Part Three - How quilting took over my life.

Part Three of How Quilting took over life and the Family Tree quilt that is to blame!

Part One:  http://alchemyquilts.blogspot.com/2011/03/in-beginning.html

Part Two:  http://alchemyquilts.blogspot.com/2011/03/blog-post.html

........Months and months had passed.  Countless books, magazines and innumerable yards of fabric had been acquired.  It was finally time to put the quilt together.  

In retrospect the process seems painless now, but at the time it was anything but.  Because the 'tree' part of THE QUILT would cover most of the quilt, the entire quilt had to be pieced before I could start the process of putting on all that applique.    

The sky was all squares and half square triangles.  I'd asked my mom for a blouse - she had no idea what for - and planned to use it in the sky portion of THE QUILT.  She handed me a pink/white striped blouse.  

Oooooookkkkkkaaaaaayyyyyy.   I was a little worried about how it would fit in, but as it turned out - it gave some sparkle to all the blue I was using.

    

That yellow fabric you see was some fabric my grandmother had purchased (probably in the 30's or 40's).  I used some of it for the sun in the quilt.  There was also fabric from an aunt and an uncle and some fabric from my grandmother's nightgown.   I'm telling you - I threw in everything I could think of into this quilt.  

Once the background was done the arduous process of all that applique' began.  It seems like it took forever, but finally the quilt top was coming together. 

I added some blank leaves and the butterflies to sort of 'gild the lily'.  It helped with the blank areas of THE QUILT.   

It was quilted my Michelle Wyman (an extraordinary quilter here in the Atlanta area!  http://heartandsoulquilts.com/).  

Finally after well over a year since I first saw that Simply Quilts episode - I got to give my mom THE QUILT as a (OK it was a little late) Mother's Day gift.  

And I've been quilting ever since.  Someone should warn people about this hobby!  I now have four sewing machines, a serger, an embroidery machine and a longarm machine.  World travel would have been a less expensive hobby!!   

What am I working on now?   Stay tuned!!

Dave

Part Two of how I quilting took over my life and the family tree quilt that is to blame!  Part one is here:
http://alchemyquilts.blogspot.com/2011/03/in-beginning.html


.....Then the memories came rushing back. Horribly disfigured quilt block memories. I could never make that quilt. I couldn’t make a remedial quilt block much less THAT!

Surely there were classes for unskilled sewers like myself. That’s it! I’ll take a quick quilting class and viola! – I’ll be making that quilt in no time! I even vaguely remembered the location of the dusty rotary cutting mat – heck – I was half way there already.

What did we do before the internet? Anyone remember? Nope – me neither. I promptly started searching for quilt shops in the Atlanta area. Scouring their websites for class schedules and costs, etc. There were classes! They even had supply lists and – HEY! I need to go shopping!!

Before long I had signed up for 2 – count ‘em – 2 quilting classes. The first was a short 2 day class in Marietta. A substantial drive, but I was determined. Muriel Pfaff was the teacher and I was immediately smitten with the quilting project pictured on the website. 

Muriel was great. I was the ONLY person who actually showed up for the class, so the instructions was 1 on 1. I needed it. The need for ¼ inch seams became clear to me. Accurate ¼ inch seams are a necessity in quilting. I learned how to nest seams when assembling blocks so all the corners came together. I learned how to pin nested seams so the corners came together. I learned about ½ square triangles and pressing to the darker fabric and lots of other things. The more I learned, the more I realized that the family tree quilt was still beyond me. I needed more.

My second quilting class started a few weeks later at a different quilt shop. Ann Ewald was the instructor. I didn’t realize at the time, but I’d hit gold. It was an 8 week class (One 3-hr. class/week) – and it covered just about everything. Slowly. It was great. I learned more in that class than I’ve learned in any other since. Ann was an enthusiastic, entertaining and patient teacher. The quilt was her design and it was beautiful (I made it with autumn colors and it hangs on my wall every fall).   Here's a pic:

The class covered four patches, nine patches, drunkards path blocks, flying geese, borders, assembly – EVERYTHING! (except appliqué – I would still need that for “THE QUILT” – as I had started referring to the family tree quilt I wanted to make)

Ann’s enthusiasm for quilts and quilting was infectious. Before I knew it I had – on the side – finished a Chinese Coin style quilt for my Mom for Mother’s Day. I was working on another quilt for my nephew (mum’s the word – it’s still unfinished) and was planning a quilt for my sister for her 60^th – oops 50^th birthday. (she’s much, much older than me – it’s hard to keep track!)  Here's a pic of my sister's quilt:

 I was buying quilting books and magazines at an alarming pace. I could walk into any number of quilt shops in the Atlanta area and be greeted with “Hi Dave” by a significant percentage of that shop’s staff. I’d purchased a new sewing machine during my first class and in September I bought a high end Janome model.

I purchased fabric. LOTS of fabric. As anyone who quilts will tell you – fabric is the addiction most quilters battle. Some who are married must hide their fabric purchases from their spouses under threat of divorce. I was not burdened by such threats, so the fabric flowed freely. I bought fabric that I envisioned using in THE QUILT, fabric that I thought would be useful in other planned projects, fabric that I liked because it was purple, fabric that I thought was cool because it looked like leather, fabric that went with that other fabric I bought, though I couldn’t remember what for. One time I bought fabric from a vendor at a quilt show because she looked lonely. It was hand-dyed stuff - $15/yard. I bought 3 yards. I’m pretty sure I cheered her up.

The more I learned about quilts and quilting – the more books I bought on landscape quilts, paper piecing, and shadowing, the more modifications I made to my plans for THE QUILT. It was growing by leaps and bounds. The high wall noted in the original design would be replaced with gently flowing browns and greens that were more true to nature. Family members names would appear on individual leaves. My sister helped with this part.  She's the embroiderer in the family.  She patiently embroidered the name of every single person in the family onto a piece of green fabric.  Our grandparents names would be at the base of the tree, and she also embroidered a 'title' block for the bottom border of the quilt.   The sky would be more intricately pieced, though I like the border of star blocks – those would stay. . I took classes on appliqué, decided I didn’t like the raw-edge technique for the leaves of THE QUILT, so I referred to a book on the subject and tried several different techniques to find one that I liked.

Months and months had passed.  Countless books, magazines and innumerable yards of fabric had been acquired.  It was finally time to put the quilt together.  

to be continued .....

Dave

In the beginning ....

About 6 years ago I decided to make a quilt. I liked quilts. We always had quilts growing up during those cold Illinois winters. I could sew a straight line. How hard could it be?

A few years prior I had purchased some curtains. “Machine Washable” the label said – “perfect!” I said. I hung my new curtains and after about a year (it was probably longer, but let’s say it was a year, OK?) I decided to wash them. What went into the washing machine and what came out were two TOTALLY different things. They fell apart. I don’t mean a few loose seams, or a ravel here or there, I mean what exited the washer was an unrecognizable clump of fibers. I was not happy. I decided that I would, from that moment forward, make my own curtains. I mean how hard could it be?? I purchased a used Singer sewing machine from a local sewing machine repair shop. I didn’t know how to thread it, but with the help of a friend I was soon sewing away. I made tab top curtains for the living room and I’m pleased to report that they turned out great. I used twin bed sheets and the whole affair cost me around 40 bucks. When I put them into the wash, they came out of the washer in one piece. Actually I still have those curtains – waiting patiently for me to again live somewhere that has windows to fit. It was with this sense of undeserved confidence that I undertook quilting. Boy was I in for a surprise.

Turns out I knew nothing about quilting. Never one to let ignorance deter my ability to spend money – I went out and bought a rotary cutting mat and a rotary cutter. How I knew I needed these things I don’t recall. I probably read it somewhere on the internet. I’m sure that further instructions were available, buy HEY! – there was shopping to be done !! I purchased some fabric and set about making a rudimentary quilt block. . Instructions? – who needs instructions? You sew together some squares and some triangles and bingo – you got yourself a quilt, right?? This was going to be a cinch. What I sewed that day was not a quilt block. I’m not sure that the English language has words to describe the puckered, mismatched, lopsided THING that I eventually constructed. If memory serves I spent most of a day to create this abomination and less that 1 second to decide to trash the embarrassing thing and give up.

I’m not sure what happened after that – a long stretch of work, a shiny object in the corner, but properly distracted - I forgot about making a quilt. I stashed the rotary mat and cutter in a closet (after they had accumulated sufficient amounts of dust from sitting on the dining room table for a few weeks) and moved on with my life. Quilting was a vague and unpleasant memory. Life was good.

Then it happened. Bleary eyed and gazing blankly at the TV one morning I surfed upon it and there it was. The most beautiful quilt I’d ever seen. A Tree of Life quilt by Diana McClun on Alex Anderson’s (now defunct) quilting show ‘Simply Quilts’.

That’s a great idea!” I thought.  

(By the way - that pattern is still available here:  http://www.dianaandlaura.com/patterns.html)

Then the memories came rushing back. Horribly disfigured quilt block memories. I could never make that quilt. I couldn’t make a remedial quilt block much less THAT!

to be continued.....

Dave

Hi!  Thanks for stopping by my blog.  A little bit about me:  I'm a nurse by profession and quilt as a hobby.  I got started quilting about 6 years ago and it's taken over my life, one spare bedroom, a couple of closets, most of my spending money and, occasionally, significant chunks of my sanity!.  I LOVE designing quilts, piecing quilt tops and endure the quilting of said quilt tops.  I really need to work on my longarm quilting skills, but hey - Rome wasn't built in a day, right?  I'll be posting some of my projects here for anyone interested in taking a peek.  I'm hoping to do some posts / tutorials on some of my original designs in the future.  Stay tuned!!

Dave