Imperfection

It's heavenly here in my new sewing space surrounded by books and fabric. What a wonderful combination. I'm still getting used to it. I stayed up until 3am this morning working on the quilt below. It felt good to be in the space. Just across from the master bedroom. Down the hall from my daughter. Bathroom next door. Just far away enough from the kitchen to not eat all the time, but close enough to the kitchen to get up and get something to eat. LOL!

I started a Turning-Twenty over a year ago at my guild's Spring Retreat. I brought it out and returned to it at this year's Spring Retreat. In another life I would have paid someone to do the top-stitching for me. I didn't trust myself to do a decent job. I still don't have great top-stitching skills, but I made a decision earlier this year to go for it. Practice. Practice. Practice. I still have a way to go on stippling, but straight line stitching works just fine on the modern looking quilts I favor. Concentric circles, however, would look better on this quilt, I told myself.

So I pulled a plate out the cupboard and started tracing. It helps to make one's peace with imperfection. If quilting has to be just so for you, machine top-stitching is not for you. So what if some of the circles are a bit wonky? Enjoy the process. This has been the "perfect" quilt to experiment with. I love all the fabrics so much that quilting (imperfectly) the concentric circles on this baby has been fun. Having that 11" throat on my Janome machine helps. Stuffing such a large quilt through a machine with a smaller throat would have been a nightmare. Doing my own quilting is fun. What's more, the money I save on a professional top stitch job gets to be used to buy more gorgeous fabric.

Look closely and you'll see all the jerks and pulls and snags typical of a novice machine quilting job. (I've seen worst jobs, but that's another post.) But step away from the quilt and what's there not to like?????

Postcard from the Edge

It's been a while since I've posted on the blog. No excuse except it's been busy at work and I've been doing lots of traveling. It's that time of year. Time to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

But now that I managed to convert my study into a craft/study room, I'm back on my Janome. I'd outgrown the little corner in my master bedroom. It had become so cramped and junky I didn't want to do anything in the space. Quilting was no longer fun. I didn't even want to look at the space which was hard to do since it was on my side of the bed which meant it was the first thing I saw in the morning when my eyes opened. One day I could take it no longer. It was time to face the fact that the writer/scholar was also a quilter. And the quilter was demanding to share space with the writer/scholar.

My husband and brother-in-law did me the favor of moving my beloved office desk to the sitting area in my bedroom to make room for my cutting table and a bakers rack for my notions.

The farmhouse dining room table which I bought back when I was a grad student in New Jersey and kept in my study to hold my books, folder,papers and knick knacks converted nicely to a sewing table. I love that old table.

Of course, there remains the matter of what to do about the HUNDREDS OF BOOKS I took off shelves. A third of them are going downstairs to another set of bookshelves I keep there and the other two-third are being discarded. That's right. Discarded. (Weeping.) Discarding old books is like discarding old friends. I feel like I'm being ungrateful. After all they taught me and the many times they saved me. Never mind that many haven't been cracked open in years. That's not the point. My books sit as reminders on my shelf that I did not make myself. That I've been shaped by reading, books, writers, beautiful sentences, worlds of words. Luckily, there's a store in the city that takes old books and makes them available to new owners.

I love my new space. Enough to start sewing and quilting again. (And oh yeah, for those of you who are wondering whether I'm going to change the color of the room. Yeah, perhaps. Red worked well for my study. But it makes the room dark during the day, especially a north facing room. I'm just not ready yet to part with the red. I will when I'm ready.)

Eager to show you the chasulbe I whipped up the other night to wear in the pulpit the next morning. I love fluid, feminine chasulbes to wear over whatever it is that I have available to wear underneath.

Do I have a chasulbe pattern? No, I simply trace around an on old chasulbe I purchased from Cokesbury many years ago. You need 54" inch wide fabric (this one was 58"), trace around the fold of the fabric, and cut. Hem it and go. This website was helpful in giving me confidence that I could make my own chasulbe.

I also managed to finish two other projects in the last few weeks.

I covet a lot of the bed quilts other quilters post on their blogs and have dreamed of quilt one for the master bed. But I prefer sleeping under a comforter. The cool feel of a down comforter against my skin is fantastic you wake up in the middle of the night feeling like you're on fire (cough, cough). One evening when I had nothing in particular to do I reached for some fat quarters in my stash and started making blocks. A week later I had a duvet top. It's reversible. My husband who's from Trinidad prefers the other side because it has a Caribbean flavor. This side is my favorite.

. Lastly, I finally finished the applique quilt I started some months ago. It's a gift for a friend who was especially kind to me when I was home for all those weeks after surgery. We've known each other for over twenty years now. She went online to my favorite natural hair products store Oyin and made sure I had a stock of products to keep my hair moisturized during recovery and radiation. All I have to do now is give it a sleeve and a label and ship it off to her. Shhh...it's a secret.

Appetite for Applique

Doing lots of appliques these days. Above is my latest project. I'm so glad to have Leah Day's timely lessons on free motion quilting to give me confidence to do my own top quilting. Whether it's straight line quilting or free motion quilting, don't be afraid to try, make mistakes, learn from your mistakes, and keep it moving. With my new Janome 7700 machine I'm eager to try anything-- at least once, twice, whatever.

By the way, remember the Butterscotch quilt I started a few weeks ago? This is how it looks weeks later with a few more appliques applied. I'm planning to add beads and other accessories to this one. Stay tuned!

Butterscotch and Polka Dots and M. L. King, Jr.

Okay, so I haven't been able to get as much done as I'd hope now that school is back in session. I am practicing my FMQ but don't have any photos to show for it.

After getting home from a MLK speaking engagement in Washington, DC on Sunday I did manage to spend Monday at the machine quilting and watching televised MLK ceremonies from around the country. Here's what I have to show for my labors this past Monday.



I think I'll name it: Butterscotch and Polka Dots.

Sitting there at my machine looking up at televised ceremonies around the country, I continue to be in awe of the contribution of King and others, male and female, black, white, Jewish, Christian, and others who worked and sacrificed their lives to change the laws impacting the poor and disenfranchised. We have Independence Day to celebrate the importance of freedom from one's colonizers, Labor Day to celebrate the dignity of work, Veterans and Memorial Day to celebrate the courage and sacrifice of our military personnel, Presidents' Day to celebrate the vision of our founding leaders. And with MLK's holiday, we commemorate the ordinary and extraordinary sacrifices of its citizens to fight to make the country live up to its creed, "one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Chewable Goals

At first glance it may look like my usual simple big block quilt. But it's not.(Mind you, I don't apologize for favoring simple block patterns.) But I'm pushing myself to try my hand at something new with this quilt. This pattern calls for applique treatments which will be new for me. I'm excited.

As I tried out different fabrics for this quilt I learned something. Something that will change my fabric buying habits. I seem to have something against prints on white, and yet a white background fabric is crucial to balancing out the bold, colorful, scrappy fabric designs I'm drawn to. Afterputting together this quilt I'm going to make it my business from now on to stack up on white background fabric when I'm out shopping. I fell in love with the Kenyan Tea Leaf white background fabric (Alexander Henry Collection) you see here in this quilt and have been eager to find a way to use it. (I loved it so much that I bought six yards of it!).

Also, I'm not one for jumping into Quilt Challenges and Quilt Alongs. But I couldn't resist joining the FMQ Quilt Along over at The Free Motion Quilting website. Leah Day makes great videos and is a wonderful teacher. As requested by Day I'll be posting quilt sandwiches here on my site showing my progress in the quilt along. It makes sense to perfect my FMQ with such a great teacher a click away.

What are my quilting goals for 2012? I don't like biting off more than I can chew. Only frustrates me. I prefer chewable chunks and thus will say that my quilting goals for the first quarter of 2012 are 1) to incorporate more white background fabrics in my fabrics, 2) learn to applique, and 3) improve my FMQ by participating in a few FMQ Quilt alongs sponsored by some of my favorite quilt bloggers. This I can chew!

Done!

Do I have any quilting goals for 2012? Sure I do. I guess I do. I suppose I should. My favorite quilt bloggers seem to.

For now I'm just happy to be done with the String quilt I started a few weeks ago!

Beginning Intermediate

That pretty much describes how I'd describe my quilting skills after three years. While I feel pretty confident that I'm an intermediate when it comes to cutting and piecing together blocks, my top stitching as you can see from the photos below is pretty juvenile.

What was I thinking to leap into free motion quilting this 48" by 60" string quilt? Pretty crappy looking stippling, I admit. But not to worry. Once I wash the quilt the crappy stitching will give way to a fluffy textured looking quilt. As you can see, I'm tackling the binding right now. After that, the quilt label. After working on this almost everyday during this holiday period I'm convinced that straight line quilting is what I'll be doing from now on. I guess that puts me firmly in the modern quilting tradition of quilting with my simple piecing, straight lines, colorful fabrics, and noncompetitive interest in quilting. (More about the modern quilting movement later.)

Oh yeah, that's the Christmas gift my sweet husband gave me there in the background: a Janome Horizon! I love it. This was a great project for learning how to operate many of the features on my new machine.