A mom and therapist quilting her way to calm
I have a crazy pile of quilt tops that need quilting. So I decided to make a list so I can start checking them off. Here we go:
Now for the pictures!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I heard the term bucket list quilts recently and I realized that I totally have a quilting bucket list. These are the big or the complex quilts that you take your time making and developing because they cannot help but be stunners! I broke my list into three groups: The quilts I’m dreaming/planning/thinking about doing, the bucket list quilts I started, and the quilts I’ve already finished.
This quilt was designed by Willyne Hammerstien and is featured in her book Millefiori Quilts. Hammerstien’s Millefori quilts are sort of like the Godfather (mother?) of EPP quilts. The rosettes form a kaleidoscope effect when the fabric is repeated around the rosette. As you can see from this example below, the quilt is a show stopper. My husband bought me the book and the paper pieces kit for Mother’s Day/My Birthday. I’ve decided to wait to start it until my fabric fast is over. I want to go crazy with the fussy cutting and the colors, which means I need access to fabric. Plus I think after the fast is over, I’ll have enough fabric in my stash to get started that will help me get an idea of how many repeats of what I want are in a fat quarter so I can avoid over buying. I have a deal with my Instagram buddy, Annika, that if I haven’t made a rosette by January 1, 2018, she’ll pick the fabric for my first rosette. I think a barrier to finishing with be getting over the fear of starting in the first place.
I anticipate this quilt being a slow stitcher. I would be amazed if I have the top assembles in less than five years.
The Dear Jane Quilt has a very special significance for me. My late mom-in-law was named Jane, and I miss her a lot. My daughter’s middle name is Jane in honor of the grandmother she was never able to meet. I am also a big fan of Jane Austen and the book Jane Eyre. When I heard there was a quilt called Dear Jane, I felt my heart pulling towards it. This is a quilt of many tiny pieces, which intimidates me. Recently, I learned that paperpieces.com had partnered with the author/publisher to offer an English Paper Pieced version. I’m waiting until after the fabric fast is over to start buying rows.
I’m hoping this quilt will help me learn how to plan color placements ahead of time. This quilt will also be a slow one. I hope to listen to many Jane Austen audio books, watch many Jane Austen movies, and remember my mother-in-law while I create this quilt.
I’m going really honest: If Angie Wilson of gnomeangel.com does a sew-a-long, I always want in. She picks the most epic quilts, breaks them down into steps and then builds a community to sew-a-long. It’s wonderful. Even though she’s partnered with paperpieces.com to do an EPP version of this, I think I’m going to try to foundation paper piece this one. I really want to hone by FPP skills. Also, that darn fabric fast gets in the way of EPP. I will say I enjoy the creativity needed to make this one work without more fabric.
My daughter and I have a ritual. When her hair needs to be combed we watch episodes of the Midnight Quilt show and this episode is by far her favorite. She loves the colors associated with this quilt, and she thinks Ms. Angela is SO COOL! I would love to show her how to make a quilt using this quilt. Also, I have this creative curve ruler I really want to try.
This quilt is in the book Quilting with Tula and Angela. I wanted to make it almost from the moment I saw it. After I saw Tula Pink’s line De La Luna, I REALLY wanted to make it. When the fabric arrived, I had to start cutting. I love the playful and mischievous of the fabric. This quilt is both. Plus, it turns out that the skulls are quite fast and easy to assemble.
Elizabeth Hartman is a genius. Her ability to make animals into quilts with traditional piecing is incredible. I admired this quilt from the first time I saw the pattern. This pattern sat on my Amazon wish list for ages until my sister bought it for me for Christmas. I am really excited about finishing this quilt!
I’d been itching to do an Elizabeth Hartman pattern ever since I saw Fancy Forrest and her butterfly pattern blew my mind. I bought the pattern from a deal of the day. I would regularly take it out and look at it, but I was intimidated by picking the fabrics. My sister rescued me. She was super helpful. I am so super proud of this finish!
What’s on your list? What are the quilts or projects you’re dying to make? What is stopping you?
I love forward motion. Want to watch me crawl out of my skin? Put me in a meeting where NOTHING is getting done, like a brainstorming session. I hate brainstorming sessions. I don’t want to put 100 ideas on a board and not examine them. Examining them in the fun part. I want to pick one that seems like it will work and start working on it right now. I can always adjust, right?
There’s a word for that. The Gallop Strength’s Finder calls someone like me an activator. Activators love motion and doing stuff. There are activators in the world who are also strategic thinkers. I am not one of them. In fact, in my list of top five strengths (you can find yours if you take the Strength Finders Inventory) I have activator (likes forward motion) and adaptability (don’t mind changing plans on the fly). Put those two things together and you end up with someone who tends to jump into things and figure them out as she goes. For the most part, this works pretty well for me.
Sometimes it does not.
Around November or December of 2016, I started to get the feeling that I might want to learn English Paper Piecing. Some people I was following on Instagram were doing it and I thought it looked interesting. I watched a YouTube tutorial, bought a starter kit online, and started cutting some fabric I’d gotten in my sew sampler box. I went with a Grandmother’s Flower Garden Pattern because that was what was on the YouTube video and in January of 2017 started cutting and sewing.
I know it was January of 2017 because it’s now July of 2018 and I am about half done. I had no idea what I was starting when I bought a bunch of 1 inch hexagons and started sewing them together.
Here’s how the pattern works:
You start with one hexagon.
You sew on six more.
Then you sew on 12 more.
Then you add 18 white hexagons as a border.
Then you attach them with green hexagons which represent the garden path between the flowers. You need about 11 green hexagons to attach the flowers together.
As you can see, they start off really cute. Then when I get to the white hexagon border I start to question my life choices. When I’ve assembled a few together and have a long stretch of green to sew, I am sure that I am crazy.
I had no idea how big this was going to be. I thought I’d make it 8 rows of six flowers and that would be no big deal.
Turns out, it’s a big deal.
I learn a lot along the way when I leap before I look, and I also end up feeling frustrated. I’d never heard of fussy cutting when I started. I’m sad I didn’t fussy cut my flowers. I also have two flowers where the 12 hexagon row alternate fabric because I didn’t bother to check if I had enough fabric for a whole row before I started (turns out I did).
This is a bit of pattern for me. I read the quilting pattern once, quickly, get a general feel and then go for it. As a result I miss stuff. That is how I ended up with an extra seam in the backing of my Lepidoptera Quilt. And why Ice Cream Soda quilt is sitting in a box looking a mess.
At this stage in the journey I’ve started to view my Grandmother’s Flower Garden Quilt as an exercise in persistence. I want to finish what I’ve started. I must accept that even thought I’d do it differently now, that does not make it any less of an achievement. There will probably be about 2,000 hexagons by the time this quilt is finished. Two thousand is a lot.
I will finish what I have started. Half of the growth is achieved through persistence. I’ve learned my lesson: I need an understanding of what I’m getting myself into and make a plan to get myself out.
If I understand the beginning and the end, I’ll have fun making it up in the middle.
I few months ago I had this vision for a quilt project. Using only left over fabric from another quilt project I would make a blue/purple peacock on a background that went from yellow to orange to red. I was super excited when I started working on the project. Check out that eye!!! 
I was so excited I did not read the pattern closely and ended up piecing the project backwards. I thought that was pretty cool because I think I have enough fabric to make another one in reverse, so green to blue to purple background with a yellow/orange peacock. If I made the second one the correct way it would look like they were mirror images.
Then I started scrolling through other people’s interpretation of the pattern on Instagram, realizing that what I was treating as background was actually the peacock’s feathers.
Now my idea feels stupid to me. How did I not catch that the feathers make up the background?! I’ve spent more than 30 hours hand piecing this project, and I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to do another version mirrored version of my same stupid idea.
Some of you may be tempted to write a comment about how much you like what I made and reassure me that my idea is not stupid.
I am gong to invite you not to do that.
If I don’t believe that for myself either I won’t believe it from you, or I will need you to remind me forever. This is why telling someone who is anxious that everything is okay is a waste of your time. If a person cannot do it for themselves, then it won’t stick when you do it. You’ll have to keep doing it. Forever.
It is also not effective to tell people who are anxious to calm down or stop worrying. That’s roughly the same as me telling you not to think about Abraham Lincoln.
Seriously, stop thinking about Abraham Lincoln.
Stop thinking about the beard and the top hats or the Emancipation Proclamation.
STOP THINKING ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN ALREADY!!!!
To which any sane person would say, “Every time I try to stop thinking about him you remind me of him, and I start all over again.” That process is exactly what happens to an anxious person. Each time you tell them to calm down they are reminded of their anxiety and start all over again.
So what to do instead? Ask people what they need to handle whatever it is they are worried about. If they don’t know, I either invite them to take a few deep breaths or take a few moments to think about it. I do not solve the problem for them. Solving the problems leaves ME with the burden of relieving THEIR anxiety. No thank you.
Where does this leave me and the peacock? First I need to make peace with how my original vision is different. Then I need to decide if I want to spend another 30+ hours making another version or if I want to move on.
One of my favorite things about quilting without deadlines is that I can put something away for awhile and look at it again when some of the original emotion has worn off. So away goes the peacock for a bit.
Until then, I’ll be thinking about Abraham Lincoln.
The countdown is on! We are on our way to the start of another 100Days100Blocks challenge. I love this project! I have so much fun sewing along with all the other quilters. Since this quilt-a-long is such a marathon, I thought I’d share my process with you.
First, I sew ahead. I would not be able to manage this pace otherwise.
I start by putting all the fabrics I’m using in one spot so I can pull fabric for multiple blocks at the same time.
I usually pick a focal fabric (in this case Prince Charming), and then look for accent colors in the print. I set the blocks together how I envision it working and then take a picture so I don’t forget what I had in mind when I actually go to cut fabric.
Next I put the fabric in bags with one of my alphabities blocks, so I don’t forget which block I was pulling fabric for (notice a theme of me forgetting things sometimes?).
After I cut the fabric I lay it all out on a piece of batting so I can see it all together. I also work at least two blocks at a time. Having two blocks going means I can chain piece.
Here’s how I have my sewing area set up: I bought a press and flip cutting mat. It has a cutting mat on one side and a pressing mat on the other. I also have a tiny iron. I set up the pressing mat and iron on the side of my sewing table. I place the batting on the floor to my left. I press and then realign the blocks.
Using the batting and pressing right next to my sewing machine minimizes that chance that I mix up pieces. I did that a ton last year and ripping seams is a pain! I also keep the alphabities piece over the block so as to not mix things up.
The process then become a lot of sew, press, repeat until…Ta Da! A finished block.
Hope that was helpful. Happy stitching!
Welcome Too Imperfection 