The Giants - Part One

When I talked about my stash the other day, I mentioned I use large prints on the back of my quilts. It's a funny thing, but when I take photos of my quilts I don't take photos of the backs, which is a bit of a shame because I choose the backings so carefully. I never just use what I have hanging around.

So last weekend I set up my quilt stand and remedied that situation. Some of the photos have a blue cast because they were taken in the shade on a sunny day, but you get the idea.

In 2009 I made this quilt, Letters From Home as a sample for Tonya Ricucci's book, Letter Play Quilts. Tonya had stipulated the quilts had to be quilted. I had never had one of my quilts quilted before and was wary to let somebody else loose with it. Fortunately Julie Sefton intervened and recommended Chris Ballard.

When I talked to Chris on the phone she said, in her inimitable Southern accent, "I don't know how I'm going to quilt your quilt. I'm going to hang it up on the wall. Your quilt will tell me how it wants to be quilted."

Right then and there I knew Chris was the one, and she has quilted all my quilts since. I let her do her thing and it is always perfect.

At that time I had been reading Julie's blog and saw how Julie used a lot of pieced backings for her quilt. So I assembled this out of a Kaffe and some leftover bits. As you can see I added a cat emoticon.

When the quilt arrived at Chris's house she gave me a call, "I like the way you didn't drop the ball on the backing."

I've never forgotten that, and make every effort to "not drop the ball" on every backing of every quilt I make.

 Here is The Quick Brown Fox, also made in 2009.

And here is the back. Generally I feel backings are a great big space, and need something equally big to fill it up so it doesn't look stupid. I guess I just don't like a lot of empty space.

 
In between "arty" quilts, I make "normal" ones, or my version thereof. I made this because I wanted to see how many so-called rules about placing fabrics next to each other that I could break. I was going for broke, and ended up with a jewel box. The result is my quilt "Laughing Out Loud."

Here's the fabric I chose for the backing. It's an eye-popping Philip Jacobs print I was lucky enough to get on sale. I figured if I was going for broke on the front, I had to go for broke on the back. I gave this quilt to my Mom, so I don't have a "proper" photograph of the back.

My son asked me to make him a yellow quilt.

 Really.

(An aside: The tutorial for this quilt, Slashed Squares, is here. It's an easy quilt to make, and has lots of possibilities. It is the single most popular page on my blog, having over 27,000 hits since I wrote it in 2008.)


He said he wanted a "Quilt of Sunshine" so when he took a girl to the fireworks they could lie on a nice quilt and he could make a good impression. You can read a bit more about it here. My son gave me all kinds of grief about the fabrics I selected, but I have "Mom Armor" and I ignored him.  He was, originally, quite dismayed at what I selected for the back.

Giant Magnolias.

I had asked him if I could make "to Paul from Mom with love" in free pieced letters on the back of the quilt. He said "NO WAY" so I just made "XXX..." which is the way we sign letters to each other. (Tell that story now, however, and he slaps his forehead and says, "I was WRONG! I should have LET YOU") This is the same son who's getting the Petals quilt. I only have one child.)

When I gave him the quilt, he carried it home and placed it on his bed. He's never once let it touch the ground on the beach or at the fireworks. It's on his and DIL's bed as we speak.

BTW, the other print on the back, a small Japanese design printed in metallic gold, was chosen by him against my advice. Gold sparkly stuff on quilts WILL wash off eventually. So now the back of the quilt is flowers, and gray.

He loves the flowers, and he's graceful enough to admit he was wrong about them.


More backings and more quilts later!

Binding the Petals Quilt

I made the binding for the Petals quilt, and sewed it to the back of the quilt. The binding is one of the grey prints that's in the quilt.

This is looking quite nice and my son and DIL are very excited to get it.

Blue Boy Finish

The Saturday before I started thinking about the quilt for my niece, Diamond Jubilee, I finished the Blue Boy rail fence quilt. It was late in the day, and most of my favorite "beauty shot" locations were in full shade, so the porch railing was the best I could do.
 

The quilt is quite handsome and I like it a lot. I hope the little boy this quilt is going to will enjoy it a lot.

The Stash

 Everybody comments on my stash, and I am embarrassed to say I don't think much about it. This is pretty much IT.  The little bins on the top shelf hold the tiny bits bigger than 2" square, but smaller than, say 6" x 8".

(All photos will supersize when clicked, then clicked again if you want to study each stack more closely.)

The bookcase is a simple melamine bookshelf three feet wide by six feet tall. Yes, it's messy, but I've been busy.

This is what it looked like when I moved into this house a year ago. Nice and neat. I haven't really added a lot to it since then, so most of what was in the stash in this photo was used to make the Fall House Top, Blue Deco, Blue Boy, Triangle Dance, Petals and the Diamond Jubilee quilts.

These are the White with Colors, Orange and Yellow stacks.

 Here are the Acid Green and Green stacks.
  

Next shelf down is the pink, lavender and blue.

  Light blue, dark blue and teal (blue-green)
 

Red and Purple.

 Black on Black (BOB) and Black with Colors.

Black and White (I LOVE B+W, but you knew that, right?) and Grey, a new stack this year.

 The the creams and browns and tans.

And these are my WOWs and very light things.

These photos were taken Thursday evening October 8, after I finished the Diamond Jubilee quilt. I like to have fabrics that are blenders, some that have smallish allover designs, and some that have medium designs, some with larger designs, and some giants, but generally, I like fabrics that I can do lots of things with. I don't get all too worked up about it.

Why am I showing you this? Because Jackie said "You must have a fantastic stash..." and she wondered "when you purchase fabric is it for a specific project or just because and if not for a project how much do you purchase randomly?"

I bought these fabrics when I visited Kathy in Belfast Maine this past July.

Wow. Talk about a good question.

First, look back at the stash. I buy a lot of pure, vibrant color. I do not buy muddy values, and I can't stand the  "civil war prints." Too tiny, too dull, and frankly too hard to work with. Most of what's in my stash reads as ONE color, with the obvious exception of the large prints, which I like to use as backings for my quilts. I tend not to have any of the "modern" fabrics either, because a lot of them don't know which color they are.

The two on the right were used in the Diamonds quilt

Fabrics that can't decide what color they are are too hard to work with so I don't usually buy them.  What does that mean, too hard to work with? It means the fabric can't decide WHICH it is, so neither can the viewer, which makes it a bad choice.

These are fabrics that were given to me, but they are examples of stuff that's really hard (for me) to work with. I don't buy fabric like these.

What I have come to recognize as my "style" is my ability to put different prints together and make them "flow" from one to the other and look good. I can do that because the fabrics I generally select lend themselves to this kind of work. They're basic, and don't fight with each other.

 
Then again, being trained as an Artist, I know how to make a color look good. Remember, colors are affected by the colors they are next to. So you can make a color look brighter or duller by changing its neighbors. That makes it look like you have more fabrics than you really do.


By and large, when I buy fabric, I buy half yard pieces. I might buy a fat quarter if I need a particular color and can't find yardage, but I don't generally hang out in the FQ section. If I'm making a house quilt, and I need a brown for tree trunks (for example), or I want a stone foundation, I'll check the FQ section, but that's about it.

I never buy more than one yard of ANYTHING unless I have a specific use for it. And I rarely buy  backing for a quilt until the quilt top is finished. (Ask me how I know this.)

NOW... I have my share of novelties and things that I just think are irresistible, but I know full well buying them that they are not the most "flexible" things in my stash.  Look closely at the yellow stack. There's a fabric in there of black and white zebras on yellow.  Not exactly user friendly, but I thought they were fun. At the time I had a yellow and grey and black and white quilt in my head, but I used a lot of the grays in the Petals quilt. Oh well. They'll end up somewhere. Remember, I'll fussy cut ANYTHING to get the look I want.

I adore "The Ghastlies" and someday I'll use them in something, but I don't know what. Stuff like this, I only buy a yard or one pattern repeat.

 For me, the novelties are the extra goodies I put in my word quilts as visual "jokes." They will be a letter "i" that is really a cat, for example, or something like the ladies in the Rules quilts.

I'm not going to use a lot of the fabric, but when I do, I usually get a big impact out of it, so it's worthwhile. Stuff like this, I buy a yard, not more. Generally I see a print like this, and if I can see possibilities, and I like the colors, and it isn't "cute" or "cartoony" or "corny" or "tacky" I'll buy some. Yes, I am very, very picky. (And yeah, I know I'm opinionated too.)

Generally, I don't buy fabric unless I need it. I mean, OK, you've seen my stash, so that's not a big surprise. I just made two quilts (Petals and Diamond Jubilee) where I ONLY used fabrics from the stash. Look at the top photo. There's a LOT of fabric in there. There are more quilts to be had from my stash.

One exception is WOWs, or White On Whites. When I make a quilt with a "white" background, I use WOWs. So when I see one I like, I will buy a yard, but usually I buy four or five one yard cuts of different WOWs. In this case, more is better. I like a variety of pattern and texture. Regular readers know I use them randomly and interchangeably. I think they add interest and I like the way they reflect the light differently.


ONE THING I NEVER EVER EVER EVER DO... Well, OK, two things.
1. I never buy precuts. No jelly rolls, layer cakes, charm packs or any of that crap. Never. Ever.
2. I never buy everything in a designer "line." Oh, gag me with a spoon, how dull. Much, Much, MUCH more fun and interesting to combine a fabric or two from one line with blenders, batiks, or anything else from among the thousands of fabrics at any given quilt shop.

Okay, three things. I don't buy solids either. I use blenders instead.

ANOTHER BIG LESSON...
I never buy fabric I fall in love with, unless I have a specific plan to bring it home and cut it up for a quilt I am making.

I bought these fabrics five years ago, and only cut into the one on the lower left when I made the Diamonds quilt last week!

Why?
Because it will sit in my stash for years before I cut into it.  That's a waste of money and storage space.  I keep threatening to teach a class and tell my students to bring their favorite fabrics and then make them cut it up. Does this thought make you cringe? Gotcha!


The only time I might buy something I really don't need is when I see a fabric and it's a beautiful pure color. Believe it or not a "true blue" is almost impossible to find, so when I see some, I'll buy a yard or more. As you know, colors come in and out of "style" so you can't always find what you want for sale in the shops. So I try to make sure I always have the basics.

I view my stash as my "Raw Materials." If it's in there, it's meant to be cut up. And one other thing. My stash is right out in the open. I never put fabric in a drawer, or wrap it up. For me, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist. I am not made of money, and storage space at my house is not infinite. Buying fabric I don't need, and then putting it away so I forget I have it, is a waste of money and space. I live by myself, so I don't have to worry about hiding my fabric purchases from a husband.  Believe me, I know full well that I spend more money each year on fabric than I do on clothes, but then, clothes are kinda boring.

LOL!


I can do what I do and make the quilts I make because my stash has a wide variety of colors with varying scales of patterns. I have them on hand. If something isn't working, I can walk over to the stash (which is right next to my design wall) and rifle through it, looking for something else.

If you don't have a wide selection of fabrics in your stash, you might settle for something less than what you need. If you've read this far, you know I don't do that. I never settle. I keep pushing. Having a good stash makes my life a lot easier in a lot of ways.

The stash on the evening of Friday October 9th. I just had to organize it while I was working on this post.

I've been building the stash for five years, and let me tell you one other thing. It will NEVER get bigger than what's in this bookcase. Too much can be overwhelming. Sometimes endless possibility can be endlessly frustrating. You've heard me say it before, sometimes having fewer choices forces you to be creative about what you do have. Tim Gunn says "Make it work." I'm not above cutting a shape out of the middle of a piece of fabric if I want that part of a print to do something special.

I look at my fabric not so much as what it IS, but of what it can BECOME.

Petals Sneak Peek

OH YEAH!

My pal Julie drove 30 miles to Chris's house so she could see the Petals quilt in person and collaborate with Chris about a quilting pattern.  Later she wrote to me: "Good thing the quilt is going to your son and DIL, otherwise Chris and I would be jostling to the front of the line to gain custody of the Petals quilt..."

Valerie Has Questions... I Have Answers

The internet can be a wonderful place. I met three of my best friends over the internet, from all over the country and the world.  It's also where I meet quilters I have inspired. This is the most wondrous.

One of them is Valerie from Purple Boots and Pigtails. She wrote me a letter about a year ago saying I had reawakened her love of quilting. You can read it here. Someday I gotta meet this girl.  Valerie is the quilter I made the Kona solid word JUNGLE for.

Anyway.

 
On yesterday's post, Valerie asked a few questions and they made me think. Although I showed you how I designed the quilt, I didn't show you how I made it.  So here are Valerie's questions.

 "...are you planning to have a straight edge for binding or leave all those delicious diamonds as they are?"
 I'm planning on having a straight edge. I plan to cut it outside the vertical rows of small diamonds.

"Which leads me to ... if you square it off, will you cut it before or after Chris works her magic?"
I'll cut it off after Chris quilts it. I find that it helps to not make a decision to trim a quilt before it's quilted. Chris often makes magic happen where I didn't see it earlier, so I don't rush. I can always trim a quilt down, I can't add.

"This top will be super stretchy with all those bias cuts, so I wonder if trimming after might be helpful?"
Absolutely. In fact Valerie's most recent post talked about a quilt with mitered corners that got stretched out.  My quilt is made with a few hundred diamonds and each piece has two bias edges. I don't want it to stretch, so I haven't showed it off to anybody because I don't want to stretch those edges. Right now the quilt is folded up so it can't stretch. I won't be holding it up until it's quilted.

"I like the back, it reinforces that my eye is drawn first to all the littlest diamonds that act like stripes. Those are the colours in your backing fabric."
It's funny, but that's what good design does. It makes you see connections. The colors of my tiny diamonds are actually all colors - yellow, orange, red, hot pink, purple, blue, green and teal.

"Glad you steered away from the predictable creams, yellows and golds...much too matchy matchy."
 Me too. As I've said before, the quilt usually tells you what it wants, and if you're smart, you'll listen. This quilt did not want yellow or anything tiny.



 "Lastly, did you have a 60° diamond ruler or did you cut with a straight ruler?"

 I used this ruler, which is the one you used to make your Gravity quilt. I used blue tape to outline the 4" diamonds and the 2" diamonds. I ordered a 4" diamond template from another company online, and it never arrived until after the quilt was finished, so I cut all my pieces - one by one - with this template. It was a royal pain in the patootie. For the small four patch diamonds, I sewed together a pair of 2-1/2" strips and then used the template to cut pairs which I then sewed together.

I only had a yard of this fabric, and couldn't get as many perfect diamonds as I needed, so for a couple of them, I pieced them together, matching the pattern.

You all watched as I designed the quilt on the wall, putting something up, stepping back (with my glasses OFF so the fine details wouldn't distract me, but so I could still see the masses of color. I tried to avoid "blobs" of  dark areas and "holes" of too many light ones. I tried to distribute the colors and not make things too repetitious. I inverted some of the fussy cut blocks so they all wouldn't point in the same direction.

I literally cut one piece, put it up on the wall, stepped back, decided if it was OK or not, and then cut another. When the fabrics I had pulled looked too dark, I went through my stash to find something better. Piece by piece the quilt grew. I didn't get too bogged down with details, and tried to keep it fresh and vibrant. It didn't need to be perfect, and yet I think it is.

I am really, really happy with it, and am looking forward to making my next quilt, and hope I can keep it as loosey-goosey as this one.

And Pat, I find if I know I'm making a quilt to give away, I don't get attached to it.

Valerie, thanks for the questions. I enjoyed answering them. Anybody else?

Backing for the Jubilee

After all my crock about how this quilt had to have a subdued backing, I shopped several online fabric sites and found absolutely NOTHING that (in my hairdresser's words) "lifted my skirt."

Until I found this Kaffe print. A version of this in a different colorway is in the quilt itself, but this fabric just screamed "ME! Pick ME!"

So I did.  Of course it isn't quite this gigantic, but eight yards are on their way to me even as you read this.

And at this stage of the game, the binding might be a blue or a green or a teal. That will change, undoubtedly, when I get the quilt back from Chris. And since I put my nephew's name on the back of his quilt, my niece's name will have to go on the back of hers.  Guess what I'll be doing this weekend?

Diamond Jubilee is a flimsy!

I assembled all the diamonds into long rows, then pinned them together.

Then sewed them all up.

All quilt flimsies look like stained glass when you shine light through them, and this is no exception. It was so pretty I took a picture.

So here it is, the finished flimsy. I know I thought its name would be Diamond Tapestry, but the colors are far too vibrant, so Diamond Jubilee it is.

It's about 68 x 80 inches (173 x 203 cm).


btw, the movie, The Martian, was very good and I highly recommend it.

Construction Continues

I worked on this most of the day on Saturday. This, above, is three big pieces.

I texted my niece (she lives on the West Coast, across the country from me) told her she could see pictures of her quilt on my blog. She loves it, and is very excited.

I sewed all the remaining components together. I need to make a few four patch diamonds for the left edge.  These pieces are on the floor because as I was removing a few from the top part of the wall so I could sew them together I lost my balance, fell off the stool, and fell against the door before landing in a heap on the floor.  Ouch.



I took a break, made dinner, and then went back to work, but when I did this...
 

I knew it was time for bed.

Construction In Progress

It's construction time for the Diamonds quilt, and since it's based on a 60-degree diamond, there are lots of bias edges which need to be handled carefully and as little as possible. The vertical edges of the quilt are the centers of the tiny colored diamonds, and I needed to add some extra fabric on the side, so that's why the right edge looks like an elongated sawtooth. We'll see how that goes. As you can see there's at least one of those added-on diamonds where I obviously lost my train of thought.  Oh well. That may need to come out later. If it does, it does, no big deal.

Pat J asked if I would add a border or just bind it. Pat, I can't answer that question until all the pieces are sewn together. I did go online fabric shopping last night for a backing, and this may be a tough one. I usually use a large print (like the Philip Jacobs prints in the large diamonds) but this is so busy on the front, it may need something a lot calmer on the back.  At any rate, I have learned never to select a backing fabric until the top is complete, so there's no point worrying.

With a quilt this complex. it's useful to have a photograph nearby when I'm sewing the elements together. 

I hope to have the flimsy complete by the end of the weekend. The house is clean and doesn't need any work. With the windy weather expected I may have to move some garden pots around and bring light things in the house or move them to the shed.

I'm also going to the movies to see The Martian tomorrow. I read the book, and emailed my California pal who recommended it to me when, halfway through, I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO KNOW if he got off Mars alive. Naturally she wouldn't tell me. I think I read the book in like three days.

Diamonds Are Fun!

I think this is it. I'll start sewing it up this weekend. I'm very happy.

This quilt is for an 18 year old girl who'll be graduating from high school in June. I wanted something fresh, vibrant, youthful and colorful.  This quilt scores on all points and, as I looked at on the design wall a phrase came to my mind...

"This isn't your grandmother's quilt."

It sure isn't!


By the way... Every. Single. Fabric. in this quilt came from my stash. I didn't buy anything, although a quilt like this will surely need a backing every bit as avant-garde.

Diamond Jubilee?

I made a lot of those little diamond four patches and threw them up on the design wall. The more I looked at it, the less I liked those big dark diamonds - the ones with the wavy design - even though that fabric was my inspiration for the whole quilt. There are no sacred cows. If a fabric doesn't work, it's gone.

So I covered them up with some of the leftover big diamonds, and I liked it a lot better.

So I cut up another big print and moved stuff around, and yes I like this. I didn't like the dark medium-sized diamonds, so I removed some of those.

A little bit more shuffling, and more filling in, and I had this just before I went to bed.  I like it so far, though I won't really be sure until I have all the empty spaces filled with something.  I know what I want the shapes to do, and they're not doing it just yet. And hey, I might put back some of the stuff I took out. We'll see.

For those of you who are looking at this and thinking.. "Yes, but the shapes are not defined... the colors blend together... you don't see the individual pieces..." (And my least favorite: "there are no big blank spaces for fancy quilting designs..." Um, not in my quilts, pal. I'm the star of my show.)

You are right.  I do not want this to look like a lot of individual pieces sewn together. I want the viewer to see a dance of color. THEN I want the viewer to notice all the shapes are diamonds, and THEN I want the viewer to notice the different sizes of diamonds, and that they keep making more diamonds. THEN I want the viewer to notice the vertical rows of little diamonds, and THEN all the different fabrics. When I decided to call this quilt "Diamond Tapestry" that's exactly the look I was going for.

Like I say, I have a lot of work to do, but it's the kind of work I like doing.