Yesterday I told you about my trip to the quilt store. What kept me going last week through trying to get my house back into shape, washing stemware and tablecloths, and wilting in the heat was the thought that soon I would be quilting again!
So exciting! And so necessary, as I have four married children and only one finished wedding quilt, not to mention the baby-quilt needs piling up. I am trying to get faster in my crafting so that I don't end up buried under good intentions.
Anyway, Nick and Natasha's quilt is next, and I fully intend to rip through this project. You can see my inspiration on my Pinterest board if you look at the triangle quilts. Natasha and I agreed that scrappy and triangly is the way to go, so, with that in mind, I had a great time at the sale!
So, before moving on to this project here on the blog, I think we all need closure vis-a-vis Rosie and Philip's quilt, don't you?
After all, you were with me from the start, and you helped me figure out a crucial step -- what the background color should be!
After all, you were with me from the start, and you helped me figure out a crucial step -- what the background color should be!
It's only right for us to experience the end of an era, and it was eons in quilting time, together.
This was my inspiration -- a quilt featured in a Country Living from the good old days when that magazine had content and wasn't all styled rooms and food. This particular issue, December 2006, had several beautiful quilts. When I saw this one, I knew I wanted to make it for Rosie some day.
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| My inspiration: An antique quilt pictured in Country Living. |
There's another, similar one in a book I love, called The Quilters: Women and Domestic Art, an Oral History. Only that one is even more complex, with lots of piecing in the sashing as well as in the patches, somewhat putting the lie to the idea that yesterday's woman was all drudgery and no scope for creativity; especially when you consider that whoever made that other one was also homesteading, raising children, helping her husband farm cotton, and otherwise battling elements.
Anyway, I introduced my own form of complexity when I was making the pattern. There are a very few patterns for this quilt out there, but none of them seemed to actually work in the swirly parts; you can see that the pieces would have to be drafted just right for the swirls to actually make a circle.
Whatever, they probably did work, given my capacity for making things more difficult than they need to be!
But I went ahead, compass, ruler, tracing paper, and pencil in hand, and made my own pattern. And for some reason I was convinced, despite the evidence before my eyes, that those points -- you know, the points that go around the swirls -- were in fact also curved, in curves that continued the curves of the swirls.
They are not.
But that is how I made them.
When you look at my photos you can see that they are not the same (not as pointy and elongated and straight-sided), but, in fact, much more (needlessly) difficult.
Another difference? My quilting is way closer than in that inspiration photo.
Sigh.
Didn't mean to do it. It just happened that way, and by the time I got to the border I wised up, but by then it was water under the bridge.
On the plus side, I love this quilt and I think it goes well in Rosie's home. It goes, in the sense that it doesn't clash, with her duvet cover, which was a wedding gift from Philip. That was lucky! (Although I have said many times that a wedding quilt from me does not mean that it must go on the master bed, at all.)
I'm proud of it. I hope I will never do something as recklessly involved as that again... but... I probably will.
Anyway, I introduced my own form of complexity when I was making the pattern. There are a very few patterns for this quilt out there, but none of them seemed to actually work in the swirly parts; you can see that the pieces would have to be drafted just right for the swirls to actually make a circle.
Whatever, they probably did work, given my capacity for making things more difficult than they need to be!
But I went ahead, compass, ruler, tracing paper, and pencil in hand, and made my own pattern. And for some reason I was convinced, despite the evidence before my eyes, that those points -- you know, the points that go around the swirls -- were in fact also curved, in curves that continued the curves of the swirls.
They are not.
But that is how I made them.
When you look at my photos you can see that they are not the same (not as pointy and elongated and straight-sided), but, in fact, much more (needlessly) difficult.
Another difference? My quilting is way closer than in that inspiration photo.
Sigh.
Didn't mean to do it. It just happened that way, and by the time I got to the border I wised up, but by then it was water under the bridge.
On the plus side, I love this quilt and I think it goes well in Rosie's home. It goes, in the sense that it doesn't clash, with her duvet cover, which was a wedding gift from Philip. That was lucky! (Although I have said many times that a wedding quilt from me does not mean that it must go on the master bed, at all.)
I'm proud of it. I hope I will never do something as recklessly involved as that again... but... I probably will.
