Valued Bear Paws

This year, in addition to making any quilts that choose me (you never know what's going to come up), I'm planning to supplement all those Bear Paw blocks I made as part of the Quilters Color Quest last year. If you recall, there were lots of versions of blocks in many styles/colors of fabric according to various prompts over the course of the workshop. They were all fun to make, but didn't all mesh well with each other, at least in my eyes. So this year I'm making more (yes, making Bear Paws is like eating potato chips--you can't stop at just one) to fill out the blocks for a variety of quilts. At least that's the plan at this moment. 

Because it was easy, I started with a simple plan of a quilt using two values of one color in each block. I had a few blocks as seeds for the quilt, and then it was just a matter of dragging out every tone-on-tone fabric in my drawers and pairing things up. Oh, and dragging out all the low-volumes/whitish solids I could find. What a mess!! A fun mess, though. I completely forgot to take photos of just which blocks I started with (probably only about four), and in the end I wasn't paying so much attention to whether there was a lot of contrast in the values of each block. I was just having fun pairing things up. Because I wanted to focus on color and value, I tried to leave out highly figured fabrics as much as possible. To each of the six-inch blocks, I added two strips of very low volume fabric to make 8-inch blocks. This makes a small lap size quilt that is preferred by my favorite agency for quilt donations. The most interesting thing to me is how those low volumes that looked pretty much alike while I was sewing them cast different subtle value changes across the quilt when viewed in sunlight.

I did need to buy some fabric for the backing. I have really enjoyed making pieced backings from leftovers/scraps over the years, but recently, that requires a lot of work because my available pieces are getting smaller and smaller. So I have been purchasing either wide backings or sale yardage. And even more recently, I've been purchasing them online for local pickup. For this quilt I browsed through the available sale fabrics at my chosen website until I saw that cute floral print on the right. It reminded me of a Liberty print, minus the luscious feel, of course, but still, so lovely and cheerful. I thought I was done looking, but then I had second thoughts. What if it didn't look the same in person? I kept scrolling through available choices. Oh, my! That fabric on the left. It took me right back to high school. I just had to have it, even though I knew there would be a dilemma over which one to use. 

I spend a lot of time laying my options over the quilt top. Dither, dither. One fabric picked up on the lighter fabrics of the top.

The other picked up on jewel-toned blocks.

In the end, I trusted my first impulse and went with the floral. I have all kinds of ideas running through my head for the 70's style print. I'm thinking pairing it with bright solids would be fun. 

Isn't it interesting how the repeat in a pattern causes a grid when you view the fabric from far? It's just a little off from square, but no one sees that when the quilt is in use. I did manage to piece a seam to match the pattern.

I knew when I pieced the quilt that I wanted it to be quick and easy. To me that means meandering in the background. Few stops and starts and fewer threads to bury. Plus, it's relaxing for me. Everything went well for a bit. Then my machine started to skip stitches about every three or four inches. I had just given it a spa treatment, so I couldn't figure out the problem. I put in a fresh needle (twice), rethreaded, found a little chunk of lint in my feed dogs, reset the bobbin, changed the bobbin, tried again and again, and...still skipping. So much for having few threads to bury. There were lots of stops and starts to pick out stitches. Then I noticed that the problem happened mostly when I was sewing over one kind of low volume strip. It was a prepared-for-dying fabric that was a little heftier than my other fabrics. I had used that fabric in another quilt last year and had no problem with the quilting, but I was using a walking foot that time, not FMQ. So I replaced my usual 90/14 topstitch needle with a denim needle, and voila! Problem solved! The needle made quite a racket puncturing the quilt, but I was so happy that it was sewing well again, I didn't mind. In no time at all the background quilting was finished. 

But what to do for the paws? For some reason, I wanted to do something different. When I made the blocks I pressed the claw seams open. I'm not sure why I did that, but it sort of eliminated in-the-ditch quilting for me as i don't like to sew in the seamline on open seams. I don't like in-the-ditch anyway, as I find it boring. So I decided to quilt about a 1/4-inch away around the blocks. With a walking foot because I don't do straight line FMQ well. Kind of a dumb idea. You can imagine how many times I had to spin the quilt to do that. I did figure out a way to do the whole block without breaking thread because, you know, I was trying to do this quick and easy. And it really didn't take all that long after all. But then, the middle of the paw. I had to do something there. I looked at gorgeous quilting by talented quilters online and must have drawn a zillion designs with pencil and paper. I was over with walking foot quilting. I still wanted something quick with few thread breaks. I finally came up with a stylized leaf. I wasn't happy with it, but by now, the quilt was no longer quick, so I just went with it. I'm okay with the overall look, but if quick and easy was my top priority, I should have just meandered the whole quilt and been done. Will I remember this next time? Who knows. But I've recorded it here as a reminder to my future self. 

So, here's how it all turned out. It's really fine, and definitely doesn't take itself too seriously. 

And I love the texture of the back.

I sneaked my initials and the year into the bottom right corner, using my washout marker. (After washing, it just becomes part of the texture unless you know where to look for it.)

Here are some close-ups.

And some with a glimpse of the scrappy binding. I cut lengths of about 8 inches (about 10 inches for the ones at the corners) from leftover paw fabrics in an attempt to reduce my scrap fabrics even more.

After years of binding with 2-1/2 inch strips, I had more recently been trying to make more modern narrow bindings, but my corners always looked rounded and "thick." Lately, I have realized that 2-1/2 inches is the sweet spot for me to get sharp corners, so that's my habit now. On quilts that have block points at the edge of the quilt, I cut my backing and batting about 1/8 inch outside of the top, and then I sew my binding with a scant 3/8-inch seam allowance. This keeps most block points intact, or close to it.

February has been a cold and snowy month for us. But yesterday, we had brilliant sunshine with no wind. So of course, I had to brave the cold not only for my usual garage photos, but a glamour session in the snow. Our front yard was pristine--not even marred by bunny tracks. So I tried. I really tried. I thought I could fling the quilt smoothly onto the snow. Except. One corner folded over. So those holes you see are my tracks from galumphing around to adjust things. Oh well. We'll celebrate snowy glamour shots anyway.

Here are the stats:

Pattern: Bear Paws; layout was based on a quilt pattern at Generations Quilt Patterns

Fabrics: Scraps from many years of quilt-making; backing is a Keepsake Calico (I think) from Joann. 

Batting: Hobbs Premium 80/20

Thread: Superior Masterpiece in Granite for piecing; Superior King Tut in White Linen for quilting; A heavy glace finish hand quilting thread that's no longer made (sigh) for hand sewing the binding.

Binding: 2 1/2 inches cut, double layer, machine sewn to front and hand stitched on back. 
Size: 48 1/2 by 56 1/2 inches before quilting; 47 1/2 by 55 1/4 inches after quilting; 44 5/8 by 51 5/8 inches after washing on cold and machine drying on low.

Machines: Singer Featherweight for piecing; Singer Treadle 115 for free motion and walking foot quilting and the machine work on the binding.

Indoors, after washing

This quilt will join two others I made in the last months for donation. 

Now I'm taking a little break from Bear Paws. Today I'm cutting up blue fabric that will put a big dent in the scraps. My pattern is one I got in a giveaway last year. It is the quilt that has chosen me this month. Stay tuned...

I'm linking up this week with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday, Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop, Wendy at Wendy's Quilts and More for Peacock Party and Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap 

How are your scraps doing? 

(Just a reminder: I'm not affiliated with any company, so when I mention products, services, or stores I'm just documenting what I used or liked.) 

 

Happy Wholecloth Flowers

Hello, 2021. Can you believe some quilters have new finishes to share already this year? That's amazing. I have a finish to share, but it's really the last finish of last year. I shared one photo of it in my 2020 wrap-up post, but didn't have time to get a post together for it, so here it is again.

Looks wonky; just the breeze

During November I had the thought that I might be able to eek out just one more quilt. I had a two-yard length of fabric I had bought as a souvenir at a Ben Franklin store on vacation in October 2017. I love Ben Franklin (think five and dime store, variety store...much cooler than a dollar store), but they are few and far between in my state now, so shopping there for fabric was high on my list of vacation activities.

I knew immediately how I wanted to quilt this fabric, but it took me this long to get to the quilt. I wanted to make it just a bit wider than the fabric, and when searching around in my bins, I discovered that I had a bunch of solids that were in the same color families as the fabric. And I don't even have that much solid fabric. There must be a connection between those pieces and this print. Are these "my" colors?

I used newsprint (packing) paper to foundation piece 1-inch (finished) piano keys for the borders. I didn't feel like planning corners so I just attached the strips and used a partial seam to finish it all off. 

I am still not real comfortable going into a retail store, but I did not have fabrics on hand that might work for a quick, easy backing. The next best thing was to search online for fabric immediately available for curbside pickup at Joann. My first choice would have been a local independent store, but they don't have a big online presence at this time. (I hope that might improve in the future, but I know that's hard for small stores.) You can not imagine how long it took me to look at (agonize over) every bit of fabric, squinting at or enlarging to try to determine how the colors and prints might look in real life. I fancied a small print multicolored floral, but of course, that was just a fantasy given what was available. I finally settled on a mottled yellow print.

It was described as a floral print, although I couldn't see that on my screen, and the colors sort of vibrated between yellow and orange. I took a leap of faith that that might translate to a goldish, cheddary (not lemon!) yellow. I was thrilled when the fabric was just as I envisioned it when I picked it up. The flowers just show up as texture, but it works well with the front of the quilt.

I knew that I would be tempted to over-quilt this, but I wanted to keep it a soft and not too lengthy project. All of the quilting is following the shapes. I tried to follow as close as I could, but did not obsess about it, so there are lots of wobbles--enough to keep it playful. 

I started with the shapes of the biggest flowers, then the tan leaves, and finally the interiors of the biggest flowers and some of the ladybugs. I was tempted to outline some of the small flowers, but wasn't sure how to keep myself from doing all of them, so I stopped. My freemotion quilting is a little rusty. I don't do it as much as walking foot quilting these days, and my stitches were a bit tiny, but the machine has a great stitch (tension is just perfect), so it still looks good.

I puzzled over the border a bit. I get bored quilting in the ditch, so I did not want to do that. I thought of a vine with leaves, but wanted it to be even simpler. Then I remembered that I had some very old cardstock stencils from back in my hand-quilting-only days. The biggest one just happened to be the width of the border.

I used to carefully measure and plan these kinds of borders to go around corners with symmetry, but not this time. Following the borders in the same style as they were attached was easier and had a more modern vibe. 

I used my hera marker for the lines, which worked well on the solids. And the soft December light by my window was just right to see the lines as I quilted with my walking foot. I left the last bit of border clear for my initials and the date.

(before washing, the washout marker shows)

When planning the size of the quilt, I made sure to allow enough fabric for the binding. I love pieced scrap bindings, but again, in the interest of a quickish finish, a single fabric was preferable, and the big print achieves the same purpose of varied colors. 

I took my time with the piecing and quilting, but it could have been a very quick project. I know that I will keep my eye open for other very large print fabrics to do this again because it was really fun. Minimal piecing, minimal marking, loosey goosey quilting, easy backing, along with a fun print--who doesn't love that?! (The only thing I might have done differently was center the main fabric vertically so those big bottom flowers weren't cut off in an awkward spot.)This quilt is going to be set aside with another similar-sized quilt until I have one more, and then I'll ship them off as a donation. 

Here's a gallery of photos after washing. I tried and tried to get good photos in the sun, but our weather has been fickle. The sun would peep out, I'd run out and get set up and then it snuck back behind the clouds. But I did get a few.

Where's the sun?

I did find some sunshine for a few seconds through the living room window.

Here are the stats for this one: 

Pattern: Wholecloth with piano key border
Fabrics:  Free Mind by Hoodie Crescent for Newcastle Fabrics; various solids, mostly Kona, but some others, too; probably a perennially-available Keepsake Calico fabric from Joann

Batting: Hobbs Premium 80/20

Thread: Superior Masterpiece in Granite for piecing; Superior King Tut in White Linen for quilting; Yellow, hefty hand quilting thread from my drawer (the label is gone, but it's got a nice glace finish)

Binding: 2 1/2 inches cut, double layer, machine sewn to front and hand stitched on back. 
Size: 48 1/2 by 60 1/2 inches before quilting; 47 3/4 by 59 3/8 inches after quilting; 44 by 55 3/4 inches after washing on cold and machine drying on low.

Machines: Singer Featherweight for piecing; Singer Treadle 115 for free motion and walking foot quilting and the machine work on the binding.

So that's a final wrap on 2020. After the week we just had in my country, I truly wonder what awaits us in 2021. Quilting will continue to be needed as a balm, I think. I gave my two machines a spa treatment this week while I was between projects. Then I started a new project, a Year of Scrappy Triangles, 52 patterns by Leila Gardunia. I think (hope) I can handle one block a week. That's all I'm going to say about it right now. I'll tell you about my "rules" for these blocks after I have a few made.  

Have a safe, healthy new year, and keep quilting!

I'm linking up with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday (yeah, I know I'm late), Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop and Wendy at Wendy's Quilts and More for Peacock Party.

(Just a reminder: I'm not affiliated with any company, so when I mention products, services, or stores I'm just documenting what I used or liked.) 

TBT: Hand of Friendship

Well, Happy New Year! I am off to a great start. I just spent several hours working on this post. I even got my husband involved scanning old photos of quilts I was going to share. Then I started jotting notes for what I wanted to say about them. It was going to be another post about my tiny quilting career, which--as you know--I've been writing about for a very long time, it seems, in my Throwback Thursday posts. I wanted to tell about my craft show quilts. Somewhere into this little time-consuming project, I decided to check something and pulled up pictures from the blog. Uh, oh. It seems I already did a whole post on these quilts back in December 2015. I had forgotten to label the post and had forgotten it was there. Well, that's a fine kettle of fish! If you'd like to read that old post, go ahead. I'll wait.

So here I am starting again. I do have a quilt to share that sort of fits the theme of those old quilts I was going to write about because--as they were--it is a one-block quilt from that same era. I don't really think of these as minis--just a framed block. (This one is 18 inches square, machine pieced and hand quilted with cotton thread. The batting is a very lightweight polyester made by Mountain Mist, I think. It was a dream to quilt.)

Given the colors and style, you probably can tell I made this in the 1980s, the summer of 1986, in fact. The block has a number of names, but I chose to use "Hand of Friendship." You see, that year I was the stay-at-home mom of a preschooler and a toddler. We often took walks around our neighborhood. We liked our neighborhood, but there weren't a lot of people our ages. One day, as we were walking around the corner of the next block, a woman came running out of her house to introduce herself. She and her family had recently moved in. She didn't know anyone nearby, but had seen our little family on our walks. She was watching for me. It turns out that we were both a little starved for some adult contact during the day as well as some playmates for our children. Her son and daughter were just a bit younger than my daughter and son. Soon we were spending lots of time together. In fact, her son developed a little preschool crush on my daughter. It was wonderful. And then came the day not long after we met that she told me her family was moving because of a job transfer. To Florida.

Of course, my way of handling the disappointment was to make her a little quilt. And because it was the 1980s, and my idea of Florida was sherbet colors and warmth, I chose pastel country colors from my stash for a Hand of Friendship block. I wanted her to embrace Florida as her home but not forget her time in Michigan, so I chose quilting designs to represent both states: a pine tree and a snowflake for Michigan and a sun and a shell for Florida. In the border, I quilted waves--for Lake Michigan and the Atlantic Ocean. 

I wish I could tell you that our friendship has continued to this day, but that was not to be. After her move, we kept in contact for awhile, writing letters and exchanging Christmas cards. (It was before the era of social media.) Our friendship was in its infancy, so as our kids grew and we got involved in other things, it was hard to keep the friendship alive long-distance. Her husband's job required a few more moves. One Christmas, she wrote that they were moving again. There was no return address on the envelope and when I wrote later to the previous address, the letter was returned with no forwarding address, and we lost contact. 

Life moves on, but it's nice to remember this little friendship at a time when we both needed it. I still have a photo of our kiddies taken just before the move. That, and these quilt photos are sweet mementos, but isn't it wonderful that social media makes it easier to keep in touch these days?

As always, I'm linking up with Sandra at mmm! quilts for Throwback Thursday. I'll be back next month with more TBT quilts from my tiny quilting career (yes, there are enough for at least a couple more posts), and today I found more loose photos from my personal quilting, so it looks like I'll keep sharing TBTs for a little while yet this year.

Throwback Thursday: Schoolhouses

Since it is September (already!) I'm celebrating back-to-school for lots of families in my continuing TBT series this year of posts about quilts I quilted during my tiny quilting career in the 1980's and early 90's. For the previous posts, click on the label "my tiny career" on the right sidebar or below this post. Most of these quilts were made by Becky Schaefer from antique fabrics. She hired me to hand quilt them--a dream job. All quilting was done with off-white cotton thread. This month I'm including a few other quilts because they fit the theme.

I love riding by old schoolhouses and am always happy to see ones that have been preserved, even if they have been repurposed. We do have one schoolhouse in our area that is still part of the public school system (since 1879). It is a beautiful two-color brick building that has been lovingly cared for. Last year there were 14 students attending. They have technology (and indoor plumbing), but the teaching is still one-room style with kids from kindergarten to fifth grade. 

So, let's get to these quilts that commemorate historic places of learning. I showed two of these quilts (with red borders) in my first TBT post about my tiny quilting career. I quilted several others of the same color scheme over the years, but let's see some other color schemes. I like this little brown and blue one with "floating" schoolhouses. Notice that one is the reverse of the others. What a fun detail! As usual, I'll include size, date quilted and amount of thread used for quilting, as it is my documentation of the quilts I worked on in my career. So this quilt is 8 by 10 1/2 inches. I quilted it in January 1987 with 2 2/3 yards of thread. 

As was typical with these little quilts, the back is muslin, with diagonal lines quilted in the background.

The next quilt has sashing between the schoolhouses. It is 8 1/4 by 11 inches. Quilted in January 1987 with 3 1/2 yards of thread. I'm really struck by the antique fabrics used in the borders of these tiny quilts and by the variation of patterns in the fabrics even though the colors are similar. I'm guessing at that time green was green and brown was brown--limited range of dye for each particular color. 

Here's the back of this one, again diagonal lines within the sashing strips. I won't show backs of others (don't want you to fall asleep) as my quilting did not change from one quilt to another in these layouts.

Here are some more. Just sit back and enjoy those tiny bits of colors and patterns. They are a fun collection of antique fabrics. 

Notice the subtle variation in the background fabrics of the blocks. 8 1/4 by 11 inches; 3 1/2 yards of quilting thread; quilted in January 1987

I think of lighted windows on this one and the next. This one's slightly bigger. 9 1/4 by 11 3/4 inches; 4 yds 6 inches of quilting thread; March 1987.

8 3/4 by 11 inches; 3 yards of thread; March 1989.

This next quilt includes an alphabet stencil. The picture cuts off some of the border, but the quilt is 10 1/2 inches square. 4 2/3 yards of quilting thread; April 1989.  

Here's the back so you can see the tiny matchstick quilting around the stencil. 

As I worked on Becky's quilts, I became more confident in doing tiny piecing myself, so of course I had to try out some of Becky's patterns from her book Working In Miniature. I made this schoolhouse quilt with my 80's fabrics, and gave it to my sister-in-law. 

8 3/4 by 11 1/2 inches; February 1987. No need to keep track of thread on this one.

Of course, I had to do the binding myself on this one. Here's the back to show how I made hanging strips. I hadn't figured out yet how to do (much neater) triangles--there wasn't the online support to learn such things as there is today.

Right around February 1987, I went to a craft show at a nearby mall. There I met a woman who had a booth with some antiques and perhaps some quilts and antique fabric. I really don't remember the details. We got to talking, and I mentioned that I was a quilter and that I had experience quilting antique quilt tops. She took my information and pretty much arranged with me on the spot to make some quilts for her to sell. She said she would buy any quilts I would make. The first quilts I made for her were schoolhouse quilts. I made one like the one above and one in green in February 1987. (I made another blue/rust one in the spring of 1988.)

These varied slightly in size depending on the width of the borders, but they were all about the same. 

My new client also brought me a box full of antique fabric scraps and yardage and asked if I would use them to make quilts. There were four antique schoolhouse blocks, which she asked me to make into a wallhanging. It was kind of tricky, as the blocks were uneven in size and were to be set together without sashing. It really looks uneven to me now (although the cut-off picture probably makes it look worse.) I'm hoping she blocked it. I'm not sure why I didn't do the binding. Maybe because there was no piece of fabric in the box big enough. I suspect that she planned to bind it with other antique fabric. It is 31 by 32 inches. I finished it in April 1987, with 78 1/2 yards of quilting. 

The back:

The box had some small scraps of the same fabric, so I also made her a mini version--still with wonky houses, but this time with sashing. The back was muslin. I finished it in April 1987 with 5 1/2 yards of quilting. 

Later that year I tried a combination of schoolhouses and log cabin blocks with log cabin ghost quilting. 

Strange glare in this photo. The quilt is 11 3/4 inches square. 9 2/3 yards quilting; July 1987.

Here's the back with those ghost cabins.

Later I tried a scrappy version of schoolhouses using 1930s scraps from the box. For fun, I made this one horizontal with quilted vertical lines in the borders. 

10 1/2 by 13 1/8 inches; 11 yards of quilting; January 1989. That looks like machine quilting, but I don't think I did machine quilting then. I suspect the chalk lines I used for marking were still showing. 

One more schoolhouse to share. This quilt was made by a client of a quilt shop owner in California.The owner of the shop was a friend of Becky, so she asked if I would quilt and bind it. After all those tiny quilts, it was fun to work on something bigger. This one is 38 1/2 by 32 inches. I remember being nervous about binding it, as that is definitely not my strength. I finished the quilt in December 1988. 76 yards of quilting thread. 

The back:

I'm linking all these schoolhouses up with Sandra's Throwback Thursday party on mmm! quilts. Join me there and see what everyone else is reminiscing about. See you next month with another installment of "my tiny career."

Whether or not you are in school (or live on a "school calendar"), I hope you are enjoying this time of year of new beginnings and changes in routine. 

(I'm not affiliated with any company, so when I mention products, services, or stores I'm just documenting what I used or liked.)