Cut, Sew Back Together; Not that Easy

I made this twin-size quilt in February, in reds and purples with a red border, and it's one of the prettiest quilts I've made.  Andrea Hill of Scottsboro, Alabama, machine-quilted it with red thread in a swirl pattern that united the tile-like blocks.  Andrea is a retired teacher, and has a Gammill long-arm sewing machine for stitching.  She can do custom stitching, or use a pantograph method to stitch repeating patterns.  She does beautiful work.  I asked her how many quilts she has quilted.  Her answer floored me:  1700.  

I sewed on the binding by hand.  It me takes two or three evenings of watching TV to finish a binding.

I do the patchwork, and working on the quilt design is stimulating.  The colored fabrics are like a big bunch of colored pencils, a palette of possibility, and they work together in surprising ways.  I am continuing to learn about color combinations.

  I have hand-quilted only one quilt, a baby quilt, and it took me three years.  It was too small for the baby by then, so I gave it to a different baby.  Hand-quilting is beautiful, but if I had to hand-quilt all my quilts, it would be like falling into a black hole from which I would never emerge.  I've found I can cut out and sew a quilt top together in a week, however, if it's not huge, if I stay with it and if it's not a difficult design that I'm working out as I go.  I machine-quilt baby quilts, lap quilts, and table runners myself, but if they are larger, I can't get them under my sewing machine needle.

Grandma Rachel Shurtz lived next door when I was growing up, and she always had a quilt in progress.   If she wasn't hand-quilting, she was cutting blocks or sewing blocks on the sewing machine.  I grew up playing under the quilts that were stretched out on quilting frames in the living room.  She often sent me to the store for hand-quilting thread, 50 white Mercerized (60 is the gauge for general sewing-machine sewing).  Grandma Shurtz made all kinds of quilts.  I remember fans and stars and nine-patches and Dresden plates, and camp quilts that were made from old woollens and denims and tied rather than quilted.  I recognized some of our old clothes in the fabrics.  She sold her quilts for five dollars each. I wish I knew how many quilts she made during her lifetime.  Aunt Bernice once said that she had twenty-two of them.  I have three that were my mother's, just everyday quilts.  The backing on one of them is made of flour sacks.  Grandma made a special quilt for each of her grandchildren when they got married.  She made two quilts for Joanie, a star and a double wedding ring.  I was her youngest grandchild, and she died in 1957 when I was twelve.  I felt I was her most special grandchild because I lived next door and knew her house as well as my own.

My grandmother's tools were flimsy patterns cut from paper sacks or pieces of cardboard, a pair of dull scissors, and a sad iron that she heated in the Heaterola.  She had thimbles, but she tended to wear holes through the little indentations, and she sent me to the store for adhesive tape to put on her fingers.  She worked on the kitchen table, and had to clean off her quilting projects when she rolled out homemade noodles or made bread.  I have sharp rotary cutters, and mats with all kinds of grids, templates of every ilk, and two Rowenta steam irons.  I have a table that I use only for cutting and laying out blocks.  I have a brass thimble that is adjustable to fit my finger and has a little protective lip.  

With these tools, I can make quilts that look perfect, but I don't like quilts to look too perfect and flat, like they were made by a machinist.  The blocks need to wiggle a little, and an odd piece or odd fabric adds interest.   I like the scrappy look, probably because my grandmother's quilts were scrap quilts, and it's more interesting working with many different fabrics.  I like most of the quilts in Surprisingly Simple Quilts.  I share the Australians' taste, which is a little old-fashioned.  I usually work out my own design, but I've made another nice quilt from a pattern in this book.  Contrary to the title, it's not always that simple.  I've been amazed at how many wrong ways it's possible to sew two pieces of fabric together.  I try not to make the same mistake twice, and the big design board that Ronn made for me from foam core makes it easier to plan ahead.

I saw an intriguing quilt in a book by designer Kaffe Fassett.  The blocks are made of cotton shirting, and I've been collecting striped shirts from thrift stores, and cutting them into flat pieces, in preparation for making blocks.  My grandmother would have liked this quilt.