10 Reasons I Love Quilting

Stephanie at IndieQuilter wrote a post about the reasons she loved quilting, and encouraged others to list their own reasons..  I've decided to follow along on my blog.

Here are my reasons, in no particular order.

1.  I love combining different fabrics and see different patterns emerge.  Just like mixing paint and seeing new colors emerge, but better because there is the pattern in the fabric too.

2.  I enjoy the mystery of it.  I choose fabrics and think they will go together, but until the block is actually made or the quilt is actually put together, I'm not really sure what the finished product will look like.

3. I like the creativity of it.  I can choose to add or not add certain fabrics or combinations. I can take a pattern and change up something, or I can design my own. I choose the style I want to make - modern, improv, traditional, art, etc.  Totally up to me.

4.  After all the time I spend doing it, I have something to show for it.  It's not like watching movies or playing video games.  If I did those things, nobody would really know I did that or care years from now, but with quilts, there is a bonus end product that I can use or share or display.

5.  I can customize a quilt that fits the person I am giving it to.  It is truly unique and one of a kind, because no one can make another one just like it, not even me!

6. I like the feel of fabrics and the feel of completed quilts.  And they provide warmth!

7.  It is something that waits patiently for me.  If I don't have time to work on something this week, month, year, it won't spoil or change in the meantime.  It will simply wait until I am ready.

8.  It calls me.  I am constantly drawn to the colors and shapes and designs and want to keep making more and more and more.

9.  The quilting community is awesome.  Everyone you meet is so sweet and generous and creative and helpful.

10. It helps me develop skills at a pace that is comfortable for me.  If I want to master a new skill, I can make a small project.  If I want to take it easy and practice a skill I already have, that is okay too.  I can make casual quilts that don't take much thought but take lots of energy (small pieces) or I can make complex quilts that take a lot of thought or skill to put together.  Totally up to me.

There are so many more reasons  It is difficult to limit myself to 10, but these are the first 10 I thought of, so they must be the most important. :)

You can read Melanie's list at Catbird Studio.  I found about this list from her.

Elephant and Rail Fence

Yesterday's circle was an elephant. I thought I should make sure there is at least one elephant in my quilt.  I like how the background fabric looks like the elephant has a tusk! I also like how the elephant fabric made a design on his forehead and has a circle for the eye.  I attached a separate fabric for the ear; it's subtle but it is there.

And I started yet another project.  I've had Sujata Shah's Cultural Fusion book for a while now and it has been calling and calling me.  I kept making it wait since I wanted to finish something, but I broke down to start it.  This quilt makes me happy.  I'm making two blocks with the same colors, which makes it go even faster, and makes it easier to chain piece and make sure I have something underneath the needle at all times without needing a leader/ender.These blocks (I'm making them half the size as in the book) are so quick to make.  A few seams and I appreciate the way I combined the fabrics, a few more seams and the block is done already.  And then it is time to choose two more fabrics to combine. Most of my brights seem to be tone on tone, but I want to add zippy, energetic fabrics as I go along.

Islamic Tile Quilt Top Finished

Islamic Tile Quilt made by Shasta Matova

As I promised you yesterday, I pressed the Islamic Tile quilt so I could show it to you today.  Pressing is not my strong suit, and I obviously need to press it again, but this quilt is made up of a whole bunch of 2 and a half inch squares.  Even those long lines were made with separate squares so they would look more like tiles, and I managed to keep the design looking like the inspiration tiles I saw at the Islamic Center in Toronto.  Now I have to think about how I want to quilt this. It's a fairly big quilt by my standards - bigger than a lap, smaller than a twin bed.

Next up, I wanted to show you a purchase I made from Spoonflower.  Since the fabric is printed on order, it is expensive, but when I think about it as gifts instead of fabric, and you buy them when they are on sale, it somehow manages to fit into the price range. I bought four fat quarters which will be hemmed to become kitchen towels and if I can bear to part with them, I will give them to my family.  The print quality of all of them was very good, so any issues you see has to do with my taking images in the wintertime when it is always dark, and trying to fix the light quickly with photo editing.

The elephant will likely stay with me since I have a collection of elephants around the house.

I was showing my mother these, and she has asked for this one specifically to be hers.  She likes that the design goes over the calendar. I think if I was designing a calendar like this, I would have thought that people would prefer to have the calendar easy to see, but I was wrong.  How often are you really going to look at a date on a towel anyway?  She did ask me why I only got four, and now I see that maybe getting more to share with others would have been a better idea. 

I'll have to think long and hard about which of my relatives will get these two.  They are going to have to be super nice to me between now and gift giving day!

I haven't made my Quilty Project 365 Circle today, but I wanted to share with you a Pinterest board I created for me to save circle ideas. I do hope that people have realized that Pinterest is a great resource and not a place that steals ideas. When I copy an image and put it in my hard drive, I can't remember where I got the image, but when I pin it, I can click on the link to get back to where I found it, to see other details, to remember where I got it, and maybe even ask for permission to use it. Also, on HubPages, I find that a lot of my readers come directly from Pinterest instead of through a search engine.

I have to go make my circle of the day now.

Day 3 of Quilty Project 365

I won't be posting each block every day, but it helps me to remember to take the picture and the thought behind it.  I saw a row of rings that were broken like spokes, and I wanted to recreate it, but this is easier.  The background fabric is also used in A Life of Plenty and the fall fabrics have been used in several different fall quilts, including Dear Jane.  I like them both so I use them sparingly in many quilts.  Today, I am thinking about the love of family and pets, so the x and o are quite appropriate.  I didn't really mean to sew a spiral, I started securing around the circle and didn't want to stop so I kept going into the center. I thought the center of the spiral wouldn't match the center of the x because I wasn't keeping track, and I would have been okay with that, but it centered by itself!

In other quilting news, I have finished my top of the Islamic tile quilt.  I have to press it and then I will show it to you.  Since this is a tile quilt, I thought I should stitch in the ditch only, but that requires too much precision, so my original plan was to quilt a quarter inch away from all the seams, but I think that also is too much precision (and sewing).  I'm now thinking about doing some organic lines instead. I'm not sure if that makes me lazy, or if that more honors the quilting medium, which gives you more options than tiles would.

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Let's Bee Social #99

Project 365 Day 2

Today's block represents the feeling I get at the start of almost every quilt project.  I debate about the pros and cons of the many options in my head and go back and forth, around and around, until I finally settle and commit to the plan. Sometimes it takes a while to get to the commitment stage.

Yesterday, almost as soon as I posted my block, I looked at some other blogs and came across Amanda Jean's circle quilt It was nice to see what a circle quilt could look like when more circles had been added, but hers isn't a calendar quilt. It uses fabric from particular fabric lines and is so coordinated and so pretty. I was already wondering if I should just make circles instead of going off on tangents with trees and such, and seeing this beautiful circle quilt just made it louder.

Should I keep it simple and use circles only using a template?
What colors will represent what mood?
Should I focus on continually improving my mastery of skills?
Should I do my best?
Should I keep if casual or formal?
Will the background be pieced or whole?
Will the circles all be a certain size and shape or can they vary?
Will I like it in the end?
Should all the blocks be the same size?
What if I don't like the block later?
Should I keep them in chronological order or arrange them in a pleasing manner when I am done?
Should I attach the blocks as I go along or wait until the end?
Can I cut up fabric yardage for these, or do I only have to use scraps?
Should the applique be hand appliqued, turned under, fusible web or can it be free form?


The problem is that there are so many beautiful ways to make this quilt, and they are all right in their own way.  And until it is too late to turn back, I will keep debating until I finally commit to the plan. And I do tend to break the rules once I make them (like my scrap only rule I made up yesterday and broke both yesterday and today) so my commitment is somewhat fickle!

The background fabric was used in my Christmas trees quilt. The black fabric is a whole fat quarter that I received from a swap. I haven't made any black and white quilts. I say this as I look at my improv quilt which has plenty of black and white fabric I could have used, but I don't know where the scraps are for it. I did fuse the applique.

Project 365: Day 1 11/16/2015

This is day 1, block 1 of project 365, where I make a circle block a day to represent my day.  Today's circle is brought to you by the color green, because I painted a picnic table I recently bought.  I had some leftover paint in the garage, and decided to use it instead of buying new paint, and it happens to be green.  I like the green picnic table. I especially like that the weather is cooperating and it was warm and dry enough to paint outside.  Didn't even need a coat. Last year, we had snow.

 Since picnic tables are not round, I decided to make a tree instead.  I put some french knots in it for apples, and I will eat an apple after I finish this post to make an apple tree more appropriate.

It is raw edge, free form, no freezer paper or fusible used.  When I went searching for brown fabric, I decided to use scraps instead of whole fabric, which apparently is a new rule I may or may not use throughout the project.

The cream and the green fabrics are both leftovers of the Islamic tile quilt.  The brown fabric was in the Lansing Leaves leftover bag, but it appeared to be a full fat quarter (don't tell the quilt police!). Maybe it started its life as a half yard fabric.

Quilty Project 365

Audrey at Quiltyfolk is working on a calendar quilt of sorts.  She will be choosing fabric each day, cutting it out into circles and appliqueing them to a standard size background square.  It will be a record of the fabrics she liked and a record of her year.

Since I missed out on the last calendar project, and since I really like circles, I was thinking of joining her. I know I have no business starting a new project, but really how hard can a circle be? Please don't answer that. That is a rhetorical question to which I know I probably won't like the answer. I will be using raw edge and fusible applique to make it easier for myself. I might skip a day or two and wind up having nonconsecutive 365 days. I may wind up having a different number than 365 depending on how big I want my quilt to be as I get further down the line.

I think that I will make my circles more elaborate - some will be cut into spirals and other circle like shapes.  I might even embellish some with beading or embroidery, or applique other things on top of a circle, or use layers of raw edge circles, etc.  Yes, I can dream big at the beginning. I'm sure in the end, I will use a lot of plain round circles too. I think I am going to make mine smaller than hers - 3 1/2" squares finished, so 4 inch unfinished.   I don't want the quilt to get too big.  I think that a layout of something like 17 X 22 squares so 59 1/2" X 77" would be a manageable size. Since a full size mattress is 54 x 74, I think this size would work. I could add some more time to the quilt if I wanted to have more overhang.

This is just an introduction post. I will be making and posting today's circle later.

Come join us if you want. It will be fun.