Work In Progress Wednesday

It's a really good thing I made that binding this weekend; on Tuesday, Susan Caldwell of Quilting Around the Block called me to tell me my quilt was done. I can't remember the name of the pantograph she used to quilt it, but it was perfect with the Piece O'Cake fabric I used. As soon as I got it home, I started sewing on the binding, which I oh so convienently had on hand. Tonight I will start handstitching it to the back.

This weekend I hope to post instructions for this very easy and fast quilt. My version is based on a quilt pattern VickiW and Anne designed a few years ago. They dubbed it the "Gift Quilt" because the concept was to take 20 fat quarters (for a twin) or 30 fat quarters (for a queen) and quickly make a quilt with no unused fabric. I've made a couple of the "Gift Quilts" as a result, and always enjoyed it. Not long ago, I had an idea on how to make it even more easy and I sketched it out on a piece of paper (I'm no artist, trust) and emailed it to VickiW. She saw no flaw in my plan, so the quilt pictured above is the prototype. I'm calling it the "Strip Gift Quilt".

I'll show you a photo this weekend when I get a chance to photograph the whole quilt and I'll begin to post the instructions. I can't wait to make more of these.

Parting shot: It has turned cold here this week. Yesterday we had snow flurries, first time I have ever seen such in November. So here's a photo to remind us of warmer weather which I took at Anne's river house back around Labor Day during the whole Craft Week extravaganza:

Weekend Wrap-Up

The weekend was a fun and productive one; my first order of business was to go visit The Quilt Man in Ashland, Virginia. The Quilt Man a/k/a Chris is known for his array of Asian themed fabrics. I have promised to make my friend, Tammy, a quilt and my idea for it includes using many Asian fabrics in rich colors that will make a lavish, sophisticated quilt. I've asked Tammy to help me pick out the fabrics (we'll be needing 30 fat quarters) next Saturday, but I wanted to do some reconnaissance work before I took her into a fabric shop and had her OCD mind completely blown. I'm happy to report that Chris' selection is awesome and I believe Tammy and I will have a wonderful time next Saturday pawing through his fabulous fabrics.

Next up, I made some boxer shorts for a friend of mine (I think he is getting them for Christmas) from a watery dolphin fabric. It is from the Simplicity pattern line. There is only one pattern piece; you cut two. You would think this would be a really simple garment to make, but no matter how many times I've done it, I have to study the instructions real closely just to make sure I get the fly done right. My topstitching isn't the best here; the blue water fabric just didn't want to take any marking at all, but I remembered that I was making underwear here, and men's underwear at that. Like he'd notice. Several things that I do differently from the directions: as soon as I cut the two pieces out, I hem the legs of the boxers. Easier to do it flat than when they are already in the round. Also, instead of snaps for the fly, I always put it in a buttonhole and then a button - it looks nicer and in my mind, it is easier.

Next, I made binding for a quilt I have out being machine quilted. Not very exciting. Making bias binding ranks right up there with cutting out a pattern or ironing your fabric. Necessary, but not thrilling. But I have found that if I make the binding while I'm waiting to get the quilt back from the machine quilter, I'm much more excited about sewing it onto the new quilt as soon as I get it. If I don't, then making and applying the binding seems like a really big hassle. Also, I like striped fabric for bias bindings - the stripes wind around the quilt when sewed on and it gives the whole quilt a little pop.

And I was able to make a few blocks for this simple lap top size quilt I'm piecing for one of my Prayer Sisters. I got the pattern last February at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Show. Really easy, I thought, a good pattern for something I could make quickly for a gift. And it is easy, so easy to the point that I keep losing interest, so the "easy" pattern ends up not going so fast for me. I guess I need a challenge to keep me interested.

And I got to see the new James Bond movie!! I enjoyed it immensely, but then I like my violence gratuitous, no realism for me, thank you very much. I don't know what all the critics are complaining about; Daniel Craig is one cool cat as James Bond.

And finally, the housework report: no housework done this weekend except one load of laundry that is still in the dryer, needing to be folded. I call that a successful weekend!

Parting Shot: when I went out for my walk today (and discovered the wind was much more brisk that I thought; gloves would not have been amiss!) I saw the other white squirrel. Of the two, this is the whiter one, and my mother named him Al on one of her visits. Surely this is a sign of good things to come.

Great-Grandmother's Quilt

Of course, the key to successful blogging is having decent photos of what you are talking about and the key to decent photos are photos taken in natural daylight. Flash really doesn't get the job done. But between the whole earth tilting on its axis so that it gets dark before I get home from work, and the fact that we have had non-stop rain for days, my photo ops have been few and far between. I woke up this morning excited because it was, indeed, daylight, and no water was coming down from the sky. But I had discounted wind. Wind is a problem when you are trying to photograph a quilt like this one right before the whole thing came tumbling down:

But I finally got a photo of this, my great-grandmother's quilt.

My great-grandmother was Daisy Snell Payne. (I love the name Daisy, don't you? It sounds so sturdy and honest and old fashioned.) I don't have a photo to show you, but I can tell you that she looked like a proper great-grandmother, full-figured with an impressive bosom upon which her favorite brooch rested. She wore glasses and had grey hair. She died during WWII, in 1944, I believe, of cancer, according to my father. He remembers her as an enthusiastic quilter, with a quilting rack suspended from ropes from the ceiling of one of the bedrooms in the old farmhouse. The rack would be lowered when her sewing bee came over to help quilt the quilts she had handpieced together.

My family has dozens and dozens of quilts pieced by her and quilted by her quilting bee. There are no labels on them, of course, but she was the mother of five boys and no girls, so we are pretty sure she did them all. I have several of them and this quilt is one of them. I was inspired in 2005 to re-create this quilt. I'm not certain why, as I had only made one other quilt in my life. I had no pattern, no experience in dealing with triangles, and no clue how to do a 'Y' seam. I don't know what I was thinking. I think my great-grandmother, whom I never met, must have been giving me some quilting guidance as I made it.

Daisy's quilt is made from feedsack fabrics except for the pink borders and setting triangles. It is all handpieced. In addition, her feedsack strips and her muslin strips in her blocks are not uniform. The feedsack strips are slightly narrower, probably because she had more of the cheap muslin laying around and in her farmhouse even the feedsack fabric was a precious commodity. Also, on all of her quilts, she never made a separate binding, she simply folded over the muslin backing from back to front and created a straight grain "binding".

You can see from these photos that these quilts were meant to be used, to keep her family of five boys warm during cold Alabama nights. I know there was no central heating in the house - only fireplaces. My family didn't get gas heaters in the house until after the war. You can also see where mice must have "borrowed" from the quilt to make their own nests warm.

When I made my version, I decided to make my muslin strips and feedsack reproduction fabrics the same width. I actually just stripped pieced the fabrics (my fabric strips were cut 2 1/2 inches wide) and then cut 60 degree triangles. Doing it this way creates the triangles with the muslin centers, but it also creates "negative" triangles. I still have those left over and my plan was to make a throw-sized quilt out of them, but I still haven't managed to do anything with them yet.

I sewed three triangles together, starting one quarter inch from the large end of the triangles (so I could later sew the 'Y' seam when I joined the blocks together). Then I would sew three more together, and then join the two halves, again, starting and stopping one quarter inch from the large end of the triangles. When it came time to join the blocks together, I read up on 'Y' seams and then just plunged in. Some turned out great like this one. Some were not as good. But I decided not to worry over it; Daisy's quilts weren't perfect either.

Good 'Y' seam here:

Not so good here:

As you can see, Daisy quilted her version with mostly an outline quilting stitch. I had mine professionally quilted since my first quilt taught me that I do not like machine quilting (and I don't do much of anything by hand, much less quilting). Carol Lyon from the Lyon Den Quilting quilted this for me and she did a really great job, especially since I was a new quilter, and let's just say not everything was perfectly square. She is a good person.

My version did include a separate bias binding sewed on after the quilting was done, and I used the same fabric for both the borders and setting triangles. I was able to find a similar pink fabric to match the original Daisy had used.

I would have to say this was the most satisfying project I have ever done. (I still believe Daisy must have been helping me the whole way!) My version of Daisy's quilt is the one that drapes my bed, and the quilt I travel with. I'm unsure of the name of this block; the closest I have been able to identify is "Spider Web", but usually spider web blocks are scrappier, using both the positive and negative triangles. If anyone out there has any idea of what else this block might be called, please let me know.

Parting shot: a white squirrel. We have two white squirrels that live in my neighborhood. Any day I see one of them, I consider it to be a good omen and guarantee that I will have a good day:

Still new to this blogging thing

I'm still getting the logistics all worked out. But I'm having fun, as VickiW and Summerset were the first commenters on my blog and now I understand the thrill of that.



I do want to report that I went to my Sewing Guild on Saturday morning. We are called the Fashion Focus Group, and Audrey showed up wearing this, an absolutely fabulous jacket she made back in April. I want to say that her photograph simply does not do it justice. It is made from the most wonderful wool/Lycra blend, and was so yummy that several of us just had to touch it. I love Audrey's blog; her posts are thorough and thoughtful and I always learn so much.



Parting shot: me being shy. Just so you know, this is NOT my 1961 Rolls Royce. But it does belong to a friend of mine who lets me ride in it occasionally. I absolutely love this car.

First Garment, Last Garment

Welcome to my blog, Cotton Creek Sewing! This blog will hopefully satisfy my intense desire to talk about my passions, sewing and quilting. My non-sewing friends are tired of hearing me drone on about patterns, new fabric collections, and the wonderfully creative blog world where people are making amazing things. As my sewing friends are few, I have attempted to lure my non-sewing friends over to the sewing world by offering sewing lessons, with limited success. I've had better luck with their daughters, truth to tell. I love teaching the younger set: they are enthusiastic and ready to learn. Their mothers, however, seem to react with my offers to teach with the same mild panic and protestation, "But I couldn't never learn to do that!" I tell them it isn't brain surgery.

They are unmoved.

I haven't actually begun to teach people how to sew against their will, but I'm afraid I'm coming close. Thus, this blog.

I've been sewing since 2002. I had some abdominal surgery that year, and I was shopping for just a simple skirt with an elastic waist that would be comfortable to wear. I found it, but at a hefty price. I complained to one of my Prayer Sisters (the wonderfully wise Judy), "It's just two pieces of fabric with elastic at the top - how hard could this be to make???!!" Judy said, "It's not hard; I'll show you how." And she did.

I bought the pattern which was this one:

And I bought some rayon challis at my local Hancock's. And I made this on her Sears Kenmore on her dinning room table:

I still wear it, and when I am feeling patriotic, I wear it with a red shirt. Here's what it looks like on the inside:

The seam allowances are frayed and the sewing wasn't the most expert, but it still hangs in my closet, whereas many things I have made since have been worn and subsequently retired. After that first skirt, Judy let me borrow her Sears Kenmore sewing machine and I made skirt after skirt, just doing it on my own. I discovered several things: 1) sewing was more interesting than day time television during my recovery time; 2) sewing could be accomplished sitting down; and 3) I could make the skirt way more cheaply than I could buy it. I became hooked and bought my own sewing machine soon afterwards.

As a compare/contrast exercise, this is the last garment I made, six and half years later: It is McCall's 4919:

I made it from a glen plaid wool I bought in Boston at The Fabric Place (soon to be out of business according to Gorgeous Things) several years ago for $ 7.98. The story behind this dress is that I went shopping about a month ago at the local mall, just to look at the fall fashions. I didn't see much that excited me, although I did find a sleeveless wool sheath dress at Banana Republic. For $ 150. No way.

I went home, dug out this fabric and used a little over two yards to make the dress. I figure with the zipper, and the free lining fabric, I made the whole thing for less than $ 20. Much better.

I've made dresses from this pattern before, from cotton, from wool, from silk, but I had never cut the bodice on the bias before. I wanted to try it with the plaid for visual interest and also so I could avoid worrying about matching the plaid. Before cutting out, I made a full pattern piece of the front so that I could lay it out in a single layer. I also put in a call to VickiW, my sewing mentor, on working with the bias edges and she suggested that I stay stitch all the edges. I did, and it worked like a charm.

No problems. I lined/interlined the bodice with some free lining my mother had brought me from an unknown sewer who had died, leaving her stash (so that's what happens to our fabric when we die - it's given to other sewers!).

And that is what I love about sewing and quilting - the possibilities are endless with each tweak you make.

And to borrow Summerset's parting shot format:

My neighborhood in autumn, my favorite season.