"green is not just a colour"

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…

My Scrap Dreams Coming True

Collection of colourful quilt blocks

I’m not sure what is going on lately, but I have been having some very vivid dreams. It’s happened to me before, but medication was the cause. This time, I have no clue what is happening, but I’m leaning in to it. So when I had a dream about a quilt, I had to make the quilt.

Seriously, I had a dream about a very colourful quilt made from traditional blocks. The block itself wasn’t distinct, but the colour was. That day, when I arrived at the studio I immediately went searching for a potential block. I grabbed a favourite book - Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns - to browse for ideas. Rather, to search for what I might have dreamt about. In the end, I settled on one specific block, which she calls the Crocket Cabin Quilt.

A hand holding a book called Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns
Close up sketch of a Crocket Cabin quilt block

Sadly, my dream wasn’t super specific on the block in question. Or maybe that was a good thing? I mean, what if I didn’t like the block? Regardless, I chose block 1123a, the Crocket Cabin Quilt block. Why? Mostly because it was simple, graphic, and just felt right. The math was pretty easy to figure out as well, considering the block only has half square triangles and plain patchwork.

The first experiments were straight out of the scrap bin. That is, I dug in to the colourful bins on my cutting table and picked two contrasting fabrics. Block 1 was a success so I tried another one, and another. I played around with values, making the dark the bowtie, then making the light fabric the bowtie. I couldn’t decide which I liked better, so I went with both. After only a few blocks it was apparent that I was indeed starting a new quilt.

When I made that decision I also put some limits on my fabric selection. This is primarily to satisfy the vision I had in my dream.

  • No low volume fabrics

  • No black backgrounds either

  • Value is only relative within the block (it doesn’t matter if what is light in one block would be a dark in another)

  • No repeating fabrics, each one is only used once

There is no special reason for these limits, it’s only just what feels right for me, for this project, for right now. I am shopping for the fabrics from my scrap bins first. I’ve found some classic gems doing this! Of course I have loads of scraps, but they aren’t always big enough. Then I go to my stash and pull out fabrics that might need to be trimmed a little or not. It will not be hard to get enough fabrics without spending a penny.

How big will I make the quilt? My default size is usually 80” x 80”. I made the blocks to finish at 8” square, so that means I will need 100 blocks (and 200 unique fabrics). I’m currently sitting at 43 made, with a few more cut out and ready to sew. I’ve been making 1-4 each day that I am in the studio. No great rush, but it is a nice way to round out my days before returning home.

Dreams really can come true.

Braided Rug Quilt Coming Along

There are a lot of different reasons folks make scrap quilts. And many for why they don’t! I go over a lot of them in my presentations and classes. I can say that one of the key reasons to make a scrap quilt is to clean up/use up scraps. There comes a point where the pile/bin/basket is too much and to avoid throwing them out you have to find a way to use them up while making yourself happy with the process.

That’s exactly what happened with these blocks. I have 3 more to make to get the quilt to where I want it to be. Have I used all the fabric yet? Nope. Am I sick of making these blocks? Yup.

Now I could just stop, set everything aside, and come back in a year or so. I do that a lot and have no problem doing so. But that itch to clean up/use up those scraps was strong. Very strong. So I did the math on what was required to get where I want to go. That is, after changing my mind. I’m so close now that I am excited by the finish.

Besides, my new studio is so very nearly ready and it will be great to go in there just a little bit lighter on the scraps.

Empty room with white walls and a yellow floor

Wildfire Quilt

It’s scary to think that wildfire season started here in February. February, when it is supposed to be cold and dark and snowy. February, when we are cocooning and only dreaming of summer days and the dappled light of the forest. Not this year. Wildfire season already started and, indeed, zombies fires from last year still burning.

This quilt started life as a fun experiment and sample for a Cut, Sew, Repeat Playcation. I used it as a sample in the class then had fun continuing the play. The entire time I played and sewed I saw it vertically and just about the interactions of the colours. Then, the night I was basting it, I saw it horizontal and only saw the wildfire influence. Then I couldn’t unsee it. So I ran with it, adding quilting to accentuate that design aspect.

For the quilting I used a coordinating thread for each band of colour. It was a mix of Wonderfil and Aurifil 50 weight cotton threads - whatever colour I had around that worked well. In each section I changed my free motion design. The orange, obviously, had flames. The green was a triangle meander that I’ve used once before. I don’t know what you would call the blue section, it’s some kind of hatch but not really. The purple was a wavy meander for the sky/smoke. Breaking it down like this not only made it manageable from a working perspective, but really accentuated the overall design.

Binding the quilt was straightforward. My usual high contrast binding was not going to work here so I went with a charcoal grey. I want to say it is symbolic because of soot and ashes, but really it is about picking a neutral to frame but not take away from the quilt. Black was too dark, too sharp. The grey was perfect.

Most of us here are worried about what the coming months will bring for fires. We did not nearly have enough snow cover and cold temperatures to give our forests and grasslands a proper break. We can hope for a wet spring, but that brings its own challenges. With a kid with asthma that definitely gets triggered by poor air quality, wildfire season takes on another meaning too.

In my previous career I worked on the climate change file. I started there over 25 years ago, working to convince a lot of people that we needed to act, acting in industry where we caused a part of the problem. I had to leave because it got so disheartening, if I am being honest. While I am glad that I no longer have to define or explain climate change, if that had happened 25 years ago we might be in a different place.