Quilting and Sewing Archives - Page 92 of 158

Life Story Medallion Quilt

December 31, 2014 jennifer Quilting and Sewing

Perhaps you remember this quilt.

I started it back in February of 2013 and added to it over the next six months or so. I finished the quilt top in August and shared photos of it here.
For a while I didn’t share it simply because I hadn’t taken proper photos of it. This fall I finally enlisted the help of my husband and son and we took some awesome photos but they were all lost on my old hard drive. I’ve struggled with how much I wanted to write about this quilt, but today, as I review the year and prepare for 2015, I suddenly needed to tell it now. I got it out, spread it over the guest bed for some indoor photos and here we go!

This quilt was a totally new quilting experience for me. As it developed, border by border, it changed and became different – but better – than I’d pictured. It challenged me, fed me, and was generally a beautiful experience.

But something happened half-way through it, something that made me love it even more but struggle to talk about it. It happened on border #5.

Border 5 is the mosaic styled one, with all the strips sewn into squares sewn into nine-patch units. It’s beautiful, but it’s also chaos. I had just attached that border and was holding it up to show to my children. My oldest daughter immediately noticed a mistake on a previous border and I was amazed that I hadn’t caught it sooner. I concluded that if I hadn’t caught it, or anyone I’d shown it to before that point (including all my friends at UCMQG) then I could probably just leave it and no one would ever really notice. Since that day no one has pointed it out.

But it got me thinking, and looking at what I’d made so far.

Suddenly I realized that I’d quilted my life! I couldn’t have created something that more closely mirrored my life story if I’d intentionally set out to tell it. It was quite a moment for me, to look at the center of that quilt and every subsequent border and see my life represented so perfectly by them. From the near-perfectly pieced 8 pointed star in the center to the paper pieced arrows, so much of my life was based on the idea that if I was careful and good and did my best, things would always work out. I don’t mean the working out that comes from living through things, but the innocent idea that things would work out the way I wanted them to. Pretty. Neat. Orderly. Perfect family, adorable children, etc. I thought that if I sent my arrows in the right direction they would all fly straight and true and hit my mark. I really did. I get that it’s funny, but it was 100% me. And then I entered motherhood. It worked for a while, right up until I had six kids. That was when I started noticing things not completely coming together all the time. I forgot things, messed them up. missed them entirely. Not that I hadn’t made mistakes along the way. But perfectionism worked pretty well for me until I had six kids. Then came my unraveling, little by little. Babies 7 and 8 finished the job and I’ve been trying to find my way ever since.

What a revelation, to see it all playing out there in my quilt.

By that time, I’d already made border #6 and I sewed it on, still pondering the whole thing.

Those two borders, numbers five and six (six is the flying geese border pointing to the outer edges of the quilt), are where I live. It’s my current stage. Beautiful and busy and full of good things, but totally crazy. I’m forever trying to push my way out of it to some sort of calm – any sort of calm. I guess I’d really like the calm where I feel like I get to resume the “once upon a time” narration of my life, the idea that I have a story to tell and I’m in charge of how it turns out. Wouldn’t we all like that? Believe me, with 8 children in our family and all the surprises that daily land in my lap, sometimes I’m crazy for the feeling that I can see even ONE THING through to completion without it being changed beyond recognition. Some days I think I’m getting there, like our family is getting to a calmer, more manageable stage, and then life rises up like a tidal wave and sends me crashing back into the middle of border 5.

Making this quilt taught me that where I live, crazy as it is, is beautiful, and necessary, and OK.

Every border I added after that point, in addition to being aesthetically pleasing to me, also became a statement of faith. A promise to myself that I will finish the job, stay the course, and that things will work out for the best. Not the way I pictured, but far better than I pictured. Each border represents something specific that I won’t go into here, but they represent a great deal to me. Those borders are my statement that “the best is yet to come,” that motherhood is awesome, and that I’m excited to see it all unfold.

The quilt measures nearly 85 inches square, a huge project to quilt myself, but I felt compelled to do it. I tried a different style of free motion quilting on every border, some with more success than others, but I did it. Somewhere in the middle the whole project had become a spiritual experience for me and I wanted to say that I’d stitched every stitch myself. If this quilt is like my life story, I couldn’t ask someone else to bring it to life through the quilting.

And actually, with all the mistakes, I’m crazy proud of it. It’s heavily quilted. I wanted to quit so many times but kept going. I learned a lot and got better at what I was doing. It was an awesome experience and I LOVE how it looks.

In fact, I think this is the first quilt I’ve made that I would call an heirloom. It’s the first quilt I’ve set out so I can look at it every day. I usually roll up my quilts and add them to the bucket in the family room for snuggling. I’m ok with them getting spilled on and being loved. They become part of the fabric of our family life which is, as I stated, messy. Not this one. It hangs on a ladder in my room and I see it every day and smile. It reminds me that I’m in. No matter how hard it feels, I’m in, and we’re going to make it. I love this quilt. There will never be another just like it and it’s totally, completely, ME.

I pieced one more arrow block and embroidered it for use as a quilt label. It says:

Life Story Medallion Quilt – Jennifer S. Harrison begun January 2013, finished February 2014 www.hopefulhomemaker.com inspired by modern medallion challenge of Utah County Modern Quilt Group I usually finish my bindings by machine to avoid aggravating an old elbow injury, but this one I finished by hand. And of course, it had to be a black and white binding!

It’s done. Someday I hope to take better pictures of it, but for tonight my heart is happy to have these photos and to share it here. It’s a great way to sum up the year and say good-bye to 2014.

Life is great, isn’t it?!
Jennifer Previous posts about this quilt:

Medallions Lone Star Block Tutorial Arrow Arrows Border 4 Medallion Border 5 Modern Medallion Progress Medallion: Pluses and Arrows Medallion: Arrows and Orange Medallion Quilt Top Collecting

11 comments medallion, quilting

Nine-Patch Mini Quilt

December 31, 2014 jennifer Quilting and Sewing

In November my friend Pamela hosted a mini quilt exchange. I was so excited to be invited to participate, but nervous as could be about it. I’d never done an exchange before and was afraid my offering wouldn’t be good enough. I had an idea I’d thought about for weeks but had to skip because of time constraints. Finally I got out some of the leftover scraps from Scarlet’s quilt and started playing with them. I settled on this layout and got started.

The inspiration for this mini quilt was three-fold. I’ve never made the granny square quilt I pinned forever ago. I also bought Camille Roskelley’s Niner pattern, but have never even opened it up. Finally, I’d been looking at some photos of stained glass windows, admiring the beauty of the light and color between the leaded glass.

I sewed a dozen little nine patches and then started sashing them with a thin strip of black with gray polka dots. I used the last of my dark gray solid (I love this color and can’t believe I never wrote down the manufacturer, color, or even where I got it!) for the center block and setting triangles. Soon it was all put together and actually looked good! Relief!

Next came stress about quilting it. I wanted to do something to make the center block awesome but didn’t want to highlight my poor fmq skills. At last I chose straight line quilting and went to work with the hera marker. Above is what it looked like with all my quilting lines marked. It looked awesome so I knew I was on the right track but I did wish for a minute that the lines would magically become quilting. I was so afraid to mess it up!

Here it is, quilted in a medium gray thread. Not too bad! Actually, I was ridiculously happy/relieved that it worked.

Even the back looks cool!

I learned some good things through this experience. While I am likely my own worst critic, I am also accepting of my own work. I know the story behind the decisions, the time constraints, the intention and the vision. So I roll with the imperfections pretty well because at the end of a project I’m reminded what a gift it was to squeeze it in at all. It terrifies me to sew for money because I feel like getting paid would require total perfection. Sewing for a swap felt a little like this. I didn’t want the person who opened mine to be disappointed! I was crazy nervous at the party and realized I may have a few lessons to learn about confidence when surrounded by quilters I admire.

When my package was finally opened, no one looked my way. It took a few minutes for them to figure out who made it. I knew the design was outside what might be called “my style” and yet I really love it. It was harder to give away than I thought it would be, a reminder that when we create things, we put pieces of our hearts in them and letting them go can be bittersweet.

It would be fun to make a second one to hang in my laundry room with the three other mini quilts there. We’ll see if I ever take the time to do it. I’m so glad I got to participate in the swap despite my (out of character) nervousness. It was a good experience in creativity and self-expression!

Jennifer

2 comments mini quilts, quilting

Life’s Journey Quilt

December 31, 2014 jennifer Quilting and Sewing

This quilt has been years in the finishing! Begun early in 2010, this post is being written almost 5 years later. Crazy. When I originally pieced it, I wanted to have it professionally quilted. It turns out, the longer you wait to quilt sometimes, the easier it is later to do it yourself. Such was the case with this quilt. While I still like it, it’s no longer my current favorite so I became less attached to a professional job.

Even so, learning free motion quilting is much easier said than done! This quilt was worked on, quit, put away, and brought back out perhaps more than any other project of my life. I’d quilt a little and get so annoyed with myself that I’d set aside, vowing to unpick it all. But when I got it out again, I wasn’t in the mood to unpick so I would quilt a little more until the same thing happened. I even remember at one point discovering, after a very rough section, that I’d never lowered my feed dogs!

After a while I decided that the name of the quilt pattern, “Life’s Journey” was appropriate for my quilting journey and that I’d leave it as it is, keeping the quilt as a reminder that we all start as beginners at something and slowly get better with practice.

The section above is pretty rough, but I also got better in some sections!

The aqua background quilting was intended to look like water flowing, but in fact looked more like flames. Yet when it was finished and washed, it simply looks fine.

That alphabet print in the upper left corner of the above photo makes me smile. I believe I bought it in early 2006 (maybe even before that?), on clearance. I still remember how much I loved it. I bought everything they had left of it and the lady at the quilt shop thought I was nuts and basically told me so. She thought I must be some crazy school teacher or something to like a fabric that had TEXT on it. Ha! I’ve used that fabric in so many quilts over the years and it always makes me smile. Guess I was a little ahead of trend on that purchase. 😉

The borders were the last part I quilted (done in December 2013) and I really enjoyed them. It’s the only time I’ve ever used the fabric print to dictate quilting but I love how it looks on this beautiful tile print from Laura Gunn. This is a fabric I’d love to buy yards and yards of if only someone still had it. Isn’t it funny sometimes the things we love? It surprises me how much I love this print, but I love it all the same.

For this quilt I pieced a mostly low-volume backing. More of that tile print and the alphabet print too! I also used a few favorite pieces of French General’s first collection, Rouenneries. I had loved French General before they announced their first fabric collection with Moda, so these fabrics were much anticipated.

On New Year’s Eve in 2013 I finished binding this quilt. I have no good reason why it took me another year to bury threads, wash, photograph and post about it!

Now that it’s done, I’m happy not just with the outcome of the quilt, but also with the process. I’m reminded that it’s the work of experts that draws us to a craft, but we all have to do the work of beginners when we start. So much of this quilt shows the hard work of learning something new, but when you stand back and look at it as a whole, it looks just fine. Which is often how life is. We can get hung up on little details and small areas and forget that in the end it will look like life, no matter how imperfect some spots may be. I’m grateful for that reminder, happy to have learned the lesson – again – in a small way.

Jennifer Other posts about this quilt:

Life’s Journey quilt