First, Manhattan, Now the World, in Scrappy Quilts

Did you ever want to make a city quilt, but weren't sure where to start? I once trod in your shoes — but now I can help! 

Hot off the press, five years in the making, here's my new 96-page book, 'Scrap Cities: Joyful Modern Architecture-Inspired Quilts.' 

Cities are fascinating in a billion ways, and a quilter could spend a lifetime making city-themed quilts — which I feel like I just did (In fact it's only been about five years).

'Quilted New York,' the book before this one, took me a year bent over a smoldering keyboard, plus before that, happily shlepping around Manhattan, photographing every building (sidewalk, wall, bus, etc.) that struck my fancy. I had a blast, but drove my family, computer and left knee, nuts. What I got from it: meniscus surgery ($ thousands), a new computer drive ($ hundreds), and the following book: 

'Quilted New York, Celebrate the City with Fabric and Color,' was published  in December 2022. It's a love letter (with an occasional 'what the heck?' but a stronger word) to the city where I was born, and which gave my parents a shot at the American dream. 

While working on it, I collected material that applies to ANY city — and I sewed quilted cityscapes of Chicago, Los Angeles, and multiple fantasy locations. (Here's Chicago, for example.)

So, naturally, after finishing the New York book, I wondered, could I turn my mountain of leftover ideas, photos and projects into an any-city book? 

The task seemed infinite...I plodded...I experimented...the days rolled by (water flowing underground)...until a few weeks ago, when I realized it might be done. (The last building I added was this:

...based on this photo my friend Gail Solomon just took while travelling in Holland.)

What the two books have in common: A method for pressing raw edges to the back during piecing, instead of afterwards. This makes fabric buildings strong; when you finish piecing them, their trickiest edges are already neatly turned, you can easily and quickly appliqué them anywhere you want -- especially overlapping OTHER buildings, to replicate the magnificent clutter of big cities.

What's the difference between the two books?

- 'Scrap Cities' has instructions for 25+ buildings. Some are inspired by real buildings; some are pure fantasy. 'Quilted New York' has instructions for 11 structures, all inspired by real NYC buildings. 

-  There are NO quilt patterns in 'Scrap Cities,' although there are many examples and suggestions. You decide which buildings and how many to make. The book helps you brainstorm ideas and arrangements, to create anything from a 1-building pillow to a 3-building wallhanging, to a 12+ buildings bed quilt. 'Quilted New York' has two different quilt patterns for quilts about 60" square or larger.

 

- 'Quilted New York' encourages you to improvise, within limits. 'Scrap Cities' goes much further. It shows you how to use the book's patterns and ideas as a launching point to design and create your own buildings, whether inspired by a real one, pure fantasy, or a hybrid! There are sections on windows, roofs, stairs; curved buildings, triangle-based buildings, etc. This beach house-themed quilt is in the "stairs" section:

• 

'Scrap Cities' is unique in that it offers a variety of fun ways to create artist's perspective, using strategic cutting of geometric fabrics; and/or value choices; or literally adding a side-view onto a forward-facing building, to give it a  3-D 'wow' factor.

'Scrap Cities' also offers ways to incorporate fun novelty fabrics, for a baby or child's quilt, and/or for an eco-cities quilt; plant flowers, vegetables, chickens, your cat, etc., on balconies and rooftops! Below is a lush rooftop garden of Kaffe Fassett kale, serenaded by a violin-playing angel. It grows on a pieced zigzag plaid building that's a takeoff from real buildings shown in the book. The treehouse trunk is made with fusible raw edge applique, but the cabins are all turned-edge, and appear dimensional thanks to a simplified attic windows trick explained in 'Scrap Cities.' 

(On the lower left, riding the cable car are...The Beatles!) 

“Modern” in 'Scrap Cities' subtitle ('Joyful Modern Architecture-Inspired Quilts') has two meanings—the modern quilt movement, with strong graphics and simplification; and modern/contemporary architecture. 'Scrap Cities' projects take inspiration not only from what's formally called "modern" architecture, but also from elaborate Art Deco structures, turgid grey Brutalism, "postmodern" whimsy, and more! In the last category, here's Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce Street Tower in lower Manhattan, with  inexplicable yet charming stainless steel ripples.

And here's my version, made with an improv curves technique. (This could also serve as a river.)

Where to learn more about either of these books?

'Scrap Cities' in digital (PDF) form is in my etsy shop, here. Find the paperback in brick-and-mortar and online quilt and book shops, or in my etsy shop, here. 

'Quilted New York', (84 pages), is sold in paperback and digital form. In digital (PDF)  it's here. In paperback, buy it from quilt or bookstores, or directly from my etsy shop here.  

Interested in both? A digital bundle to purchase both, with $10 off the total price, is here. 

See more of my cityscape quilts on my website, here. And everything else in my etsy shop is at https://cathypstudio.etsy.com. 

Now that 'Scrap Cities' is finished, is another cityscape book in the making? I'm torn. I still have a few leftover patterns for Los Angeles buildings....

Which cities would you like to make in fabric?

Celebrate New York City! Make a Quilt!

My favorite things in life (aside from people) include most foods; most quilts made by someone other than me; and many aspects of New York City, which is sorta my ancestral homeland. 

So I am thrilled to announce that after a lifetime of gestation (plus a year of actual work), my book, "Quilted New York; Celebrate the City with Fabric and Color" is in print and available! 

Here’s the proof, my new book in my old hand, wearing my Dad's even-older ring (I think my grandmother gave it to him in the 40s). My Mom’s ring is on my other hand. I wish they were here, because New York City played a big role in their lives.

The book has detailed directions for making 11 structures inspired by iconic NYC architecture. There are two quilt patterns, one for this quilt, which I call "Color Block New York." (It can be about 70" square, more or less, depending on border choices.)

And for people with less wall space, there's "New York Condensed," which is about 60" square. 

My Dad's mother, a turn-of-the-century immigrant from Poland, settled in a one-room tenement apartment in Williamsburg (at 182 S. Third Street). Her husband abandoned the family, so she raised two sons alone, toiling at a sewing machine in a leather pocketbook factory. It’s such an irony that the sewing which wore her down brings her granddaughter so much joy. I understand how much luckier I am than her; the unconditional love she showered on us despite so many years of hard labor is one of the reasons I have the luxury of enjoying recreational stitching.  

My Mom was a death camp survivor from Radom, Poland, who moved to Brooklyn after the war. 

New York City gave both of them refuge and an excellent education. Dad earned an undergrad degree from NYU, and a graduate degree at Columbia U's Teacher's College; his tuition was paid by the GI Bill because of his combat service in WWII. I don't know how Mom paid for Hunter College, but it couldn't have been expensive, because it was public.

When I was in elementary school, we'd visit my Bubbie (grandmother), in that Williamsburg apartment. To my frustration, our parents absolutely forbade my brother and me from playing on the tantalizing fire escapes.

So New York always felt like my homeland. One building in my book is a tenement, complete with fire escape, in honor of Bubbie. (I took artistic liberties with the color).

It's my hope that the book will appeal not just to fans of The City, but also any quilter interested in portraying any city. 

First, because the book teaches my unique piecing technique for architecture, in which most raw edges are turned to the back during piecing, so you don't have to rip seam ends after the building's pieced. This method works well for all kinds of architectural appliques. 

Second, even though most of the buildings were inspired by particular New York structures, there may be similar buildings near you.

For example, the Empire State Building shares the wedding cake profile of many of its peers across the country that were built in the 1930s. Here's one of my depictions. 

The next structure was inspired by the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the edge-turning-during-piecing technique works particularly well for so many post-modern buildings like this that have cantilevered sections hanging out beyond lower sections, with no supports at the ends, an engineering as well as a piecing and applique challenge.

Making my version of the Freedom Tower (gold below) was a little like making pants, because the base piece was so long. Next to it is a purple-ized Chrysler Building variation, with arcs of triangles.

 

And so forth! The book invites you to either follow along with detailed directions, diagrams, and measurements; or if you prefer, improvise your own variations. 

Learn more about the book at my shiny new website, here. Where can you buy the book?

1. Ask at your local quilt shop. Tell them they can order it from me, or via the wholesaler Ingram Books. (If you ARE a quilt shop, please contact me for more information, at cathy.perlmutter@gmail.com)

2. Order it from a local bookstore: Go to Indiebound.org, and enter your zip code, to find a local bookseller who will order it for you (from Ingram).

3. If you'd like a signed (printed) copy; or a digital PDF edition, find both in my Etsy shop.

4. And, yes, it is on Amazon here, as well as other online booksellers. 

Please do feel free to email me with any questions!

Clean Your House by Reincarnating Your Freemotion Practice into Psychedelic Gifts!

I've been on mental vacation for the past couple of days, because I just wrapped up a couple of big projects.  So I started procrastinating the next big thing on my list by cleaning up my studio and selected portions of my home. 

But then I wound up procrastinating my procastination with this gift project idea, just in time for the holidays: Wall art/kitchen art/potholders from old freemotion quilting practice pieces! Here's some of what I've made so far, in the guise of cleaning up my house:

1. An oven mitt made from light-threads-on black practice pieces. 

2. A square potholder made from two different practice pieces: 

And a dark-thread-on-white fabric potholder, colored with  fabric markers:

And you can do this, too! It started with the oven mitt. While cleaning out a cupboard in my sewing room, I found a forgotton stack  of freemotion practice pieces, including this: 

(Here's the quilt it was practice for, made for my next book "Quilted New York".)

You can't see quilting in the black sky above because I used black thread, so that my imperfect freemotion quilting wouldn't detract from the piecing. 

But on the way to that nervous and maybe temporary solution, I did a whole lot of quilting practice on black fabric with conspicuous threads. One of the most striking was a variegated grey which fades in and out as it shifts from light to dark and light again.

Also in my cleanup efforts, I've been throwing out old potholders. This is poignant; I made most of them in the last millenium; but especially because of the one below, a factory-made oven mitt that my daughter decorated for Mother's Day circa 2010. I have loved it dearly, but after a dozen years it's disgusting, greasy, and has a dangerous bald spot. It had to go. But I don't own another decent oven mitt, and, well, this one's got my precious little girl's art on it! 

Fortunately, the spirits sent a solution: Reincarnate it. I turned it inside out and traced around it to make a paper pattern. 

If you don't own an oven mitt, you can just as easily trace around your hand. I suggest you make the pattern substantially bigger. My first paper pattern, below, is about 8" x 12", but that was a little tight - my next one will be closer to 9 or 10" at the widest. (The 12" length was good, and you'll see I made another one a little shorter, which was fine too.)

I used that to cut out two opposite oversized mitts from my black freemotion practice pieces. (The one on the left still had gaps where batting showed - the white areas - but I easily covered those with more black fabric and a bit more uninhibited freemotion quilting.)

Now the two oversized halves looked like this. I added one more layer of white freemotion practice pieces under them.

The reverse sides:

I placed black sides together, outlined the mitt pattern closely on the back of one side, pinned everything in place, and sewed on the line. 

Trimmed the seam allowance far back.  Also clipped deep into the angle between the thumb and the rest, cutting up to but not through the seam. 

Then came the hardest part: turning it right side out.  It was a long, unladylike battle involving chopsticks, a metal ruler, bicep-flexing and grunting. 

Eventually I got there, and beat my chest with joy while giving a Tarzan yell. (Never say I'm not ladylike.) 

The other side. (The wiggly wave is the new patch, a slightly greyer black fabric.)

Binding the bottom edge was the last step.

I found leftover quilt binding, and ran it around the bottom to determine length. Then I pulled it off, trimmed back the extra with a half-inch seam allowance, sewed the ends together, and clipped it back in position. 

Sew 1/4" from the edge. Convert your arm to a freearm if you can, to make this step easier. 

Then turn the loose edge inward and hand sew in position. 

Awkward, but doable. And voila, here's the finished mitt, side 1.

And side 2 

That was so satisfying that I made a shorter oven mitt from the same pattern, and a shorter quilting practice piece, with dark thread on white fabric. For this one, I only used one freemotion practice piece on each side (instead of the double layer I used in the black one). That made it a lot easier to turn and I think the protection is still pretty good.  

I followed that with the two square potholders you saw above. This one was made from practice pieces from two different quilts, one grey and one black. I cut their mutual edges straight across, and did a multi-step zigzag to unite them. Can you find the guy shooting out of a cannon? 

The other side features guitars, suns, and a large upside-down cat. The seams criss-cross each other in opposite directions. I added a fried-egg binding.

That led me to dig up more freemotion samples, in this case white ones, to make another square potholder. 

The reverse side had two different white practice pieces zig-zagged together, with the join covered by a strip of popcorn fabric. 

Compared to the others, this one seemed boring. Wouldn't it be great if that white fabric were rainbow-colored? Wait - I can do the coloring myself! (My little girl is now in grad school  and doesn't have time to color these new potholders just because her mother is having a nostalgia fit.)

I dragged out my extensive (and old) collection of markers, pencils and crayons, and tried coloring with all of them. My unscientific findings: 

• Fabric-tipped markers are much easier to color with than crayons or colored pencils. It's especially helpful if the marker has one narrow and one wider end. 
• Crayola washable markers were my favorite for lots of courage and minimum dexterity required, but unfortunately they're "WASHABLE," which means the color will vanish with washing! This can be a good thing if you're doing this project with a very young child who also wants to color themselves and the walls.
• I enjoyed using my old permanent Identi-pen fabric markers, Zig markers, and FabricMate markers. But all those sets were pricey when I bought them new, and they still are.

Marker and pen brands come and go, so I did a little online research and found many more choices these days! I was especially overjoyed to discover that Crayola now sells sets of  permanent fabric markers, and they are less expensive than most other brands. I headed for my local Michaels, expecting to find them easily. 

Michaels had at least three different sections with many brands of colorful permanent markers (fine art supplies, fabric supplies, and scrapbooking) - but nowhere did I find the Crayola permanent fabric markers. Here's what was in the fabric marker section:

Most are "Tulip" brand (the ones on the bottom are "Artminds". I decided to invest in a small set of the former, $8.99 for six pens. 

I tried them on my white potholder.

That led to another interesting discovery - the bottom section of the potholder above was quilted on a white-on-white muslin print. The subtle white design on the print was nearly invisible, until I colored it  - then the fabric's subtle leafy print appeared as a watermark-like texture! Kinda cool! 

Meanwhile, the area above it was on a smooth solid white fabric....so no watermark texture appeared, you could just see the strokes. 

I had trouble coloring in the lines and the result was a bit blotchy. But once I colored more of it, it became psychedelic, like Yellow Submarine! I even colored over some of the popcorn, which you can see on the right. 

This would be a fun collaborative gift. Present a potholder, (or a pillow, or a throw) made from freemotion practice pieces, to an artsy-craftsy youngster or adult; along with a set of fabric markers (or washable markers if they're very young and the piece will never be washed). You could even sew a bunch of practice pieces into an artistic coloring book! 

I really want to know: What do YOU do with your old freemotion quilting pieces? 

Commercial postscript: My big projects that I just finished include my new website, and my next book "Quilted New York," which is about to be published!