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."

Washing Machine Shuffle

Somebody asked me what I did with the leftover bits of quilts that didn't work. This quilt is an example of what to do with those leftover duds. My pal Julie asked me to send mine to her several years ago and she made me two quilts. This is one of them, and it is made of leftover letters from my Daft Zebras and Nine x Nine quilts as well as some other experiments (houses and trees) and a baby quilt I made (asterisk flowers and hearts). Julie made the quilt from my pieces and Chris quilted it. When I knew that was going to happen I made our names and Julie included them in the quilt. It just goes to show that duds are only duds in the eye of the beholder.

I love this quilt so much it has lived on my bed for almost ten years. Every time I try another quilt it just looks blah.

So why is it on the blog today? Because the other day I was doing laundry and I thought, hmm, maybe I should wash this too, so it took a trip through the washer and dryer ("washing machine shuffle") and when I put it back on the bed I was struck by how much brighter it looked.

Ahem!

Another Distraction

My friend Julie says I should have a letter quilt flimsy available for my students to study when I teach.  She thinks students can benefit from seeing how something is put together if they can examine both sides. She also thinks it's good for folks to know that free-pieced and improvisational doesn't mean sloppy workmanship.

It's a good idea but I had a hard time grappling with making a letter quilt that would never be quilted. Sitting in my studio last night my eyes drifted up to the long shelf above my design wall and to the plastic bins full of dud letters and orphans.

D'oh!

I didn't have to make a "real" quilt. I already have a lot of already made letters that I could sew together to show students.  So I pulled them down and played around a bit.

Right now it says "When soup dogs steal chicken use  aaaa ruta-a-a." I would have to make a "g" and a "b" to finish "rutabaga." Julie reminded me I had sent her a box of my duds last year and she could send them back for me to play with. So I shall be having some fun without having to start from scratch. I think it's even more amusing the sentence is nonsensical.



Here are the twelve rail fence blocks on the design wall.

 I have two blues, a yellow, orange, green, grey, pink and red left to go.

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!

Colors Lined Up

I have sewn the letters of "goldenrod" together. So far I like the way it is looking
Here are the duds so far this round...
There's nothing really wrong with any of them, they just didn't work in the words for which they were originally intended..