Oh, no. Oh, yes!

Do you know the phrase, “The perfect is the enemy of the good?” That is the right phrase for my quilt project.

As I have said before, I am a beginner, so this is going to be a beginner’s quilt. I am sure that experienced quilters’ results would be very different, but I am going to learn as I go.

I had a terrific meeting with my quilter, Dr. Joan Gaither, who generously gave me her ideas and advice as she heard my ideas. I was struck by how her images were all born from fabric: she talked to me of ribbons, sashes, scarves, and flags – every image was not only meaningful, beautiful, colorful, rich in associations, but each was also always made of cloth!

My “oh no” moment came afterwards, when I realized that when she had handled and played with the fabric “bricks” I had made as models, she wanted to put the short side laying “on its side” – I turned it in her hand and she looked confused. I thought about it later and realized I had been visualizing my “bricks” all wrong! I knew the dimensions of the brick, but I was “looking” at the wrong side of it! Thinking about being a bricklayer, I would set each brick down on its largest face. That meant that looking at a finished wall from the side, I would see the side of the brick, not the largest face (that’s the top). Oh, no! I got out my cardstock and changed the sizes of my brick models. OK, that’s better!

Joan told me how I would incorporate thin batting inside each brick, folding the sides of the fabric around the batting, pressing the fabric sides around it with an iron, and setting them aside in a pile. She folded and ironed imaginary edges in the air with her deft fingers, and I saw how it would go. Home I went to get my batting. Thank you, Joan!

Quilt Project Progress

My Tuesday meeting with Joan was rescheduled, so I have a bit more time to get ready for her! I now have sketches and some new fabric, and my plans have taken more shape! More on that later, as I putter around!

When I envisioned this project, I didn’t want to have to count on outside help to achieve my goal. I am not a quilter and have never made a quilt, but I have made two quilt squares (well, one is a circle) under the tutelage of Dr. Joan Gaither, and I realize that even as a beginner, the only thing to do is to start.

Joan invites the community to get involved with her quilts, and I have taken part in that experience, and it is uplifting! But I didn’t see my project growing to that scale, so in order to involve the community, I began by asking folks to simply donate fabric to me, and I can do the rest. My idea was, the community will be able to view the finished quilt and see their own fabric making up a part of it. This idea was also influenced by Joan, because she has made quilts in honor or in memory of individuals, mostly family members (especially young people), and has used their garments – hats, baby clothes – and has sewn these to her quilts to very powerful effect – it is as though the garments have been strewn across a bed. When you see the fabric of a particularly memorable outfit that you loved on a person, whether a grandmother or child, or even sometimes an acquaintance, it brings the memories flooding back. Cloth has so many ways of signifying powerful emotions!

The donations of fabric have been limited – but many thanks to Vicki Petersen of the Captain Salem Avery Museum for the fabrics she donated! Let me know if YOU would like to donate fabric as well!

An unexpected development then arose – many people here have taken workshops with Joan and have seen what she can do with cloth, and they contacted me and said they wanted to contribute quilt squares that have their own imagery on them, and not just fabric! I resisted at first, but it became evident that the urge to create imagery with fabric, and to see the finished product as part of a quilt, is shared by many! So now it seems that the Four Rivers quilt will have an array of finished 12×12 squares as well as cloth “bricks,” as I first imagined, and I am including places for the squares in my design. I am pleased to say that Joan herself has said she hopes to make a square for the quilt as well. I have asked Four Rivers staffer Aleithea Warmack to consider making a quilt square too, and she has agreed! Watch this blog for news of these developments!

Note: unless otherwsie noted, the quilt posts are written by Carol Benson.

Starting the Quilt Project

 

Fabric for the primary bricks – perfect!

Today, Friday September 2, 2011, I start the Quilt project in earnest. This is prompted by a call I got yesterday from my Quilt Guru, Dr. Joan Gaither. She’s ready to help me, we are meeting Tuesday. This is what I’ve been waiting for! But my notes are sketchy, my plans not fully formulated. I have the advantage of working at home today, and starting with a clear head – holiday weekend, my daughter’s off at school, my husband’s at work. A new laptop at home is going to make all the difference, too. My printer is nearly new, and thanks to a generous donation of amazing fabric from Vicky Petersen of the Captain Salem Avery Museum, I can develop my first steps. One of my visions for the quilt is to use fabric rectangles of “bricks,” laid next to one another but not stitched together, to give the pattern of bricks-and-mortar. It will probably make my process infinitely harder, but that’s my vision and for now I’m sticking with it.I went online to determine a size I’ll use for my model of a colonial brick. Typing “dimensions of a colonial brick” into my search bar, I found a site, http://www.sizes.com/materls/brickNonM.htm, that gives me the dimension for Colonial America of 8 3/4 x 4 x 2 5/8. They also caution tht bricks varied a LOT, and cite Ivor Noel Hume, so I decide to use that as my model brick size. After I cut a bunch of cardstock bricks, I eyeballed them and they look fine to me!My next step was to cut the fabric and wrap fabric around a few of my cardstock models. I don’t want to do anything permanent yet, these are just experiments. They look fine, now back to my notes, sketches, and the fabric store!