Tag: hand quilting

Yoko’s Garden

I’m still in a red mode with Valentine’s Day on the horizon.  

Lately I’ve been finishing some projects that have been in progress for a while…I miss playing with art quilts and story quilts, but finishing some of these has been satisfying.

The one that I finished yesterday is Yoko’s Garden.  Several years ago I was inspired by some deliberately irregular polygons that Yoko Saito had appliquéd in one of her quilt books.  

I cut some freehand hexagons from a collection of Japanese woven fabrics I had in shades of taupe and appliquéd them to a remnant of an old linen sheet.  I love the soft neutral palette, but felt it needed a zinger, so I added a flower using a bit of a red cashmere coat I had felted.  For several years, this piece has been spilling out of baskets here and there when I needed a touch of red.  

This year in December I needed something to stitch with red in it.  I picked up this piece, layered it on a bit of wool (not wool batting, but a piece of felted wool) and began hand quilting.  I enjoyed that process through lots of tv time in December and January, added a binding and label, and I have a finished piece.  The final piece measures 15” x 20”.

Hearts were cut freeform and positioned randomly.

Progress on red hearts is going well.  Here, on the 8th day of February, you see the first 8 hearts.  These are scattered over the linen tablecloth.  I’ll fill in with more small hearts and add some embellishments, too.

I’m enjoying planning embellishments keeping in this beige/brown/red color scheme.

And let me just say, stitching on linen is so delicious!

108

In the last couple of years, I’ve been obsessed with circles. 

One of my explorations dealt with blue and white circles appliquéd to a brown linen tablecloth.  For all these projects, I didn’t count the circles…just made them until I thought I had enough.  I laid the blue circles on the brown linen until I liked their distribution, pinned them in place, and started appliqueing them.  

I wanted to hand quilt this larger piece using the seed stitch.  I love the texture that stitch gives.  I’ve used it on smaller pieces a lot, but wanted to see it on a big piece.  I used Aurifil #12 thread, stitched a double seed stitch overall though only the top and batting.  Then I added a backing layer (a piece of an indigo overdyed linen sheet) and stitched through all three layers with the same thread around the circles. 

I never had a title in mind for this as I worked – I presumed one would come to me.  My working title was “blue circles on brown”.  That could have worked for a final title.  But as I neared the end of the stitching, I decided to count the circles.  107.  That could work..it’s a prime number and I like those.  But, I needed a label on the back.  If that label was a circle, I’d have a total of 108.  108 has meaning in my life and I love for the quilt title to have meaning.  

I grew up in Turner County.  During the years I was learning to drive, our county’s number was 108.  So, the title of this quilt was born.  

Between 1957 and 1970, county codes were used as part of an auto’s car tag.  The first numbers on the tag were based on the respective population of the county.  Out of 159 counties in Georgia, my home was 108th in population those years.

Notice that on the label, I used some of the trims I’ve recently dyed with black walnuts.  It’s tempting to “save” those precious bits we made or altered, but I’m in the business of using them.  Here the tatting that took the dye so well borders the 108th circle.  Oh, and the fabric circle is cut from the center of the napkin with the embellished corner.

I made Dots and Vines, which you’ve already seen, stitched some circles on a bit of linen for a scarf, and made these blue circles and appliquéd them to a remnant of a brown linen tablecloth. I have lots of prepared circles waiting to become part of another quilt, too. The post on Dots and Vines is here.

I guess this little brown linen pillow with buttons attached fits the circle category, too.

I’ve referenced my love of the blue and brown connection before. One post describing a rolled up quilt exploration is here. And a sweet little case I found that’s blue and brown and toile and bows is here.

This finished quilt measures 40″ x 60″, a lap quilt for reading or watching tv. And, yes, for napping.

School Days

One of my projects completed in 2020 was this School Days quilt made of wool and entirely hand stitched.

I had a delicious length of wool in a subtle plaid (thank you, Mary, for this glorious gift) that I wanted to use for the background.  I love the schoolhouse block, but it’s traditionally a pieced block.  I didn’t want to cut up this wool and sew it back together, I wanted to appliqué.  So I refashioned the traditional pieced block into an appliqué pattern.

The lines in the plaid meant I wouldn’t have to mark anything if I made the schoolhouses the right size to fit within the repeat of the plaids.  So a little measuring and planning, and I was ready.

I selected 20 different wools from my collection and ironed freezer paper templates on to the squares.  From that point on, I had a perfectly portable project needing only needle, thread, and thimble to work anywhere.  

I even laid the houses out on the background to get a pleasing distribution of color and pinned a swatch of fabric in each house’s position so I would know what went where.

I stitched each house to the wool using a whip stitch and thread (usually perle cotton #12) to match the house.  

When that was done, I layered it with a piece of hand-dyed linen on the back, pinned it in place, and began quilting.  I didn’t use batting – I thought the bulk of the wool-on-wool quilt was enough with a lightweight back.  I used 12 wt Aurifil thread for the quilting and found it a delight to pull though the  buttery wool fabric.

Again, I had nothing to mark, just stitched along threads in the plaid. It was sheer delight to have one spool of thread, a pair of scissors, a needle and thimble, and pick up and sew.  Relax, relax, relax.

Having no batting meant no where to hide the knot, and “popping” wasn’t easy either.  So, in another connection to past methods, I left the tails loose as if the quilt were “tied”.  But my ties are on the back, not the front.

When it came time to add a binding, I didn’t.  Add one, that is.  I cut the backing 1” wider than the top, folded over, folded over, stitched down.  That’s the way our grandmothers did it, and now I know why.  It’s lots easier than cutting, pressing, stitching by machine with mitered corners, then hand stitching down.  I will continue the latter process on most quilts, but bringing the back to the front on this one was a pleasure.

This was one of the quilts I carried on our photo trip to Indian Springs.  Some of these photos were made there, some in our front yard.  The finished size is 36” x 48”.