First finish of 2011 (this UFO was started in 1994)...

Yippee!  The first finish of 2011!  And the embarrassing thing is that it only took 30 minutes to finish...I only needed to quilt something simple on the four corners.  Why I couldn't "inconvenience" myself to finish it sooner is beyond me.   

I stumbled on some notes and found that I started this project in 1994...I wanted a hand piecing baggie project at the time and thought that it would be fun to go through my scraps and cut one bowtie from each thing that caught my fancy.  I hand pieced the bowties over the next few years.  Then the stack of finished bowties sat around for a while.  Then I assembled them without borders and THAT lanquished for a while.

   

Then I was trimming my stash and found enough fabric to border the bowties, which then sat some more before it was basted and finally hand quilted.  Well, you get the idea.  This quilt just wasn't in any hurry to be finished.

Each bowtie block is 6 inches, finished.  I just love scrappy quilts, and especially love a "charm" scrappy quilt where every fabric is only used once.  This kind of project shows my love of the quilting process...each step was therapy...fabric therapy.  Each block is a record that a particular fabric existed in time.  My husband and I were newly married and he used to read aloud to me while I worked.  I can look at some of these blocks and remember snatches of stories.

It was slowly cut out by tracing plastic templates and cutting with good scissors after pressing each large scrap as it emerged from the jumble bag of scraps that I used at the time.  Just like some people like to peel an apple with the peel snaking down in one long, curly, unbroken ribbon, when I use scissors to cut fabric pieces apart, I try to keep the mimimal fabric waste in one unbroken piece.  Isn't that weird?

Then each block was slowly, individually hand pieced...just whenever I had a spare moment.  Lots of time for petting and loving each fabric. 

I'm such a freakin' fabric addict!

It's not a quilt to be entered into a show, not a particular prize, just part of our family inventory of quilts that we will use.  Then maybe it will be part of my daughter's household some day.  I love the old historic practice of a girl entering into a marriage with a collection of homemade quilts...part of her dowry and responsibility upon entering the partnership or just a part of her first home by herself.

OK...what UFO with it's own history will I attack next?

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

New Years "movitation" and quilting mojo...

I am so impressed with everyone out there starting out their quilting new year with a high spirited plan for finishing things (way to go, Mary Lou of Cheaper Than Therapy Quilting...your motivation and cheerfulness is talking me down from the quilt guilt ledge I've been perched on since the big Christmas push...).

I spent some time yesterday evaluating the "2010 To Do List" that I had listed on my blog last year.  I guess I finished a little more than half the ambitious list of active projects listed there.  And some things I finished weren't on the list at all.  I "high 5-ed" myself on the finishes, completely deleted some things that I am going to bury for a while, and formulated a "2011 Must Do List."  I've gone from "to do" to "must do."  Hmmmm...

I'm a list girl, but I'm also a rebel.  It's the new year...I'm supposed to be motivated by resolutions and lists...oh yeah, and the guilt associated with not tackling things on last year's list.  But there were also things I wanted to start that I did not start, displaying GREAT discipline...like "Stars and Sprigs" by Kim McLean.

And I also ordered the pattern for the Antique English Basket Quilt from Threadbear.

I love these two quilts!  They would certainly be long term projects.  And, except for backgrounds (which I've already purchased), I will make these TOTALLY from my stash.

When I wrote the title of this post, I had a Freudian moment...I mispelled "motivation" M-O-V-I-T-A-T-I-O-N.  I decided to keep it (eat your heart out, Stephen Colbert!).  The first part of motivation is MOVING.  I'm not having a MOTIVATION problem, I'm having a MOVITATION problem.

After Christmas exhaustion and a bad cold are certainly not helping.  Finishing something quickly WOULD help.  This scrappy bowtie quilt was hand pieced, hand-quilted and bound EONS ago.  I couldn't decide how to quilt the corners, so I put it aside.  Hand quilting is my therapy, mental and physical, so I'm going to do that...TODAY!!  I just have to M-O-V-I-T-A-T-E myself downstairs to the quilt cave, with a cup of hot tea.  I bet I could finish quilting this thing while watching an old movie.

Then I could smugly snuggle under it while contemplating my next finish...or start.  I smell mojo...

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

Bonnie Lehman - a humble, but heartfelt, tribute...

I just read on Barbara Brackman's blog about the passing of Bonnie Lehman, who started Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, now Quilter's Newsletter.  It caused a sad and unexpected lump in my throat. 

Even though my grandmother quilted, I didn't start quilting until 1982 when my grandmother was in her last year of life and very sick.  She gave me her last quilt, A Grandmother's Flower garden, hand pieced of scraps from some of my hilarious homemade wardrobe through the seventies (when I was a teenager).  Here's a picture of her treasured last quilt (Weasley is checking it out):

I am a self-taught sewer and quilter who made (and still makes!) embarrassing mistakes on quilts (and clothes!).  Here's my first attempt at making a quilt...a hand pieced Grandmother's Flower Garden (still unfinished...currently one of those dusty U.F.O.'s (or P.I.G.S. - projects in grocery sacks...).  And I had never even heard of English paper piecing!  LOL!

Get a load of all that calico and the bright cotton/poly blue blend that I put the flowers together with (that blue was left over from making my college dorm curtain!)  Back then, there weren't a lot of good "how to" books out there to help floundering quilters like me.  Thank God I found Quilter's Newsletter Magazine!!  It was my first subscription to any kind of magazine in my life, and I was always hungrily looking for the next issue.

I loved the patterns, the articles, but especially editorial articles by Helen Kelly, who also died in the last couple of years.  Reading the magazine made me feel connected to the quilting community, which was great for me as a young college student, busy studying chemistry and music at Auburn University.

It was publications like Bonnie's that brought quilting "out from under the bed" for all of us.  When I first started sewing and quilting, the choice of 100% cotton fabrics was the pits!  Now look where we are, baby!  (Does this mean I can blame her for the hoarded stash in my basement?!?)

I made this Lemoyne Star quilt, unfortunately, before I learned the proper way to piece an 8-pointed star.  I think this dates from 1984.

Just look at all that plain muslin and cute calico prints!  And no one told me that the quilting cross-hatching (or echo quilting) from area to area had to be the same size and scale!!  HILARIOUS!!

Then look at how much hand quilting it took to get the star center to lie flat and not resemble a circus tent!!

I used to use plain muslin on all my backings and fold the back to the front for my lumpy binding.  OMG!

It's a little scary and humbling, showing you the "dreaded Lemoyne Star."  I feel a little like "my knickers are showing..."  I donated that quilt for an unknown baby years ago - I almost wish I still had the quilt (glad I at least have a couple of bad photos), and I know the baby didn't care, or even appreciate, how funny his or her quilt really was...smile).

I am so grateful for all the books, patterns and magazines that we have now.  I feel like Bonnie Lehman started all of it (I may be a little biased...).  I love all the new modern patterns we have now (not to mention the option of machine quilting), but I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the older classics that I learned about from the earlier days of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine and the feel of quilts that are hand quilted.

(The first quilt picture on this post is a hand pieced scrappy bowtie quilt - I got the pattern for the bowtie square from QNM many years ago.  I used to keep little fabric pieces in a baggie in my purse to hand piece when I had a spare moment.  It is one of my U.F.O.'s - I just need to finish hand quilting the corners of the borders.  In Bonnie's honor, I will push myself to finally finish this quilt!)

In stitches (and in memory),

Teresa  :o)

Celebrating 2010 - the year of the stash...

Happy New Year to everyone!!  I was really ready to close the book on 2009...maybe about 5 months ago, really.

I have decided to make 2010 the "year of the stash" and I am declaring a little personal war on all my UFO's and bulging stash.  This scrappy bowtie quilt (with hand pieced blocks) above has been hand quilted except for the corners FOR OVER A YEAR!!  That is disgraceful!!  (I think it is even bound...no excuse for not finishing it!) 

I've taken the hint from others of you to post my list of things to work on for 2010.  My list, thus far, is just things off the top of my head...I need to go down to the "quilt cave" and do a thorough inventory of started items, THEN update the list.  It is really shameful, all the things that were started with such fun and enthusiasm only to be cast aside by the sexiness of a new project or new line of fabric.  So many projects, so little time.

I also need to sew more this year.  I named my blog in an appropriate fashion for me...fabric is really all the therapy I need...I just need to do it more!!  Planning with it, cutting it into shapes, petting it, sewing it, quilting it.  It really makes me feel better and brighter.  Just what is needed for the gloomy, cold gray winter months in Michigan!

And hanging out with other creative, wonderful quilting friends, either in Michigan or in quiltblogland is also a good idea for the new year.  I love all my quilting connections, no matter where they are!!

In stitches,
Teresa   :o)