it's only words

I've been collecting fabrics with words for several years. Since I'm a writer who quilts, I've always though this was a great convergence for me.
But then there's the problem of what to do with it. Some of it is busy, other stuff is muted, and I didn't have a real plan until I found Tonya's free pieced letters a few months back, and the light bulb went on. So yesterday, after months of practicing letters on other projects, I finally started cutting up darks and lights to make some letters.
Does it bother anyone that the words go up and down and across? That's the problem of cross-cut strips used vertically. I'm thinking I'm going to have too much waste if I cut both ways.
Here's the first two words of what promises to be a quilt of many words. The theme is "Words ( insert verb) me." "Fail" is just one of the verbs I'll be using. These are quite big letters -- four inches tall, and I'm planning to make most of them in the 2 to 3 inch range, mainly in lower case.

Strings and letters

What's a quilt without a good bag? This is the personalized bag I made for the liturgical stole below. The stole is made from my huge collection of reds -- I cut strips from every one and string-pieced onto a fabric foundation.
The back is two marbled fabrics, and I quilted from the front in the white stripe
as well as in the black cross. The new owner, a United Church of Canada minister, is thrilled because red is her favourite colour.

Two inch square finish!

So after digging through her stash, my mother found some solid blue and a multi-coloured heart print to coordinate with the pink and blue squares from that box of two inch squares. She cut and I sewed for a few hours last week and came up with this baby quilt, measuring about 40 by 47. She took it home to layer it and tie or quilt it, and it's headed for some as-yet-unknown baby. That makes two quilts from that box of two inch squares. The first one is all sewn together, and is just awaiting borders.

Scrap Stars

This is a close-up of a tesselating star lap quilt I made for an ill friend a while back. If you look closely at the prints, you may recognize some 80s and 90s specials. Again, this is a quilt made mostly from Mom's stash. The only purchases for this project were the neutral background fabrics. I used the remaining 2 inch strips to make a scrappy border and put a flannel back on it and did some simple machine quilting on it to keep it together. If you're wondering about "Mom's stash", it's huge, although less than it was. A year ago, she started culling it, but there are hundreds of metres left to play with. Most of the time I can have what I want, especially if I take the older prints. And since I'm not that fond of batiks, and she doesn't want to part with those, we're both happy.

Using up a big box of little squares

Since Christmas, I've been sewing two-inch squares together. I "inherited" a box of thousands of squares from my mother's studio. About 20 years ago, she cut 2 inch strips off everything in her stash and made a log cabin using values, not colours. The rest she cut into 2 inch squares to make a water colour quilt. After years of not her getting to the water colour, I took the box home with me and started making this double four-patch out of darks and lights.

Above, it is laid out unsewn on my bed, and the borders of my handquilted Amish square within a square quilt (made by my mother for our wedding) are peeking out. You can see there are many, many colours in the dark squares. I also found a pile of 3 1/2 inch squares in a dark print that I used for the bigger four patch. The only squares I cut in this whole double quilt were the neutral 3 1/2 inches and some light 2 inches when I ran out. I've used up about 1,200 little squares for this project.

After that, I still had many, many squares left, so I sewed together the medium pinks and blues. This time I had to cut the bigger squares, again from my mother's stash. Right now she's looking for sashing so I can make this a crib size quilt.

This has been fun -- mindless sewing and no cutting. The biggest challenge has been finding coordinating fabrics from the 1980s and 1990s to match the busy prints in the squares. And I'm determined not to buy any new yardage to use up this old fabric.

Stay tuned for more 2 inch square projects. there's hundreds left, mostly in busy florals. Those may be a challenge.

One question: I uploaded both of these photos exactly the same way and with the same instructions, but only the second one enlarges when you click on it. Any suggestions?

Gifts from my house

Here are my contributions to Bonnie's housewarming party being hosted by Lazy Gal Tonya. I've been reading Bonnie's Quiltville blog and website and I'm inspired by her quilting patterns, her productivity, and her scrap user system. Not that my sewing room is that organized, but I did manage to locate 2 inch strips and 2 inch squares for the houses. The Lazy Gal letters are for Tonya's leftover letter quilt. These weren't exactly leftover letters, but letters made from leftovers.

Lenten purple and Frank Lloyd Wright

This is a liturgical stole I made recently for a United Church of Canada minister for use during Lent and Advent. It's based on a picture of a Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass window, or light screen. I've used hand-dyed fabrics, one commercial fabric, and a purple silk and velveteen to make the six stripes. Later, I saw the same design adapted to a wall hanging called Architect's Dream on Carol's Feb. 8 blog entry.
This is the back of it, using a wild batik I bought last summer on the Minnesota shop hop. I had some fun with it, putting in his titles: Reverend Doctor.

This is another purple liturgical stole, made with hand-dyed scraps from another project, which is why it is string-pieced extensively:

Happy Valentine's Day to my two valentines

I'm the mother and daughter of Valentines. That's right, my mother, a talented quilter and applique artist and teacher and fabric dyer, and my son, are celebrating their birthdays today. My son is 14 today -- so it's his champagne year, or his magic birthday. In honour of this special day, I'm posting a quilt made by Grandma for her first grandson 14 years ago. It's the one on the left, a log cabin made from that Hoffman Painted Desert fabric that was popular back then, and appliqued with hearts, trains, teddy bears and balls, and then handquilted by Grandma. She started the quilt well before my son was born and she didn't know (nor did I) that he would share her Valentine's Day birthday. Grandma made the purple quilt on the right two years later for my second son, also a log cabin from a purple and green Painted Desert fabric, this one appliqued with tumbling blocks. Originally, she had made another quilt with lots of pinks and blues in that same Painted Desert fabric (obviously, a favourite), but I asked her to make a less girly one since I was sure the second baby was a boy. So a granddaughter who followed my boys was the lucky recipient of that one. These quilts were both on display along with about 50 other items when Grandma was the feature quilter at her guild's show last May.

lobsters again

This is the whole busy, but beautiful top, inspired by the people over at Heartstrings. Does anyone think the lobster fabric is ugly enough to send to Bonnie at Quiltville? Tonya is organizing a housewarming party for her in the blogosphere.

Have you ever seen a lobster quilt?

This is part of my quilt group, the Strip Piecers, tying our first group project last night. We each string pieced three 24-inch 6 inch strips from our scraps and then I sewed it all together into a 60 by 80 top. This quilt is going to the relief organization Mennonite Central Commitee to be sent overseas. We have images of someone in a refugee camp not being able to sleep because she's distracted by the huge variety of fabrics in darks and brights, including some novelty prints. One person put her leftover lobster fabric in her strips, and since I had yardage in the same fabric, I used it for the borders. Otherwise, when would I get a chance to use it?

We tied it with many hues of embroidery thread given to one woman, and with a backing and batting from the relief organization, this blanket didn't cost us anything. Truly a something from nothing project, except we had lots of fun and laughs making it.

I'm totally hooked on letters!

Although I'm new to blogging, I've been inspired by many of the blogs I've read over the last months. Those of you who surf Lazy Gal Tonya's blog might have seen me on the Winter Class with my Deep and Crisp and Even quilt. I had so much fun learning how to do letters that I've been making more.

For the last two weeks, I've been working on a quilt representing a biblical genealogy for a university course in the Old Testament I'm taking. It's supposed to represent the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1, but I've been having far too much fun with this to consider it as an assignment. Five women are named in this genealogy (for various reasons that scholars argue about) but the point is how I've chosen to portray them. I've made their names in bright hand dyes and batiks, using Tonya's letter tutorial. Each of the three dozen men are represented in 2 inch strips in various blacks, greys and browns.

Here's the whole quilt -- it measure about 32 by 48. Right now it's a flimsy, but I intend to layer it with warm and natural, quilt around the names, and maybe quilt in freehand fans on the rest of it with a variegated thread.