Quilting as Therapy

I have been swamped with year end stuff and the birthdays of several family members.  I always write my annual letter in January to avoid the confusion of the holidays.  This year I am rushed even more to get it done before my daughter's knee surgery.  I MUST get all this stuff done and my week already has two out-of-house days.

I am really finding out what my daily quilting does for me because I am not doing any right now.  What do you gain from quilting?  These are the things I treasure:

**The challenge.  There is always something to challenge our capabilities.  There is something     new to learn.  There is something new to try.  There is something to think about and puzzle out.

**I love the opportunity to be creative.  Design a quilt.  Design a quilting pattern.  Choose colors. Figure out how to put a quilt together both design-wise and technical-wise.

**Many quilting tasks require repetition where you have to pay attention with some intensity.  Even monotonus tasks leave me more relaxed when I finish.  The satisfaction of progress is a real upper.  As you go over the same thing time and time again your mind has time to wander and think about things in your life to the music of the motor.  

**There is pleasure and happiness in finishing a task or completing a quilt.  I love to go back to look at what I have done.  Sometimes I see things that need fixing, but mostly it is gratifying to see something accomplished and looking pretty.

After a session of quilting I am ready to quit for awhile - until the next day anyhow!  It somehow leaves me feeling a little like I do after good exercise session.  I find that the little worries of life go away for awhile, leaving me more willing to face and deal with them.

You have heard it before:  Work on a quilt and say goodbye you your therapist.  Works for me!

The quilt below is sitting on my machine waiting for attention.  I turned it over and the light from the window highlighted the texture of the quilting.  The other side has color, but the back is different sort of vision.  On the front some of the quilting doesn't show much, but the back says it all.

Quilting from the back.

Sew a happy seam this week.  I wish you joy in your quilting.

How Do You Make a Rhapsody Quilt?

I used to look at some quilts and wonder how on earth anyone could have sewn them.  On a whim I bought Ricky Tims' "Rhapsody Quilts," then discovered it meant doing a lot of machine appliqué, which I did not want to do so I closed the book and hid it in my library.  Some months later I picked up the book again and discovered that he does his appliqué with a machine blanket stitch.  I loved the look and tried it out with great success on my Bella Bella Blue quilt for the flowers in the center and corners.  I was ready for a new challenge.  Thus began the designing of my own Rhapsody quilt.  I will share an overview of the procedure for the interested and curious, but if you really want to make one of these quilts I highly recommend purchasing the book for in-depth directions as I do not intend to rewrite the book here.  There are no patterns...you must do your own.  Even my overview will take more than one post.

Initially I cut a square about 8x8 inches from freezer paper.  Size here is not critical as it will be used only for establishing the basic lines of a design.  I prefer a pencil and eraser rather than the computer for this process.  I folded the paper on the diagonal, shiny side inside, and drew a shape on the dull side to form a border line.  Then I drew a few lines below the border line, straight and/or gently curving.

TIP:  A mirror is helpful to see what the design will look like after the mirror image is transferred to the other side. 

When I liked what I had drawn, I refolded the diagonal line of the square so the shiny side is out and used the side of a fork to rub over the lines until they showed up on the empty, dull side of the square.  Remember doing that when you were a kid?  Magic!  Then I opened it up, traced the markings so they were more visible, and I had the main building block of my design.

TIP:  You have to rub the lines with enthusiasm and check often to see if the lines transfer.  They will be light, but should show enough to draw them accurately on the dull side of the paper.

TIP:  Remember that the diagonal line in my drawing is black like the seam lines.  In actuality it will only be a fold line and the elements that cross that line will each be cut in one piece.  Try it.  You will see what I mean.

Each line (except the diagonal) will be a seam so I checked carefully to make sure that all the seams and their intersections would be possible to sew.   It is important to plan out how to put this together, so I numbered the pieces in the order they will be sewn.  I also like to see what the design will look like when I put the four corners together so I scanned it into Illustrator and rotated copies of the corner to see the whole.  Mirrors work too.    

Finally, I transferred one corner of the design to a large piece of freezer paper, or two taped together, to equal 1/2 the measurement of the finished quilt.  This must be a perfect square.  I copied my lines freehand onto the large freezer paper folded diagonally just like on the little square.  I refolded it shiny side in, rubbed, and traced the design to the other dull side to complete the full-size square corner.  I added registration lines so I could line up the seams correctly...like notches in clothing construction.

TIP:  Allow an extra 1-2 inches outside the border to provide leeway when the quilt is done and ready to bind.  I missed that part of the lesson and I ran into difficulties at the finish line.

Give it try and see what it looks like.  It is fun.

Creativity and a Red and White Design

I am finishing the quilting on one quilt.  Another quilt needs to be blocked and bound.  A third one has been in the planning stages for 3-4 years, and I got started on it when I got stymied on the other two waiting for a couple of online orders to arrive.  You'd think all those UFOs would keep me busy enough, but the mind is a strange confusion of nerve connections and molecules, and they are always yelling at me, "What are you going to do next?"  I respond to my brain, "I don't know, but something will turn up, turn over, or arise from under the layers of my stash."  While one idea was formulating in the wings, I came across a Red and White Design Challenge tossed out by SewCalGal.  She is challenging her readers to create a new design and does not require that you make the quilt.  You can do that in Phase III if you choose to.  I am stimulated and inspired when the gauntlet is tossed onto my sewing floor.  I have to pick it up because my physical space is so limited.

The requirement is that the design be your own, but it must be red and white ONLY.  These are not really my colors, but I found the idea exciting and I have quite a few reds and white-on-whites in my stash.  You can use many shades of red and of white, but nothing else.  Below is what I came up with:

Red Galaxy

This quilt is all paper pieced using techniques for design and construction from "Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts" by RaNae Merrill.  I work on a Mac using Adobe Illustrator, which I like very much and because I think doing it with pencil and paper would be far more difficult.  I would have to own an eraser company.  I can also preview colors and fabrics on the computer, make changes quickly, and easily manipulate the design.

The finished quilt is 51 x 56.5 inches.  The Challenge rules also require that I post the amount of fabric needed so here it is:

Very dark red = 2 1/2 yards

Dark red = 1 1/2 yards

Scarlet red = 3 1/4 yards

Bright red = 1 1/4 yards

Dark pink = 1 1/4 yards

Light pink = 3/4 yard

Very light pink = 3/8 yard

White (can be various fabrics) = 2.5 yards

White for background (all same) = 1 3/4 yards

TIP:  Accept Challenges as they help you grow.  Try new colors as they expand your color perceptions.  Even when you don't win anything you learn new techniques, which you can use in other quilts.  You learn more about what you like to work on and what you are good at.  Sometimes you find out about things that you don't care about doing, and then you reevaluate and redirect your energy.

Orion Star

I loved the design of this quilt called Orion Star and found a bunch of batik fat quarters in my favorite colors.  This is one of those quilts that I did for the fun of it.  It is not hard and was great to take to a quilt retreat when you have noise and confusion around you.  I prefer not to have to think very hard in that venue.  I saw it in a magazine advertised as a quilt made with "Thangles."  Thangles are a method of making half-square triangles using pre-printed paper as a cutting guide.  You can learn about Thangles here and get the pattern and Thangles here.  Since I tend to jump in and get all wet before buying more stuff, I just designed it myself by looking at the quilt in the advertisement.  Mine is much smaller (about 36" x 48") than what they sell in the kit, but it served its purpose for me.  The biggest challenge was working on my design wall to arrange the colors in a way that pleased my eye.

TIP:  You can have a fancy design wall or use your bed.  I hang a flannel-backed tablecloth on my wall, flannel side out and use it.  It is easy to put up, take down and store, and it does the job just fine for very little money.

TIP:  Arrange the blocks the way you think you like them, then leave it for awhile.  Wander into the room now and then and look at it again, rearrange and go away again.  You can get a lot of house cleaning done or dishes washed during this process.  Do this for several days.  Fresh eyes see things that were missed.  When you are sure you are happy, crank up the sewing machine and sew it together.

I had gotten comfortable free motion quilting flowers with big, simple petals and that design served well on this quilt too.  More practice.  I still wasn't loving it, but I didn't want to pay someone else to do my quilt.  It takes motivation, determination, and lots PRACTICE, to get the hang of free motion quilting whether you are working on a longarm or sit-down machine.  Don't get discouraged.  It will come.