Have you heard about the Modern Quilt Guild’s request for quilt blocks in response to the Boston Marathon bombing ? I thought they did a great job of requesting manageable quilt blocks, and some fabrics I’m using for a current project match their color preference.
Blocks should be 12½” on one side by the size of your choice on the other. The preferred colors are those of the Boston Marathon: blue, yellow, gray, and white. Click here for more info.
I made a few myself, later than most bloggers I think, hoping that even a small submission will be useful. Here are the blocks I am submitting:
I’m planning to mail my blocks this week to
Quilts for Boston
P. O. Box 79225
Belmont, MA 02479
You can also contact bostonmqg@gmail.com with questions. Submissions should be mailed by May 24, 2013.
I just discovered Rebecca Ringquist’s blog, DropCloth, and I love it! I even feel like we have some things in common… especially when I started looking for coincidences. ; )
Her name is Rebecca, same as my only sister. Her grandma Dorothy was sick back home in the Midwest in February. My grandma Dorothy was sick back home in the Midwest in January. In tribute to my grandma’s memory, I plan to make a quilt with her pajamas:
She’s in the process of making a quilt with her grandma’s housecoats. She talks of needing to get out of the city (Brooklyn) sometimes, which is just how I feel about Chicago! (She went to school and taught in Chicago.) Of course, she just co-hosted an embroidery event at the NYC Public Library with Liesl Gibson of Oliver + S fame and is a professional artist whereas I embroider in my car over lunch breaks, but still. Blogger soul mates, right?! : )
Rebecca participated in Mail Month, which I hadn’t heard of before. If you know me, you know it’s CRAZY that I missed a chance to send or receive mail! I love mail. And stationery. And office supplies in general. I decided to start my own Mail Month. Hers coincided with Valentine’s Day, which makes a lot of sense since you’re supposed to reach out to loved ones on that holiday. But mine has the advantage of alliteration: May = Mail Month!
Don’t you just love when someone you don’t even know inspires you from the interwebs?! Based on some pinspiration (oh yes, I did), some of the items I’m sending loosely qualify as “mail art” (redacted to protect privacy):
The first few were easy: a May Day letter, some graduation cards I would have sent even without the challenge, and a thank you to Rebecca for posting the idea. If you want to start your own mail month, get some ideas by clicking the graphic below:
True to spring, the April weather has been unpredictable, but the fluctuations became even more drastic when I traveled for work the past few weeks. I went from a partly cloudy 88 degrees in Dallas one day to 22 inches of snow in Minnesota the next!
Ever since I saw this post by Dana of Dana Made It, I’ve been wanting to see the Mustangs of Las Colinas (a fountain), which I discovered is just minutes from my company’s Dallas office. Who knew?! I went one day over lunch:
My photos don’t do it justice. You can walk right up to some of the horses, which are bigger than life-size, and you can cross the water in a few places, too. When you step back, you notice that the little fonts by the horses’ hooves make it look like they are splashing through the water. I loved it. I will say I had a little trouble finding it because I didn’t expect it to be in an office park!
Because of all the travel and a nasty bout of the Plague, I didn’t get much done on the creative front, so I photographed some works in progress instead. First up are the two embroidered quilt blocks I finished for my barn quilt:
Ultimately, the quilt should look something like this:
The images on the quilt include those places that are dearest to me: my grandparents’ house, my childhood home, my grandpa’s tractor, etc.
The on-point setting made the quilt blocks awkward to photograph, however. So did being in public. Do other bloggers live in more rural areas [than Chicago], or do they just have a ton more confidence when taking photos? People walked by me every 5 seconds or so, and several had comments, which ranged from “That’s cool!” to the incoherent and/or hostile. (I live in an “interesting” neighborhood.) Still, I saw two really amazing places I wanted to use as backgrounds but just didn’t have the guts. I was really glad I skipped one of the two since a guy who glared at me walked past me into the building a second before I’d planned to photograph it with my quilt blocks. Eek!
I complained a few weeks ago that most of my poor photos are due to getting home too late to catch the natural light. For the photos above, I did at least have the last shreds of light for the day. I think the photos are still mediocre at best, so… I think I’m taking my first-ever photography course! A community college near where I work offers it as continuing education. The course is on Mondays, which would leave the rest of the week free for work travel, and it’s late enough in the day that it shouldn’t conflict with most of my meetings. I am really excited.
With that bit of info, perhaps you can excuse the poor lighting of the following late-night shots. Since I’m sewing a million little blocks together, I’ve been doing them in strands, and they make the cutest banners:
I like looking at the colors in even the unfinished state of the quilt:
When I was designing the quilt, I was on a lunch break and couldn’t actually touch the fabric. I made this little doodle while I daydreamed about the colors:
With any luck, the blog will soon go from shady instagram sketches to magazine-quality photos!
I felt like a rockstar last week when I completed all 49 blocks of my original 7 x 7 sampler quilt design:
It is decidedly more traditional than the quilts I’ve begun in the meantime.
In my original design, I included a border on either side to round out the queen-size requirements. I chose this over another row of blocks. But I’m not sure how well the quilt-as-you-go method would work for borders, and I also felt silly avoiding 7 blocks when I’ve already come so far. So… I have a new goal of 56 total blocks (design below).
Since I started working on the quilt in September, I typically completed either 4 blocks per week or absolutely 0 blocks. This means I completed about 7 blocks each month for 7 months. Of course, this includes the time spent graphing my blocks, cutting fabric, and all the preparatory work, plus the holidays and a death in the family where progress halted. Could it really take a whole ‘nother month to finish a portion of a project that I had nearly written off as complete?! On the other hand, I made room for some fun new blocks that I only discovered after cutting all the pieces for my original 49, so I am excited in spite of myself.
My sister’s dog, a pit bull, wanted to be sure he wasn’t missing dinnertime when he heard me moving around.
I completed the center of my Marcelle Medallion quilt… finally! I’ve been spending much less time indoors with the nice spring weather, plus I have been hosting visitors from out of town, including my parents. But I’m pleased with the result now that it’s finally done:
In particular, I’m happy to have made it through the y-seams. I tried four different times the first night and started to think that I’d either cut the fabric crooked or was lining it up wrong until a quick google search revealed that marking is really important with y-seams. I was under the impression it was a waste of my time. I mean, it was easy to line up the other pieces! (Hmmm… this flat end must line up with that corner…) But that whole trick of marking the y-seam corners was magic.
I am finding in blogland that quilters often apologize for imperfections. I myself planned to throw in a comment that my y-seams still weren’t perfect, but that I’m happy with them because they add character, right? Then I realized: quilting is probably the one area of my life where I don’t fret about imperfections. It is so liberating to decide a y-seam is good enough and seriously not give it another moment’s thought. It might not be the reason I started sewing, but it’s definitely the reason I’m still doing it. I had to laugh when I thought what it would mean if I used the same philosophy at work: Well, the acquisition is finished and the employment contracts are drafted, but I couldn’t work out the details of the non-compete clause, so I left it out. Now the former employees are starting a competing business across the street. It adds character to our business! Yeah, that’d get me fired. But my y-seams definitely have character.
I have the fabric for the remainder of the quilt and I’ve planned which fabrics to use for most of the borders. The hardest part of the quilt, the center square, is complete. I’m really looking forward to seeing the final product, imperfections and all!
I chose “craftprowler” as a blog name because I never, ever thought I would be able to design my own projects. I figured I would just make minor alterations to the projects I found on Pinterest. However, I’ve spent a lot of time designing projects since the last time I posted photos. The burst of creativity feels amazing, but there is blessed little to show for my efforts so far!
I bought the notebook featured above at Target. It is responsible for maybe 30% of the projects I’ve designed so far. (Another 40% is Pinterest, and 30% is me.) The reason? It has gridlines, with heavier lines around every 8 boxes. It’s perfect for sketching out quilt ideas.
I haven’t gotten far with sewing the Marcelle Medallion quilt, but I selected all the fabrics and cut out the middle pieces already. This is the layout so far:
(Confession: I actually did start sewing the middle, but the Y-seams stopped me short. I am going home tonight to rip out some of the seams and try again. Apparently, marking is important. Oops! I like the pattern enough that this is the first time I won’t just plow forward with the awkward, first-try version.)
I’ve also drawn several more templates for my Barn Quilt, including this 1982 Buick LeSabre:
I drew a fox to grace either a purse or a pillow – haven’t decided just how to use it yet. Embroidery? Appliqué? Both are possibilities. If you want to use the image and end up making something before I do, please email to let me know! I’d love to see your projects.
After seeing some neat images at the Etsy store of cheesebeforebedtime, I tried doing a self-portrait with the intent to post it as my thumbnail here on the blog. The first result was embarrassing. The second definitely looks like a person, but not like me. Let’s just say it might take a few more tries before it’s worth posting online.
I have also been scheming the past few weeks about how to take better photos for my blog. A major issue is my work schedule. My evening commute is around 2 hours, so even if I get out at a decent time, there’s not much daylight left by the time I get home. The windows of my apartment also face directions/buildings that are not conducive to natural light. My new goal is to work on projects a week ahead of time so I can photograph them on weekends. (Disclaimer: Procrastination may still mean low-resolution iPhone photos.)
You may recall that last year I started what I thought was a Dear Jane quilt, only to discover it was probably closer to a Farmer’s Wife or Sampler quilt. However, my blog has received a fair bit of traffic from people searching for Dear Jane information. (My thanks to WordPress for showing the search terms that lead people to my blog!) I thought I could help by redirecting Dear Jane searchers to the info that helped me determine my quilt isn’t actually a Dear Jane:
My Time with Jane by Miriam Bruening. Displayed at the Madison Quilt Expo, September 2012. Photographed by the CraftProwler.
Free Blocks of the Month (BOMs) for Dear Jane quilts are available here.
The Dear Jane complete autographed book and templates are available here, and the Amazon copy of the book is available here.
Note: A woman named Brenda Papadakis seems to be the leading expert on Dear Jane quilts. Two of the links above go to her website/book. Internet rumor is she also responds to email requests and is a very helpful person in general.
A ton of block tutorials are available on this website. The tutorials are linked on the right side of the page, just below the Google members.
Another blogger has drafted her own Dear Jane templates and posts photos online here. Scroll to the bottom left of the page to see additional redraft links.
Dear Jane foundation piecing tips are available on this blog.
Hope this helps some of you Dear Jane enthusiasts!
