The Big Why

 

Whenever I start sewing the binding down on a quilt I start about sixteen inches away from a corner and sew towards it. Getting the first corner out of the way quickly is fun, but it means when I turn the fourth corner, I am well and fully in the home stretch. 

I am very eager to finish this quilt and toss it over the back of the couch and see it with the pink pillows for a few weeks before the Christmas decorations come out.

I've been telling you that Millie has been acting really demanding. This photo should really give you the idea of what she looks like when she Wants My Attention. 

(I told you!)

Later today I'll be meeting my dad at a local restaurant to gift the Garden Party quilt to Marjorie, the Lady Priest. I've made a PDF file of the story of her quilt and collected all the in-process pictures and copied all to a flash drive for her. I hope to have photos tomorrow. 

Pretty sure there will be tears.

So now I'm going to tell you something you may have heard here before, but it's the kind of thing we quiltmakers shouldn't forget. It's WHY we make quilts.

I believe that quilts are Magic. I believe that the very best present EVER is a quilt, that it supersedes money or any other THING. What separates a quilt from "other gifts" is time and touch. Quilts take time to make. Time to plan, to design, to sew, to quilt, to bind. During that time whoever makes the quilt touches every square inch many times. I believe that touch STAYS with the quilt, that the quilt holds that touch, that caring, those thoughts and then surrounds the persons who are wrapped or covered in it. 

Don't believe me? Go back to the very beginning of this quilt blog, back to July and August 2008 and read about the quilt I made for my goddaughter Violette. Violette's quilt was the first fully free pieced quilt I ever made. It had free pieced letters, asterisks and butterflies. It even had a cat hiding in a garden of flowers. I worked on that quilt for over four months, agonizing every inch of the way. I never gave up, even though the quilt changed many times from inception to completion. Violette lay under the quilt exactly once, when I took her picture. Ten days later she died.

To say I and her family were bereft is an understatement of epic proportions. I was disheartened that a quilt I had worked on for so long would be forgotten, tucked away in a drawer somewhere. One of my friends reassured me that would never happen. "Just wait," she said, "that quilt will be a comfort. You'll see."

After Violette's funeral (the quilt covered her tiny casket; not exactly the way I wanted to remember it), her eldest brother put the quilt on his bed, "so she wouldn't be alone." Weeks later her mother admitted that during one particularly rough night when she couldn't sleep, she went to get Violette's quilt from her son's bed and covered herself with it. "I fell right back to sleep, and slept so much better... I slept under it a lot after that. I even woke up one morning to find my husband sleeping under it...  It has become the quilt everybody wants. When anybody here is feeling blue or they are sick, they sleep under Violette's quilt..." (And every time I visit, I get to sleep under it. It always brings tears to my eyes.)

Yeah. Hearing that story took my breath away. But since then, I've heard other similar stories, so I know that quilts REALLY ARE as Magical as I think they are.

So remember this: When you gift a quilt, the recipient does not care if it is an original design or if it came from a book, a pattern or a kit. They do not care if the fabrics are "designer" or left over. They don't care if you bought fabric from eQuilter or the local big box sell everything store. They do not care if your seams are perfectly straight, if your quilt lies flat or if the tips of the triangles are chopped off. They do not care if the quilt was custom quilted, or hand guided quilted, or quilted by a long arm machine running a CAD program. They do not care which side of the quilt you finish sewed the binding on. They do not care if it was sewn by machine or by hand. They don't even care if it was never in a quilt show. Or even if it was.

What matters is that it came from YOUR hand. From YOUR heart, from YOUR time, and from YOUR love. What matters is that it came from YOU. That YOU made it. That YOUR touch is in it. 

NEVER underestimate the importance of that.

That is the rock bottom reason I make quilts, and frankly, I can't think of a better legacy.

I'll never be a millionaire. I'll never be so famous everybody knows my name, but there are people I love who sleep under my quilts every night and feel that love. Hell, even I don't sleep under a quilt I made. I sleep under a quilt that my best friend made for me, and another friend of ours quilted.

Like I said, tears.

**Update: I added a photo of Violette's quilt.

Tulips?

These tulips are from the quilt I made for Violette several years ago. I thought I'd lost this series of photos and am very happy to have found them again.

Violette

True Quilt of Love

I think all quilts are made with Love, but this one is special. Violette's Mom is a cat blogger, like me. That's how we "met." When we all heard about Violette's untimely death, everybody wanted to do something to help. Mom suggested everybody send her a 2" square of fabric, with their name written on it, and she would assemble the pieces into a quilt with which the baby would be wrapped when she was laid to rest.

It was quickly apparent that it would be difficult for everybody to make this happen, so one blogger offered to sign squares for everybody who emailed her. In the end, a local fabric store donated the fabrics, cut the squares, and our cat blogger spent several long hours writing all the names. Then the package was shipped to the family via overnight shipping.

In the interim, I made plans to attend the funeral. I didn't see how Violette's Mom would be able to put this together herself, given the circumstances, and offered my services to sew it up. I arrived Thursday evening and spent all day Friday, the day before the funeral, sewing.It was interesting. The squares the cat bloggers sent were perfect 2" squares, but the ones from the fabric store were anything but. They were "about 2" " in every sense of the word, slightly larger in each dimension and not "square." At first I tried trimming them, but realized quickly I'd never get it done.
So I just did the best I could, knowing the most important thing was the love with which the quilt was made.

Any quiltmaker worth her salt can make a quilt in a day. But I didn't have my sewing machine, my tools, a flat surface on which to work, a rotary cutter, or even a big ruler.

The ironing board was a portable one, and was set on the floor. I have at least one burn mark from the iron just above my knee.I sewed the pieces into pairs, then four patches, all the while trying to evenly distribute the colors and patterns. I enlisted a young cousin to help me cut the chains apart, and help match blocks together. The fours became eights. About midday the mail arrived, with a new batch of squares from the bloggers, and all day I received emails with more names to write on the extra blank squares I had received.
Without knowing exactly how many pieces there were, and with all the size variations, trying to get it all to make a rectangle was a challenge. I had brought a 1-1/2 yard piece of fabric with me, figuring the quilt might need fabric for the back. I used all of it, as well as another donated piece. I would make the quilt the way I usually make mine, without filling.
Finally, it all came together. It's about 40" by 54" or so. We never measured. I know there are well over 400 names.

I'll never see it again, but it ranks high as one of my proudest achievements.

All Together Now!

This is the finished quilt for Violette.Here is the Sugar and Spice panel. It's about 40" wide by 44" long or so. The letters in "Sugar" are about 5" tall. This is the name panel for Violette. The letters in her name are about 8" tall. The butterflies are about 7" wide by about 5" high. Violette's family has a brown tabby cat. That's why there's a cat in this quilt, and that's why I used that particular fabric. The cat is about 10" tall, the flowers about 3" high. The signature letters on the back of the quilt are 3" high. The quilt is about 44" x 95". Why so big, apart from the fact that the elements of the quilt are large? My sister said, "Why make it so tiny? Why don't you make something she can actually -use- for several years. Make it twin-size." Made sense, so I did. This quilt is completely free-pieced. No patterns anywhere, no plans, no templates. No foundation piecing. I even designed the butterflies myself. The letters are based on free pieced letters, and the little asterisk flowers I found. The tulips are modified from a traditional quilt pattern. Tanya helped with ideas for the cat. It's not quilted for two reasons. One, this is the way my grandmother made quilts for our family, and we like them like this. Two, I have arthritis in my dominant hand. By the way, I am in Maryland for Violette's christening. I hope to post pictures of the blessed event, along with Violette and her quilt, soon. You can click the photos to enlarge. Enjoy!

Sign Me Up

This fabric was always going to be the backing for Violette's quilt. I love the way it looks like a kaleidoscope.

Having done all the letters on the front, I decided to make a signature for the back. These letters are about 3" high, finished, and this strip is about 60" long.It reads, "Made by Auntie Lynne 2008"As I have mentioned before, I do not use filling in my quilts, and I don't quilt them. I tie them. this makes for a very lightweight quilt that washes like a dream.I fold the backing over to the front to make a self-binding. I cut the backing 6" larger all around, then fold it over until the raw edges of front and back touch, then fold over again to make a 2" border all around. this way the binding isn't thin or flimsy. I miter the corners, and machine stitch all around.

Tomorrow, the finished quilt.

A Little Bit of Nature

I knew I wanted butterflies in Violette's quilt. It took me a while, but I figured out how to make them. I have posted a tutorial, here. And I knew I wanted flowers. I didn't want them to be too complicated or fussy to piece.

I didn't know how I was going to use them in the quilt.
I love the way things resolve themselves. Some of the butterflies fell next to the name panel, giving me the idea of how to arrange them.I knew I wanted a cat, since Violette's family has a large brown tabby cat. I didn't know where he was going to go, or how he was going to fit. Looking at the rows of pointed petals on the flowers, I was struck by the similar shape of cat ears. Bingo! I had the solution of how and where to place the cat in the quilt.
stay tuned!

Sugar and Spice

The answer to "What's Girly" that I asked myself after finishing Violette's name panel was "Sugar and Spice, Everything Nice." I started with violets, and rose colored fabrics for "Sugar", and used a light blue for "and" because I wanted it to be very subtle. I wanted the letters in the word "Spice" to be bright and bold." The word "Everything," of course, had to be made from colors of the rainbow. I made the word "Nice," and started playing around with the layout. I had to bend the word "Everything" to make it fit on the top of the bed, but also to mimic the arched shape of a rainbow. Then I decided to replace the dot on the "i" with a little sun.By this time I had decided to make the quilt big enough for a twin sized bed, so I had a lot of room to work, but also a lot of space to fill. I needed some "stuff", so I made these flowers, using this tutorial.And of course, I needed hearts. stay tuned...

Violette

When I was asked to be Violette's godmother, I agreed without hesitation. I knew I would make her a quilt. I planned one with beautiful bright flowers in rich jeweled colors. I began to purchase fabrics for this quilt. Then I started playing with Tonya's Wonky Alphabet. I cheated a bit. I drew out the name first, so I knew what I wanted it to look like. I wanted the two t's to look connected, and I wanted a nice wide V. (clicking the pictures will enlarge them.)But the letters tended to disappear on the background fabric I used. I really wanted to use it, after all, it was a lovely shade of lavender (a light violet). But I found this very dark purple with very light pink dots throughout. It almost looks black, but it really isn't. I wasn't quite sure about almost black letters in a baby quilt, but I had to try it. As you can see, the "readability" was much improved. I even added a tiny wonky heart to dot the "i". The name "Violette", by the way, is about 8" tall. Which means "Violette Noelle" takes up a lot of space on a baby quilt. As I pondered that, I tried to think of what to put around the letters to fill out the space. "Hmm, what is girly..." As soon as I had that thought, this phrase popped into my head:

"Sugar and Spice, Everything Nice"

and I knew I was done for. stay tuned.