Original Copy Quilt

Everything is built on something that came before it.

The TED Radio Hour of March 20 begins with that premise. So did the quilt made of Etcetera Clothing Fabric Samples donated by a fabulous friend. 
As a quilter stuck in traffic, I bobbed a bit to La Di Da Di even if I didn't like it way back when and pondered the borrowing ideas in quilting.

When I returned to quilting in 2009, I scoured the internet for tutorials and ideas.  Pinterest appeared in 2010.  I pinned all sorts of lovely work by others, longing to make it for myself.

The often debated, highly vague definition of modern quilting from the Modern Quilting Guild acknowledges building on something that came before.

Some quilt bloggers share tutorials for the methods they use to create quilts. From choosing fabric and pattern to binding the finished quilt, every step of the way can be found on the Quilternet.  Quilt patterns are sold on Etsy and Craftsy. Fabric manufactures provide free patterns.  Yet, almost every single possible layout, step, and technique around is a variation on one done by those crafters that came before us.

While enjoying the music compilation of Axis of Awesome's Four Chords, I remembered Duane Allman's biography discussing how he used his big toe to control an LP as he practiced hours and days and weeks to recreate each note, each lick, each nuance the blues masters made that connected with his soul.  (picture of Duane included just to make my heart flutter)



Is anything original?  Kirby Ferguson proposes in his Ted Talk that only The Big Bang is original. 

My Quilts are copies.  MY COPIES! 
While the colors and fabric are usually my choices, the pattern and quilting are usually adaptations of things I've seen others do.  While I rarely (never) follow written patterns, I sketch the basic blocks or layout for myself and work from my own sketch. 


So I want to say thank you my inspirations.  Many are bloggers.

 According to Charles Caleb Colton:

 "Imitation is the sincerest [form] of flattery".

My first five quilts are just variations of work done by decades of quilters before me:   4 x 4 blocks, bow ties, Log Cabin blocks including the red center square to represent the heart of home. Irish Chain layouts, and half square triangles.  The basic construction tools every quilter brings to a quilt.  

These quilting basics are the licks the master guitarist brings to the craft.  The code the programmer brings to the computer that gives us Pinterest...


Quilt 6 - Kaleidoscope quilting was taught to me by a friend, who had seen it somewhere...skills passed through old-fashioned personal interaction!

Quilt 8, 11, 12, 22, 41 - scrappy use of leftovers taught to me by my Grandmother.

Quilt 9 is my copy of an advertisement for fabric.  I believe was a Hofman's Bali Batiks ad.  And there is not one batik in my quilt.

Quilts from quilts featured in print publications - magazines and books:
13,14,16,23,24,25,31,47,48
Thank you Amy Ellis, Fons and Porter, and the best book ever...You Can Sit on My Quilt.

Quilt 7 was my first internet steal.  I recently read my favorite quilt and stitch blogger  Chawne @ Completely Cauchy began blogging in the simpler Quilternet age.  I have been fascinated with, inspired by and down-right copied this woman's work. 

Other quilts I saw on the internet and I sketched my outlook of the quilt including creations by award winners, SAH Mom's, newbies and treasured instructors.  Some of my quilts look nothing like the originals, but were inspired by something I saw...


22 Other Quilts from Internet finds!!
15, 17,20,27,29,32,33,34,36,37-46,49,50 & 51!

I wish I knew just who I stole this from!  It has been so long ago, I've lost my bookmark to the inspiration! :-(

Internet tutorials are wonderful.  They gave me Rachel's Bottled Rainbows that I used to teach My Man's daughters how to sew.  Look at Abi go!! She stayed up all night that first night making her squares.  A memory I treasure.  And just doing what other's have done before her...
So...what is my point?  I quilt.  It helps me deal with every day.  I appreciate other people who share their craft because it inspires me to do what helps me express and heal myself!   

I suppose my point is:  

Everything is built on something that came before it.

Including quilts... especially quilts?

Scrap Time!

Crazy things happen when scraps are involved.  This is the story of the crazy scrap quilt that just is sorta happening in my head and hands with nothing on paper. No plan, just color and texture.  

So, I made a failure quilt.  It was a good idea, but not enough care was taken working on the bias...but this is the story of the scraps. I feel responsible that all scraps must be used because that was how I was raised. Even looking at this quilt makes me dizzy now.  I only ripped and restitched twice - because I realized NOTHING was going to make this straighten out! 



My grandmother saved every little thing. Raising 5 kids while running a farm all by herself through the depression, making do and reusing was how a person survived.  My grandmother sewed dresses she designed from the Sunday Atlanta Journal advertisements for her own mother and the other ladies in the county. Every scrap could be used for her own kids clothing or at least a quilt or potholder.


I was eight years old, driving that old lady crazy in the summer as her youngest grandchild, a little 'town girl' full of energy and running wild, she tamed me (a bit) with her scrap box.  Teaching me to sew bonded the two of us forever.  

Something wild and crazy is happening with some yardsale black linen like fabric and the scraps from the failure quilt.

 Having fun.  And it may fail just like the original quilt, but dang, this is fun.  



I don't have the leisure to post of WIP Wednesday, or Finish It Friday like the full time Quilt Bloggers, but I do these things on my own crazy time line!  Thanks for visiting with me!

Quilt 34 January 2014

Southern Scrap Party Quilt


Not surprised I have generated an odd variety of quilts during 2014.  As the year closes out, any glance at my Google Calendar calls to mind the pendulum swings of emotion the Earth made me spin through. 

Swing high to the positive side = travel to new places!  Swing high to the negative recalls an important relationship falling apart due to misunderstanding and lack of nurturing.  Swing to the positive again to find that work and love does repair relationships and make them stronger.

The pendulum swung me far and wide about the earth.  I even made it onto Google Maps - Amsterdam.  That's me, waving at the tiny Google Pic Car. We spent the vast majority of the day sitting there on the canal, so it is very appropriate we are still sitting there in Street View. I'm still there in my mind some days this year.  

Swing to the negative to find other important things falling apart as I used my time and energy down to the bone.

Ekk!  Enough already. 

 I am glad my pendulum is still swinging while I piece my life back together by cutting up pretty fabric, ugly fabric, old fabric, new fabric and stitch it together in new form with new function in the way it pleases ME.  

Our local attempt to gather Modern Quilters in Savannah is one of those things that sadly fell apart this year.  I started quilting alone and I will continue alone.  Apparently, organized Modern Quilting is falling apart across the country.  With all the rules, standards and aesthetic arbitrarily being applied without consensus rocked over 1000 quilters when their work was omitted for inclusion at Quilt Con.  I'm not one of that number.  I don't dare put my work out in such a way to sit side by side with quilters who have more of something  - talent, time, skill, creativity, money, whatever it is.  This quilt is pieced with left-overs, remnant bin finds, boxer shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt! Definitely NOT THE MODERN QUILTING GENRE! 


So with those thoughts generated by the hamster spinning the wheel in my head, you see my first installment of the Year in Quilts. 


January Quilt # 34 A Gift given and received!  

A friend for life since 3rd grade gives joy to my soul. This Southern Scrap Party quilt now warms her new Charleston home. We share relationship pendulum swings, Macon Mental Health Runs and Allman Brothers music.  Then and now.  

Now for the self juried & back patting awards for this single quilt show for January 2014.  

Best Use of Scraps, Best ROYGBIV for the month, Best Quilt to Listen to Music Under while Drinking Beer with Best Friends, and best Omission of Expensive Designer Name Quilting Fabric.  Look at me go!  I now have four blue ribbons!

And an Honorable Mention for Pretending to Be A Chevron.

Finished On Friday

Quilts #31 and #46

The first Friday night of the fall without High School Football and Marching Band?  
It is time to finish things!

Quilt Number 31 has languished over a year with top complete and sandwiched with a true scrappy backing.  The colorful small boxes were quilted easily with straight lines and spirals.  Then...

Back in January I tentatively started doing some FMQ on the background squares, even though I was still in the practice stage. Horrified by my product, I bundled the lovely top with its awful quilting away, half done. 

  

Fall Boxes was inspired by a Jenny Retwig quilt pattern featured in Quilter's World back in Autumn 2013.  I cannot find a single image on the internet for the original quilt!  I wonder why?  I adored it.

Creating the top was joy.  Cutting perfect squares of all sizes in a lovely array of solids on hand in my so-huge-to-be-scary stash made me happy. 

Tonight, I decided to accept my poor quilting skills in order to call it a completed work.  No rip out and do over.  Life doesn't work that way.

As the final seven squares are quilting, I accept that I'm not neat or skilled or meticulous.

And I'm happy to have another quilt to keep, or give to a friend who says they love it, just really want to have it.

Quilt 46

Quilt Number 46 was inspired by the quilt displayed in MGQ Showcase at the International Quilt Festival this fall.  Pick Up Sticks by Becky Goldsmith fired my brain for a way to use up the small bag of light blue strings left over from other projects and bindings.  

There was no measuring, there was no pattern.  It was improvisational fun.  

You can see Quilt Number does NOT look like pick up sticks.  

More like crazy diamonds.  

I happily dropped the free motion foot back in the basket to spend time with my old friend, Walking Foot.  Familiar ground!

My phone was not cooperating with the snapping of pics Saturday afternoon and I had to hurry on to a Christmas Parade rather than problem solve. I will update this post perhaps today as I rake leaves with the finished quilts in the December sunlight.

 If you visit my blog, please share what you were working on this week! 

It is nice to know I'm not the only person home quilting on Friday nights. 

Minty Intersection Update

Sleepless, coughing, stuffy head feelings need to go away!  

Two naps and a set of graded papers have me feeling more alive and in the mood to clean up the house. 

Step one - get Intersections off the floor so I can vacuum!

Minty colors are not often on my palate, so this project has been a joy to spend time on. Strange paisleys, flea market finds from the 60's or 70's and new fabric like the butter soft Michael Miller gray have made me happy.  

The blue was discarded from this project and used up in my chevrons. 

 Haven't made many quilts without blue.

It didn't take very long to trim and assemble the squares.

The awesome tutorial at Film In the Fridge was easy to figure out as well as tweak for the precut squares I had abandoned months ago. 

Snapping a few pics on a warm sunny day prompted me to walk in the leaves...

that need to be raked!

A project for a day my head isn't pounding.

Step two -  nap number three, under a quilt on the couch. 

Wish I Instagramed so I could share this with the #fitfquilts group.  

If you visit my Intersections, please leave me a post, just say Hi.  Even if you don't like the quilt, just send me get well wishes!

Etcetera Fiesta!

Christmas came early for me when my friend Shelia shared years of her Etcetera Fashion fabric swatches!

Pink and Blue and Teal and Green and lovely textures in every shade.

Some are sheer, knit, wobbly.  A huge change from sturdy 100% cotton, but I so want to create something lovely from these for Shelia, a lady with a lovely sense of style.  

So I hauled out the Easy Knit stabilizer I had on hand to use for a T-Shirt memory quilt .

(Note to self:  MUST start on that soon!)

 I placed the tiny lovelies on a small section of pellon and ironed them down. I decided some of the knits needed 2-D support, so they have two layers of backing. 

Pinks were popping at me so I started there.

Auditioned several whites, grays, and taupes to complete the block.

Moda Grunge was the winner.  I seem to be the only person buying off that taupe gray grunge bolt at my fabric store, but I don't care...I like it and that means more for me to play with!

With thanks to the very first blogger I started following, 

I'm reusing a scrap-tacular  block assembly she shared in 2011.

Anyone with experience working with non-cotton fabrics, please share input! 

I know this will be a NO-wash quilt, for sure.