Three projects for 2011

I have had this post saved since January. It has taken me this long to pull together the photos. Sad, very, very sad. But I think getting my dissertation done is a good excuse!!

Finishing three quilting projects this past year has demonstrated to me that three is a reasonable amount of output to expect from me in a year quilting-wise. So I am putting my mind to finishing three more projects this year:

1) Penguin baby quilt. I picked out the pattern last fall when I found out I was pregnant. The main penguin fabric I bought years ago, probably before I started graduate school, so it is great to finally put it to use! This has a deadline of May 23, 2011 : )
I have started cutting the pieces but no assembly has happened yet.


2) Log cabin quilt for my husband. I started this quilt when we were living in Mexico in 2002-3. It is pretty far along, but I keep debating what the finished size should be and whether or not I need to make more blocks. I will make a firm decision on that this year, and get it done! Seeing as this year marks 15 years together, I think he should get a quilt, especially if the baby is getting one : ) [Forgot to take photos - I'll make a separate post once I pull everything out to work on it.]

3) This is a first for me, as I plan to START and FINISH this quilt in 2011! Whoa, getting a little bold here : ) This will be my first "kit" quilt - I bought the fabric as a bundle and the pattern from the same booth at the Houston quilt show this past fall. I think the colors are gorgeous and I have wanted to do a fat quarter quilt for a long time, so here goes!


Bonus) In pulling out the fabrics to take a picture of #3, I also found the pattern and fabric for a fourth project that I have been inspired to do. This project is actually speaking to me more right now than #3 is, so I thought I would add it as a bonus project. Who knows, maybe I'll start and finish two quilts this year for a total of 4 finished projects! (A girl can dream, right?)

Penguin quilt

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am planning to take on three quilting projects this year. Here is a preview of the first one -- a penguin quilt for the baby.

The pattern I am using, Penguin Party from the book Confetti in the Corner:


Fabrics for the front:


Fabrics for the back:


So far I have started cutting the fabrics. No assembly yet.

three, yes THREE, quilts finished in 2010

I wanted to post a summary of the three (!!) quilts I finished this year, since I am so so happy to have completed projects.

Exhibit 1: Girls of the World for my cousin Emily


I actually finished this top last, but thanks to the speedy quilting of That Quilter and binding by my friend nanann, it was completely done first! I mailed it off to the lucky recipient and heard that she wrapped her cute 6-year old self up in it on Christmas morning and explained to her grandmother that "C made it for ME!" (And for the record, my sister helped on the design and piecing of the top, so she needs recognition too!)
Also blogged about it here.

Exhibit 2: Sister's Choice, a wedding quilt for my sister

This one was quilted by a friend of my mother-in-law's in Montana. My mother-in-law sewed the binding on (she is in the picture on the left).
Here is a close-up of some of the quilting:

Original blog post here.



Exhibit 3: Troikas, a Russian quilt for me!

This was also quilted by my mother-in-law's friend. There is so much detail in the quilting -- I just love how it turned out, and it is currently on my bed!! (Troika is the Russian word for the sleigh depicted in the focal squares). My mother-in-law did the binding on this one as well. Here is the back:


Original blog post here.

I am now motivated to finish three projects in 2011 -- more on those soon!

My take on the 2010 Houston Quilt Show

Of course I took a picture of the penguin quilt! Feeding Time by Joyce O'Connell

I have gone to the International Quilt Festival in Houston every year since I moved here. I love it. It is so much more than traditional pieced quilts. It is an art show where the main medium is fabric and/or items that have been pieced together in the style of a quilt. (One year there was a "quilt" made out of squares cut from Coke cans, just to give you a sense of how far the boundaries of the term quilt are stretched.) It is inspiration. It is an explosion of color. It is a place to explore vendors from all over the country who have some connection to the craft of quilting (although there was a lot of scrapbooking crossover this year!) It is incredible and not to be missed if you find yourself in Houston the first weekend of November.

The main section of the show is the judged quilts, and attendees are encouraged to vote for what they consider to be their favorite quilt for the Viewer's Choice award. Here are my top three choices for Viewer's Choice:



Long Road Home by Peggy Parrott
This quilt had so much detail that everywhere you looked you found something new. I loved how the house in the lower left corner is in black and white (just like the movie) and how from there the quilt shifts to being in Technicolor. I also love how the Wicked Witch's dress forms the tornado.


Kirara's Walking Road in the Wood by Ayako Kawakami
This was another one that had so much detail that you kept seeing something new everywhere you looked. Every square is a house of sorts that has the quiltmaker's daughter in it somewhere, including a quilt shop! I also really liked the dimensionality and the see-through aspect of it. My sister loved the logs that formed the outer border.

And the one I ultimately decided on:

On a Quilted Breeze, entered by Nan Scott (but it is a group quilt)
The quilting on this was so cool and added so much to the quilt. There were fish in the sea and birds in the air and all kinds of other things you don't see right away on first glance. The sail though was the most amazing part - it is a quilt!

This piece was from the Text on Textiles exhibit and I wanted to highlight it because I love pieces that I learn something from. This piece in particular was a fascinating history lesson, conveyed as what I would call non-traditional memory keeping/scrapbooking.

Sarajevo Rose by Renelda Peldunas-Harter
It is the story of a woman's time in Sarajevo with the US Army and explains what a Sarajevo Rose is both in words along the outside of the quilt and with a visual picture (the red parts in the center of the quilt). So, so interesting.

Another finished quilt top!

I am so excited to have completed my THIRD quilt top this year. Yes, that's right I have finished 3 quilt tops this year, an absolute record for me, especially since I have only finished 2 other quilt tops in my lifetime!



This quilt is for my cousin. My sister and I planned it as a baby quilt for her when she was in fact a baby. We got everything done in a timely manner except the outside borders. Then as time passed and I hadn't made any progress on it, I decided that it would be more practical if I made it bigger. I figured out that I had enough fabric to enlarge it and then put it away again. I finally added the bottom third this month. My sister was in town this past weekend, and she helped me get the outside border on, the backing made, the quilt top ironed, and the threads trimmed and voila, it's done! It only took us six years -- my cousin will be 7 in February!

I am having it quilted on a longarm by That Quilter - I am excited to see what she does with it!

And because I finished three projects this year, I allowed myself to buy fabric for three more projects at Quilt Festival this year. Logical, right?

What I did on my summer break, Part 1

An astute eye will notice that the quilt is upside down in this picture - it's hard to get a good angle when it's so big! The picture is flipped below if you want to see it right side up.

I just finished reading Quilting Lessons, a book by a woman with a PhD in Native American Arts who is also a quilter. She suffered from writer's block many years ago and turned to quilting at the worst of it. This book describes how quilting actually helped her get out of the writer's block. I felt that it was hard to get into, and at the beginning I could only read it in bursts. Towards the middle, it was exactly what I needed to hear. I could have practically written one of the chapters on finishing (or not finishing) projects. The metaphors in this book are so rich! Below are some thoughts I wrote mid-way through reading.

I am a good shopper, planner, and starter, but not so good at the finishing process. That is why I made my word of the year “finished”, so that I would actually get some projects done. So far, I have finished four of my 16 items. One quarter of the list, but the year is halfway done. I have been feeling frustrated, trying to articulate why I can’t finish projects and trying to pinpoint my motivation. What I read today helped me see that I need to recognize the creative cycle and pay more attention to what I am getting done.

This book talks about how finishing in writing is a lot like finishing in quilting. There are spurts – times when you feel really amped about working, and get a lot done in what feels like a short period of time. And then there are lags, times when you put it aside and don’t come back to it for a long time. That is part of the process, something you come to expect and even rely on. Your project gets better in each of those stages, even though you wish you only had the spurts of productivity and not the long lags of putting things aside. I have put a lot of projects aside in the past and I am trying so hard to bring on a burst of productivity, but it is a slow process and I am easily frustrated.

On top of it all, I have been feeling 'meh' about the green border that I added to my Russian quilt, something I did in a recent bout of productivity. I was so excited when I found the fabric, but then not so excited once I saw it on the quilt. But the author gave me a new appreciation for that too. I started that quilt when my mom was sick, with fabrics in my mom’s collection, particularly the Russian troika fabric that she had purchased with me in mind. I picked the pattern a long time ago (8 or 9 years ago!), the fabric a long time ago, and committed to taking it on a long time ago. The bulk of the quilt is grounded in the past.

I did not choose everything though. The outer border, the binding, and the backing were still outstanding. As I finish it up, I have had to pull together these outstanding pieces at a time after a lot of loss and growth, maturity, and at a point where my tastes have changed, and I feel less into the act of quilting. This green border is a metaphor for all of these things, and a symbol as well. It is a lighter, brighter fabric that contrasts the dark toned fabrics in the main part of the quilt. Just like I am at a lighter period in my life, happier than during my mom’s illness, or the period after her death, and more at peace with where my life is going, the path before me, and the decisions I have made. It is a "scrapbooking" fabric, made by a scrapbooking company (Basic Grey) for Moda. So it also blends in my interest in scrapbooking that has grown since I started this quilt. It has a modern "grunge" feel to it, which contrasts with the old world feel of the troika fabric that is reminiscent of Russian lacquer boxes. Thus my dark, heavy quilt is contained by a light, modern border. I have emerged out of that point in life.

The backing comes from the leftover pieces from the original planning that I did. My mom’s excess in quilt fabric purchasing saves the day, just as she herself did so many times before. It is a reminder that my mom still provides for me, even a decade later, when I really truly need it. She will literally back me up in all my endeavors.


And the binding. Again from my mom’s stash, but not in the set of fabrics that I originally picked out. The perfect color combination that pulls all the fabrics together. A weird, wild, untraditional print, that looks like cells, the foundations of life, but a statement on the new growth that is beginning with the finishing of this quilt. Not something I would ordinarily pick out and certainly not something I would purchase for myself. It is symbolic of the unexpected that is to come. A reminder that what holds us all together is something unpredictable, outside of our comfort zone, but the perfect fit nonetheless. (Doesn’t that describe the future perfectly?) And it is also a fitting tribute to my mom who was definitely weird, wild, and untraditional in many ways.
I chose to go with the fabric on the lower left side.

I am trimming threads and pressing this week, with the goal of sending this quilt off for quilting by the end of the weekend! It will be the third quilt I have ever finished and the first top I have completed since my mom died. I am so energized by finally completing it, that I feel motivated to finish a lot more. Let's see if I can become a finisher.