Better than Catnip

How did I ever finish a quilt before my grandcat moved in last year?

Here, while preparing to audition different bindings on a gift baby quilt, Cleo helpfully provides aeration. Certainly, the extra movement and fur will make my binding more accurate.

 

For Cleo, quilts in progress provide a far better high than catnip. 

Next, the finished quilt, which I had to bring outside in order to get a picture of it flat.

It's one of my "everything in the world" baby quilts, made of topical 4" squares, organized by subject. (Click "baby quilts" in the word balloon on the right to see more of these.) A few more details:

Note the Featherweight sewing machine, in the photo below. Under it, a fabric featuring vinyl records. On the far lower left, old-fashioned clocks with "hands". My stash totally dates me. (There's also a dinosaur on the upper left.) I want this baby to understand HISTORY!

And speaking of ancients, I'm particularly proud of the back, made from strips foraged from my scrap suitcase! Finally using up some scraps! If I make 200 more backings like this, I might bring that suitcase down near empty!

A few back details:

I can only pray that the intended recipient, who will be born any minute now, won't have cat allergies. 

(But seriously, I machine-wash and dry the quilt, then wrap it up in plastic so my cat doesn't nap on it before I can deliver it!)

Four Windmills, 55 Years

Ever since moving to Southern California 30 years ago, I have marveled at the region's windmills, especially the miles of them between my Los Angeles home, and the "Road to California" quilt show in Ontario, CA, that I visit annually. They look like this:

Sometimes they spin in unison, sometimes out of sync, but they always make me happy, a majestic miracle of alternative energy. 

In February, when I was playing with a raw-edge fabric-covered-with-tulle technique to make Valentines, I thought of those windmills and decided to make some. I pulled all the pieces from my batik scrap bag.

The highest scrap was a failed experiment with stamping circles of gold paint on fabric. (below, left). The planet on the far right is a different piece of batik. 

For the centers, I used decorative buttons, because, why not?

A friend saw this on my Facebook page, and bought it for a friend of hers who works in alternative energy. I was thrilled, but sad, because now, I thought I didn't have a windmill quilt!

So I made another one. This has fewer windmills, and instead of buttons, I sewed hex nuts to the centers. 

Then it occurred to me that hex nuts are probably the last thing you want holding rotating blades, because they will unwind eventually, right? But I didn't want to take those nuts off, because they're so darn cute! 

And it wasn't until after I'd finished the piece, that I remembered I'd made windmill-themed fiber art more than 50 years ago. This thing has been lying on a bureau in my bedroom for so long that I almost never notice or think about it.  (Note what's happening in the upper right corner when I tried to photograph it.) 

It's felt and embroidery thread, made from a kit, probably in the 60s, when I was in elementary school. I cut the pre-marked shapes out of the felt, and followed the stitching directions, which included zigzagging leaf veins, and square stitches for the windmill blades. It's clever and adorable, and none of this was my idea -- I just followed  directions, which is how so many of us begin our fiber art adventures!

After I finished it, it followed me around. I found it in a box and laid it out in my bedroom a couple of decades ago.  

So after making the quiltets above, I noticed it again, with new eyes, and decided to take its picture. My grandcat loves when I get laser-focused on taking a decent photo, and as you can see in the upper right of the photo above, and below, she wants to help. Here's where she wound up, sitting-in for quite a while, until I finally tricked her into leaving.

So not only is this piece worn by age, sun, and never having been washed, but now it's also embedded with cat fur.

And now, I thought, I own TWO windmill fiber art pieces. But wait, there's more! Writing this blog post I remembered I had  another windmill, in my quilt "Nonsense Town," which is only about year old.

It's in the top row, center. 

It's sort of a cross between the Dutch technology in my Sixties sampler, and the sleek newfangled California model. Newsflash: This windmill, on this quilt, is now a puzzle on The Quilt Show, because of my recent episode! Find the puzzle here. 

So now, if any one happens to ask me, "What is the recurring lifelong theme of your quilts?" instead of answering, "Um, I'm not sure," I  have a concrete answer: "Windmills!"

Was a sampler your first fiber art? Do you still have it? Have you taken its picture?

For more about the relaxing confetti-raw edge applique technique, go to https://gefiltequilt.blogspot.com/2024/02/stress-relief-with-confetti-valentines.html

Hark! I Hear a Baby Boom! Be Prepared!

(Below, a brand-new human on a recently finished quilt. Eyes are covered to protect anonymity.) 

Is romance in the air? For whatever reason, in my world, babies are a-poppin! Fortunately, I am prepared! Here's my neonatal kit: An oversized shoebox full of maybe 200 4" squares, some of them sewn into 9-patch blocks.

Unpacked, below, you'll find stacks of squares, many tourniqueted with torn white fabric strips, and the category name scribbled in pencil on torn-paper labels, in handwriting so terrible (mine) that I can barely read them. 

In the photo above, the categories, starting on the top row left and going across, I discern piles of:

• Transportation; Ocean; Nature. 
• Middle row: Music; People; Creatures
• Bottom row: Science; Sports & Games; Food (that's garlic on top).

Not shown: Places; Black-and-White Prints; Rainbow Geometrics; Sky-Aerial Transportation-Flying Bugs (one category!) and the biggest pile of all, the sublimely descriptive "Stuff".

I periodically cut these squares from my novelty fabric stash, and then, when I hear rumors of a human emerging shortly, I sort the squares thematically into 9-patches, and organize those blocks into quilt tops. Here's the front the quilt upon which the baby above is laying.
  

Below is the back. 

The strips for the back didn't come from the shoebox; it came from a larger, more densely packed container (a pastel blue suitcase, circa 1965 -- no wheels!), which features scraps not only inside it, but also upon it, and surrounding it for a radius of several feet. 

(Especially when the cat tunnels into it, clawing out heaps to create a cave.)

(Below, the video evidence).

 

Next, a closer look at the back. It was wonderful to revisit scraps I hadn't seen in years. It was like greeting old friends! (I thoroughly washed this quilt after finishing it, to get out the kitty cooties.)

Below are some of the front's nine-patches. In the middle are science-related fabrics. 

Next, below, on the upper right are nine sky-themed fabrics (and you can see why bugs and transportation are part of the aeronautical category, along with UFO's and eagles.) 

(The hand is in a black-and-white border, and a "cats" nine-patch starts on bottom.)

Next, a meeting of two different nine-patches: Random Creatures on top, Places on bottom (the latter includes houses, a carnival, a map of Southeast Asia, and a Manhattan subway map). Black-and-white border squares are on the right. 

This one's People, real (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) and imagined.

Below is the Food unit (lower right). Stuff squares are above it (pencils, erasers, computers, stamps, crayons, cellphones, laundry.) 

And this is the cat block. On bottom is more Stuff, including....

...directly above, a Featherweight sewing machine! Was I happy when I found that fabric!

This "random animals" nine-patch has one of my favorite fabrics, anteaters on pink.  Also note Elvis, top row center.

And sew forth! Keep in mind that it took me 30 years of minimal-impulse control to accrue this encyclopedic collection. 

If you're hanging around people capable of surprising themselves and you with a baby, you might want to get a head start now by cutting squares. I promise you'll have a lot of fun, laugh, and best of all, you will, as the Boy Scouts say, Be Prepared! 

For more photos of my baby quilts, click on the term in the word cloud on the right. I hope you will consider signing up for my occasional newsletter, at http://eepurl.com/idjomb

Capitol Crochet, Part II: The Insurrection

In my last post, I showed off a very happy 2021 inauguration crochet scene, here. To recap the highlights, I made a whole lot of jubilant and competent people, diligently wearing masks (except when called upon to speak or sing.)

Plus a Capitol building:

When I showed it off on Facebook, friends asked me if I would do the insurrection next. No way, I thought. Crochet, almost by definition, makes sweet and adorable objects. How could you  crochet murderous cruelty and delusion?

But I couldn't let the idea go. In the late 70s/early 80s, I lived in Washington DC, part of that time in a townhouse on Capitol Hill. Every morning, I walked a few blocks to the Capitol, up the back steps, down the front steps, across the Mall, and up to my office in Dupont Circle. I developed great affection for the Capitol and the Mall, and especially for the happy wandering tourists from far-flung places. So the January 6 insurrection, defiling a place I truly loved, hit me personally.

After debating with myself for a while, I gave it a shot. (No pun intended.)

There's a Hitler worshipper. His hat says "abuse," which could stand for what he was doing to Capitol police officers, or what happened to him in his childhood, or both. 

There's KKK bat guy.

Boxcutter guy.

Hairy backpack man. I couldn't bear to embroider a real swastika, so I did it wrong.

The nail in his backpack could give you tetanus.

He's best friends with bullet vest guy, and they brought a ladder.

Bullet vest closeups. I bought the empty casings on ebay years ago, for a different social statement crochet project. (It involved a yarn gun). 

Vest guy believes he is a Christian. 

Knitting needle guy stabs the dome. 

Gallows guy. The hat says "hate." 

They all need help; some need prison. Here's the lineup. 

I don't really know what to do with all this. At the moment, I think of it as a playset that will allow me to work through my feelings surrounding perhaps the most bizarre month in American history, January 2021. 

Revisit the much more cheerful Inauguration crochet playset here.