A Quilt And A Crow

Day 321: For the historical record, here is Mousie's grandma's heirloom quilt, complete. When it arrived at my house, it consisted of sixteen hand-pieced Dresden plates mounted on a sheet of unbleached muslin. The plates were not aligned evenly, having as much four inches difference in their spacing, so after conferring with Mousie, I cut them into 16" blocks and put them back together using a blue cotton broadcloth to try to change the colour scheme from pink to blue. Darker centers were placed at each intersection of the "streets" between the blocks, and each of these was quilted with a shamrock to reflect Mousie's Irish origins. The streets were quilted from a commercial template I referred to as "DNA," a double-helix. I also used commercial stencils for the "hibiscus" flowers and leaves in the top and bottom borders, but the sides were my own designs. There are two repeats of four patterns on each side: a crow for me, a mouse for Mousie, a goldfinch for our other sister-of-the-heart and a hummingbird for Mousie's husband. They are set among oak leaves, acorns, butterflies, dragonflies and bees. As is the case with most detailed quilting, you don't see the design until you flip the quilt over, but I could not get a good image of the back side. It goes in the mail today, and after 11 months of work, I'm going to miss it. That said, I had taken another quilt off the frame before it was completed in order to work on Mousie's. That quilt is back on, and I should be able to finish it in about six weeks.

Almost Done

Day 316: I realize that this is a little precipitous, but it represents the point at which a decision had to be made. When in late October 2019, I took on the project of finishing a king-sized heirloom quilt begun by a friend's grandmother over fifty years ago, the plan had been to have an old-fashioned quilting bee in the spring, a get-together which would allow both her and our other sister-of-the-heart to place a few stitches in the design. We were in the middle of trying to work out a schedule for the bee when COVID hit, and the plan had to be put on hold. I kept working on the quilt between other projects with the thought that by the time I had it nearly done, the pandemic would be history. Ah, what a nice dream that was! At this point, the quilt is done but for the last two blocks I had intended to leave unfinished until we could hold the bee, but COVID is still strong among us and not showing any signs of waning. Thus it was that I posed the question to Mousie yesterday about how she wanted me to proceed. Her decision saddens me, but it seems the only reasonable option. She wants me to finish it: "You. My sister, who has shown such care and love and thoughtfulness throughout this process" which of course means that the bee will not be. Still, knowing that the quilt will be keeping her warm in her New York home this winter fills me with the pride of accomplishment even as it makes me wonder if I, aged markedly by the stresses of these times, will see my dear friends again.

Wheels Within Wheels

Day 74: The wheels have been turning a bit more slowly these last two weeks while I've been dealing with tooth issues, but now my engine has begun to rev up and a bit more progress is being made. I'm finding that I'm going to need to ration quilting time in order to have anything left for the Feathers & Fur Quilting Tour to do when they arrive (date still undetermined), although if it came right down to it, I have another quilt partially done which I could quite easily pop back on the frame. As for spinning, even once the Cinnamon Twist is finished and I take up turning it into a sweater, I still have grey Gotland, more white Corriedale, black Shetland and a huge bag of silvery-tan, long-staple Romney fleece to keep my fingers busy. For those of you who are curious, my wheel is a Louet S15, bought before they began manufacturing models with a balanced flywheel (hole in the big wheel). I do not regret my choice. The slight difference in balance has not been an issue (it's easy to learn to compensate with the treadle), and it allowed me to paint a Tree of Life design on the face. The Tree of Life has been incorporated into each of my homes in the last 50 years in some form or another and always contains at least one bird among a welter of botanical diversity. Some of the figures have personal significance; others are simply drawn from fantasy.

A Twist On Honey-Lamb

Day 47: After assessing the cinnamon fleece I bought last weekend at the Ashford bazaar, I decided I'd put a twist on "honey-lamb" (as I'd taken to calling it as I was spinning it), extending the amount of yarn it would yield by plying it with soft, sillky Corriedale. The result is one of the prettiest yarns I've ever spun, warm brown and creamy white wrapped around each other like the stripes on a candy cane. There will definitely be enough for a sweater when I'm done, perhaps a matching hat and mittens, or even a scarf. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a "fiber fascist." With the exception of rayon (which, if it comes right down to it, is actually cellulose), I want nothing to do with manufactured materials. Give me cotton, silk, linen and wool in natural colours, and pitch that nasty polyester in the bin!

Adding To An Heirloom

Day 36: The work on Mousie's grandmother's quilt is progressing much more rapidly than I had expected. All the "streets" dividing the blocks are done (shadow-quilting and twisted-ribbon "DNA"), the inside edge of the blue borders is stitched all the way around, and I've finished my first plate block. Now I'm taking a break from pushing the needle through multiple layers of fabric to work on the "character panels" (crow, mouse, goldfinch and hummingbird) on the side borders where there are only two layers of cloth sandwiching the batting. I elected to finish this plate first because it was the most problematic. There were issues with buckling in the blades, but I was able to overcome them without having to undo any of grandma's stitching (my priority is to preserve her work in its entirety), and other irregularities were accommodated to my satisfaction (if perhaps not to perfection). As Mousie herself has said, the irregularities make the quilt feel more "human." And now it's time for me to get back to work, doing my part in adding to an heirloom.

Streets, Shamrocks, DNA

Day 28: If Mousie is amazed, so am I in how rapidly her quilt is progressing. That's not to say I'll have it done in anything under a year, but I have completed the hand-stitching of 15 of the 24 "streets" which includes shadow-quilting and a twisted-ribbon design running the length of each one (a pattern I refer to as "DNA" because it's a half-double helix). I've also filled in the nine shamrocks at the intersections and some additional work near the broad borders. I am not devoting myself exclusively to this project, no. In fact, today I've been hard at work on machine-finishing the cathedral window kitty quilt, and in the evening when I feel my back needs a break, I'm hand-stitching orange-themed Dresden Plates to dark brown broadcloth (I'm going to hate myself when it comes time to quilt that). But...and here's the important part of today's post...if schedules can be tweaked to coincide, my two sisters-of-the-heart are planning to come out to the Pacific Northwest for a quilting bee some time in the coming months. This quilt is going to have quite the historic lineage!