Lynne's Liberated Letters Class

Here are the ladies from the Liberated Letters class on Saturday at Night Owl Quilt Studio. They had a grand time and they did great work, as you can see.
 

Not Paper Pieced is Finished

 

The Not Paper Pieced quilt is finished. I sat down on Saturday morning, and started sewing. I had found a really silly television show to stream - Holey Moley - about extreme miniature golf. Think miniature golf meets Wipeout, with crazy ridiculous trick miniature golf holes with near impossible tricks. It was just the kind of mindless thing I needed. I worked steadily, taking breaks to have lunch and strip the bed, throw the sheets in the washer, then the dryer, then remake the bed, then have a snack, then make dinner. So I watched ten episodes of season one. 

As you can tell, I finished the flimsy for this quilt in 2019, then brought it to Janet-Lee. We weren't quite sure how to quilt it, so it sat and sat. Now it's done and I'm happy with it, and it will be the centerpiece of my talk to the Seabreeze Quilters in Exeter NH on January 9, 2024.

Happy New Year's Eve!

Motto

I don't know how long ago I put the letters together for this smallish flimsy. It is made of leftovers and duds and other stuff I had hanging around. I finally squared it up, and added a border around the whole thing to keep the edges straight. I use it to bring to my letters classes to show two things - one, that dud letters are simply letters that don't fit where you want them to go; they are not necessarily BAD letters.

And two, I flip this over to show how the back of my quilts look. (I forgot to take a photo of it before I put it on the design wall, so the back of Not Paper Pieced will have to do for now...)

Which is to say, neat and tidy. No scraggly threads on the back of MY quilts. No ragged seams. Everything lies FLAT. Everything is neatly pressed. Free piecing or Improvisational piecing, Quilting Without a Net, or No Patterns, just sew one thing to another... whatever you want to call it, my craftsmanship is very good.

So "Don't be chicken; have no fear; just make super amazing quilts" yeah, that's a good motto for me.

Or anybody, really.

PS Happy Birthday Mary!

 

Letters

 I was talking to my pal Julie on Friday in one of our marathon monthly telephone calls. We talked about letters and somehow I got the idea to make KEEP IT SIMPLE in free pieced letters.

Why KEEP IT SIMPLE ? Because we have both noticed that my best quilt are quilts that I don't think too much about when I am making them.

So I got the idea of making several KEEP IT SIMPLE panels and put them together in one bigger quilt.

This was my first one.

I wrote a tutorial on "liberated" letters. You can get it here at my Etsy shop. Yes, it's a big tutorial, but I tell you everything you need to know to make all the letters in the alphabet in upper and lower case, as well as all the numbers.

Giggles

 I decided the next word should be GIGGLES. It's fun and silly.

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I knew where I wanted to go with the word, but it wasn't until I tilted the letters that I really started loving it.

 I think the fabric I is perfect, and the dino dot is the bomb!.

 

I'm not quite sure about the L, but overall I am pleased.

Of course, looking at it now I think the third G needs to be a bit bigger.  I want to make a pink butterfly as a companion to this word.

If you want to know how to make letters, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. My letters are made without patterns or templates and they are NOT paper pieced.

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."

Holiday Time

I've got all my holiday decorations up, including the Happy Holidays quilt I finished last year. Here are the two birds that grace the quilt. I made them from Christmas fabrics, and I wanted them to mirror each other.

The finished quilt also has free-pieced letters and some trees and holiday packages. 

There is no pattern for the quilt, but if you want to make birds like mine you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. My tutorial for the free-pieced letters can be found here. Both are instant downloads so you can get started right away.

Friday Thoughts

I'm doing some cleaning in my studio and I have this pinned to the wall, and I thought you might enjoy it:

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I've been reading Laura Lippman for a long time, so when her newest, Lady in the Lake, came out, recently, I got it right away. It didn't hurt that it got a rave review from Stephen King himself.

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I've also just read American Fire, about a series of arsons in Virginia. How'd I hook up with that?  There was an article in the New York Times about how every state has an infamous crime, and a book about it. After reading about all 50, I chose this one.

and I've discovered Bruno, the Chief of Police. Have so far read two, and have the next three already lined up.

Have a nice weekend. I'll be teaching birds at Quilted Threads (and wrestling with signing up for Medicare, parts A and D.)

Year 2019

I made the numbers for the year on the signature panel of the Not Paper Pieced quilt.

And you know me, I couldn't resist adding a fun element to the hole in the zero. The lady is saying, "I'm watching you! No paper was harmed in the making of THIS quilt!"

So here it is. I've got to add fabric around the word sections to make it a big panel and then piece it into the rest of the backing.

I briefly considered making the numbers pink, but I felt they would draw too much attention, so they are gold.

AND BEFORE ANYBODY SAYS ANYTHING... I think there is a bit too much space between the T and the Y in TYLER, and a smidge too much space between the 0 and the 1 in 2019, and the diagonal leg of the 9 is too narrow. The second Y is made of components that are probably a bit too thick. Of all of those things, what I might fix is the numbers.

Otherwise, as the French say, "Tant pis." (And I'm 90% sure those of you who don't speak French can figure it out.)



In my tutorial on "Liberated" letters, not only do I tell you how to make all the letters in the alphabet without patterns, templates or (god forbid), paper-piecing, I also tell you how to make numbers.  You can get it here, on my Etsy shop. It's full of absolutely everything you need to know to make letters and make them well.

Black Butterflies

 I liked the black butterflies in the Ghastly fabric, and wanted to use them in the quilt somehow
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I had made a black butterfly for the quilt back in April, but I had made it with a white background, so it didn't really fit.

So I decided to make a black butterfly for the signature panel of the Not Paper Pieced quilt.

I think this is going to work. Now I just need to add the date.


If you want to make your own butterflies, you can get my tutorial here. 

If you are interested in learning how to make  free-pieced letters that don't use templates or patterns and AREN'T PAPER PIECED... you can get that tutorial here. Both tutorials are instant downloads so you can get started right away.

Signature Panel, part two

So here's my last name, in letters. Be aware these letters aren't trimmed, lined up or spaced properly yet. They will look a lot better when they are all finished and sewn together.




If you want to make patchwork letters, you can get my tutorial. No patterns, templates or (gasp!) paper piecing needed. Get it here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.

Signature Panel & Maiden

First things first. When I got an alert on my phone that the movie MAIDEN was showing an hour's drive away, I made plans to go see it with my Dad, who loves sailing. It was a terrific movie, and it's a hell of a story. (It got a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes). You ought to find, and see it if you can. Click the link for more information.

I am working on getting the backings ready for quilts to bring to Janet Lee next week, and I had to make the backing for the No Paper Pieced quilt.

As soon as I laid the fabric on the floor to figure out how I was going to sew it into a backing I realized this quilt (of ALL my quilts), needed a signature panel. So I got to work making letters.


My letters are free-pieced, meaning they aren't made with templates or patterns and they are most decidedly NOT PAPER PIECED!! If you would like to make your own, you can get the tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.

Size and Space Matter

It's easy to lose track of how big something is until you see it in context. I looked up from my worktable on Saturday when I was sewing big chunks of the Not Paper Pieced quilt together and saw this.

I spent most of my sewing time last night removing the Grouchy Seamstress from the quilt.

Yes I did! She was too close to the letter Q, so I moved her over to the left.

She only shifted an inch and a quarter to the left, but I think it looks better.

You can see some of the things I've hidden in between the NOs. I see two things I want to change. The man between the two NOs in the top row needs to move so he's leaning next to the NO on the left. Right now he's sort of hanging in mid air. Now that I know I have that much space, I may fill it with the rest of his body.

The light grey NO on the left side, opposite the Grouchy Seamstress is now too light. When I envisioned the border of NOs I thought of them as very low key, but they got darker and brighter. Now that one looks like a hole through which the rest of the quilt (and the precious viewer's eye) can escape. Can't have that!    

  The lady at the sewing machine has also finally found the perfect spot. She'll be down in the bottom border of NOs, right next to NEVER!

We're in the home stretch.

Almost There!

I got four yards of my background fabric in the mail today. I probably only needed three, but more is better. I am finished with the body of the quilt itself. Now all I have to do is add the border of Nos and then the outer border of more background fabric. You know, "all."

Yesterday I sized and sewed some of the NOs together. I couldn't sew them together into long pieces because their length would be determined by the finished size of the body of the quilt and the way I want the NOs to fit in a rather tight border around it.

I am really sorry I can't make this picture better. The quilt is really cool in real life, but you've been looking at it sorta like this for so long that the little details are almost too small to see.

The grouchy lady in front of the sewing machine is now hiding in the border of NOs along with a man, a mischievous boy, a group of black butterflies, a grouchy gardener and at least one cat. I plan on moving a couple of NOs around so the bottom row doesn't look so empty and the top row doesn't look so crowded.

Outside of the NOs will be a 3 inch border of the background fabric, and then this will be finished.

It's worth noting that since I started this on April 10th, the only thing that has stayed put in the quilt is the big grouchy lady and the word QUILT. (And the birds, I suppose.) The NO, THIS, IS, NOT (made the NOT four times, by the way), PAPER and PIECED were all made twice.

Many of you think I am off my rocker. I have heard the word "courageous" bandied about, but I do not think of myself as "courageous." I'm persnickety, I'm demanding, I'm persistent, but above all I consider myself "creative." I know what I want, and I'm going to work until I get it. NOT "getting it" is not an option. And the idea that I CAN'T do it NEVER crosses my mind. I have absolutely ZERO doubt that I will solve the problem. (Ask Julie how many times she's heard me say that. Go read "The Value of 'Meh.'")

I actually LIKE not starting with a complete idea (the very anathema of paper-piecing) and figuring it out as I go along. I LIKE thinking about it when I am not working on it, and getting ideas and changing things around to push forward the IDEA I have in my head.

There's a quote that the Ringling School of Art used as advertising years ago: "A good idea is only an IDEA until you make it REAL." You know you've succeeded when you don't have to EXPLAIN it to anybody, because the piece says it on its own.

Sigh, yeah I know. This quilt DOES have to explain it, but it certainly DOESN'T have to explain how I feel about it! LOL

R Redo

I thought the tail of the R would look better when I added a fabric strip below it and the end would be covered by the seam allowance. But the angle of the tail was wrong.

So I took it apart.

Somehow the piece got turned upside down and I thought maybe it was an easy fix.

This fixes the problem...

but I don't like the look of it.

I tell my students that very often it's just more efficient to start over, so that's what I did. The top letter should answer the questions about what I do with "duds" or leftovers. I generally recycle what I can.

This was a vast improvement, but the top part of the R was too wide and too heavy.

Even though I had already sewn the background piece to the right of the letter, it was an easy fix. I sewed that seam again, just took a larger seam allowance.

Now I'm happy.