
Flower Basket

Flower Basket




Chevron Progress

The chevron quilt is coming along. It fell off the wall one more time, and I reassembled it from a picture while watching Bones reruns. Last night I stayed up till midnight sewing and watching the smart, beautiful, and independent Katherine Heigel navigate owning a business, raising a child, and getting two guys to fall for her at once. I now have some choice words for the simple, innocent-looking chevron quilt. The strips are about half-done, and I am laying them to rest in a cute little shoebox for some day in the future when chevron doesn't feel quite so much like a four-letter word.


{Check out the beginnings}

On the Sixth Day of Christmas

When asked at church this morning what I had been doing this week, I answered quilting. It didn't seem adequate enough to cover the last five days, but that really is all I've been doing. Dyeing fabric for quilts, cutting fabric, piecing blocks, collecting plants to dye fabric, stealing onion skins from the grocery store bins to dye fabric, laying out fabric for other quilts, watching TV while I piece blocks, and a little bit of knitting while I watched movies with my mom and sister. It's been a perfect balance of very relaxing and quite productive, and I have six blocks to show for it!

My chevron quilt is coming along. It has fallen off the wall at least twice now and has been restarted and reworked at least that many times. I'm fairly happy with it now, and once I reassemble it from my most recent picture (this morning I found it in a heap of pieces on the floor because the flannel sheet velcroed to the wall had fallen down), I am going to try to blitz it and finish it today. Check back tomorrow to see it finished. What projects have you been working on this Christmas break?

This Week's Blocks:
Spider Legs, Broken Dishes,
Postage Stamp, Homemaker,
End of Day, & Waste Not

Spider Legs


Waste Not

Homemaker


Broken Dishes


End of Day


Postage Stamp




A note about Homemaker: It is a much more complicated block than it appears, and if you are like me and wish that the book had given better instructions than "sew the seams that are next to each other together," then you're in good company. Alright, the instructions didn't exactly say that, but that's about all they said. To complete this block, I used partial seams and Y-seams. Bee in my Bonnet explains partial seams here. Kaye Wood shows how to easily tackle Y-seams in this video.


P.S. I may not finish the chevron quilt, but I will do my best and I promise to post a picture tomorrow of how far I've gotten whether or not it's done.

Day One of Dyeing

Today I decided to tackle some dyeing. I was met with two obstacles. One, nothing is really growing outside right now, so there's not much to harvest for natural dyeing. Two, even if I did harvest something, it needs to soak for a couple of days. Therefore, no dyeing today. Unfazed my mom and I made a list of the various roots or trees in our yard that we might be able to harvest tomorrow and decided to start with something simpler today: yellow onions.

Following Maura Ambrose' directions over on Folk Fibers, we bought a bag of yellow onions, peeled them, and boiled the skins for half an hour. They need to soak for several days before adding the fabric, so we settled in to watch Brave and Merida's adventures with bows and tapestry needles. The neat thing about onion skins is that they are completely non-toxic, so I can boil them in any old pot from our kitchen without killing off family members. Plus, onions produce a color-fast and light-fast dye without something to set the color. All you have to do is use an aluminum pot. The aluminum from the pot leeches into the water and acts as a mordant itself. So handy. With my first dye project underway, I am already planning all the plants I want to grow in my garden next summer. This is just the beginning!




Chevron Beginnings

New quilt time! With hours and hours ahead of me over Christmas Break, and seeing as I haven't actually completed a quilt in many years, I decided to whip up a baby quilt. After perusing my needle+thread board on Pinterest, I set my heart on a Chevron Quilt by Anna Joy. It's light and airy quality is very appealing, and the piecing seems simple enough. I sketched it in my sketchbook, drew up my own template, and set to work. The color scheme grew from fabrics that were nixed from my Farmer's Wife Quilt: coral and sweet greens. I happily ironed and rotary-cut in glasses and PJs until a friend showed up for a coffee date. Now after a game of scrabble and several mugs of chai tea, I am ready to quilt into the night!



{Check out the progress!}

Beach Boys and Breakdancing

I'm home! I spent the morning piecing blocks in the studio and singing along to the Beach Boys, and it was the perfect way to begin break :) So much space to spread out. So much light. Being able to turn up the music so much louder. It was lovely. In the afternoon, I returned to the studio to pick out and cut fabric for new blocks. I only ended up with one that I really liked, but with Step Up 3 to keep me company, I was dancing my way out of the studio anyways.

Today's Blocks:
Rainbow Flowers
&
Windblown Square

Windblown Square


Rainbow Flowers



Spare Moments

The week before finals has been a busy one, full of papers and projects and physical chemistry tests. However, with the excitement of my own quilt show on the brain, I have not been able to set my sewing aside. In all of my spare moments (and some that aren't spare), I've been researching quilting history and natural dyes. I even have a list of the books that I will pick up from my home library when I return in a week. More than just research, I actually brought my Farmer's Wife Quilt book to class with me on Tuesday after cutting neat 2x2" squares of each of my fabrics and picked out fabrics for two more blocks. I've also been choosing some of my favorite Farmer's Wife blocks and sketching them as inspiration for larger quilts. I cannot wait for Christmas Break when the fabric dyeing and all-day quilting can begin! What are you looking forward to most over Christmas Break?



Old Women

This week's squares are so lively and lovely. I pieced them while my dear friend Margarita was arranging the sections of her afghan to sew them together. It was a joint quilt-crochet date. I am blessed to have so many talented friends and several who love fibers just like me! Thank you, Susie and Margarita, for being old women with me in the best way possible. Spending Friday nights knitting. Adventuring to the library for pattern books. Going to bed early after a long week of knitting and crocheting hats. You're the best.

This Week's Blocks:
Buckwheat
&
Hovering Birds

Buckwheat 
Hovering Birds


Quilt Show, Here I Come

As a newly declared art major, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what medium I want to pursue and what I want to do for my senior show. I was thinking about how many hours I put into doing fiber art every week and how I'll be bummed to transfer that time to senior show prep time. That's when the wheels started churning. Could I do a textile show? How awesome would that be. So I approached my advisor about it, but he said it was pedagogically unviable because Wheaton doesn't offer any fiber classes.

However, the next day a senior show went up of printed fabrics! I talked to the girl as she was putting up the finishing touches of the exhibition and asked who her advisor was: Botts. While Professor Botts was helping me to load new paper into the photo lab printer that afternoon, I asked him if he'd be willing to advise me on a quilt show for my senior show. And he said, "Yes." !!! Then he proceeded to ask me if I'd been to Quilt National ever. Yes, twice. And then asked me if I'd ever thought about dyeing fabric. I said, most emphatically yes, I'd LOVE to try it. At this point, I was so excited about having my own quilt show that I completely forgot about the yards of fabric that I have already dyed with my mom and grandma until my Mom reminded me on the phone later. How silly of me. Oh well. So, hooray! I am doing a quilt show for my senior show, and my hours on pinterest and perusing quilting blogs is actually now considered homework time. Yay!

Rekindle

Lately I've been feeling discouraged about my quilt. I haven't been keeping up with the two-squares-per-week goal, and I'm feeling like the quilt will never be finished. Plus, while I was home, I walked into the studio to find three beautiful quilts laid out on the floor in various states of assembly. My mother and sister have been hard at work and will definitely be growing their piles of quilts faster than I. Although Susie and I have been reminding ourselves that we have our whole lives to keep sewing and knitting and don't need to accomplish every project next week, I was still feeling the project was a little hopeless.

However, Friday night Susie stopped by to knit while I pieced some blocks that have been laid our for almost a month now, and she asked to see all my finished squares. I told her that I may use my fabric and choose a new simpler quilt pattern that I can finish more quickly. But, I laid them all out on the floor, fourteen in all, and I love them. I am very excited for the beautiful quilt they will become. It may take a year or two, so I won't stop myself from other projects (perhaps, a baby quilt next summer), but I am committed to slowly but surely finishing my Farmer's Wife Quilt.

This Week's Blocks:
Farmer's Daughter
Friendship Block
&
Weathervane

Weathervane may be my new favorite block. Do you have a favorite block so far?

Farmer's Daughter

Friendship Block

Weathervane




Fabric Overload

This Sunday, my mom and I ventured into Mega Fabrics downtown Chicago. It's wall to wall bolts of fabric. Suiting, shirting, stretch taffeta, upholstery fabric, raincoat material, tweed, cotton, tulle, satin. They have everything. We meandered through the maze of the first floor, blown away by the sheer number of bolts on all the neat racks. Then ascending to the attic, we wound our way past piles and fabric landslides. Unorganized mountains of fabric filled the basement. The experience was overwhelming and, in the end, unfruitful but a fun adventure for a Sunday afternoon.