Monday, November 30, 2015

I Spy Placemats

November 2015

For some of us, I Spy quilts are the popcorn of the quilt world.  You can never stop at just one.  This is particularly true for those of us who collect “picture fabrics”.  Aptly nicknamed “conversation fabrics”, these pieces can have pictures of pretty much anything – barns, dogs, birds, angels, stinky cheeses, Snoopy, Nancy Drew’s magnifying glass...the list is endless. So far the only pop culture object not depicted in fabric is Donald Trump’s hair. 

Basically, if someone, somewhere liked something, there’s probably a bolt of fabric bearing a picture of it.  And I probably bought a bunch it.  These pieces, while looking nothing short of fabulous in my fabric collection, are actually quite difficult to use up.  It’s like cooking – you can’t just grab all your exotic ingredients off the shelf and use them up in a single dish.  That method yields the proverbial dog’s breakfast whether you’re making food or quilts.

Our guild recently made placemats to give to the clients of The Red Cross Meals On Wheels program.  My contribution was two I Spy placemats.  They’re fun visually because every time you look at them you find something you didn’t see the last time.  It’s the same pleasure you get from watching reruns of your favourite TV show.  There are always subplots and cool props you missed on your first pass. 

Some of my other adventures with I Spy quilts, including tips on making them, can be found in my previous posts Julie’s Garden and True North. 


Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Lost on the Ocean

Quilt No. 107
August 2015

Frogs.  They keep showing up in my quilts.  It’s not so much that I love frogs.  It’s pictures of frogs that I love.  I have frog calendars, and frog stationary, and more than one Kermit the Frog hanging around the house.  I have a frog cookie cutter, frog salt and pepper shakers, and a plastic frog next to the kitchen sink that dispenses soap.  With the exception of the dispenser, I did not buy any of these froggly items.  People see frog stuff and they immediately think of me.  It’s pretty humbling.

I do admit that I have allowed the inspiration of frogs to guide my purchases more than a few times – and all of those purchases were fabric.  So, whenever I can, I like to add a frog or two into my quilts.  Sadly, this does not happen nearly as often as I’d like.  So my collection of frog fabric is growing in leaps and bounds.

In Lost on the Ocean, a particularly exotic frog is sailing on his lily pad.  The sun is blasting down on him.  The ocean is swirling.  A mildly frantic concern is starting to nudge at his consciousness.  The heat penetrates his skull and unleashes a psychedelic vista.  He begins to long for the comforts of home...or maybe even just a bit of sunscreen... 

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Prairie Points


Quilt  No. 106
July 2015

Apparently, I’m not yet finished with my exploration of what can be done with all those old crewel embroidery pieces that I did decades ago.  Who would have thought that they would find their way back into the creative queue after all this time?

This wagon piece was probably the second embroidery kit I did back in the day.  I found it balled up in a drawer.  To be truthful, I never really liked it much – both the colours and the composition were kind of dull.  After I embroidered it, I never even considered framing it.

So…when I wanted one to just fool around with, this fit the bill.  My general rule of thumb is to never fool around with anything you aren’t willing to lose.  This includes quilts, pieces of fabric, old linens, buckets of ice cream, and friendships.  I wanted to machine quilt  the whole piece rather than cutting out portions to use as I had in Fred and Marty, and The Fox Gets a New Home.  

So, using smoke Wonder Invisible Thread, I machine quilted the details of each object.  I then moved on and did some contouring of the off-white background so that the elements weren’t just “floating around” loosely anymore.  Meh.  It improved it a little.  But only a little.  I added on a medium green cotton border.  Basically that made a larger but no more interesting piece.  Or…maybe I’m just not fond of wagons.  The rabbit in the scene wasn’t prominent enough to pull the piece out of the Land of Ho Hum.  

Eventually I hit on the idea of putting the teal green/blue/beige lumpy wool between the centre and the border.  The teals added enough warmth to wake up the whole piece.  Echoing that colour in the binding brought things together in a much more pleasing way.  

Next came choosing of a name for this quilt.  “A Wagon, A Barn, and a Rabbit” seemed unspeakably lame.  I turned the naming proposition over to my Facebook friends, who, as always, elevated the whole endeavor to a new level.  The names began in the realm of the sublime and poetic, emphasizing the genteel farm scene.  Then…people started to get concerned that the wagon lacked a horse.  This was quickly interpreted as the horse having shirked his duties and run off.  I don’t know much about horses, but perhaps this is the sort of thing they routinely do.  The rabbit, having no duties other than being cute, stayed put.  The tale about the miscreant horse began to morph into titles worthy of country and western ballads.  

At the end of it, the weight of collective brilliance made it impossible for me to choose a title.  I defaulted to a draw.  My friend Helen won the draw with her entry “Prairie Points”.  I thought this was especially fair, since Helen revealed that she had completed the same embroidery piece too.  There was also additional "insider" amusement to be had, since Helen is a quilting friend, and prairie points in the quilting word have nothing to do with prairies or unreliable horses.  They’re a series of folded triangles used to finish off the edge of a quilt.  Maybe the horse ran off with those too.

Here’s a list of titles that were suggested.  Note that the rabbit received as much love as the horse received derision.

Homestead

Home Sweet Home

Rancher's Meadow Caravan

Harvester's Chariot in Grasslands

The Day the Horse Died

Damn That Horse. Died and Left Me to Tow the Wagon

Na minha casa existe paz (translation: My home is a haven)

Peaceful

The Horse Ran Off

Prairie Points
The draw!

Thumper

Rabbit Finds a Home

Rabbit's New Car

Spring

Crewel Summer

Wife Left, The Horse Ran Off: It's Been a Crewel Summer

Rural Exodus

Runaway Horse

Lonely Rabbit

Spring Delight

Amish Homestead

Once Upon a Time

 

Sunday, August 30, 2015

The Fox Gets a New Home

Quilt No. 99

Ahh, the early 1980’s.  They were the Crewel Years.  Every department and craft store had a tantalizing selection of crewel embroidery kits.  It was a welcome change after I’d knitted an ocean of sweaters, a platoon of Christmas stockings, and crafted enough Christmas decorations that, three decades later, I still have too many to display.  

Crewel embroidery kits came complete with everything you needed to finish the project. The cloth was delicately stamped with the picture.  Ample amounts of wool in all required colours was included.  This came in one giant hank, like a horse tail, and the first task was to separate out the medium green from the light green from the very light green.  Sometimes they even threw in very very light green.  Separating the colours could take a whole day and would have my mother and I debating rose vs coral vs fuchsia for hours.  The kit would also include a complete set of detailed instructions on how to make every type of required stitch. No matter how many kits you did, they always came up with novel stitches – herringbone, threaded backstitch, closed featherstitch.  Final details were added in with embroidery floss.  The smaller kits thoughtfully included a little plastic frame so that you could get your project ready for display without that time-wasting trip to the store. 

For those with very dexterous hands and the eyes of a sharp shooter there were also extremely tiny embroidery pictures to complete. These ones used only skinny embroidery floss, which came in a 6-stranded format and often required the use of a single thread-like strand for a particular area.  Those kits required gobs of patience and the same quantity of light as your average hospital operating room.  Such was making of The Fox. 

Sometime in the early 1980’s I gave the completed, plastic-framed fox to my sister.  Years went by, and she subsequently gave it back to me.  The circumstances surrounding both situations elude me.  And, yes, she will be horrified that I don’t remember.  Geez.  I made the fox.  What more does she want?  She will give me the complete fox history, and I, having failed to file away those crucial historical details, will be compelled to believe whatever she tells me. 

Despite his meandering life path, I still liked the fox and was happy to have it back in my possession, even in its dated plastic frame.  I threw that away.  I cut around the fox leaving a narrow seam allowance to use when I appliqued it to….I couldn’t think of anything.  I thought I might add it to a postcard quilt for a friend who had moved away, and casually mentioned this to my sister.  Surprisingly enough, she completely lost it.  The last time she had become that mired in emotionality she was at the altar getting married!  Who knew the fox was that important?  I was forced to re-think my position.  I abandoned it in a box of embellishments where it could share equal time with all that other stuff I felt guilty about not using. 


As per usual, years went by with the “in progress” fox in limbo.  One day a quilting friend called me over to her place to share in a windfall.  She had come into possession of a large box of fabric.  Most of these were fabrics of the “outcast” variety.  They were not cotton. Quilters generally worship exclusively at the altar of cotton.  I’m a little more inclined to stray outside of the all-cotton rule, so she kindly shared the box of deliciously slippery shiny fabrics with me.  

There were all kinds of taupes and related colours.  So intriguing!  I cut lengths from several pieces and sewed them together in aimless curves and ended up with a whole lot of sew-what.  I thought maybe the fox could help me out, but I wasn’t sure just how.  

My friend had also given me the fabric I ultimately used for the trees in this quilt.  She described it, and I agreed, as a piece of fabric that was just too special to cut up. The fat quarter (a 20x22” piece) was terrorizing her – too beautiful to use, too beautiful to not use.  It was too small to use in a large quilt, too big to waste.  I have a largely undeserved reputation for bravery with scissors, so she felt the fabric had a better chance of finding its way onto a quilt if she gave it to me.

For quite a while the fox and the enchanting slippery fabrics went back and forth to my cottage in the box I take with me every summer weekend.  One Saturday, a blue fabric that was under consideration for another quilt ended up tucked next to the stalled fox project.  It was fabric love at first sight – the dark blue provided the missing element that the fox had long dreamed of, and the creation of the fox’s new home was on its way.  


So, who got the quilt after the fox found his new home?  Well my sister, of course.  I figure I have a couple of decades before she gives it back to me.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Fred and Marty


Quilt No. 104
April 2015

There has never been a time in my life when I didn't have at least one creative pursuit as my constant companion.  One of my very earliest memories is that of threading wool on a blunt plastic needle through pre-punched holes around a dog printed on a piece of cardboard.  There were other cards that came with the dog – maybe a duck and a horse, but really I didn't care a fig about the animals.  For me it was all about the needle and that single strand of wool. 

As the years went by I exchanged my over sized plastic needle for shinier and sharper metal needles. This started me down the long path that eventually took me to quilting. The route was long and circuitous.  By the age of six or seven I was already a jaded crafter who had wandered through knitting and button sewing and embroidery. I had become a serial crafter, living for my next needle.  In my endless quest for more, I made the discovery that a motorized version of the needle existed. It was called a sewing machine!  This opened up whole new creative vistas for me as I created a kickass Barbie doll wardrobe that would have made Pierre Cardin scream into his knickers and take up baseball. 

Peep and Squeak in original crewel work.

In the 1980’s my needle mania took me deep into crewel embroidery territory.  I embroidered fruit and birds and wishing wells.  Eventually I came to the Dimensions embroidery kit entitled “Peep and Squeak” designed by Linda K. Powell.  In it, a bird and a mouse sit atop a fence post, completely lost in the bliss of a routine day of easy companionship.  There are a few flowers around the base of the post, but the background is completely empty.  This framed piece hung on a wall for a number of years, eventually losing favour for no discernible reason.  The delightful bird and mouse silently took up residence at the back of a closet.  Every so often I would find them in there.  I would feel guilty.  I would close the closet door and turn my attention to something else.  They never seemed to mind.

After some experimentation with fabric paints one summer, I came up with an interesting piece of fabric that had a blue sky hovering over white leaves.  These were outlined in green, courtesy of the light-sensitive Setacolor dyes.  I had painted the dyes onto white cotton and topped it with mountain ash and other leaves and ferns from the surrounding forest at the cottage.  Next, I let nature takes its course (otherwise known as reading cheap novels on the dock).   The fabric turned out pleasing and vibrant, giving the impression of wind blown foliage.  It figured it would work well as a background fabric if I could find something that wouldn't get lost in the leaves.  


A few years went by before the dyed piece accidentally crossed paths with Peep and Squeak, proving yet again that you should never keep your creative stash too tidy.  Too much organization can be a creative buzz kill.  A stray piece of fabric thrown on a an old piece of embroidery could be the perfect surprise  marriage.   The mouse and bird had enough visual oomph to tame the background.  And since they were reinvented with a whole new look, I decided it was time to give them new names.  They became Fred and Marty.  Names like “Peep” and “Squeak” hardly seemed lofty enough after all that they had been through.

Quilt Notes

Step one was to pry the embroidery out of its frame, and tame the dust monster by hand washing the piece. Crewel work washes surprisingly well if you give it the same respect as a 100% wool sweater, and it comes out completely refreshed.  I then ironed fusible cotton onto the back of the sections prior to cutting out the individual pieces.  A large dose of audacity was required to take the scissors to a piece of embroidery that had once taken me several months to complete! 

 I left about a ¼ inch seam allowance and hand appliquéd the bird/mouse/post piece and the clover pieces onto the background.  This required a lot of attention to detail in order to keep the heavy pieces of embroidery flat against the background. A lot of work had to be done to make the embroidered pieces appear complete again.  I added in crewel stitching where the background showed through, or where the wool strands had separated.  Most of the crewel work was outlined with new stitches in wool.  Finding matching wool was tricky even though I had kept much of the leftover wool from multiple projects my mother or I had completed decades ago.  The wool from the original Peep and Squeak kit was nowhere to be found.  Of course.

I then began free motion machine quilting the background using rayon thread, mostly following the outline of the leaves and then adding in quilted leaf shapes above those.  Gradually I began quilting lines in the sky that would suggest a blustery day.  I used smoke coloured polyester thread to quilt through all layers of wool and fabric to enhance the details in the characters, the post, and the flowers.  The stems for the clover were added on last of all.  The Fred and Marty relocation was complete.



Tuesday, February 17, 2015

LM + BD


Quilt No. 103
February 2015

Say it with fabric.  I keep immersing myself in this endless quest.  And when I decided to create a quilt for my daughter’s wedding, it was never more difficult.  It needed to celebrate one of life’s key events, and to wholeheartedly welcome Lucas into our family.  It needed to depict something about them, something they could look back on in their dotage that would make them say “Remember that?”   It also needed to show that as a mother (and mother-in-law) I had at least some understanding of what they loved to do.  I didn’t want them to think that I hadn’t been listening...

Each year they plan their wilderness camping trip with great zeal, selecting the destination, amassing the equipment, working through lists of gear and food, selecting between the “must have” items and those relegated to the “wish list”.  The duration of any camping trip is far shorter than number of hours that went into planning it.  Since this is a many-months-long focus in their lives, I know how much it means to them.  After all, who doesn’t want to conquer nature with a canoe, two paddles, a food barrel, and the luxury of a single roll of toilet paper? 

Fortunately, I had lots of time to plan their wilderness camping quilt - just as well because for the first year of “planning” I came up with absolutely no ideas.  During the second year I came up with several crappy ideas, one of which had park symbol signs stationed along the border in a freakish parade.  Mercifully, that one never got off the design table.

Trying to force a creative idea invariably sends it into that slippery-pig phase where the harder you grasp at it, the more gleefully it eludes you.  In the end all you have to show for your efforts are greasy hands and remembered squeals. 

I finally quit actively thinking about it.  Likely, my subconscious continued to wring its hands over the problem, because not too long after that, I was struck by the image of a tree trunk with their initials carved inside a heart.  It seemed like something they might do, or rather, like something they would talk about doing, and then decide against in order to avoid harming a tree.

Once I had the key element everything flowed from there.  Well…I wish!  It was more of a miserly trickle, with more ideas tossed out than embraced.  I at least knew the concept of what I wanted – a lake, a canoe, an idyllic forest scene where a few animals made their home, and a campfire.  Bit by bit it came together, eventually including a picnic and their favourite bottle of wine. 

My plan was to put ferns along the bottom, and I spent a couple of painstaking hours cutting out fern-print fabric to capture the ferns without the background on which they were printed.  I arranged and rearranged ferns for weeks on end without ever even approaching a pleasing result.  By the end of my endeavours the ferns took on a flayed look, completely shredded from too much handling.  I moved on to flowers, combing through my considerable stash of fabric, auditioning every possible floral piece regardless of colour or size of flower.  It wasn’t much of a surprise to find that method yielded nothing. 

During this time period, wedding planning was going on.  It included a trip to help my daughter purchase her wedding gown.  Of course, this brought back memories of my own modest gown, and I pulled it out of the box that was hiding under a deeply satisfying layer dust.  This sparked conversations with my sister about her wedding gown, so she retrieved hers as well. 

It was pretty clear that styles have changed radically since the 1980’s when gowns were demure and covered as much of the bride as possible.  High collars and long sleeves were the trend, pretty much the opposite of today’s styles.  For my sister and me, there was no doubt in our minds that no one would ever want to wear those completely outdated wedding gowns again.  But that didn’t mean that they were of no further value.  Both gowns had flowered lace in just the right scale to use on the quilt. 

I remove some pieces and started “testing” it.  The lace readily accepted Pebeo Setacolor fabric paint, and was easily transformed.  I made orange flowers from my dress, and orange-pink flowers from my sister’s dress.  Hers also had lace in the shape of leaves, and this I painted green.  The bluebells readily exchanged their bland white existence for one of vibrant blue.

The tree has only a few tender young leaves.  It is at the beginning of its life’s journey.  I removed the sash from my wedding gown and dyed it green.  The synthetic fabric slurped up the paint with gusto, and was relatively easy to use to make appliquéd leaves.  A little silver metallic thread machine quilting gave them the dazzle they deserved. 

I still needed to add the bride and groom into their own personal camping-quilt experience.  Luckily I had one photo of them paddling a canoe.  Since I am not generally on the invitation list for their camping trips (no one wants to portage a canoe, numerous backpacks, food, paddles and one mother) I felt quite fortunate to have snapped a photo several years ago at our cottage. I printed out the photo of them in a canoe, and fused it onto the quilt. 

I hope that this quilt will always hold true for them, and that they will always paddle together through all the sunny days and the inevitable sorrowful days that will build the fabric of their lives.  



Monday, October 6, 2014

Quilting in the Wind - Again!

Quilt No. 62 Gets Some Much Needed Lovin'

As I've said before, most quilters are plagued by UFO's (UnFinished Objects).  It's one of the inexplicable tenets of life that starting a project is ever so much more fun than finishing it. There's that tsunami of enthusiasm, that unadulterated glee that accompanies a new enterprise. This applies not only to quilting, but to pretty much everything else - taking French lessons, teaching the dog to fetch your purse, encouraging the cat to flush the toilet, siding the house.

I like to think I've taken the UFO to a new place.  I now take quilts with FO status (Finished Objects) and demote them back into UFO's.  It's positively perverse.  It's the equivalent of Sisyphus finally getting that cantankerous stone to the top of the hill, being dissatisfied with the way he got it up there, and deciding to roll it down and start all over again.  At least in my case I only roll it half way down.

While I was reasonably satisfied that the design of Quilting in the Wind expressed the story I wanted to tell (see the 2008 blog post) I was never happy with it as a Finished Object.  It's been hanging in the closet since the day after it was finished in 2008.  So it was the first quilt I thought about when I started looking around for a quilt that I could revitalize with some machine quilting.  A practice piece.  Quilting in the Wind backslid into UFO status.

I removed the binding and all the hand quilting.  Yippee - none of the elements on the quilt needed to be replaced, unlike my previous adventure with My Escape.  Lacking a good idea of just exactly what shapes I should quilt into it, I spent hours gawking at it, doodling with my machine, and creeping other quilter's FO's on the internet.  All of that proved to be fruitless.  Ultimately, I just went for it and tried to add in quilted shapes that looked like wind.  Never having actually seen wind, this was tricky.  It called for lots of imagination and plenty of cups of coffee, and not necessarily in that order.

This quilt did prove to be a good learning experience, and my key take away was this.  If you don't know what to do...just jump in.   It actually will come to you.  (Warning: this is not good advice for non-swimmers or pilots who never showed up for their lessons.)


Friday, July 25, 2014

Cabin Fever


Quilt No. 97
March 2014

Each September at the guild the president announces a new challenge, and the quilts are due the following spring.  It’s something I look forward to each year.  We have a varied group with members of all skill levels who do all types of quilting, so rules are kept to a minimum - lest anyone be discouraged from entering their own unique interpretation in the challenge.  This is quilting at its purest – there is not usually a prize, it is simply done for the joy of it.  Some members make a quilt, others do not, and both scenarios are perfectly welcome. No scrutiny, no judges, just, “Here’s an idea. Make it your own.” 

The 2013-2014 challenge was to use the log cabin block in a new way.  Or…if you didn't feel like that, well…use it in an old way.  Keeping it loosey-goosey – that’s what creativity is all about.  The log cabin block is easy to construct and is often the very first one a new quilter is taught.  I was no exception. Way, way, back in something like the Jurassic Period, I was a new mother on maternity leave.  Since a baby only took up only 20 out of every 24 hours, I was looking for something to fill in that dull and dreary 4 hour gap.  The city’s Parks and Rec department offered a basic quilting course right when I most needed it.  It was there that I learned about rotary cutters, quilting mats, and what a log cabin block was all about. 

I’d always wanted to learn how to quilt, had begged my mother to teach me since I was about eight years old.  After all, I’d been using the sewing machine for two full years at that point!  When you’re eight, that’s 25% of your lifetime!  I refused to believe she did not know how. I figured she did but she was just too busy and was pretending to not know. I ignored the fact that she’d never made a quilt or even a block. I also failed to appreciate that she had plenty of time to teach me to sew kickass Barbie clothes, play jacks, iron shirts (I had an inexplicable fondness for ironing), cut out magnificent snowflakes, swim, and play poker.  I went on to excel at the crafting of brocade Barbie evening dresses and winning at five card stud.  But I now see the truth.  She never quilted and probably didn't even know much about it.  She wasn't withholding at all!

The log cabin block is super simple.  You start with a small square of fabric.  You sew a strip of fabric to one side, rotate it, sew on another strip.  You keep going in this way and a block magically blooms in your hands.   I was anxious to practice my newly acquired skill back when I took my first class, so baby was installed in an infant seat, the seat was installed on one end of the dining room table, and I was installed with my Singer at the other end.  My first project was a log cabin table cloth that covered the top and padded the sharp corners of our large square coffee table.  It turned out to be a fortuitous choice when, later on, the infant-turned-toddler launched herself eye first onto the corner of the table.  The end result was that the Christmas photos featured a black eyed child.   Thankfully, the doctor in the emergency department gave us the benefit of doubt after a cursory run of the child abuse checklist.  So you could say that quilting has made me a better mother.

Of course, I like to think outside the blocks, so I wanted to do something a little different for this challenge.  I reasoned that an actual log cabin would do.  I love to take a photo and scale it up into a pattern for a quilt.  There is one crucial element.  It must be photo I really like.  I also had a momentary flash of brilliance and decided to make this quilt for my soon-to-be son-in-law, Lucas. He loves camping, so isn't a log cabin just about the same thing?

I started looking at photos and drawings and paintings of log cabins on the internet.  I wanted not only the perfect log cabin, but one that I felt he would think was the perfect log cabin.  I have no idea what the criteria for that would be, but I figured I would recognize it when I saw it.  I probably looked at a thousand cabins.  Not one seemed right.  It turns out they’re not that aesthetically pleasing.  But I’m perpetually undaunted by daunting tasks.  Eventually, long after I’d tired of looking at *!%$#&^$ log cabins, I saw a photo that was just a porch, with a window, a rocking chair and a guitar.  I could feel a bingo coming on.  Clearly this was the one since he loves to play the guitar.

I scaled up my outline of the photo, dyed some fabric for the logs of the porch wall, painstakingly put together the whole quilt, leaving the rocking chair until the last.  I couldn't get it to look right, despite keeping it proportionally sized to the original photo. I made it bigger.  I made it smaller.  I made it black, then brown.  I thought about red, the colour that all rocking chairs should be, but decided against it.  Sorry Dad.

Also, when I looked at it the window didn't seem right.  It was too large.  The guitar was bloated and misshapen like it had been bingeing on sodas and marshmallows.  I had made some extremely tiny actual log cabin blocks to put around the perimeter.  I wanted to respect the spirit of the challenge and use the actual log cabin block somewhere in my piece.  The tiny blocks did not work. The whole thing resembled  a mismatched set of china - nothing went together. There was not even one thing that I liked on the entire piece.  I consulted  others and they verified my worst fears.  Yep.  Ugly.  I showed it to my husband.  He couldn't tell that it was a porch.  Yep.  Ugly and confusing.  Clearly this was way more than just the “ugly phase” most  quilts go through at some point in their evolution. 

The challenge deadline was looming, mere weeks away…and despite a massive effort....I had…nothing. 

I decided to keep what I could from the current excrescence and  go forward.  Since the porch concept was a failure, I needed to find a new format for my log cabin.  What if…I moved the whole idea to the inside of a log cabin? That gave so many more possibilities for objects that could be used!  And I could still use the window and the rocking chair!   The miniature log cabin blocks that weren't working for a perimeter could be made to look like an actual log cabin block quilt draped over the chair! 

I dyed new fabric and came up with a much better way to create the log walls, sewing on each log individually and then stuffing it.  What else would be in this log cabin?  I’d always wanted to use up some of the fabric from my extensive collection of bricks, so adding a fireplace was an easy decision.  The fireplace would need a nice bright fire burning and a basket of birch firewood handy.  The window was lifted out of the failed quilt and placed in the new quilt and curtains were added.  The rocking chair was added.  Not again!  It was too big.  The next one was too small. The next was too black and dominant.  The next was too brown and disappearish.  I was Goldilocks, unable to get my porridge just right.  It’s important to know when you are defeated.   I usually figure this out long after that actual event has taken place.

Perhaps… it needed some other kind of chair?  A comfy chair?  A puffy chair?  A chair with print fabric?  For once I knew exactly what it should look like!

When I was a child we had a cottage, and of course, it being the sixties, and my mother being super-social, we knew everyone on the lake.  Some neighbouring cottages I liked going to more than others.  At the top of the list was the cottage with the real bear skin rug.  I still get a thrill just  thinking about it.  Next to that came my parent’s friends, Doris and Ted’s cottage.  Their place had two gigantic puffy armchairs.  Occasionally, Dad and Ted were unable to come to the cottage because of work, and my Mom, my sister, and I would stay with Doris.  Being the littlest, I was given the mind-boggling privilege of sleeping in those two flowery chairs.  They simply pushed them together.  It was like sleeping in the softest cloud, one with exquisitely flowered walls.  I knew it was probably the safest place on earth.  I felt sorry for all the other poor dolts who were too large to get the chair treatment.  That was the sort of chair the cabin deserved. 

I was able to find a perfect chair photo, scale it up, and use a piece of the fabric my sister had just given me for Christmas.  Yes, she’s that insanely cool – she gives me fabric on my birthday and at Christmas - even though she doesn't quilt!

I loved the chair, it was just like the one I remembered, even if it had paisley fabric instead of flowers.  There was no way I could drape a miniature quilt over it and cover up a place I was going to want to sit quite often.  I decided to place the quilt on the floor of the cabin.   Except, (spoiler alert) it isn’t really a quilt.  Sewing those tiny blocks into a quilt would have made it too bulky to drape.  It was added onto the quilt one square at a time.  It’s quite a challenge to place blocks on a quilt “floor” and have the perspective such that it looks like it’s lying on that floor. I finally solved quilt dilemma #203 by getting out a quilt, laying it on the floor, photographing it, and using the fold lines in the picture as a guide as to how to place the blocks to get the look I wanted. 

Whew.  Almost done.  I sewed the salvaged guitar appliqué, which was tricky with its multiple pieces and the lumpy quilt behind it.  Alarm bells went off.  Too large!  The guitar was too large.  The relative size of each piece in this type of quilt is crucial if the end result is going to be pleasant – and convincing.  By now I had pretty much ground my teeth down to nubs in frustration.  It took several days before I allowed myself to admit that I would have to completely re-do the guitar…meaning that I would have to find a new photo of a guitar at the precise angle I needed  (I don’t have a guitar I could photograph, and I draw haphazardly at best).  It would have to be the proper orientation, and I would have to once again create the wood fabric for the guitar body. How far do I go with these things?  Turns out, pretty far.

I looked for photos of wood that you would buy if you were going to make an actual guitar.  I downloaded a photo of spruce.  I digitally adjusted it, getting the colour just right, and the scale of the wood grain just right.  I printed it out on cotton.  I tell you this, so that in reading this long treatise, you too can know the suffering of tedium.  I sewed on the new guitar.  It looked, it looked, well, it looked – bent.  I had to unstitch it, and add a cardboard insert in the shape of the guitar body in order to get it to look flat.  It’s possible that I could have made an actual guitar in the length of time it took me come up with the final fabric one.

Finally the quilt was finished, well, sort of…but it lacked life.  And the quilt in the middle of the floor with the guitar on it looked lonely and unanchored.  What else would Lucas have in his cabin?  Well, yes, a whole lot of computer gear, but one can get too realistic.  Dogs!  He is a card-carrying dog lover.  I added in two pets who tied everything together quite nicely. As a bonus, they seemed quite satisfied with their new home.  I can’t guarantee they’re housebroken, but after he the gets the quilt, well, it’s no longer my problem.

This quilt is unique in many ways, but at present the feature that sticks out in my mind the most is how every single element in the quilt was problematic.  Except for the dogs.  By the end of it I had become the living embodiment of the quilt’s title.  I was wracked with Cabin Fever.