White Fences Quilt

I started this quilt in 2012, the same year I started quilting. I sketched it out all cute on a sheet of graph paper.  I still remember waiting in line at my local quilt shop with the two bolts. I cut out about half the quilt. I even started sewing.

I had some notion of this quilt being inspired by those beautiful horse fences you see in Kentucky, I think.

Then I got distracted by something shiny.

The pieces sat in my work in progress box. Every time I saw them I thought about getting back to that quilt.

The years past, so much changed. I made lots of quilts. We grew up a lot. I looked at this quilt in my sewing room and thought about finishing it. I think we all have seasons in our lives where we look back and realize that we passed some developmental stage during that time. Between 26 and 30 I feel like I became an adult. Not in the, now I can pay my bills kind of way, or even, the I can't be goofy and have fun kind of way. I mean my priorities shifted and my outlook changed. I was looking for a place in the world, I stopped waiting for "real" life to happen and started living my life.

That whole time I would occasionally look at the pieces of this quilt up and think, I will finish this someday, not now.

Then, in my 30th year,  everything changed again. We bought a house. We moved to another town. We reached another life milestone.

New years eve of this year, I was cleaning my new sewing room in my new, much loved house (actually it is a really old house) and I saw the pieces of this quilt and I knew it was time to finish it.

I finished it that night while drinking champagne (no joke).

I quilted it the next day.

It was time finish this quilt. I just didn't know that I was waiting until I was home.

Quilt Stats:
Name: White Fences
Size: 67" x 68"
Pattern: Designed by a 2012 version of me
Quilting: Organic grid with Aurifil thread
Finished: January 2016

The Softest Quilt.

I seem to only find myself in this space when I am procrastinating or I have abandoned my daily routine. I could apologize for that, but I think you all get it. So pull, up a chair, I am drinking a pot of tea and ignoring chores right now.

I am not going to say, "I am just so busy." I reject that generally for myself. I have made choices that keep me away from this blog and I am okay with that. I could make different choices, but, for me, just coming here occasionally is the right choice for now.

I have a new house that is tons of work. I have full time job that is more than just a day job, it is a career that requires me to invest myself in it physically and mentally. I have a husband that deserves some of my time. I like to eat. I like to sleep. It is a good life.

Anyway, enough of your complaining Sarah! This is a quilting blog.

I still sew almost everyday. I still like blogging and sharing. So, I still have a quilt to share!

This quilt. Is the most comforting quilt I have ever made.



Last summer was not a good time for me. I had a huge deadline at work. We were buying a house that was under construction. And oh, our lease for our rental ran out and we had nowhere to live. Now, do not feel sorry for me! We have tons of lovely friends and family and the means to rent something short term and move our stuff into storage. It was stressful, not catastrophic.

At the end of July, we had to move out of the tiny house we had lived in for the past five years and move everything we owned into a storage unit. Then move ourselves (and very cranky cat) into a coworker's house (aside: the very best coworker in the whole entire world!). Then the next day I had to leave for a business trip.

It was a tough time.



Like many people, I lost all of my inspiration. I just did not have the energy to think (also, most of my supplies were packed away in a storage unit). Before I moved I put all of the double gauze I owned into bag and then I started this quilt. This is the softest quilt I have ever made. It is not complicated. I didn't plan it out, I just started making hearts (using this awesome tutorial). Then I cut a bunch of squares 5.5 inches tall and random widths. I knew that I didn't want to worry too much about aligning seams or keeping angles perfect, because double gauze is shifty stuff and it would be futile.

The fabric is a mix of Cotton & Steel, Nano Iro, and some random Japanese brands. I didn't worry about matching or even trimming selvedges.


Then it was a quilt top. I backed it in this perfect soft cotton lawn with some fun hot pinks, because I love hot pink. Quilting was simple and relaxing too, just random straight-ish lines. It was the first quilt I basted and quilted in my new house. It felt like magic.

Before I washed it, I noticed I had a fray in a seam (double gauze...). I didn't want to worry too much about that so I used some fray check and an awesome patch with some visible mending.



This quilt was therapy. Now it travels with me when I go on work trips and I can snuggle under the softest quilt.

Friends. Thanks for bearing with me on this long post. Sometimes the words just need to come out.

Love ya.



Quilt Stats:
Name: Softest Quilt
Size: No idea, small throw
Pattern: Simple patchwork with lovely hearts from Cluck Cluck Sew's tutorial
Quilting: Simple grid with Aurifil thread (white)
Fabric: Primarily Nano Iro and Cotton & Steel double gauze, Heather Ross Tiger Lily Lawn on the back.
Finished: September 2015

Northern Flicker. A Quilt and a Bird.

The Northern Flicker. 

(Colaptes auratus)

photo by Kent Keller (utahbirds.org)

"Northern Flickers are large, brown woodpeckers with a gentle expression and handsome black-scalloped plumage. On walks, don’t be surprised if you scare one up from the ground. It’s not where you’d expect to find a woodpecker, but flickers eat mainly ants and beetles, digging for them with their unusual, slightly curved bill. When they fly you’ll see a flash of color in the wings – yellow if you’re in the East, red if you’re in the West – and a bright white flash on the rump." - The Sibley Guide to Birds

Hiking in the mountains of Santa Fe, my husband and I heard the noise of flickers knocking on the trees. Two male flickers were fighting about something just above the trees. They are beautiful birds all spots and stripes with bright flashes of red.

Flickers are Derek's favorite bird. They are one of my favorites too. When Derek and I were dating we were both living in (separate) off campus houses with friends while we were undergraduates at the University of Denver. The houses were only a few blocks from each other and I remember many walks between those houses in the residential neighborhood around DU. In the early morning and in the early evening the flickers would come out to hunt.

Walking in the New Mexico mountains with Derek ten years later, the flickers were still fighting, hunting, and scavenging. Derek and I are still walking.

Sometimes you see something and you know it needs to become a quilt. I knew my flicker quilt was not going to be a literal bird quilt. I wanted to try to capture the colors and movement in the birds feathers. I just started cutting fabric and sewing it again. Triangles and circles, to make stripes and dots. I wanted the quilting to be irregular and organic. 

I gave this quilt to Derek and he promptly wrapped it around himself. Later I found it in his office. I think he likes it. Flickers are his favorite bird.

Quilt Stats: 
Name: Flicker
Size: Approximately 65" x 70"
Pattern: Improv, with lots of straight lines, but no pattern.
Fabric: So many scraps....
Quilting: Organic lines with the walking foot using Aurifil thread
Finished: January 2015

Why I quilt and #quiltconreject

Why do we quilt?

Why cut up fabric and sew it back together? Why do we do elaborate things with fabric when we could just sew together simple squares and the final product would be just as warm?

Quilting is a meditation for me, a meditation about creation. It is something I devote time and energy to because the craft makes me feel good.

I was reading Uppercase Magazine (January 2015, Issue 24), editor Janine Vangool interviewed Denyse Schmidt. In this interview Schmidt discussed why she started quilting, "The tangible record of time and effort I held in my lap, versus the ephemeral nature of what I produced day to day was a revelation."

That is it.

Sometimes a quilt is not designed or pieced, it is built block by block. I feel a little like a mason building a brick wall. It is not improv, per se, I used rulers and traditional blocks with precise point. It was a journey, I did not know what the finished project would look like until the end.

I chose traditional blocks to reference our heritage as quilters. I am so proud of my quilting fore bearers and I like to think they stitched up beautiful designs both for the practical and aesthetic reasons. Just like me, beauty was created for beauties sake. The quilting is done by both machine and hand. It felt important to make this personal quilt even more personal by adding handwork.

It also felt important to take my time. Quick quilts and easy patterns have their place (I personally love them!). A quilt that takes time is special, it means something when you stop and contemplate your work. We don't have to do this. If I needed a blanket, I could sew some squares together (something I have done and loved), but devoting oneself to a project gives it more meaning. It is almost like I stitched part of myself into this quilt.

I put my name on the front of this quilt. It felt so permanent and personal. It is also a statement on the art and craft of quilting. Quilting is an art that generations of women have perfected and loved, it is also an art that has often been ignored and under valued (I am sorry men, not trying to leave you out, but quilting has been long considered women's work and has been undervalued in the way that tasks considered "feminine" often are). Stories of finding intricately pieced antique quilts with no name or date are so common. On a quilt that is all about the maker and the process of making should include placing the person on the front with the design.

This quilt was rejected from Quilt Con 2016.

I am not going to lie and tell you I was not disappointed. I poured my heart and soul into the construction of this quilt. It was a passion project that took me weeks and months to complete. I do not, however, make my quilts for showing. I made this quilt because I had something to say, I needed to make this quilt.

I know that many fantastic quilts were accepted and rejected from the show at Quilt Con and I try not to derive self worth from a jury decision. Sure, it still stings. I am writing this here in case you were rejected from a show. I think it is okay to admit to being bummed. We want to be cheerful cheerleaders for our buddies who are showing quilts and the craft that we love! You didn't submit a quilt unless you loved it and believed in it. It is hard to hear a "no".

The good news is, this quilt lives in my house and I still love it. I am happy with my concept and design and I would not change a thing.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Why I Quilt 

Size: 65" x 70"

Pattern: my own, many traditional blocks included...

Fabric: Many stash fabrics, mostly from the scrap bins (as an aside, how do these bins never look smaller!)

Quilting: Straight lines by machine with Aurifil and hand quilting using Finca thread and some Aurifil Floss. 

Finished: August 2015

Reunited and Happy 2016.

Dear Blog,
I am writing this letter because I miss you. I miss posting my finishes. I miss checking in with my works in progress. I miss being connected. I am writing this letter because I didn't know how to come back after being gone for so long. I didn't know how to catch up with the months that we missed. There have been ups and downs. Incredible things have happened and then, I didn't blog. I am so sorry. I am writing this letter because I want to come back to you.

Let me start with a bulleted list of the THINGS that have happened in since I have been gone. I do my best work in lists.

THINGS: 
1. I turned 30. This is a big milestone. I am out of my twenties. Time to adult like a pro (higher level amateur?).

2. We bought a house. It is nearly a hundred years old and was under renovation when we bought it. That all means that less than two weeks after my 30th birthday Derek and I moved out of our rental and into a storage unit/friend's house. The friend's house was nice, but the experience was simultaneously the worst and scariest thing I have ever done. The house is pretty much done now (if a hundred year old house is ever really done). It is now glorious and feels like one of the best decisions we have ever made since we decided to get commit ourselves to each other (5 years ago this year!).

3. My job got so stressful. It also got more rewarding. Probably related.

4. I have the best sewing room in the world now. Sorry other sewing rooms out there. Mine is the bomb (also sorry it is not pictured, might need to be the subject of another post and some camera time).

5. I finished some of my favorite quilts ever and then, just like that, I lost all my creativity. I think the energy went straight into the house and the job. It took several months and some real work to find my creative fire again. I only have photos of six finished quilts from 2016 (mostly terrible photos), but I think upon my current count I have actually finished at least ten. That is certainly less than last year, but pretty decent for a year where we moved and I have had been more busy at work than ever before. The real shame is that I have only blogged about three of these! I am so sorry blog.

I am going to stop my list there. I feel like a I need a fresh start. I might try to blog about some of the missing finishes, but I know you will understand if I let them go and free myself from that burden. It is a new year, we are finally living in our new house, and it is time to come back together.

Reunited and it feels so good.

Love and kisses,
Sarah

PS - No resolutions or words right now. I am just so happy to be here and I just want to enjoy this year and see where this trip around the sun takes me. I know you understand.

Dear Baby, You are Loved.

Dear Gwendolyn,

I had a hard time starting this letter; there are just so many things I want to say to you. I know you are just a little one and it will be years before you can understand these words that I type.

Let me start with the easiest thing, you are so special little one, so loved, and so precious.

Your parents are pretty great. I mean, you are a pretty lucky little one. I know they will be there for you forever. I know this because I know them. I have known your mom many years before the beginning of your time. She is the best. I have known your dad for some smaller number of years before your time, but he has proven to be a pretty awesome guy too.

I know your parents probably have many hopes and dreams for you little one, but let me add a few. I hope that you have a happy childhood, full of tire swings, time machines, daydreams, and fairy tales. I hope you experience sledding down hills at top speeds, climbing mountains, waking up to clear bird calls in sun filled tents, and hearing echoes. I hope there are flowers, mud, and bugs. Eating warm wild strawberries, dandelion necklaces, mosquito bites, bicycles, macaroni and cheese.  Mud puddles and rainbows, tree houses, story telling, legos, and cold mountain lakes.

I dream that you will grow up confident and happy. I dream that you will have convictions and beliefs and that you will keep them and change them as you find you need to. I dream that you will be a girl who knows she is strong and woman who knows she is stronger. I dream that the world you live in accepts you for who you are and treats you as an equal.

Most of all, little one, I dream and hope you turn out a lot like another little girl and woman I admire a great deal, your mom.

Sending warm love and kind regards. May the force be with you.

Sarah

PS - I am sorry if this is a little cheesy, but real like can be like that.

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: A combination of paper pieced pattern set at random. Strawberry by Sew-ichgo, paper crane by Kitten’s Mittens, mushroom and gnomes by Artisania, and paper airplaine by Quiet Play.

Fabric: Assorted stash fabrics, Heather Ross, Alison Glass, Carolyn Friedlander, Joel Dewberry, Bonnie and Camille, among others…

Quilting: Shell pattern with white Aurifil

Size: approximately 40” x 40”

Finished: March 2015

Bacon Punk

I had trouble putting words on this screen to talk about this quilt. 

It is everything I love about a quilt. It is everything I love about quilting. 

Recently, I have been trying to shift my quilting focus towards trying all the hard things. I want to look at patterns and designs and feel empowered instead of scared. I want sewing and quilting to feel like a journey. Personally, I believe that perfecting my craft is part of the fun and that you have to know the rules in order to break them. I am proud to consider myself a quilter within the tradition and I embrace my quilty forebears. Someday, we can sit down with a cup of coffee and I will share my opinion on all the divisions quilting (modern, traditional, art, oh my). For now I will just say, we are all quilters.

When I first saw Jen Kingwell's Steam Punk quilt, I loved it. But then, the little voice inside my head told me that I could not make that. It was too hard. Templates. Curves. Appliqué. 

On a whim, I went for it. I ordered the pattern, I ordered some acrylic templates. I opened my scrap bins. I combed through my stash.

Each block was an adventure. I didn't have a plan. I just started making blocks. There was some intense fussy cutting and a large number of cats (honestly because I have a lot of cat fabric in my stash, no particular design plan). 

Because rainbows. 

Then, all of a sudden, I had all of the blocks. 

Over a couple of work trips, I hand appliquéd. It seemed to go fast.

Scraps on the back. I guess we could call this improv?

It is not perfect, I could probably point out all the mistakes. It is mine and I am so proud of it.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Bacon Punk

Size: approximately 71" x 71"

Pattern: Steam Punk by Jen Kingwell

Quilting: Shell free motion quilting with Aurifil white thread

Finished: April 2015

Blue is a Happy Color Scrappy Quilt

I had trouble naming this quilt. I mean, it is just a quilt. It was not hard to make, I didn't spend a long time debating my fabric choices or patterns. But, I did enjoy every second I worked on this project. Sometimes just a quilt is just what you need.

We have had a tough couple of months in Bacon casa. No babies (at least ones that belong to us) or divorces, but life is full of ups and downs. Sometimes when you are THINKING so hard about everything in your life you need to enter your sewing room and not think at all. This is a project born out of my desire to meditatively cut fabric apart and sew it together. This is also a project born out of the fact that I could not close either of my two (two!) blue scrap bins. My two low volume scrap bins were also not closing anymore. My color choices were made for me.

Blue is also my favorite. A happy color for me.

I knew I needed something simple and I also needed to use small pieces (scraps, amiright). I did make some rules for myself. The best meditation is done within constraints. I could not cut yardage. In a pinch, I was allowed to use fat quarters. I was not allowed to think about placement. I cut. I sewed. I pressed. It took me less than a week to make this top.

My instagram friends and my husband both convinced me that bigger is better. So this is twin sized. I also decided I needed some quilts that fit beds.

I didn't want to think about quilting either. I also think this quilt demanded simplicity so I went for straight lines in a crosshatch. I didn't mark, just eyeballed the lines using the quilt.  I tried to play with thread color switching between blue and white Aurifil, but you can barely tell.

One of the best things about scrappy quilts are the little nuggets from other projects you find. There are gnomes, cats (so many cats), frogs, dots, bridges, birds. text, bicycles, metallics, flowers, and deer... to name a few. Did I mention this project had very few rules?

Just in case you want to make your own scrappy Irish chain (did I mention that this is an Irish chain?) here are some stats. I cut 2.5" squares for each of the nine patch blocks. The large low volume squares are 6.5" (unfinished). Each block is 6" square finished. It is 11 squares across and 15 squares tall (measuring 66" by 90", taller than my 6'1'' quilt holder).

So, my first true finish of 2015. I started on new years and had the whole thing done in January. Just blogging now. New years resolution is going well.

Sew Joy my friends.

I love you all and I promise life is going okay. I promise you I have some fun stuff planned. I am heading to Quilt Con in 11 days (!). I have a post planned about my quilts that are going to be hanging in the show and I have a fun blog hop coming up sewing with some gorgeous bright and happy Gina Martin fabrics.

Cheers! Let me know if you are coming to Quilt Con in Austin. I would love to meet everyone. I can be a little introverted, but I know that we will be friends because we all love quilting and fabric.

Quilt Stats:
Name: Blue is a Happy Color
Size: 66" by 90"
Fabric: Way too many to name, all the girls are here... the backing is Carolyn Friedlander's Widescreen in Yarrow (by Robert Kaufman)
Quilting: Straight line cross hatch with my trusty Aurifil in white and blue.
Finished: January 2015

PS - These photos were all taken at the Mast Farm Inn, Banner Elk, NC. Derek and I took a mini weekend vacation there this weekend to hike in the mountains and curl up by the fire. It is a charming, small (and romantic) inn, which I would highly recommend to my local (and not so local peeps) looking for a unique getaway.  We stayed in a renovated woodworking building, which was completely luxurious.

Cabin Couture: Michael Miller Challenge

I am writing this post from a hotel room in Tennessee. This trip is for work and it is pretty standard archaeology stuff... so I am tired physically and mentally. I thought I would use this hotel room time to catch up on some of my finishes that I have not blogged about. 

Welcome to Cabin Couture. 

I made this baby quilt for the Modern Quilt Guild's Michael Miller fabric challenge. The deal is, you sign up and they send you fat eighths of fabric. Then you make a quilt and you submit it to the judges. 

I am going to be real here, I did not love the pastel colors all together. I could not get inspired. We were supposed to use only cotton couture solids on the front. I loved the hand of the cotton couture. It is so soft. But I could not picture myself spending money on more of these colors I did not love.

So I got together some colors I did love and pulled out the pastels I loved. This combination was inspired by sunrises and warm days. I was trying to think about vintage quilts faded from years of use. 

I was inspired by traditional historic quilts. Simple and eye catching with clean lines. I want to make a really big one now....

The quilting is equally simple. These fabrics are so soft! This is a dreamy baby sized quilt.

It wasn't selected as a challenge finalist so it will go to a baby who will love it very soon, which is the perfect place for a quilt to go. I am pretty excited to hand this one off to a new baby! 

Quilt Stats: 

Quilt Name: Cabin Couture

Size: 40"x 40"

Fabric: Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids

Pattern: Log cabin

Quilting: Figure eight loops with Aurifil thread

Finished: November 2014