When a Professional Hockey Player Makes a Quilt

It all started with a simple text. My nephew had asked for a quilt to gift to a teammate. We’d done this a few times before, so it wasn’t odd. Then, one day, I was playing with scraps in preparation for the Quilters’ Playcation Adventure Sewalong and sent him a pic of the slab in progress, with a little tease. Instead of just handing over a quilt he should come and help me sew it.

So one day, a few months back, he showed up at the studio and sat down to sew. His mom, my sister in law, is also a quilter. Along the way she’d already taught him how to use the sewing machine. Phew! I pulled out the scraps, did a quick reminder, and he went to town on his very first slab. We chatted and sewed. It was an absolutely wonderful break in the day for both of us.

To be perfectly honest, I thought that would be it. He made one slab, about 16” big or so. His job done I assumed I would make the rest of the quilt.

How wrong I was!

In between games and training and road trips and rest and visits with a new girlfriend he showed up to the studio and kept sewing. Very quickly he realized that the time with fabric and our time together was an excellent stress reliever. We were having fun, and as I’ve said to anyone who will listen (and many who won’t) learning a new hobby is a great way to have the rest of the world melt away.

In our second session together he added to the first slab and made an excellent design decision. I promise, it was all his own idea. He thought to break up the slab by adding in a band of a colour. We auditioned a few choices and he went with the orange. A perfect choice. After that we made more slabs and assembled the whole top. By that point he was keen to be involved in every step of the process.

Except the quilting. He said he wasn’t ready for that yet.

We were getting close to our deadline (baby being born and the end of the season) so he missed out on basting the quilt. Honestly? I think he was a little sad, but they were on a road trip and I needed to get going on the quilting. After I basted it I settled in for some time with my free motion. He went home one night with a collection of my machine quilting books and picked pebbles as the doodle of choice. It ended up being a nice contrast to the angular nature of all the piecing. For thread I used my go to colour choice on a multicoloured quilt - Aurifil 2882, Light Fern. Olive Green, Aurifil 5016 is pretty good too. Whichever one is handy, really.

It was down to the final minute when it came time to bind. He really liked the idea of using the same fabric as the orange band for the binding. Unfortunately, we used all I had for the band and no local stores had it in stock. It’s not actually a solid, but a textural print from Libs Elliott. Thankfully she confirmed the colour for us and I found it in a Canadian store. Did Canada Post cooperate though? Not so much. But Lucas showed up to the studio for a chat and the hope that it was here and boom! It arrived 15 minutes later. We got the binding cut, pressed and attached that day. Then it was time for a hand stitching lesson. He wanted to finish it with some big stitches, instead of invisible and I had the perfectly matching Valdani thread. I tried, folks, but he would not go for a contrasting thread. With a little sewing kit I put together he went home and finished it.

Don’t worry, it’s labelled too. He actually signed the back before I quilted it so the label was already on.

He finished and gifted it in the knick of time. All throughout the process he let me take pictures of him because he was sure his friend wouldn’t believe it - that he actually made it.

Folks, I was totally impressed by this kid. I can say kid because he is my nephew, but he is in twenties and towers over me. He dove in, taking a real interest in the design process, enjoying creating something from nothing. He now looks at my quilts and even colour a bit differently. Ho notices potential in the real world. Will he make another quilt? Who knows?! We don’t know where he is playing yet next year. If back in Calgary I am sure I will have him in the studio again, if he wants. And he’s told his mother he would like to quilt with her too.

Log Cabin Play to Recover

In all my years of teaching I have never screwed up what class I was teaching. As in, taught the wrong class. Well, there is a first time for everything. Back in November, just a few days after I returned from my epic adventure to Buenos Aires, I was set to teach for a group in Vancouver. Indeed, a group that I’ve joined before. Well partway through our Zoom event I got asked a question which made me realize I’d been teaching the wrong class the whole time!

Yikes!

(To be honest, I was rather apoplectic, but I did a quick regroup for the rest of our time remaining and then recorded a session to share with the group to make up for what we should have been doing the whole time.)

What we were supposed to be doing is playing the One Colour Challenge, Improv style. Thankfully, right before my trip I had organized my scrap strips by colour so I grabbed them and we started playing.

These log cabins were that first bit of play. I wanted to show that within a single colour - blue - fabric gives us so many variations and by sorting our fabric accordingly when we use it, we can get some pretty great results.

Not every sample I use to teach becomes a quilt, nor every experiment. But this time? I couldn’t resist. I just had so much fun diving in to the scraps and making these improv log cabins. Do you see that single curved seam in each one?

Each block was squared up to 7”. An odd size, I know, but that’s what the first ones turned out to be and I stuck with it. You can’t always control the size when you are working with scraps.

At the end of each day after that, I would put on Stewart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe and make a handful of blocks. My goal was to use up the blue scraps. But some of the blues were a bit more teal, some turquoise. Which then led to green. I kept going. I dug in to my regular scrap bins when I ran out of strips. I may have cut a piece or two out of the stash but stopped myself from doing more. The quilt is this size because I wanted to stick to 99% scraps.

And any bits leftover? I’ve already pieced them to go on the back. Use it all up!

Have You Always Made Slabs?

After inviting open questions on today’s Quilters’ Playcation Adventure Sewalong, someone asked me if I’ve always made slabs (hi Gail). The obvious answer is no, but at the same time it feels like I always have.

I can remember the first ones I made. The girls were babies playing in the bath. I needed to watch them, but they managed their splashing about without me. So I took my plastic baggies of scraps and sorted them on the bathroom counter into little piles of colour. It was so motivating that I put the girls to bed quickly (and early) so I could go to the dining room and sew. I took one pile and sewed all the pieces together. Then another. My first slabs. That was in December 2009.

Slabs have become a life-force all their own since then. That first blog post initiated a conversation with Amanda Jean Nyberg. That conversation sparked a collaboration and then a book. That book launched our careers. Thousands of people have made slabs for themselves, for charity quilts, for joy. They’ve become a go to block for many, for many reasons.

More than 15 years later, yes, I am still making them. I love them. They are a perfect way to use your scraps as they are. No need to force the fabric to do something it doesn’t want to do and you don’t want to sew. I love the meditative aspect of sewing slabs. I wouldn’t say that I could do it in my sleep, but it does not require a lot of thought anymore; just action, muscle memory. I really like using my scraps, period. Slabs use them, really use them. I love the design possibilities of this made fabric and have not run out of ideas for their use.

Case in point, I’ve never quite used them like I am this year, on the Quilters’ Playcation Adventure Sewalong. All solids, for one. More importantly, truly as a fabric. Paired with Kona Snow they are one of the two fabrics in one of my sample quilts. And I am loving the way it is turning out! Quite a few others are also making and using slabs, and also discovering/embracing the possibilities.

So, no, I haven’t always made slabs. But I don’t forsee ever not making them.

Gaia - Slabs from Scraps for Donation

Gaia

60” x 72”

She lives up to her namesake. Forever picking up bits of things - pretty stones, a fallen leaf, even the trash. Forever finding beauty in all of it.

In need of a new finish in a short timeline, I turned to some class samples. You see, I always have my class samples ready to go. In this case, the samples were piling up. In each Scraptastic class or each Slabs only class I make a slab. It’s a great introduction in to organizing your scraps, then seeing both colour and value as you go to use them with some improvisational piecing. I usually make my class samples so that they can eventually be put into a quilt, should I so desire. Well, I desired.

Combined with a simple white on white print sitting in the stash I took the slabs from 14 separate classes (with a few still left for teaching) and put them together in a generously sized lap quilt. She is destined for a specific donation opportunity so I needed to make her big enough for adult snuggles.

Quilting was pretty straightforward. A simple loopy free motion pattern on the rented long arm. I chose a turquoise thread because it looked good with the backing fabrics. With white and all the colours on the front I could have picked anything.

I have meters and meters of this black and white stripe in my stash because, well, it’s a rather perfect binding. You can’t go wrong with it when you have a multi-coloured quilt. My machine binding skills are finally in a place where I am happy with them (after many, many, many mediocre efforts over the years - you get better each time) so it was nice to finish this off quickly this way. I used a turquoise thread in my machine again to stitch the binding down, this tying it all together.

She was ready for a special giveaway. More to come on that soon…