Sadiya - Our Trip Diary Quilt from Egypt and Turkey

Sadiya

36”x 42”

Our trip is long over, the tastes gone from our mouth, the smells disappeared, the noise in the distance. All we have left are our memories.

Our journey to Egypt and Turkey this summer was beyond memorable. I am so glad that my last minute decision to bring sewing supplies resulted in this special piece. I’ve been sitting with all the memories as I stitched it. Opting for hand quilting/embroidery in all the blocks meant I’ve been sitting with it nearly daily for a few months. Bit sad to be done, really, because that means the trip is truly in the past.

Make sure to check out the post I made right after the trip with block and trip details.

To see details of the stitching on each finished block, I made a reel that you can see here. It was a lot of fun to pick stitches and patterns to both highlight block elements and sometimes reference the original block inspiration. I played around with thread weights, brands, and colours. Not to mention, a collection of stitch options!

While the back of the quilt is not a perfect reflection of the front, I did try hard to be as neat as possible. This meant thinking through my movements as I stitched, burying knots, and a constant aiming for consistency. Oh, and a pick a busy print to give yourself a break!

The binding was a special experiment. Inspired by ancient linen seen in the Grand Egyptian Museum I wanted a fringe element. Knowing that linen frays so nicely I embraced this instead of fighting it. Stay tuned for a tutorial on that.

In our house we have a no quilts on the wall rule. Considering that vast number of quilts here, I think it is a pretty fair rule. But even my husband agreed we could break it for this special quilt. Now to find the perfect spot to hang it so we can all smile at our shared memories. Oh wait, I guess I have to sew a sleeve on it first!

In case you missed it, here is the small quilt I made with the scraps from this one.

Randa - A Mini Quilt From My Trip Diary Scraps

Randa

28: x 26”

When you cut a bunch of random shapes to make 30 quilt blocks you are left with a lot of weird little scraps. Not surprisingly, I decided to sew them all together into a slab. No rhyme or reason to the construction, just what fit. A few concessions to design in order to manage the bossy red and dark blue fabrics, but that’s it. In the end, it pretty much used up all my scraps too.

Since my big Bernina spent the summer at the spa I decided to test out her energy and fixes by quilting this immediately. I grabbed a random variegated yellow from the stash and went for an echo wave using my walking foot. Good news, many of the fixes the old girl needed happened. (Just like me and my summer off.)

Not one to stop at just simple and because I really enjoyed the handwork over the summer I decided to add some hand quilted elements. I’d actually brought the thick thread with me on the trip, but never used it. Just a few colours to add some shapes and texture here and there. it would have been easy to go overboard, so I had to exercise some restraint. The hand quilting threads are a mix of Valdani and Wonderful Eleganza.

To finish off this piece I went with a white linen binding. Not just any linen though! I had a pair of pants that I bought for the trip and they ripped before the trip was over. That dreaded thigh rub ruined these quick. While I wouldn’t use such an obviously weak linen on something that will get used and washed, it worked perfectly here for the binding. You can see more of that process here.

Now, in our house my husband mandated a no quilts on the wall rule years ago. But here I am making not 1, but 2 wall hangings! I can probably convince him to hang up the trip diary quilt when finished, but this one might be pushing it. It’s okay, I think I might give it away. One of my daughter’s teammates travelled with us on their off week so we spent 3 weeks with him and I think I might give this to him and his family as a souvenir.

Oh, and the name? I named her after our lovely guide in Cairo. Randa was an outgoing, very knowledgeable Egyptologist. We had a great time with her and are very grateful for her kindness over the days we spent together.

July Morning Make 2021 (Meet Dot)

Remind me never to hand quilt in the summer again.

Not sure what possessed me to think it was a good idea for July Morning Make, other than a desire for the act. We started the month with record heat so it wasn’t my smartest move. But when it comes to the quilt, it was brilliant!

When you only commit to a little each day hand quilting is far from overwhelming. Hand quilting an entire quilt, no matter the size, is definitely a big deal. Just thinking about it gave me the sweats (or is that the menopause transition?). Quilting a little each day, however seemed manageable. One stitch at a time. In the end, I finished this in the middle of the month! Every step is a step in the right direction.

On this particular quilt the stitching followed one single line. Each day I started where I left off so that now that it is done, it is a trail across the quilt. Twisting and turning here and there. Sometimes following the appliqué, most of the time ignoring it. Just taking whatever path felt right at the time.

The quilt top was another Morning Make adventure from last year. One appliqué shape stitched down per day. No preplanning, just improvising the composition and shapes as I went. Great fun!

Dot

49” x 54”

Meet Dot. Dorothy, if you must, but she prefers Dot. Just like she prefers her coffee with a wee bit of whiskey in it, her steak pretty rare, and her men on the younger side. She might look like your Gran, but do mistake Dot for her. Her heart aches for the baby girl who left this Earth when only a toddler. For years she barely moved, barely breathed. Life wasn't worth it until she found a way to find her spot in the world. A spot that can only be occupied by her alone. Dot moves with double the energy of most, playing with expectations and attitudes. You won't find her marching on a path, rather, she finds a winding road and moves where her whims desire. No worries, she'll get where she needs to in the end, but she has to do it her way.

Not being your typical gal, Dot was finished with a lovely contrasting binding. Unexpected but perfect. Her backside is a woven from Anna Maria Horner’s Luminous collection, with a scrap of yellow because sometimes you make mistakes when doing math.

We should all be like Dot a little more - take a few unpredictable paths and see what happens. Whether it is with your quilt making or in life.

Social Justice Sewing Academy Anti-Racist Guidebook

Last fall, after a summer of Black Lives Matter protests, the Social Justice Sewing Academy set out to do some different kind of work. This, on top of the amazing lessons, memorials, and community work they already do. They’ve just published a guidebook for the sewers of the world, An Anti-Racist Guidebook.

What is Anti-Racism?

I came to the term through Ibram X. Kendi and his book How to Be an Anti Racist. Essentially, it is about doing more than saying you believe all races are equal. Saying you don’t see colour isn’t the answer. It is about examining the systemic racism that we all participate in one way or another, then actively working to dismantle it.

When the call for volunteers came out I signed up immediately. As a quilter who works almost exclusively in cotton, as a white woman who only learned more than pop culture civil rights history in the last 10 years, as a human, I wanted to do some of the anti-racism work for myself and our community. Ever since my trip to Alabama and seeing cotton fields for the first time I’ve wanted to dive deeper into its production. Hand in hand with that is the deep dive into the role cotton has played in systemic racism.

My essay in the Anti-Racist Guidebook is the result. I looked into the ties between slavery and cotton production, which most of us know about. But it also examines the growth of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism as tied to cotton production, and therefore slavery. It also examines current cotton production, including how those links aren’t really gone.

The process was eye-opening for sure. I hope it is for you. It has me hanging on to every scrap of my cotton, not wanting to waste a bit of effort that went into making it. I won’t lie, it also gives me mixed feelings about using cotton at all. This discomfort is good, its going to force me to dig deeper. The next step is to talk to the fabric companies that make our medium of choice and ask them about their current supply chain. The more we all know, the better.

I highly recommend checking out the entire Anti-Racist Guidebook. There are some incredible pieces on everything from code-meshing to political quilts, from housing to resiliency. Each essay is written by a volunteer. They place themselves in the work, to show the work rather than centre their story. Each essay also includes recommendations for self reflection by the reader, to do their own work on the topic.

For my part one of my resources was this book: Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert. I pulled from multiple sections but now I am sitting down for a good read. It is fascinating and disheartening at the same time, illuminating and depressing. But we can’t walk away from the thick, the ugly, the hard just because they are so. People live this still and it is up to all of us to move forward for all.

And for those of you who might want to tell me to keep politics out of quilting, I hope you read this guidebook. If anything, to know that cotton, our material of choice is inherently political.