Names for Snow

Names For Snow

47” x 58”

Okay, so I finished this quilt more than a year ago. Then it was on display and stayed living for a friend for a year. He was paranoid about it getting wrecked and so gave it back. I’ve just been waiting for a proper snowfall to get a picture of it.

Of course, I forgot that proper snowfalls actually make it difficult to take quilt pictures. There is the feets of snow, for one. And two, despite all that white, it is quite difficult to get accurate colour representation in snow. Good thing this quilt is inspired by snow! In a strange twist in quilt photography, shooting this quilt in the sun was the way to do it. Got my tween and her best friend to help out as I forced them away from the snow fort they are building.

The entire quilt started as a love letter to my favourite scissors. Kevin from Knife Wear goes on buying trips to Japan. I made a comment about scissors offhand and he came up with some pairs to try. Yes, I know we quilters are spoiled with a lot of scissor options. These ones are, by far, my favourite. So I set out to freehand cut half square triangles and sew them together. Everything was cut by hand - the initial squares, trimming, and squaring up. The only time I brought out a rotary cutter and ruler was to square up the finished quilt. What a liberating way to work!

Note to self: do this again.

Playing with all these neutrals resulted in another love letter through this quilt. To my favourite season: winter! It isn’t often that I have the name of a quilt early in the making but this one was set pretty quickly. Whites, creams, beiges, more whites, a little blue. No yellow.

I spent way too much time obsessing over the quilting. I was researching different languages and their names for snow, I was trying to figure out how to stitch in Inuktitut. I brainstorming loads of options. In the end, however, a deadline and my desire to never mark quilts won. I went with dense, wavy lines (snowdrift) with little asterisk/sparkles here and there. Texture, more than anything.

The white binding seemed like a no brainer.

When making improv quilts, whether free hand cut like this or now, one key thing to remember is that perfection does not live here. Points will be trimmed off, lines might be a bit wonky, you might cut more than expected to make things fit, and almost nothing lines up. This is precisely why I like this. It looks and feels handmade. I see my own movements in every line of stitching, every shape. It can be a hard switch from the pursuit of perfection in quilt making but it is a liberating switch for many.

Now that we are settled in for a Christmas at home I am glad for another quilt on the sofa to celebrate my truly favourite season. Winter is indeed for snow forts and skiing (hopefully) and skating. Winter is for curling up with quilts and cookies at the bookends of those activities.

Here’s to the season!

This is the third in my landscape series. See Mountain Meadows and Ripples.

HOME - From Virtual Workshop to Fundraising Opportunity

Wrapped up my last virtual workshop of the year this past weekend. What a whirlwind fall it’s been! Two of the most popular classes have been HOME and Make Words Not War. HOME is a more focused version of the other but both are about making Improv letters and using intention in our improv piecing.

As I developed samples for the HOME class a collection of blocks grows. Different text styles, different piecing techniques, and different homes.

A while back I asked followers on Twitter what home means to them. Interestingly, no one mentioned a physical space. It was more about a feeling - of warmth, safety, comfort, love, a deep breath. I’d always envisioned these blocks as representative of a physical space, so it presented a design challenge. It got me thinking about the different physical spaces that can be home - an apartment, a bed, a hearth. And about the non-tangible feelings. Not sure how to represent the latter, but I am working on alternatives to a single family dwelling.

This particular block started in a workshop with Keystone Modern Creative. It was about showing a few different ways to use curves in making the letters. Then that O happened. Doesn’t it look like a flame? That got us talking about the hearth of a home, the idea of warmth and comfort. With input from students I picked the fabric to make the tile surround and mantle.

Home really is the heart of life at the moment. For good and bad. I realize that for so many it is not safe place, not a place of respite. It can be scary or boring or dangerous or not even there. I’ve decided to take the HOME blocks I make for these workshops and turn them into a quilt come summer. After that it will be used as a fundraiser. I will also donate a portion of my earnings from each HOME workshop. So the more workshops I do, the more potential for fundraising.

Not exactly sure how this will all unfold, but I want the money to go towards a shelter that helps those finding home. I am open to suggestions, but will likely pick a local option.

Thank you so much to everyone inspiring these. Thank you to everyone staying home, staying safe.

Morning Make October 2020

On October 1st I had a grand plan that I was going to make this symbolic improv quilt. A stylized version of the date, counting up with an interruption of a different colour every time a kid in the house was affected by Covid in terms of learning or having isolation requirements of their own. On October 2 I scratched that plan and decided playing was a lot more fun than getting symbolic with a quilt. Especially now.

Especially now.

So each day I woke up and padded to the sewing room, with the sole purpose of making an improv doodle. This isn’t totally new to me, as long time readers will know, but my approach this time was definitely different. Instead of making a block each day AND THEN figuring out how they might all work together, I decided I would make, compose, and build the quilt as I went. Each day the block was sewn next to the previous day’s block. After 5 days I had a row. After 10 days I sewed the two rows together. And onward.

None of the rows are the same height, but I did get them all the same length - some with trimming and some with additions. The height of the row was determined by where I stopped sewing with the first block, then all were made the same.

Composing on the go like this is a definite challenge. I just didn’t want it to look like 31 distinct blocks or have a grid. I can look at the finished quilt top and see some things I would change. Oh well. But I did eventually get in the groove and could see lines I might extend or places where it would be fun to change directions. I repeated a few motifs and the whole thing has multiple techniques used again and again.

I do think it finishes with a fairly well balanced composition, so that makes me happy.

Watching the quilt grow was indeed a marker of time. It marked an improvement in my mental health as opposed to a marker of my stress, which would have happened if I stuck with my initial plan. That also makes me happy.

I’ve got a plan in mind for quilting already and found the perfect fabrics in my stash. I almost basted it last night too, more welcome distraction in very stressful times. Hopefully it will happen in the coming days because I am in the mood to quilt! Plus, I am not sewing for November Morning Make so I need to get at my machine!

Exclamation Points!!

I’m not sure I’m done saying the words that need the exclamation points, but it seems I am doing sewing the exclamation points.

This 100% Covid inspired quilt top is now ready for a date under the needles to turn it into a quilt. That’s the point when I can be more reflective, maybe a bit more quiet, possibly a tiny bit excited. Or still saying a lot of things!

Free Video Tutorial! for this block.

We are still very much in Covid times. We are still very much in a reckoning regarding Black Lives Matter and a strong need for anti-racist actions. We are still tired, stressed, privileged, scared, bored, anxious, frustrated, angry, grieving, and maybe a tiny bit hopeful. We still very much need words that end with exclamation points.

Here, our kids are back in school. We had a choice between online and in person. Our kids are social creatures and the numbers, while not good, are low enough with regard to community spread (at the moment) to make us feel okay with their return. We’ve already had one round of isolation and a test for a kid with a cold, so we’ll see how it all pans out going forward. For now they are happy to have some routine and greater social interactions than the 4 families we bubbled with. And, thankfully, they all wear their masks and understand the rules.

With them in school I have some semblance of a routine developing. I’m trying to catch up on our family business. I’m also starting some online teaching. Right now it is all through guilds and stores, but Zoom is indeed a remarkable platform for delivering classes. It’s working for me. I’m even managing a bit of yoga and dog walks while still feeding sourdough and stress baking cookies!

It’s all good, until it isn’t. As we’ve been saying to the kids since March, we take this one day at a time.