Archive for the ‘The Quilts’ Category

It looks better than I could have imagined it. Sue brought it over the other day and I couldn’t believe how well it worked out! the colours, borderless, simple, thick and comfy…and essential to the whole quilt thing is that it is unstudied. She worked some kind of mysterious magic with the positioning of the squares. I’m just glad that part wasn’t up to me because I know I would have tied myself up in knots about it.  Now the rest is up to me to tie it or quilt it in some way. I had imagined leather tags like what there used to be on mattresses, but now I’m thinking felt behind buttons, I have hundreds of buttons!

The The Quilts category for the preamble to this post……….

The quilts, remember my friend who can quilt? are at the batting stage, tops done now decisions about insides and unders and edges and actually quiltifying. They must fulfil their clothy destiny and become coverlets. They were bits of stuff but they are no longer or will not be for long.

The more I hear quilty speak the more I think it is more of a science than a craft or at least it leans dramatically towards the alchemy end of creativity, well particularly I suppose if you don’t use a formula or a pattern created by someone else. There are so many factors, variables, possibilities and hypotheticals as far as the eye can see. The placement of fabric pieces with pattern and colour, is just the beginning, the insides need to be stable and sincere, and the edges firm , friendly and precise, and of course the flip side needs to hum wid it. We have decided on ‘tied’ rather than quilted and we are going to tie with a felt anchor like an old mattress. Yummy.

Having a friend who can make quilts is probably better than being able to do it yourself. I once thought I could be one of those clever quilty people but I was wrong. I can’t cut straight with the wheelie cutter thing, it always goes off skewy or I run into the metal ruler and make a blunt patch in the blade. It’s only a matter of time before I take a big chunk out of my finger and bleed all over the place. I’m good at collecting fabric though, got piles and cupboards and drawers full of it in anticipation of creative genius. Who said it had to be my own?

I have been resigned to my ineptitude for some time and quietly feeling guilty about the massive stash of quilting cotton, and then my friend Sue muttered one day that she would make quilts for my girls. Woohoo….. that was a silly thing to say! My policy is never refuse a genuine offer of help, when help is genuinely needed. The only question left was, ‘can we fit coffees in to this project somehow?’

The thing is that she is really good at it probably because she understands all the measuring. I think she finds it relaxing, I like being distracted by the balance of colours and patterns and…..the happy sideline is that my 8 year old daughter has jumped in with two feet, to iron squares and choose extra colours, and then makes comments like, ‘this has been the best day ever’.