Vintage Quilt Redux

This past year, I was commissioned to fix a filthy, torn, tattered quilt top and asked to "repair" it. I'm not sure if the owner even knew it was only an unfinished quilt top, and not a finished quilt until I told her. It was in bad shape.
I consulted my friends, quilty experts and contacts, including art restorers, wardrobe experts, people who market professional textile cleaning products. And then I dug in to the mess. I had to hand wash it 4 times in Soak textile wash just to get it clean enough to work on. 

Then I bought vintage feedsack scraps on eBay and made little patches for the really bad holes. 

There was lots of hand sewing to be done and much going back as I'd see more holes, ripped seams and tears, but slowly it began to come together.
I fell in love with the fabrics the more I worked with them, and found little gems and favorite spots throughout the quilt.

The more I worked with it, the more I wished I could speak to the woman who made it... The whole process felt like a conversation I was having with her. There was a distinct primitive beauty about it... I can't help but wonder if this was the only quilt this sewist ever made. So many quilter rules were broken (which reminded me a lot of the natural beauty in the quilts of Gees Bend) and I just loved the innocence of it all. As I finished the quilt, I didn't square it up, I left the edges all wobbly and dealt with the wrinkles that were there as part of the design. I told the customer that these were beautiful and should be preserved as the voice of the original artist.
What a joy it was to finish it. I quilted it really tightly and backed it with Denyse Schmidt's Greenfield Hill line, a vintage inspired line that matched really well.... When it was finally finished, it was strong and safe enough to wash thoroughly with some of my favorite handmade laundry detergent... And what came out of my dryer at the end was gorgeous. It was an absolute delight to work on.

Mimi's fabric collage

Mimi's fabric collage, a photo by libby dibby on Flickr.

It took over our living room for two days. Mimi was a hard worker and even got everyone in the on the act at some point as she cut and glued through my scrap bag. The finished project is about 4'x6' and now is proudly hanging in her bedroom above her bed.
She worked on it between making a cement stepping stone and knotting a fleece pillow. The girl is a crafting machine...(can't imagine where she got that from, I wish my day were as fun as hers!)

Paper pieced WIP over New Years

Paper pieced WIP over New Years, a photo by libby dibby on Flickr.
 

It's almost done... I spent much of 2011 hand sewing this. A hard year that left me so stressed out that I needed something to work on with my hands during lots of waiting moments... I have sewed this entirely by hand, often in cars, I took it camping with me, brought it to meetings... It steadied me by giving me something to focus on in some scary moments.



And now the final product is so much prettier than I ever imagined... The red hand stitching makes me so happy.
It's going to be gifted to someone who has walked super closely with us through our year - our social worker... Someone who carried our pain as her own and was a valiant and strong champion for all we stood for and believed in. I feel as if no one but her could understand the depth and breadth of the year and I know she will know how much she is loved as she receives it.

Memories of Friendship Quilt

It's finished! And it's not called "The Beast" - but it is called "Memories of Friendship"
I wrote the following note to accompany it as it travels to a friend who is making a presentation on modern quilting and using it (among many others) as a prop.

Memories of Friendship
I made this quilt in stages.
This quilt started as one square with some old fabric and some new friends. We had gathered together to learn how to quilt. The old fabric was part of my eclectic and bizarre stash that I have after years of sewing clothes and collecting vintage fabrics from various elderly friends and family members. Each piece has a memory attached of who gave it to me, where I got it or the mystery of not knowing its history.
I often have a "game" I play where I love to hide what I consider "ugly" fabrics into my work. The idea that this discarded and unwanted fabric could be part of something beautiful means a lot to me on many levels. (I  live in a very old house, with lots of vintage patchwork  quilts, artwork on the walls, a creative family, a rescued dog and a foster baby we're trying to adopt. I love seeing beauty in the unexpected) I almost never quilt with a line of fabric, I like the unexpected, and the sense that no one could possibly make this same quilt.
 My new friends and I made wonky squares. I loved my first one and I used up many precious scraps to get the 5 complementary squares. 6 was all I could get. At one point they were even sewn together as a potential table runner.
Then they were ripped apart and stacked for months.

I got the idea to take them into my favorite new quilt shop (Sew Modern), and to pick the brains of the creative and fun friends who work there for ideas. Could we come up with a way to highlight these old fabrics with such a complex color scheme in a way that was fresh?
I'd come in with the idea of two stacks of squares and an off center spread of fabric between. They helped present some awesome and eclectic combos for fabrics, and suggested the wobbly placement.
I went home and pieced the rest by sight. If it needed orange over there, I'd cut and add it in... It was all done in the moment, responding to the overall feeling.
I quilted it with straight line quilting, something I've had little experience with before, but really enjoyed.
As I was basting and quilting this, it occurred to me how many precious friends and memories were represented by this quilt. Each fabric sliver reminds me of someone beautiful that I know. And to me that's what this quilt is all about. My  new friends, my old friends. My silver friends and my gold friends.

 (here's the back of the quilt)

Old Artwork - post 3

More installments in my "old artwork" series:

I grouped these two together because they may or may not have happened around the same time, but it's clear the inspiration was the concept of embroidering scenery.

 This tiny piece was what I spent a rainy winter weekend on as we escaped the frigid Chicago winter for a visit to Arizona.  We stayed in a friend's vacation home and though it was rainy, the desert was gorgeous and I sat there inside, overlooking the endless pool as it dropped off into the cool and green valley. The desert had never looked so pretty to me.  Even looking at this now, I can remember more senses and feelings than I normally remember about that trip. Isn't that one of the great reasons we make art?

 This piece also was made on a vacation. It was the view of a valley below us at the home we stayed at in Hyderabad, India. I found it so funny that there were boulders in the yards of the homes below that were larger than the houses. I imagined this would be called, "The Boulders Come With the House" - I'm sure that the doors were probably that color, too - knowing India.

Scraps finding a purpose - Rebecca's quilt

Remember how every few months I get freaked out by my stash and send out a call for people who want scraps? Well I LOVE LOVE LOVE it when the recipients send me pics of what they've made. I gave some scraps to a neighbor, Rebecca, and she made this quilt almost a year ago and I keep forgetting to post pics of it!
Well, now I remembered... Sorry to have forgotten this long, Rebecca!

Didn't she do the greatest job? I'm so happy to see these fabrics from my skirts get a fresh and happy life.
If this inspires you and you want some scraps (and are either local to pick them up or willing to pay shipping) let me know and I'll get some off to you!

my sewing goes to new widths and lengths

Remember these funky quilt squares that I made slowly over the past year with weird (and some really ugly) scraps? I loved the way they turned out and was so wanting to use them in something really fabulous... but nothing in my stash elevated them to the level I felt they were worthy of. So I did something I rarely do... I went to Sew Modern (my friend, Lauren's new quilt shop in West LA) - squares in hand with the purpose of buying just for them... and had the amazing gals there give me great suggestions and chat with me as i wrapped my head around what to do to with them.

We ended up with patterns and colors that I LOVE - I mean, I was telling Jay the other night that this is definitely the most sophisticated and complicated color scheme that I have ever worked with... And there are fabrics that no online shop could have pointed me to to make this all work. On top of that, the fact that I'd only had enough fabric scraps to make 6 of these little squares really challenged me so that I needed to come up with a cool solution for the rest of the space.

I've gotten tired of making lap size quilts... they seem small sometimes - though they are REALLY useful around here for 1000 purposes... too many of the same size, well -that's boring...

so... I had a blast the other night, sewing this puppy up. Seriously, I paid NO attention to the size. I just kept working with it until I felt like it was done. And the result is something I am really proud of!
I think the ending size is somewhere between a twin and a queen... but not really a full size and I think I love it the way it is.
It is most certainly something bigger than anything I've pieced yet...

a little bit of sewing

so you know me.... when the going gets tough, the tough get sewing.

and i needed some therapy this week so for the past 3 days, I caught up on my bees, worked on my samplers from the bees, and tried to fit in my collage for church that I need to do for the lenten season.... (more on that later... after 3+ hours invested in it, I ruined it and have to re-do it... so as my dad says, "moron that later")
Here's what my fingers and gears have been up to:
 This first one is a wonky square in square design that I did for Seams Perfect Bee - which is my all scraps bee... I love the color scheme that LeeAnn picked out.  Really not my typical shades and I loved working in it - very refreshing... like a summer swim...

 

Then I had to catch up on Yolanda's pineapple blocks for Bee Happy - Which were really hard work, but I think she's going to end up with an awesome quilt. Click here to see what is happening as she's putting the blocks together!

After that, it was the 12th and final month for Bee Happy's 1st year - and Janice requested scrappy styled wonky houses. These were SO much fun to make and I even busted out some of my long savored fabrics to add in there, because they were just what the blocks needed. She'd sent us a few pieces as inspiration and requested (in my block) that the mermaids and the goldfish ended up in the blocks somewhere. As I sewed, I had a lot of fun imagining a little world where the mermaids and goldfish were neighbors. We may need to be revisiting this idea for a certain little fairy freak we've got here in the house - I know her imagination would run wild with a wonky house fairy quilt... (if I just typed that, do I have to make it now?)

After all that happy sewing... I had a table filled with the most LOVELY scrap pile I'd seen in a while. So... well, I needed to sew up a few quilted bags, right? and I've never tried a mugrug (quilty coaster), so here's the first of three of those...

I literally was piecing tiny tiny pieces together and then making a piece, cutting that up and re-sewing it back together to get some fun results. ... you can see the tiny little scrap houses that ended up in my Coke rug...

I forgot to take photos (how could I?) of last weeks two quilts that went out for some dear little daughters to friends of mine - one as yet unborn (mommy is in the hospital on urgent bedrest at 27 weeks) and the other for a favorite neighborhood 2year old as she had her birthday. (I've also made G a little play quilt... it's nothing special, but since it's for him, he deserves his own post)

Oh yeah! and (last ones) ... here are some of the side projects for the bees... Each month in my bees, as I make a square to send off to someone else - I also make a "practice" square for myself - so that I can end the year with a sampler that represents my journey and learnings in the bee. Please don't ask me what I am going to do with all these quilts. I have no idea. So my Seams Perfect Bee Sampler is in red and white... which is fun... and my Bee Happy sampler -well, let's just say that I started with this "cool" idea that I was going to use the ugliest most hated fabrics in my collection... and see what I could come up with. Well... it's pretty ugly. I'm not going to show that one until I post about it later. Still, it was a fun experience, and a major creative challenge.
So here are my Seams Perfect red and white squares, along with a blue and white one that I made for a bee buddy who is assembling a quilt for charity for an auction.

yes. The answer is, I HAVE NEEDED TO DO THIS. As I always say, "My sewing machine is the ONLY thing in my life that I have control over." and so far, I think it's still cheaper than therapy... though that may be up for debate.

I have the coolest friends - Rachel, the Artistic Doctor

So I've written about my pal Amy on this blog a lot.  Last summer we worked a ton on fun projects for her wedding. One of the fun side effects of all that work was becoming friends with Amy's super great sisters.

Rachel (pictured here with me as we did the flowers for Amy's wedding) is not only a new doctor, but a super artistic and creative gal herself. She's multi-talented and SO fun to be with. One day, she even sent this awesome drawing in the mail to us!

This week she sent me these pictures of this awesome laptop bag that she made with scraps from my scrap bins.

 I was amazingly impressed,  and THEN when I read further, I realized she made this by hand! She doesn't have a sewing machine! Wow, Rachel, you rock. Great job!

Ticker-Tape quilt for baby Maile

Those of you who see my flickr pics will know that this was done a little while ago... I didn't want to post about it until my friend who it was for actually received it. She's got it now.

 This is a ticker-tape style quilt that I made for a friend's new baby. The fabrics in it have a lot of sentiment, there are pieces that are new and vintage, pieces that she and I shopped for together, pieces from J's grandmothers, pieces from AJ's one receiving blanket that I held onto...  There are pieces from all over the world and many of them have deep meanings to both my friend and I.  I had so much fun making this quilt, I am sure that there are more ticker-tape style quilts in my future... it's a fast and fun way to quilt. Plus, the raw edges are really... well... edgy.

I sent this quilt with a note for my friend telling her that this quilt is not a fussy quilt. I am hoping that it gets stained, used and loved.  (I guess I hope that for all my quilts.)

sunhat sewing, anyone?

I think I need one of these before our next few vacations begin... We've got a lot of travel planned this summer and I am a girl who is always wearing a big hat. Want to sew one with me?
Here's how.... if you make one, send me a pic! I'm thinking Libby Dibby scraps would work GREAT for these!
How to Make a One-Pattern-Piece Reversible Sunhat - CraftStylish

More quilting... for bee happy

My quilting bee is really a fun source of inspiration for me. It challenges me to try something new and to work on my skills ... it makes me work with new types of fabrics in color schemes that are foreign to me - which is a great challenge that I enjoy.

This month's block is for Alison and we're making "liberated wedding rings". It was another strip (scrap) quilt pattern and I made mine last night. It was fun to try to work within her requests for each block using ALL of the fabrics she sent - and also to do my best to make two squares that did not look alike. She requested that we send the usable scraps back to her for more quilting, but there were some "unusable" scraps that I thought would be fun to make something of. So it was midnight and I got out my Mod Podge... (oy!) and one of Ace's old cleaned out formula cans so that I could make her a little pen/scissor bucket.

Have I ever shown you my scissor bucket? Sonja took a great pic of it when she was here. I loved that she saw the beauty in the mundane around here... my bucket does indeed make me smile, hopefully Alison will like hers.

Today's project: spiderweb quilt

I'm so excited about this quilt. I've been dreaming about sewing it since I did my/Abi's spiderweb block for the quilting bee that I'm in... I wanted to do a spiderweb block with a patterned interior since I don't love solids... And pin dots seemed appropriate, but not predictable... So here we go! Only two squares are sewn together right now, but by tonight I should have about 9 complete... Here's a pic of them all lined up to sew.

I don't often get to sew in the daytime, but today the a/c is getting installed... I'm hanging around here as much as possible instead of running errands and I gotba few solid hours to work on this.

This pattern is fun to work on. It appeals to my scrappy, patterned, colorful, use-everything side... And I love the chaos turning into ordered wheels... How big it gets depends on how tired I get of making these - though I currently am thinking this will be my first full size quilt.