The Freewheeling Quilter

Back in the saddle again

Well, not quite.

My husband and I bought a house this summer.  Starting in June, I started packing.  Fabric went first.  For a while, our living room looked like this:

That used to be my sewing corner.

When we finally moved at the end of August, I was determined to make the living spaces box-free.  I'd been living with boxes for three months and it was just too much.   So the rest of the house became serene and settled, but the sewing room (I still can't believe I'll have a sewing room), looked like this:

There's a sofa under there, believe it or not.  And not only was it filled with boxes, but the low-hanging fruit had already been dealt with, so it was filled with the worst of the worst boxes.  The nightmare boxes.  The boxes that are a total jumble of important stuff and trash.  The "Why on earth did we move a box full of mail from five years ago" boxes.  

So, I labored on this project over this this weekend, and finally it looks more like this:

Progress, right?  Please tell me I'm making progress.  It's October.  I'd really like to use my sewing machine in my very own sewing room.  For my sanity's sake, I need a big project I can sink my teeth into.

 

 

It's nice when I find someone who has already done the mental work for me.

Quiltin' Around the World: Mason Dixon Feedsack Quilt

Oh, I am head over heels with this feedsack quilt that Kay finished.  Go go go see it now.

This is also just the most beautiful sentiment I have ever read on the subject of quilting/knitting:

The thing I'm most pleased about is that a project that an unknown quilter put aside, possibly as long ago as the 1940s, has been finished, in tidy and respectful fashion, and it's in use. In a perfect world, every project would get finished, sometime. We wouldn't worry about how many unfinished projects we have, confident that in 2070-something, somebody will get around to it.

I just think that is the most lovely sentiment.  I inherited a quilt top from my great great aunts Katie and Sadie, and have it lovingly stored until I figure out how to quilt it.  My parents have insisted that machine quilting is just fine and yet I can't bring myself to do that.  I feel like you have to respect the quilt.  But being used is also a form of respect, too.    

Fallow time

I have been wondering lately "What is wrong with you?"

Okay, maybe not in that harsh tone of voice. But I had been wondering why I had been so go go go and now... I haven't sat at my sewing
machine in a over a month.

Some stuff in my non-sewing life cropped up, requiring care and attention. But it's more than that. I think after finishing a consuming, big project, you need a little time off to regroup. You need to lie fallow for a while, or at least I do.

Now it's been a few months, and I find myself looking at things in quilt mode again. I've been snapping pictures of colors that speak to me. Verdant, new tree leaves set against purple blue skies. Houses lit up in twilight by the orange and gold light. And I have people in mind.

My brother's quilt, I just don't love at the moment and have to set it aside. But a dear friend needs a quilt, even if she doesn't know it yet, and I have this... idea. I like the idea of tiles of fabric with grey sashing. Like a crazy mosaic. A landscape in fabric tiles. Something like that. I am not quite sure how the blocks will go together but tonight I think I am finally ready to sit down at my machine and test things out.

I think it's really important to take some time and leave things alone for a while. Nothing I am doing can't wait until I am ready.

May Flowers

Five years worth of knitting.

Hearing "I don't mean to be nosy," from a stranger can mean a conversation that can either be warm and nice or truly terrifying.  Last weekend, outside a Pupuseria in P.G. County, a woman leaned out of her SUV to say "I don't mean to be nosy... but are you knitting or crocheting.  Because my friend here thought you were crocheting but I said you were knitting.  You were really working it!"  

So that was an example of that kind of conversation that went well.  And it's true, I was working it.  I was knitting as fast as I could, because I am dying to be done with this blanket.

I say I started it five years ago, but I'm not entirely sure.  Nevertheless, it's been several years and it's been sort of the perfect project for distracted knitting.  I've also taken long breaks from knitting and it's the one unfinished thing I have going that requires almost no work to pick up again.  It's also been a good way to tame my yarn buying.  I do let myself buy a skein or two for it, wherever I am, but I manage to limit myself to that.  I will have a LOT of leftovers, too, and have been wondering about what to do with my amazing, beautiful collection of half skeins of worsted yarn.

Knitting is alchemical, though.  I love starting with yarn...

Turning it into squares like this...

Sewing the small squares into big squares like this.

And the final product will be an enormous, queen sized duvet cover.

Yep, not just a blanket.  I want to knit a black or charcoal grey border on this thing, then sew broadcloth onto the back and turn it into a duvet cover.

The world's warmest, most expensive to maintain (as it will likely need to be dry cleaned) duvet cover.

Insane?  I know, but I am working it.  

What to listen to while you quilt

I have coaxed a semi-permanent home for my sewing machine on a folding card table out of a corner of our livingroom.  Having my machine set up all the time is an absolutely essential prerequisite to sewing more frequently, and this is the least disruptive to our small apartment.  The other thing that keeps me sewing is having a collection of entertaining stuff to listen to while I sew.

I put an inordinate amount of thought into this.  As much as I am a fan of mindfullness, to the point where I had this poem read at my wedding, sometimes quilting is just... boring.  To get through the boring parts, I distract myself with things to listen to.

My sewing table faces a wall.  Yours might face a TV, in which case you could watch silent movies or foreign films or brooding movies set in the English moors where nothing much is said as much as things are felt.  I am not so lucky.  I need things I can HEAR.  And I also need something that doesn't have too much linear plot, because sewing while listening to a conversation is like this:

"Luke, I am your WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.*"

*the noise my sewing machine makes at full tilt.

So, here are some of the things that have worked, and haven't worked, over the past couple months.

QI: a British quiz show trivia type thing hosted by Stephen Fry. Sewing Grade: A.  This is one of the best things I found.  First of all, there are like eight seasons, so that means a lot of sewing hours are all set.  Second of all, it might as well be radio for all I care.  The goal of the show is not to be right as much as interesting.  

The Thick of It: satire about British government, the spiritual successor to Yes, Minister. Sewing Grade: B-.  It's a little too hard to follow just from listening, but at the same time Malcolm's foul mouth is endlessly entertaining to me.  

Aziz Ansari's comedy album.  Sewing Grade: A-.  Listening to recordings of comedians?  If I like them, it's perfect.  

The Silent Films of Buster Keaton.  Sewing Grade: F.  I am not joking, my husband put on The General one day while I was quilting his quilt.  I looked up from my sewing and just begged him to put on something else.  Begged, threatened: it all starts to sound the same after you've spent eight hours at a sewing machine.

Podcasts: Sewing Grade: A.  Would be an A+++ if the ones I liked were produced often enough to fill my sewing hours.  The best podcasts are like hanging out with good friends.  I like the Ricky Gervais podcasts, the Slate Culture Gabfest (where they like to compete to see how many times can you say Borgesian in one show) and How Did This Get Made, a podcast devoted to "the movies that should have been for everyone but are actually for no one." 

Airplane: Sewing Grade: C.  I had a major nostalgia attack when I watched it--it reminded me of the summer camp I used to go to.  There were about three VHS tapes and two were about breeding horses, so we watched a lot of this one.  Unfortunately, visual gags don't work well for this purpose.

Documentaries: Sewing Grade: A.  Ding ding ding, we have a winner!  I watched, er, listened to the entire Monarchy series.  While I still can't quite tell my Aethelred the Unreadies from my Aethered the Unsteadies, I did learn about Empress Matilda and stupid Stephen de Blois.  Not that I'm partisan about 12th century succession conflicts, not at all...

Why I make things

We had friends over for tea this weekend and I set out linen napkins my grandma had made.  

They have yellow flowers crossstitched on them and a pretty scalloped border.  

When my grandfather died this summer, my grandma had to move into a nursing home and their house was sold.  Their home was the center of my family's universe.  It was where we sat around the kitchen table and ate and drank martinis.  We talked about family, politics, bird watching, wars, gardening, life and death.  

I didn't go to the auction where the bulk of their belongings were eventually sold but my mom said it was funny and sad how so many things that had made up their home kind of lost that aura once they were under the bright flourescent light of the auction house.  (My mom: "Your grandparent's house had great mood lighting, everything looked better in the house.")  All the household items stopped being magical components of a cherished home; they became things again.  

Still, I cherish the bits and pieces of their household that made it to me.  At the auction, my mom bought my grandmother's knitting needles and the roll my grandma made for them.  And she bought the book of Amish Quilts that I obsessed over as a girl.  The embroidered napkins also made their way to me, and I really cherish them. 

Last night at dinner, Geoff and I sat at our table.  I buried my face in one of the napkins and inhaled deeply.  It still smelled like my grandmother's linen chest.  I burst into tears because of the scent association, overwhelmed with longing for my grandparents and the times around their kitchen table.

I am not really answering the question of why I make things, I guess.  Something keeps me going back to my sewing machine or picking up my knitting needles.  It has to do with my grandma, for sure.  I don't know the whole answer, but I grasp at it sometimes.  I know that a big part of it is that this is the way the women in my family expressed their artistic sides.  Making things, and making a home, was their art.  This is my way of keeping in touch with this part of my history.

Life has walloped me

Walloped is the technical term for what is going on.  Basically the health stuff has turned out to be a serious chore, meaning lots of extra work at home and a bajillion doctor's appointments, and as a result hardly any quilting is happening.  I am happy to report I am reading a bit.  Both Diane Gaudynski's primer on Machine Quilting and Malka Dubrowsky's Color your Cloth.  They are both really wonderful books to change the way you think about the entire process.  

I am also fitting in a bit of knitting here and there.  I am trying desperately to finish this obnoxiously ambitious queen-sized mitered square blanket I started five years ago.  It's like patchwork, only you have to make the fabric in the most laborious way possible.  I took a giant stupid pill when I started this project, and I am trying to con my friends into forced labor invite my friends to a sewing bee to finish the seaming.

Anyway, I will try to write a bit about all of it later.

Northumberland Star Quilt Progress

I spent some time trying to piece my first Northumberland Star block.  As per usual, I am not really convinced of the best way to do this.  But the way I learn is very much by diving in and figuring it out by doing it.  Well, I read first to marinate my mind in the techniques, but after a certain point I have to get going by trying it.

I am debating, essentially, whether or not I want to construct this square with Flying Geese or Half Square Triangles.  I'm a big fan of The It's Okay If You Sit On My Quilt Book, which seems to recommend piecing just about everything by half square triangles.  

But, then, perhaps both methods would work for this quilt.  Here's my thought for the quilt: many different styles of stars in all different sizes.  And pieced in different techniques.

My first block, regardless, is being made with Flying Geese.  I'll spare you the drama, the tears!, I went through when I was trying to use a speed piecing method.  Needless to say, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.  But after I took a break, it was like a beam of light shone down from heaven and I saw the answer to all my problems.  Well, all my Flying Geese related problems, anyway.

Meanwhile, I am dissatisfied with the colors.  After all that.  They are just too... nautical.  Just a tad too college football-ey.  A little too semaphore-ish.  

Know what I mean?

Rather than let the absolutely enormous block I have slaved over go to waste, I have a cunning plan.  I am going to tape down and cover up the navy parts and then spritz the yellow parts with a diluted bleach solution.  Because playing with bleach is my idea of a good time.  Wish me luck!