Quilting

One of my favorite parts of the quilting process is binding the quilt at the end. I’m sure it’s because binding signals another completion (something that was very rare in my early quilting days). You can’t do the binding out of order, you can’t do it first because it’s your favorite part, it has to be the last step (not counting a label possibly) so it represents completion on a big scale.

That being said there are several methods of binding a quilt. In the 20’s and 30’s it was very common to fold extra backing fabric around to the front for the binding. In the late 1800’s double fold binding was popular because men’s stubble wouldn’t rub a hole in it so fast, In fact, many quilts had an extra bear guard sewn across the top of the quilt where it would encounter the people sleeping under it. Lately we have a multitude of options including binding with piping and binding with a faux flange built into it. Binding is usually first stitched on by machine, though I know a number of long arm quilters who attach the binding while the quilt is still loaded on the long arm. I am not good enough at a regular 1/4″ seam with my long arm so I prefer to do this step on my machine. After that, it’s up to the quilter whether to finish the binding by hand or machine. I let the use of the quilt dictate the finish style.

For any quilt that I am planning to put in a show, OR if the quilt is small enough like a table topper, I will finish the binding by hand. I enjoy hand work, and I like how the binding is invisibly attached when it is finished by hand. It looks the same on the front and back of the quilt, with neatly mitered corners, producing such a clean finish. For binding I am going to finish by hand, I cut strips 2″ wide and finish them for double fold binding.

Quilts that are going to be laundered heavily or used as bedding, I am actually getting to prefer finishing my binding by machine. I still stitch the binding on to the front of the quilt, but then I fold it to the back and finish by stitching in the ditch on the front. This binding I cut 2.5″ wide and fold for double fold binding. The stitching on the back is fairly even, and the wider strip gives me enough room to make sure I catch the binding on the back in the sewing machine stitch. This method wears very well and from the front of the quilt, doesn’t look any different than binding I finish by hand. On the back there’s just a wider piece of fabric with a seam down it. I know this method of finishing will hold up well to a lot of washing.

I have seen faux flange binding where a contrast piece of fabric is sewn onto the binding so that when it’s pressed in half, it looks like a flange was put under the edge (the contrast piece is cut wider than the binding piece so that when the whole thing is pressed in half, some of the contrast shows). In this method, the binding is attached to the back of the quilt first, then the binding is top stitched from the top of the quilt right along the ditch of the flange. This method usually makes the binding wider on the front than standard 2″ double fold binding but it’s a very decorative look. There are a number of blog tutorials if you google “flanged binding tutorial”, but I am impressed with the one from Sew Fresh Quilts ( https://sewfreshquilts.blogspot.com/2015/01/flanged-binding-tutorial.html ) I’m looking forward to giving this method a try on my next quilt, curious to see how it goes.

No matter what method you use, the binding is the finishing touch to the quilt. I like to think of it as the frame on the picture, sometimes it can be really fancy to enhance the picture and other times I want it very subdued or even made out of the same fabric as the border of the quilt so the binding is almost invisible.

I love words. This should come as no surprise. I like to talk for sure and I like to write. I like having a plethora of word choices, and I am fascinating how one phrase can have several meanings. Since this is the day before Christmas, I keep thinking about the phrase “all the trimmings” as in “turkey dinner with all the trimmings”.

I was working in my sewing room, trimming blocks to size, which is a wonderful opportunity to let your mind wander a little bit around different thoughts and when I looked down I had quite the pile of trimmings on the cutting table (see the cover photo for this blog post). I actually laughed out loud because suddenly I had a mental image of a beautiful table, all set for Christmas dinner, with a beautiful roasted turkey in the middle, and next to it a serving dish full of my fabric trimmings. I give you turkey dinner with all the trimmings. I’m sure this would not be what my guests would be expecting!

There are parallels, however. With the turkey dinner, the trimmings are all the other things that go along with it that make it awesome. My pile of fabric trimmings were the things that go along with my blocks that make them more awesome because they are squared up. Ok I’m reaching a bit, but it’s funny how in one case the trimmings add to and in the other case the trimmings take away, but in both cases the trimmings are a really good thing. They both represent a lot of effort on someone’s part to make something that was good, even better.

I hope your holiday week is filled with all the trimmings you want, either of the food variety or the fabric variety. I’m planning to have a lot of both during my holiday week!

I have a pet theory, that everyone in life would do better with a routine and structure. I have worked with animals a lot in my life, and I find that animals always respond best when there is clear routine and structure. I know I do better myself, when I have a clearly defined routine and structure to my days. I do this at work with good success and I have started doing this in my morning routine at home; now looking towards my writing and quilting to see what opportunities lie there for improvement.

I set up this blog over a year ago. I had great plans of writing regularly. Then life happened. I rarely wrote anything, and that’s a shame. I process my thoughts when I write. I get my head together when I write. I get so much benefit from this, that it really should be part of my routine. The problem was, I didn’t have a writing routine, and I didn’t understand how to get there.

Also this year I have been learning about the power of Fifteen Minutes. Many of the things I want to do in my life take MUCH longer than 15 minutes to do, and the tasks are so big that I can’t see my way clear to getting any of them done. My mother used to use the phrase “not in a month of Sundays” and that’s how I feel. 30 weekend days in a row, wouldn’t be enough time to accomplish some of this stuff. I’m so overwhelmed by the size of the task, that I never start and I do know that you can’t finish if you don’t start. This year I started working 15 minutes at a time. I literally set a timer and convince myself to work for 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, I stop and go do something I want to do. At first I was very skeptical. What could 15 minutes do? At first, 15 minutes made things look worse because things were more unsettled, but I kept at it. After a week of 15 minute sessions, I started to see a glimmer of hope. After several weeks of 15 minute sessions I completed a major task in the kitchen. WOO HOO!!! On to the next big task, in fifteen minute chunks.

What I’m trying to do now, is make the 15 minutes part of my daily routine, so that I don’t miss a day, make it so that it’s a habit to do my 15 minutes on whatever the task is. I can also keep a list of the big things I want to accomplish so that when I finish something I don’t waste a week trying to figure out what my next project will be. Maximize the productivity and reinforce the habit.

I have an updated routine, and I have a new goal: a post a week on my blog, (mostly centered on quilting, hopefully encouraging and useful to other people but the main focus is to keep processing my thoughts and keep improving myself) and hitting my 15 minutes of task work. Go see what you can do with fifteen minutes!

I’ve been seriously quilting for 28 years now, almost 29. I’ve learned a lot about quilting and I’ve learned a lot about myself during this time and one of the most important things I’ve learned is that I am constantly changing and evolving. When I first started, my tastes focused on reproduction fabrics. The brightest thing in my stash was some 30’s fabric, otherwise, it was all about dark and dreary. Those fabrics still hold a place in my heart, they are warm and inviting to me, the visual embodiment of wrapping myself in a quilt and snuggling down in that warmth. The last five years, there has been a growing love of bright fabrics, especially fabrics from the Kaffe Fassett collective. Oh my lamb chops, the bright quilty goodness there! Those fabrics are like having the sun suddenly come out on a rainy day and just brighten up the whole world. They take warm and inviting to a whole new place!

At the same time, I’ve noticed that what I used to call scrappy has also been evolving to a new level. I’ve enjoyed following Bonnie Hunter for a while now, and she has a very scrappy eclectic style. She works from an impressive stash that has been a lot of years in the making, and as such, not all the fabrics are the most recent, stylish fabrics. What she does with a riot of color and print is, to my eye, downright amazing. There is a practical side to this style too – if you are short a bit of fabric for a quilt, adding to a very scrappy quilt is much easier than adding to a two color/two fabric quilt. Pretty much anything will go to get you over the finish line.

There’s one more change in my quilting life, that has been coming along the last several years and that’s the intricacy of the piecing. I used to want to focus on quilts that I could piece in a weekend. It was fun and easy and I got the satisfaction of finishing a quilt top very fast. Over time, however, this process takes a LOT of fabric over a year and results in a lot of unquilted tops. As I get closer to retirement, I joke that I need to make my fabric dollars stretch for as much entertainment I can get out of them. For this reason, I have been making much more intricate blocks with smaller pieces that take a lot more time to finish. I sew 10 times longer to finish a quilt top, but that just fine. I have always enjoyed the process a lot more than the finished product (the giant stack of UFOs is a testament to the fact that I’m a process person, not a product person).

I am finding there is a synergy between my enjoyment of very scrappy quilts and this enjoyment of the intricate piecing. I can put all of my stash into a project and since the pieces are cut very small, everything plays nicely. It becomes more about the contrast of light and dark than about the specific color used. One of my favorite projects right now is a quilt made up of 6″ pineapple blocks that have 10 rounds in each block. Tiny pieces, lots of contrast and everything but the kitchen sink thrown in. I need to find a fabric with sinks on it just so that I can say I included the kitchen sink… but I digress.

So I’m changing and I’m growing, I’m expanding my horizons to include things that I never would have looked at or attempted 10 years ago. I wonder where I will be 10 years from now – I know the possibilities are almost endless!

Lately I’ve been hearing a tune in my head from Oklahoma!* “I’m just a girl who can’t say no, I’m in a terrible fix. I always say “come on let’s go”, just when I oughta say nix!”. Ado Annie was singing about the fellas, but oh boy this describes me looking at new projects to a T. So many new things. The Quilt Asylum has a Kaffe Fasset Hexy Diamond project!! Bonnie Hunter is gearing up for her next mystery and I love the color theme!! So much new stuff!! I can’t say no and I’m in a terrible fix!!

Back around 2000 or so, I read an article that talked about people being either “project” oriented or “process” oriented and it really resonated with me. I could look at the quilters and sewers in my life and see the distinction clearly.

Project people tend to work on one thing at a time. They work it to completion before starting the next one. In a quilter, that would translate to one quilt at a time. They might have several things going, but that would be because there was one machine piecing project and one hand piecing project going on. The completion of the project is what keeps their focus and drives their structure. My mother was a project person in her sewing. She would finish what she was working on before starting the next project.

Process people are focused more on the doing than the finishing. They find joy in the activity itself, rather than the completed project. Process people tend to have a lot of things in work. If the process is very enjoyable, the quilt gets finish. If the process is not enjoyable, the quilt will probably remain a UFO in a box for the rest of time. The doing is what matters.

I am a process person. Oh how this clicked with me. I like the doing. I like trying new things. I’m very distracted by shiny objects. I have so many UFOs I’m afraid to count them. Over the last 17 years, I have taught myself how to focus and actually finish things. I’m nowhere near being a project person, but I can imitate one in order to meet a deadline or complete a gift. I’m getting better about looking at something to see if I think I will like it enough to see it through. I will never be a person who works on one quilt at a time, but I am getting better about finishing the things I am working on, even if it is done in a rather disjointed manner.

So I see these two new projects, and I know I will enjoy the process of working on them, and I am energized by something new and shiny, So I signed up for the EPP hexy Kaffe with the Quilt Asylum. In preparation, I have purchased the supplies and ACTUALLY COMPLETED a Mega Dream Bag to carry the in work project with me. This is huge. When I went back to the shop with the finished bag in less than a week, I think everybody was surprised, me included. I’ve gotten half of the fabric for the Bonnie Hunter mystery out of my stash, and purchased only half of the fabric. I will make the smaller size, so I have a more reasonable shot of keeping up and finishing. If I really like it, I can always make more pieces and make the larger size.

So here I am. Humming that little tune, looking at my lovely project bag, waiting for the mail man to bring the first installment of the paper piecing project so I can get going. Because I really need two new projects in my life right now. I do. The joy it brings is worth it, and I will finish them eventually.

* Rogers and Hammerstein 1943

We’ve all heard that saying, when you fall off, you have to get right back up on that horse. I’ve had horses. I’ve fallen off. I’ve had to get back up on and it is not easy. I think the phrase stays in our lexicon because if we think of life as the horse, we all fall off from time to time and getting back with what we want to do is difficult. I know I’m talking a lot lately about this kind of topic but it is all around me.

For me, this week the horse has been my long arm. I haven’t quilted anything in MONTHS. It could be almost a year but I’m afraid to look closely at the calendar. I was afraid it wouldn’t even turn on, let alone sew the way I need. I joined a FB group for owners of my particular software, hoping that I would get some inspiration and some direction from there too, but at the end of the day, it comes down to me putting a quilt on the machine and starting.

I made so many mistakes. Rookie mistakes. Measured my back the wrong way and made it too wide to fit the machine. Once I corrected the width, I didn’t have enough fabric for the length. Thank heavens for a giant stash, go in there, find another piece and insert it into the back. Ok back done. Load it on the machine. Oh look I forgot to cut off the selvedges. Ok I can do that as I load the back, just stop at each seam and cut them off. Each step of the way, I’m nervous and I’m worried but I keep going. I know that if I don’t do this quilt, I’m going to atrophy into someone who is so afraid of the machine that I won’t ever sew again. So I push forward.

Since it has been so long since I’ve used the machine I give it a thorough cleaning and oiling and change the needle. Thanks to the user group there was a great video and I did just what it said to do. Got things cleaned up and got my quilt loaded and with HUGE amounts of trepidation, started to sew my first pass. It went better than I could have imagined. Everything worked. So I turned everything off and walked away. This morning I got up early and sewed two more passes. Again, things worked like they are supposed to. I still have two more passes before the quilt is done (it’s 98×98) but I’m getting back into the swing of things. But I’m on that horse again.

I am writing this post so that I can look back later on and remind myself that I can get back up on that horse. When life throws me a curve and I get away from doing the things I want, I can get back to it. I cannot let the fear of failure keep me from doing the things I love. I cannot let that fear overwhelm me to the point of atrophy. It may be slow and there will be mistakes, but each time, I just need to dust myself off, have a good talk with myself and get right back up on that horse.

We are heading into our grand two weeks of fall here in Texas, and it’s got me thinking about color more and more. Ok I joke a bit, fall is longer than two weeks, it’s just interspersed with more days of summer so it’s not really a coherent season, but the trees and grasses do change color. This is my favorite time of year, and these colors have always spoken to me at a deeper level, I think because to my eye they signify the end of summer and the cool crisp days of fall and early winter.

Lately, however, I have been noticing a shift in my perception of color. I notice more color. All around me. All kinds of colors. I am drawn to more palettes than I used to be. As I’m sewing more and more again, after having been ill, I am finding that I am surrounding myself with a cacophony of color. I am working on two quilts in particular, one in Americana colors (think tea dyed red, white and blue) and the other is a rainbow Kaffe Fasset. I think that’s pretty much getting to the end points on either side of the spectrum. They both make me gleefully happy for totally different reasons.

The Americana one is my wheel house. Traditional colors. Homey. Inviting. Homespun, you might even say. I’m going to back it with a brushed flannel so it will be one giant hug of a quilt when I look at it. Those colors are what say warmth and inviting to my eye. (Everyone is different, that’s just to my eye).

The Kaffe quilt is new for me. I’ve been doing more work with brights lately, and let me tell you this thing is B-R-I-G-H-T! Loud. Shouting with exuberant joy. It will still be a hug but this is more the hug I get from my chocolate Lab, that is all bouncy and ends with a lick on the face. Looking at it makes me smile. I’m fairly sure when it is done, it will be viewable from space.

I have always been fascinated by people who knew, when you asked, exactly what their favorite color is. I found that often my answer was YES. YES to color. I don’t have a favorite exactly. It depends on the day, the mood, the situation, the time of year, so many factors go into what makes a favorite color for me that it is always changing, yet the one constant is YES to color. Lots of it.