Three Quilts for March

 I like making quilts, and when I figured out I could make a table quilt, I decided to make one for each month of the year. (I love bowls, too, and this gives me an excuse to have a spiffy bowl for each quilt.)

March is my least favorite month of the year. It's usually grey and dull and blah and muddy. So black and white is a perfect quilt for March. This is Terrazzo, a Slashed Squares quilt. Readers ask if I really eat on the quilts. I do, but I use a placemat. You can see one at my place in the photo above. It's black and white and pink. (my pal Julie made me a set.)

I decided to show off some other quilts this month. So I changed the one that lives on the back of the couch. Julie made this one too. It's called Hidden Potential, and it's made from my dud letters. About ten years ago when I was planning a class on free pieced letters, Julie suggested I send her my duds. "Just because YOU can't use them doesn't mean they are bad," she wrote, "and your students need to know that too."

Julie sent me this quilt for my birthday a while back. I love black and white and colors. It's cold here at night in winter, so I like to have an extra quilt on the bed. I figured this one was March-ish too. What's funny, is Julie also made the quilt underneath, the one that has lived on my bed since I got it, and if that isn't a compliment, I don't know what is.

Lynne & Julie: Swapping Duds and Making Magic

In late 2010 I was planning a class on free pieced letters, and I wanted a sampler that showed different kinds of letters.

The quilt Nine x Nine was the result.

As usual, making the quilt generated a lot of dud letters.

 "Send them to me!" Julie wrote, "I'll make a quilt out of them. They are duds to YOU, but your students need to know it's still possible to make a great quilt!" I sent her all my dud letters, and then I prepared another box full of ALL the leftover bits I had squirreled away - mini trees, asterisks, butterflies, some free pieced houses and anything else I could find.

Julie had no negative associations with my box of duds, and she made this quilt. There were so many pieces Julie would make a second quilt. She said it would be the back. While she worked on that, I had an idea.

 I had been making a Rules quilt for myself, and made this black and white RULES word, which wouldn't work in the quilt. I looked at it and saw "jULiE" and "chRiS". OH HELL! Chris would quilt the quilt Julie was planning... so I went into the studio...

Using the letters from RULES, I made JULIE and CHRIS. I put them in the box, sealed it up to mail it to Julie the next day. Then I went to bed.

I'm lying it bed and it hits me.. SHIT!

The next day after work I went into the studio, and prepared something else for Julie and put THAT in the mail the next day.

Two days later, Julie wrote to me, "Lynne... I just got your box... I have an idea...."

"CHECK YOUR MAIL TOMORROW!" I wrote back.

We had BOTH had the same idea. Since the quilt would be made from my letters and bits and pieces, and JULIE would be putting the pieces together and CHRIS would be quilting it, it would be a three way collaboration. It only made sense to have all three of our names on the quilt.

 As soon as I saw this picture of the "back" of the quilt, I told Julie I wanted a second quilt, and that I'd pay for the quilting. This was too good to be only the back of something. Julie included three houses in the quilt, and her explanation was: "Our houses have brown on the ground because we don't have any snow here in the winter. Your house (with the red roof) has white on the ground because you have snow right now."

I didn't have the heart to tell Julie that I when I made that house I envisioned it as a house on the Mediterranean Sea in bright sunlight with a tiled roof and surrounded by flowers. Heck, I'd take that as my house! Funnily enough, years later I would buy a house surrounded by flowers with a red door.

This is the picture Julie sent me back in 2011 as she enjoyed the quilt before sending it to me.

I was thrilled when the quilt arrived.

I went home that night in 2011 and put the quilt on my bed, and it has stayed there ever since. If that isn't the highest compliment you can give a quilt, I don't know what is.

But don't feel bad for the "Hidden Potential" quilt Julie made. It comes with me to every quilt class and lecture I give. I want students to know that even things they think are "duds" (I no longer consider them "failures") have potential.

I was going to show this photo later in the story, but as Julie pointed out, it really belongs here. This is me, Julie & Chris (l to r) and the Magic Happens quilt. Julie reminded me that Chris quilted the quilt with black and white variegated thread, because my cat Millie is black and white and "her furs will be right at home."

The Table Quilts & A Few Ideas

When I visited my pal Julie in 2013 I was surprised to see a quilt covering the table in her kitchen. I thought it was a good idea to protect the table and a nice way to show off a quilt. I inherited my grandmother's mahogany dining room table, and I have to keep it covered to protect the surface. A quilt would do that quite nicely.  Over the years I have made seven.

I use the rail fence quilt, Picnic Table in January.

I wanted a red and white quilt for February. This is Peppermint Swirl.

I made a black and white Slashed Squares quilt for the month of March. I call it Terrazzo.

I like using "Hidden Treasure," the quilt Julie made for me using my leftover bits for April.

The Tumblers quilt, Easter Basket, is the one I use for the month of May.

I like using the Blue Deco quilt for June, and the rest of the summer.

The Fall House Top quilt is the one I use for November and the big Thanksgiving Feast.

The Christmas Random Plank is the quilt for December.

I like having different quilts for each month, but if I do that, I am missing quilts for July, August, September and October.  So I had to think about that. Do I really want to have a quilt for each month of the year?  YES! What would I do for those? My birthday is in July, so I knew that would have to be something special.

The quilts I have tend to be seasonal colors, so according to that August should be hot colors or red orange and yellow. September is probably my favorite month of the year - the weather is perfect, and October is peak fall foliage season, so that means reds, yellows and oranges with some greens and blues. Well, ok, but August and October aren't anything alike, and I don't want them to have the same colors. Maybe August could be beach colors - sandy tans for the beach, light blues for the sky and blue greens for the ocean...

I like that idea for August, so that's a go.

When I started looking at fabric shops online the idea for July came to me like a thunderbolt.  

I like Pink, and although it isn't necessarily my favorite color, I wear a lot of it because I look good in it.

 So the quilt for July will be Pink. (Then I bought about 13 yards of 28 different pinks!)

I like the quilts to be different designs too. I want to make a scrap slab quilt for one of these, and when the Wavelength quilt showed signs of looking three-dimensional, I got out my little notebook and did this drawing. It looks like a honeycomb, and as soon as that word popped into my head I knew that would be the theme of this quilt and that it would be the quilt for October.

And for that quilt, I may very well use White on Black fabrics for the dark side triangles instead of just darker Black on Whites. I'll experiment, of course, and see. I've got plenty of time.

That leaves September, but I'm not going to worry about that at all. I only have color ideas for July and August, and that's never stopped me in the past, but I do have a very specific idea for October, so that's where I'll start.

The next quilt is: Honeycomb, in Golds, Oranges, and Yellows for October!

Spring is in the Air

It was time to change out the quilt on the dining room table. It seemed too early to use the blue summer quilt, so I am using Hidden Potential, the quilt my pal Julie made for me using my leftover bits. Just goes to prove that just because something is wrong for one project, it doesn't mean it can't be successfully used in another.

The new cell phone arrived yesterday and it took barely an hour to set it up and restore everything. Lucky me.

For those of you fortunate enough to visit the AQS Lancaster show that begins today, keep a lookout for my quilt, the Black & White Crayons. You can see a photo of it at the bottom of this post. If anybody would like to buy a Lancaster show pin for me, I'd much appreciate it, and will be happy to reimburse you for the cost plus shipping to me. Email me at patcherymenagerie AT gmail DOT com. Thanks.

Duds, Glorious Duds!

Every word quilt I make generates lots of duds or "misfit" letters.

These are from Nine x Nine.

The letters in the lower half of this photo are the "duds" from my quilt Daft Zebras.

The only letters worth keeping in this photo were the "out of the box" ones that formed an arc above the box in The Black Box quilt.

The BOX letters on the bottom of this photo are all duds.

Now, duds aren't BAD letters, they just don't "work" with the rest of what I've made. So I set them aside. I might use them in another project, and I might even raid them for bits of fabric.

But most of my dud letters have made their way to my friend Julie.

 Back at the end of 2010 she told me I should send her my dud letters "because students need to see that the first letters they make aren't BAD and can still be used to make a beautiful quilt."

 She made this quilt, Hidden Potential, for me. I love it.  I then sent her another box of my leftover bits including some houses, stars, butterflies and other stuff.

The result was this quilt, Magic Happens, a collaboration between Julie, Chris (our fabulous long arm quilter) and me. I love this one so much it lives on my bed.

Julie and I have talked about how she takes what I consider a dud and makes magic out of it. "When I get your castoff letters, they don't have any negative associations for me," she says. "So it's easy for me to use them in something new."

Good point!  Check out what Julie made with my castoff letters from the Black Box, Red Letter Alphabet and Mashed Potato Crayons.

The letters may be mine, but the rest, Create With Abandon, is all Julie's.

The lesson, Rebecca, is that it's all in how you look at it; that inspiration, and (hidden) potential, is everywhere.

Even in the castoff bin!

Happy Birthday Julie!

Today is my pal Julie's birthday.  Julie is my best pal. We've been email and internet friends for over four years, and in less than two weeks, we'll meet in person for the first time. I can't wait.

Julie has made me several quilts, and I love them all.

The first was Obsolescence,which Millie and I both love.

This was the result of a quilt swap. I made a Rules quilt for Julie (above.)

Later, Julie asked me to send her all my duds and orphan letters so she could put them together in a quilt to show my letter-making students that there wasn't really any such thing as a "bad" letter.

She ended up making not one, but two awesome quilts.  I love them all!

Happy Birthday Julie!

Happy Birthday to You,

Happy Birthday to You,

Happy Birthday dear Julie!

Happy Birthday to You!

Hidden Potential is Here!

Woo hoo! It's here! It's awesome! It's so much fun to look at, and find every element.I love it!Love, love love!

You can see all the in process pictures at Julie's Picasa album here, and then follow the quilting journey over at Chris's Picasa album here.

No More Green

The green mat was useful, but I didn't like working on it. It was dark, and this sewing room (especially in winter) isn't very bright, and seeing the edges of things was hard. And it had a bump in the middle. I tried rotating it, but the bump was still where I wanted to work.So I bit the bullet and ordered a large white cutting mat. It arrived yesterday, and I took it out of the box and let it relax a bit, then laid it out on the table and trimmed it to size.

What a big difference! I love it! Woo hoo!

You HAVE to check out the quilt Julie and Chris and I made, Hidden Potential, at Julie's blog, here. I am positively thrilled!

When Misfits Aren't

Being a cheap New Englander, I never throw my misfit blocks away. Instead I put them in a plastic bin and keep the bin on the top shelf of a bookcase I generally can't reach.

I had misfit letters from my colors quilt, Nine x Nine.
I had misfit letters and blocks from the Rules quilts I made for Tonya, Helen, and Julie. I had misfit letters from The Quick Brown Fox.I had misfit letters from Daft Zebras, I made last summer:I had houses left over from Devon's quilt.I had leftover trees from Doll Quilt Swap 8, that I made in January 2010.
I had bits of my rows of seminole "dots" I used in my sampler quilt, "Letters From Home" made in 2009.I had blocks left over from Violette's quilt, which I made in 2008:wonky flowers
my first wonky house
and some wonky trees.

Why do I mention this? Because earlier this year, my friend Julie asked me to send them to her so she could make a flimsy.

In the lovely way a creative project changes as you work on it (if you're smart enough to let it), the flimsy developed into something more than the sum of its parts, and then morphed into not one, but two quilts.

My blocks + Julie's design sense = [two] Collaborative quilts! How cool is that? (And it's not over! Our friend Chris will add another creative element when she quilts them.)

What Julie really made is Magic. You simply must go to her blog and see Monday's post to check it out. I am positively thrilled!