The Updated Zebra

 

I love taking an idea and pushing it around, seeing where I can go with it. 

When I made my son a chessboard out of fabric way back in 2000 (can it really be 24 years ago?) I never expected to make a quilt out of the leftovers, or that I'd be selling a tutorial about making them 20 years later.

At any rate, I have made nine of the so-called "Zebra" quilts, and since I published the tutorial in 2020 I have made three more quilts, which have taught me things I didn't know when I wrote the tutorial.

I have been working on updating the Zebra tute with those things, and have added ten pages of information. I've figured out how to fix a triangle if you have cut the wrong one (there are four different triangles and they aren't easily interchangeable); a more efficient way of cutting them out, and I've included instructions on how to make the Fourth of July quilt.

The new Zebra tutorial is live!

You can get all my tutorials here, at my Etsy shop.

Fourth of July at Home in Maine

 

The Fourth of July quilt is now at home with my friend Bob, who lives near the seacoast in Maine.

We "met" over 20 years ago when I was at a seminar for our ERP software. I had recently installed an upgrade that had gone badly, and had needed some help. At the seminar I complained that the bug I had found had NOT been fixed online and I didn't want anybody else to encounter the same problems I had had. During a break, two gentlemen approached me. Their company used the same software and were planning an upgrade in a few days. Would I be willing to talk to their IT guy and tell him what to do?

Of course I would.

The next day I spent an hour on the phone with Bob, and told him what to do.

It worked, and the next week he called to thank me. It turned out we each had skills the other lacked.  This began a long relationship. If I was stumped I'd call Bob and he'd help me out. When he had questions he'd give me a call. Bob was funny and I could call him if I needed to vent, and he'd listen. Whenever there was an upgrade, we'd go through the details together and report back with our findings. 

I think it was ten years before I met him in person. Every single year on my birthday, I would get a call from Bob, and he would sing to me. Every single year on his birthday I did the same. He always made me laugh.

Bob moved from that job to another, and then another. We still kept in touch. During the pandemic, he knew I was alone and working from home. He'd call or we'd chat or FaceTime. On those lonely holidays, I'd get a text and he'd ask if I was OK.

Last spring, when I was working on the Fourth of July quilt, he texted me and asked how I was. We went back and forth, and then I sent him a picture of the lighthouse panel I had bought and decided to use on the back of the quilt.

"Which lighthouse is that?" he asked. I replied that it was probably a generic lighthouse, since it didn't look like any lighthouse in this area. We New Englanders tend to know our regional lighthouses.

We signed off, and I looked over at the quilt and the lighthouse panel.

New England.

Seacoast.

Lighthouse.

Friend.

Right away I knew I would give the quilt to Bob. I thought he might be embarrassed, so I thought some more. Then I worked out how long we had been buddies. It was 1997 or 1998. That's well over 20 years.

In all that time Bob has never forgotten my birthday. He has always made me laugh and smile. That was enough. When the quilt was done, I put it in the mail and sent it to Bob in Maine.

It arrived on Thursday.

"This is really cool," he texted, "but I expect to see a bill."

No freaking way, I texted back.

"You really are a beautiful person... Thank you, thank you, thank you."

We went back and forth. "20 years," I said, "Actually I think it's closer to 26" he said. "I should ask you how to wash it."

I told him in was in the document I sent. "Read it. There will be a quiz later."

Later I got another text, "I will get you a nice grandma rated picture of me and my new quilt. I love it, it is gorgeous. I would like to use it on my bed as a nice top cover, but it is so nice I am afraid to use it... I like the book you sent with the story. That is really cool. Did you know that one of the things my wife and I would like to do when we retire is to go see all the lighthouses in the East Coast?"

On Friday I got another text. "I want you to know I showed your quilt to several people and every single one of them thought it was beautiful and well made.

"Thank you again."

Update: I added the photo Bob sent me wrapped in his quilt.  

Fourth of July Beauty Shots

A beauty shot of a quilt shows you the photo of the quilt so you get the whole thing, and to scale. This is a quilt that calls to ming the Fourth of July in New England. It's the first of October, and I don't live near the beach, which would have been an obvious setting. Still in New England, we have a lot of green, and this shows it.

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Sometimes something happens you didn't see coming. When I was taking the photo below at the entrance of the community garden, the wind lifted the quilt right up. Which is funny, because the image on the back of the quilt is sailboats blowing in the wind.

The scene behind the quilt in these photos is a story about what has been happening in our community this summer. As you can tell, some power lines go through my community. This summer, the local electric

company has been replacing the wooden power towers with metal ones.

The gate where I've taken the photos is the temporary access road the electric company uses to access the towers you can see in the distance. We drive by this small turnoff every day and hardly seen it. I almost did, but then it registered in my head, and I turned around.

Fourth of July Quilt Finished!

 

It's finished! The Fourth of July quilt is all bound and ready for its beauty shots. It's been raining all day and the weather tomorrow isn't promising, but Sunday looks good for me to take it out for it's beauty shots.

The back of this quilt is equally stunning. 

I think it looks great with this dark red binding.

Still At It...

 

I'm still at it. Still binding and watching The Great British Baking Show.

I'm 3/4 the way around. I will finish in the next couple of days.

Binding and Bingeing

 

I'm sewing the binding on the Fourth of July quilt...

while binge-watching The Great British Baking Show.

Fourth of July Quilted!

 

This is the back of the Fourth of July quilt. You can see the quilting.

Here's the front. I will bind this with red.

This quilt already has a home. I will tell you more about that when the quilt has been gifted.

The Lighthouse

 

It was pretty clear this lighthouse panel would be the backing of the Fourth of July quilt. But it needed to have fabric added to it to make it big enough.

I had four yards of a fabric I could use, but after doing a lot of math on graph paper, it was clear my four yards wasn't quite big enough. Fortunately I had a piece of fabric that had a water feel to it, so I added strips to the top and bottom of the lighthouse panel.

The fabric I've chosen for the backing is directional, so I had to be careful to cut it properly. I cut two panels and added them to the top and bottom of the lighthouse panel.

Printed panels made great backings, but because they are printed, they don't always line up parallel to the straight of the grain. So I had to trim the edge to be straight. One side of the panel looked fine, but the other was really curved. Fortunately perfection is not required. Yes, these big rulers are used for trimming wallboard, but they are handy for getting long edges straight.

Because reality does not often match what you think, I always line up the fabric where I want it to go, to make sure I have enough. I did, so I started sewing the two long panels to either side.

This looks pretty good. The gingko leaves remind me of clamshells.

Laying the quilt on top of the backing is something I always to do make sure the backing is big enough. It also tells me how the two fit together. It does, and really like it.

This is the reason why I pay attention to the backings of my quilts. It's the back of the quilt that lives on my bed, and my pal Julie made it. Every time I make the bed I get to see the back and how it was put together. Julie has influenced my work in so many ways.

The Fourth of July is a Flimsy!

 Over the long holiday weekend, I cleaned the house, worked in the garden, watched tennis and sewed the blocks together for the Fourth of July quilt.

After I sew four triangles together into a big square, I sew three together to make one big row. Here I have two ready to pin together.

Nobody's perfect. I cut one of the triangles wrong, and didn't have enough fabric to make another triangle, so I cut it apart strategically and then sewed it back together. It's barely noticeable when you are looking right at it, but it never showed up in pictures, so I decided to take a picture of the back to show you all that just because you screw something up, it isn't the end of the world.

This is half the quilt, and you can see just how big the red diamonds are.

Here's the flimsy draped across my ironing table.

Here is the flimsy. I will add a light border.

It's gigantic. It's big, it's bold, it's bright. I love it. It isn't quite a Zebra quilt, and there aren't specific instructions for it, but you can get the Zebra quilt tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

Sew Me Up!

 

I tinkered, and now I will sew this together. I already sewed one pair of triangles together in the second row.

Somebody asked me once, when I bought fabric, why did I do it and how much did I buy. I wrote a whole blog post about it a long time ago. I'd find the link, but it's Wednesday morning and I have to go to work in less than an hour so this is going to be quick. 

Anyway, I saw this panel about New England, and since I live in New England, I bought it. Truthfully I thought it was a quarter of the size, and when it arrived I was a little bit annoyed. WHAT THE HECK was I going to do with it, but as I worked on the RWB quilt (which I think I am going to call "Fourth of July"), I thought it would be perfect for the backing.

In real life I have been planning to replace my over 30 year old central air conditioning unit. It works, but it's loud and I'm pretty sure it's very expensive to run. Every time I turn it on I cross my fingers. I won't let anybody touch it, because with old equipment like this, if you start to mess with it it may never run again. 

So I have been getting quotes. The first guy told me to be sitting down when I opened it. Good thing I was, because gosh darn it, everything is so damned expensive.