The Summum Bonum and how quilting is a part of the great good

So, I have decided to make a post on what is "the greatest good". This is something BRD has posted a lot on on Letters and Surveys. It is an interesting topic, and I was struck today by how it relates to my favorite topic, quilting.

You see, after a lot of thought about the subject, I feel that the summum bonum is best stated "to love and to be loved". And this falls on every level of life, from the most common to the super spiritual. The Summum Bonum has to be found in the most mundane, because that is where we live every day, but in its purest form it is also the most exceptional and extraordinary epiphany of life. But we can only get glimpses of that, you cannot live there.

So how does this relate to quilting? Well, quilting is what I call a "great good", no caps. It is a way to love and be loved in a daily, mundane way. The more involved you are in the process of creating the quilt, the greater the good (though perhaps the less "perfect" the quilt.) Let me explain what I mean by this.

When one buys a blanket for a loved one, you are loving them with your gift. When you pick out the fabrics and use your time and skill to create a quilt, you are loving in a more personal way, when you take hours to hand quilt and finish a quilt, you are pouring yourself into the gift that you give. All of this is a way to give love. And when you give, suddenly you begin to engage in both giving and receiving love. When the person wraps up in the quilt and warms him or herself, they continue to receive love. When they look at the quilt and think of you, they are giving love back.

Even when you wrap up in your own quilt, you have given and are receiving love from yourself.

I realize I am straying from the normal way to see life here. Imbibing inanimate objects with the power of love is not my intention here. They just are a mundane symbol of the love that is behind them, coming from or to a person. But it is the lover and the loved that have and give the power of love.

But where do we go from here. You see that this "good" is small "g", but there is a "Greatest Good" which is the pattern for all the little good we do day to day. The Greatest Good is the good that God gives us. His love for us, and the fact that he desires our love in return. His Son was sent to act on our behalf because of His love for us. And then he has asked us to love Him and each other, and in turn we also naturally desire love.

So next time you wrap someone in a quilt you made, or feed them a warm and delicious hand made meal, or give them a hand turned pen for writing, or dress a child in a shirt that you washed, or simply give someone a hug, remember that you are participating the the great good...a small reflection of the Greatest Good.

The hand quilting has begun!

So I have started with the hand quilting of my latest project. I sewed together my string blocks and added them to the quilt top. I matched that with the back and got it on my hoop. Ready to go. I started the sewing. Time consuming and tedious. This will take a minute, as they say in the south. But I am enjoying it so far. It is a great activity to do while watching TV or a movie to keep the hands busy.

As an aside, I had another class with Sandra this week. She is doing a 4 week class making a few blocks a week. We will end up with the makings of a sampler quilt. I am excited to be going back to the basics with someone who really knows her stuff. You see, I am a sort of slap-dash quilter. Certainly not a perfectionist. But apparently, other quilters judge your work by the closeness of a seam and the way corners match up. Losing even an eighth of an inch on every seem will get a block or row off by inches in the end, so the more care you take, the more even your quilt will look. You won't have to rig it up in the end because pieces don't match up right.

She also talked more about ironing techniques and cutting off the edges...Also things I am not careful about. But the more care you take is these details, again, the more it will show in your finished project. So my goal on this Sampler quilt is to be precise and careful. And if I am not, Margaret and Sandra will both be quick to point this out...lovingly of course!

In class I was going for speed, getting ahead of the other "beginner" in the class, churning off practice blocks as quick as I could. Imagine my shame when Sandra said "Why don't you try this one again...use a pin this time so you can get these matched up right. And watch your seems to be sure they are a 1/4 in exactly!" I did it and am better for it, seeing the difference between my haphazard block and the one I did carefully.

So it will be back to class next week with a new outlook. I want to improve my craft and moving quickly just isn't the way to do it. Perhaps the hand quilting at home will help me improve my patience, plus the machine quilting will seem fast in comparison, even if I am going more slowly and carefully.

I will keep you updated with my progress with some pictures from class, I hope, to show how it is going. My new mantra will be "take time to pin!"

Ironing and quilts

I don't know about you, but ironing is one of my least favorite chores. Give me a wrinkled shirt any day and I will hang it in the bathroom while I shower and throw it on, confident that any remaining wrinkles will "work themselves out". It seems like such a tedious waste of time and effort.

So when Sandra at the Quilting Frame would casually state "press the fabric, then..." during a description of a block making procedure, I would simply filter out the line. Who would want to spoil a perfectly wonderful hobby with ironing!?!

BUT, I have learned to admit when I am wrong, and ironing (or "pressing" as Sandra and my grandmother would say) has officially entered my quilting vocabulary. It started after a recent chat at the Quilting Frame. I was watching Sandra put some blocks together and saw her ironing out the seams before moving on to the next step. It made the blocks so much easier to work with...no errant pleats jumping up, or seams pushing this way and that behind the fabric. Just full compliance with fabric manipulation. Very nice! and the finished block also had a very flat and controlled look to it.

Now I am not obsessed with this sort of control when sewing, but part of the point of quilting is creating a neat and orderly space, so the ironing just sort of makes sense as part of the process. This is especially true when it comes to the string quilt blocks I have been working on lately. In the case of these blocks it is very hard to make them neat and straight without ironing. The ironing smooths the fabric so that it does not bubble up. That is, the two sides you are sewing together lay flush with each other. It is really beautiful when done correctly and a disaster when done wrong.

So, as a part of my hobby I will be ironing more now. Maybe I will even throw a shirt or pair of pants in with my quilt blocks every now and again. So if I am looking a little better lately, you know why. It is all thanks to quilting. Do you think that is a good enough reason for my husband to let me go buy some more fabric?

New Year projects--a continuation

My idea...I know you have been wondering...was to use the String Quilt blocks to finish the scrappy project that had been lingering, longing to be finished for so long. I had the main part of the quilt as well as the back all finished and ready to go. But I was trying to do an edging on both ends using scraps, many very small, put together in a disorganized way. But this was a slow and kind of boring project, so I had shelved it back in the spring and never got back to it. But now I had plenty of blocks in all the right colors all ready to go, and enough to finish both ends. Eureka!

You can see how the colors of both what I had and the new edges are both random and orderly...there is a pattern to the blocks, but the fabrics used are variable, though complementary. and the patterns too have themes to them...the straight angles and diagonal lines are common to both parts, although in different ways. I am also adding an additional red stripe to each end to help the colors blend better, since there is so much red in my newer blocks.

Now my next step will be to hand quilt the peices together to try out my quilting hoop. Then I will do the binding as well on my own, since I know how to now. I am very excited about this quilt. It has all along been done very much to my tastes and to indulge myself. It may be another year before I finish all the stages of finishing it, but it will be fun!

String quilts and projects yearning to be finished!

Well, at the end of my class on Saturday one of the instructors who had been very patient in helping me all afternoon called out from the cutting table "Hurry up and finish that pinning! I want to show you this string quilt!" Imagine this spoken like a scold, but followed by a hearty laugh. So I hurriedly pinned the fabric, only sticking myself once or twice, and came on over.

On the table were the remnants of the binding of many quilts of all colors. Once you are done binding a quilt, you invariably have a 2.5 in wide length of binding cloth left. No good quilter wants to waste such a commodity. Any scrap, big or small, is of value. It takes as much work to cut that scrap as it took to cut the piece you were wanting at the time, if you follow me, so we all keep bags and stacks of oddly shaped fabric just waiting for a quilt that needs a piece just that size and color.

So then Margaret introduced me to String Quilts. You take the strips and sew them onto a square of fabric using a method that makes the sewing simple--straight lines. You also must faithfully iron as you go so as to keep the strips smooth and straight. You cut off the excess with a rotary cutter, and you are then left with a thick (double layered) block with diagonal stripes going across it. It is a great way to use leftover strips of any size (or course, the leftovers of this process are little triangles, so the next quilt will have to involve fox and geese, I think).

Then you can do whatever you want with the blocks...long diagonal stripes across the quilt, diamond patterns, arrows, whatever you like. You can coordinate your colors or make it totally scrappy. It is actually very fun and can be a project you work on slowly as you have scraps or purposefully as the focus of your quilting.

So Margaret got me started on a sample block. It was red and white. She chatted to me about all the possibilities, showing me various scraps she had that I could take. And well, I had already done one block in red and white, so I was basically started. I began collecting up colors and blocks and my mind was already working. As I drove home from the class I was already lamenting the neglected projects waiting at home on my shelf. Ahh, tabled again due to the heady passion of falling in love with new fabric and patterns...

So for the last three days I have been faithfully matching colors and sewing strips. Many from those given by Margaret and many from my stores of scraps at home. Reds and Blues and Browns and Whites and Creams. I had used all these colors in many of my favorite quilts, so I really enjoyed the chance to work with them again.

Once I had about 14 blocks, I began thinking about how I would put them together. I laid them all out, turning the blocks like I was working a giant kaleidoscope with the colored lines moving in their geometrical way. AND THEN IT HIT ME....

Binding class

Yesterday I went to a Quilt binding class. It was great. I learned how to do the edge of the quilt for myself. I am very eager to try it. Here are some pictures of the 1st 2 steps. It is a rather tedious process , but it will he cool to be able to do more for myself.

First you cut 2.5 in strips. you then Sew them together as Shown to make one long strip to go around the quilt. You then begin sewing the Strip around the quilt. you essentially-have to sew both sides on the same Seam so that it looks the same on both sides.

You start working your way around the quilt sewing all the raw edges together for the quilt and binding. Then when you wrap the binding around, all raw edges are covered and only the folded edge shows.

This is really hard to describe. You definitely have to do it with the help of an expert in order to really get it. You end up wrapping the material around, sewing it together, and trying to match up all the seams so that it looks clean and smooth. It is tedius and requires a lot of pinning and adjusting as you go.

And then you have a fully completed quilt. This is the final stage. I am going to try one myself in the Spring...starting with the quilting and then the binding. I am really looking forward to it.

Thanks to Sandra and Margret who took several tedius hours to teach me this skill.

I often marvel at the competent hands of older women. Margret has such hands. Mine were clumsy and slow in trying to fold and move the fabric to my will. But hers were practised and sure. I hope that all my labors in fabric will make mine that way one day soon.

I have heard that my dad marvels at the competence of MY hands in the quilt I made him. I find it so hard to believe, because all I see are the flaws and uneaveness of the quilt I made them. But I guess I must be on the right path in order to get such a compliment from him. I have spent so much time marveling at the man who I feel can do or fix absolutely anything. Now there is a thing that I can do and he can't. It is a strange feeling.

OK, enough ramblings. Boy, I have missed my blog! It is good to be back!

Flower baskets

Well, this post has been a long time coming, because this project was a Christmas gift for my parents. It probably took half a year to complete.

It started after my mom gave me a pack of fabric pieces, pre-cut and matched. There were some that looked like basket weave and then all sort of flower and leaf patters. It just inspired use of the flower basket pattern. I cut and pieced the flower baskets first. Then I had to decide what to do with the blocks. There was a lot of blue in the fabrics and I happened to have a blue leafy patterned fabric as well that seemed to match. So I decided to go for bold colors with a blue back ground. SoI began putting the blocks together with some help from my husband on how the pieces and colors should go.

Then I went online and searched and searched for a flower basket print. I found a great one at the Spin Cycle Fabrics ebay store. It went perfectly with the quilt and made a great backing.

SO I completed the quilt and had it quilted at the Quilting Frame. I had it made with a cotton filler, which was more expensive, but makes it warmer and more durable.

My parents loved the quilt, and mom, if you will take a picture of the final product I will post it as well. Somehow I did not take a picture once I got it back.

Happy New Year to all!

Well, it is officially 2009 and I thought I had better start this year's blogging off right. And there is so much to blog about!

So this year I am going to start with my new organization tools and then talk about my projects planned for 2009.

This year my mom and dad picked out a quilting box for me that is so great. It is actually a tool box, but it is so functional for crafting. The first picture is the main storage compartment. I have put some extra fabric in this section. The fabric on top is some that was given as part of the gift. You can see two of my upcoming projects laying in it. I am not sure exactly what I will do with the fabrics, but the colors are great together, so I am sure I will think of somthing. The next picture is what gets stacked on top. Nice organizational compartments where I have put thread, needles, pins, and I plan to put in all the little loose buttons that come with every new shirt I get! :) So now all my quilting stuff will be neatly stored, plus the top of the box is a nice flat surface that can also be used for stacking or working.

Next, my 2009 projects. You can see two of my projects above and here are two more.

The red, blue, and brown stack is one that I have been working on for a while now...it has been featured in a past post. It is a catch-all quilt of leftovers from other projects. I am excited about what I am doing with it, but it is sort of a back burner thing and with all my gift projects, it has been languising a bit. I am exicted to get back to it and it won't take much to finish.

The second stack is one that was inspired by the quilt show I went to last summer in Knoxville. It has a space theme with lots of cool fabrics on that theme. I think I may have gone too far with the fabrics, making it quite the peice meal job, but that is part of the fun of it, right? We will see if it turns out well or crazy. I like crazy, so either way is fine with me. ;)

And finally, a new fronteir. Hand quilting!

My grandmother gave me an actual quilting and embroidery frame. I want to try quilting me next quilt by hand. We'll see if I can handle the tedium of it. But I am excited to try.

So those are my plans for 2009. I am excited to get started. My first stop will be a binding class at the Quiting Frame on Saturday. Another step to being able to fully complete a quilt by hand.