Ode to Scraps

Quilters love their scraps. Quilters hate their scraps. Quilters try to unload their scrap piles on unsuspecting innocents. Quilters covet the motley discards of fellow fabric junkies. How to characterize the relationship between quilters and their scraps? It's complicated.

Scrap-city

Every quilting project generates scraps. Even alleged scrap-buster projects have the alarming capacity to spawn scraps. These ever-multipling and ever-smaller pieces of fabric can be unwieldy, unshapely, hard to keep track of. I shove them in tubs and baskets and buckets. I procure more tubs, baskets, and buckets. I fill them, stack them in precarious, mismatched towers. My living room is now a city of sky-scraping scrap-piles.

Scraps weary me. How do I still have pieces of this fabric? I fell in love with this crazy print. Now it is unimaginably ugly. I suck it up and use it again, thinking this will be our last encounter. A month later I find more pieces of it, hiding in a forgotten tupperware. By some dark magic, this process happens again and again. They are attached to me; they haunt me forever. 

The forgotten tupperware under the shelf

This is the dark side of scraps. But there is a light side, a beautiful side.

When I quilt with my own scraps, I incorporate the memories of a hundred projects. I remember the excitement of designing something new, learning new techniques, watching my skills grow, seeing the project come together in unexpected ways. I experience again the simple joy and wonder of touching and seeing a beautiful piece of fabric, its textures, colors, simplicity or artistry, whimsy or elegance. It has been with me for a while. Today I am surprised and glad to see that some piece of it still remains. 

I made this trivet with scraps from the first quilt I made for my son

As I lift a scrap from a past project and fit it to another, I remember the person for whom I labored. I think again of how I observed their favorite colors, their style and taste, habits and needs, and then thought of what I might make for them that could make them feel special and known, make them laugh and smile. I feel again my pleasure at their surprise and delight. I connect with them in my heart, and also with my own better self, a person who is warm and generous. 

As I stitch these many pieces together I see a new creation take shape. I focus my intention now on someone new. Sometimes I know who that is, and sometimes I do not. Past prayers join together to bring blessings for someone new. 

At a simple, economic level, it is also deeply satisfying to work with scraps. These tiny pieces could be discounted. They could be composted. Or worse, thrown in the trash. I tell myself that I am frugal. (This miserly mythology is only part of the story: the amount of money I have spent building my stash could have paved our driveway, and if my husband ever reads this blog I guess we'll have to chat about that.) When I make them into something bigger, something beautiful, I feel resourceful and triumphant. All things are possible! I have made stone soup! We may go hungry, but we will never want for quilts.

Quilty Compost

This optimist's venture is also a stay against chaos. I turn disorder into order. I make the piles smaller. As I embark on a new scrap project, I think, I will use so many scraps, I will be so happy. At the end, I am vindicated. It feels wonderful. I am free! 

More gorgeous fabric from TupperwareParty

A crack opens just here. I enjoyed that feeling so much that I want to do another scrap project. But I have no scraps left. My tubs are empty, my towers demolished. I get the bright idea to use someone else's scraps. I scour ebay and etsy in search of scrap lots and goody bags, and, in the grips of madness, I buy them.

Awesome scraps from one of my favorite Etsy sellers, Textile Temptations by TupperwareParty

This mad impulse has yielded wonderful results. I would never be able to afford such a variety of batiks and Kokka designs if I bought them in bundles or off the bolt. Other people's castaway scraps can often be bought for a song, and many have numbered among my favorite fabric purchases. One of my favorite sellers to buy larger scraps from is Textile Temptations by TupperwareParty on Etsy, who share their fabulous taste in Japanese fabrics at great prices. 

But sometimes the results are mixed. A purchase of a novelty scrap lot on ebay yielded a fun asparagus print, rainbows and unicorns, emperor penguins, constellations, and a lightning-lit sky (yay!). It also yielded a surprising amount of fabric featuring money, bacon, beer, zombies, and half-naked firemen. I am stymied.

The novelty box. If only the money and beer were real...

And sometimes the results are allergies. Small scraps are very hard to wash. I can wash the quilt when all is said and done, but until then I stubbornly itch my way through piles of scraps that carry with them remnants of cat dander and unexpected perfumes. Is it worth it? Oh yes.

In a future post I'll share some of my adventures in scrap sorting. Until then, I'd love to hear from you - what is your relationship with your scraps? Do you love them, hate them, hoard them, hide them? What are your favorite scrap creations?  

Elizabeth's Maze: A Journey Begins

Elizabeth Edens, VBS 2013:
"Queen of Kingdom Rock"

A few months ago, my dear friend Elizabeth Edens turned 60. She also had recently retired from her long-time position as parish ministry coordinator at the parish we both called home for many years.

Elizabeth is one of the most vibrant, vivacious, and stylish women I know. She used to run a modeling school, and has a megawatt smile and a shoe collection to die for. Then there's her collection of teapots - whimsical, unexpected, ingenious. So Elizabeth's birthday called for something bright and fabulous. It also had to be something I could knock out in a fairly small window of time.

The idea I had was a rainbow maze, a sort of labyrinth that would symbolize a spiritual journey that was only just beginning. I searched online for modern designs that would fit the bill, and found this beautiful quilt, below, by modern quilter Marsha Bray, enitled Rainbow Trail (40" x 40", 2011).

Marsha Bray, Rainbow Trail, 2011

Marsha Bray's innovative design forms a geometric grid of color. It creates an illusion of depth and three dimensionality. In my haste, however, I did not notice this when I first studied her design. In my own adaptation, I wanted the colors to repeat as the maze spiraled outward, so I worked with smaller swaths of each color. I also chose to work with prints and batiks instead of solids, because Elizabeth is definitely a prints kinda gal. Understated ain't her thing. Not really mine, either. So, polka-dots. Here is the mini-quilt I made for Elizabeth:

Elizabeth's Maze: a Journey Begins, 2015

The spiral quilting made me think of the labyrinth from Chartres, emphasizing the unexpected turns of our spiritual journeys and softening the edges of still painful experiences that have taken us by surprise. I chose blue for the center, a primordial color, a color of calm and rest and possibility - a sabbath beginning for this next phase in life's fabulous and endlessly colorful journey.

The quilt now has a home with Elizabeth's teapots.
Perfect!

Wisdom is a Tree of Life

My quilt top: "Wisdom is a Tree of Life"

The Tree of Life symbolizes providence, nurture, beginning, and possibility. It is a home for birds, insects, and other animals. It provides oxygen and shade, healing, fuel and food. Through cycles of loss and new birth, budding and flowering, the tree witnesses to changing seasons and embodies the rhythms of created life. In houses of worship, the menorah and other traditional candelabra are stylized trees of life, linking the tree with light and flame and mapping our sacred spaces around this pulsing heart. In the book of Proverbs, a sage declares that "Wisdom is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; happy are those who hold her fast. By Wisdom YHWH founded the earth, by understanding established the heavens" (Prov 3:18-19).

Inspiration: Ann Brauer's beautiful quilt Rainbows of the Dawn 45" x 45"

My meditation on this passage inspired a quilt entitled Wisdom is a Tree of Life (above). I wanted the quilt to incorporate all the colors in the Ives color wheel in order to convey that Wisdom emerges from every life stage, every person and place, every walk of life. Inspired by the beautiful quilts of Ann Brauer (featured at right), I designed the quilt background with twelve rows of string pieced blocks (eight blocks per row), each row incorporating strings drawn from two adjacent colors on the color wheel. As I moved around the wheel, I incorporated leftover strings into adjacent rows to soften the vertical transitions and allow the colors to blend into each other.

Against the string-pieced background, I envisioned a silhouetted tree in black. Inspiration for the tree silhouette came from a cross stitch pattern by Bellastitchery. I was enchanted by the tree's strong curvature and charmed by each individual leaf. I cut the trunk and branches freehand with a rotary cutter, and appliqued these onto the pieced background using a decorative blanket stitch and dark thread. At this point, my husband declared the tree to be "pointy", "creepy," and "scary", which was definitely not the effect I was going for. I nixed the original idea to add leaves in black, and designed the leaves in a spectrum of colors complementary to the background blocks. I cut leaves freehand (with scissors) from scraps that were trimmed from the string-pieced background blocks, then turned to other fabric scraps when these were used up. I satin-stitched the leaves to the twigs and branches, using coordinating embroidery thread. To my eye, the colors of the leaves captured many seasons, from the first bright buds of spring to the deep greens of summer and the earthy tones of autumn. I tried to capture the latter with scattered leaves falling to the ground. 

Wisdom is a Tree of Life sunlit quilt top

The picture at the top of this post was taken at night, with the quilt top hanging in the window of my dining room. By day, the morning light shone through the quilt top, creating a beautiful stained-glass-window effect. The sharpened silhouette reveals the tree as Woman Wisdom. The curves of the tree are the curves of her hips and breasts. Her arms extend to the heavens and embrace creation's goodness.

I would have loved for the finished quilt to have retained this stained-glass effect and the accentuated figure of Woman Wisdom. If anyone has experimented with gauzy backings or some kind of transparent batting that makes this possible, I would love to hear about it!

Detail of portrait by Debbie Corina, Art from the Heart Portraits 

Thanks to the generosity of friend and artist Debbie Corina, this quilt now has a wonderful home in the sanctuary of Hillsborough United Church of Christ in Hillsborough, NC, and was first displayed on Easter Sunday. Debbie is the artist behind Art from the Heart Portraits, creating stunning and heart-warming true-to-life portraits in graphite, colored pencil, and soft-pastels of cherished animal companions. Above is a detail of one of Debbie's Art from the Heart custom portraits (psst! commission yours today!). Below is a picture of Debbie in the midst of the congregation at HUCC - she's the striking woman in the center foreground with the fierce spiked hair:

Here, finally, is a picture of Wisdom is a Tree of Life in its new home, where it echoes the shape and symbolism of the cross, the candles, and the lily:

The quilt could not have found a more fitting home, and I am so grateful to Debbie for her support of me as an artist and her vision of where it belonged. Who has supported you in your art? Whose vision has helped your work reach into spaces, sacred and secular, that you could not have imagined or accomplished on your own?

Black and White

In September 2014, I was invited to participate in a special event sponsored by Hillsborough Artists' Cooperative at the Skylight Gallery in Hillsborough, NC. The event, entitled "Black and White", featured the work of twelve local artists.

Participating artists were invited to consider many aspects of the symbolism of black and white. We were also instructed that we need not limit our work to the color scheme of black and white. I was honored to be able to contribute my first art quilt for this show. I also participated in a photo shoot with my dear friend and art conspirator Rev. Tiffney Marley, whose artwork is featured on her Ethnic Fusions webpage. The photo Tiffney submitted for the show was titled "A Glimpse of Zion -- Goddess." That's my face, in the photo. The hands holding the world belong to both of us.

My favorite photo from the shoot didn't make it into the show. To me it symbolizes that we are powerful together. It symbolizes the victories that we have shared through many hardships. With our gazes on the sky, we have nowhere to go but up.

My own contribution to the show continued the theme of the "goddess" while exploring the future we on earth build together across racial and cultural lines. The piece was inspired by a story shared by artist Shiang-Tai Tuan in the months leading up to the show. As we witnessed yet another dazzling, gigantic "supermoon", Shiang-Tai shared that in Chinese culture this moon was associated with the goddess Chang'e. Hers is a story of love, loss, and sacrifice. She is the dancer in the moon. She is also a patron of the home and hearth. 

"Chang'e Flying to the Moon (Ren Shuai Ying)" by Ren Shuai Ying (任率英) - Ren Shuai Ying，1955. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Here is my interpretation of "Chang'e - Dancer in the Moon"

The red background is a luxurious silk reclaimed from a vintage dress by American designer Geoffrey Beene. The upper left of the photo shows the diamond texture of the silk, which inspired the cross hatch quilting pattern. The moon itself embodies the duality of black and white, each interrupting and entering the space of the other, each participating in the other. The stars in the upper left are embroidered onto the silk fabric, echoing the stars that rise triumphantly through the moon's heart. The house pictured in the foreground is the house Chang'e has left but watches over. And it is a house built of black and white, showing again how we rise together and are strong together. I had only been quilting for a few months when I made this piece, and I did not have a lot of technical expertise. But it opened a channel inside of me. I am so grateful to the members of the Hillsborough Artist's Cooperative at Skylight Gallery for helping me to discover that I am an artist, too. 

Scrapper's Delight in Shades of Spring

In my previous post, The Easter Quilt: Welcoming Spring, I shared my struggles with negative space in making my frolicking-bunnies Easter quilt. I medicated my anxiety by making a scrappy backing using the same spring-pastel color scheme of pinks, light blues, pale green, and other tints. The pattern, called "Scrapper's Delight," comes from the book Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison.

The source: Sunday Morning Quilts

I began with this playful pile of scraps:

It was an absolute joy to watch the pile dwindle, find more scraps to use up, watch those dwindle, and find more scraps, and... you get the picture. This pattern uses up a lot of scraps!

The pattern is constructed of scrappy concentric squares built in fourths. Here is the first quarter-square:

And here is the first full square block:

If you are using this very fun pattern, I have two tips:

1) arrange the scraps in piles by length.

2) work on more than one quarter-square block at a time.

I found that I was able to complete blocks much more quickly by working on four at a time. With my scraps sorted by length, I would work through the short pieces, then the medium ones, then the longer ones. I felt a great sense of accomplishment as I finished the quarter-square blocks in quick succession and then joined them together into the full-square block.

For the quilting, I chose spiraling squares and rectangles. Straight line quilting is not my forte, and I learned some lessons in this process.

1) Read the manual! In February I purchased a Janome 6600, which is a wonderful machine. On this wonderful machine, I had

Janome even feed foot: no dogs here -
they're on the machine

previously tried using my walking foot with no success. Why? Because unlike on the Brother machine I had been using before that, on the Janome 6600 the upper feed dogs are attached to the machine, not the presser foot. On various occasions, this one included, I tried to use the walking foot with no luck at all. The fabric wasn't even moving. After consulting the manual I learned that I needed to engage the upper set of feed-dogs that were already on my machine after attaching the foot. From that moment, it walked like a dream.

Janome Acufeed Quilting Guide Bar

2) Quilting guides are designed to be used on the right side of the presser foot, with the prong facing up. If you use it on the left, which I did, the prong faces down. If you are quilting a string pieced quilt, which I was, that prong will get stuck in your seams. In this case, I didn't want to mark the quilting lines because I wanted to improvisationally vary the width between lines, but I also wanted straight, parallel lines. I thought I would use the quilting guide to keep my lines parallel. Unfortunately, I was spiralling the "wrong" way, and positioned the guide bar on the left. The prong kept getting stuck in the seams and before long the tab that held the guide bar in place behind the presser foot became so loose from all the pulling that the guide no longer stayed in place. Oops.

Hera marking tool in action

3) The Hera marking tool is amazing! I bought this tool a few months ago and never used it. My quilting guide bar fail sent me scurrying for other solutions. I read a wonderful tutorial on straight line quilting by one of my quilting crushes, Nicole Neblett of MamaLoveQuilts. She emphasized the importance of marking and recommended the Hera marking tool. I pulled mine out of the drawer and was amazed at how well it worked.

So, one of the great values of this project is that I *began* to clean up my technique and learned how to use some new tools for straight line quilting.

The last step before binding was to square the quilt:

For binding, I chose a tie-dyed fabric in pale blue, pink, and purple to pull together the many happy tints used on both sides of the quilt. And by the time I finished my scrappy backing, I had decided that the back was now the front. Whoever adopts the frolicking bunnies may disagree, but for now, here is the new front of my Scrapper's Delight / Frolicking Bunnies Easter Quilt. It makes me very happy. I'd love to hear about the projects you've undertaken to celebrate Spring!

The Easter Quilt: Welcoming Spring

Phlox announces Spring in my garden

Spring is a season of light, warmth, and color, new growth, mystery, and surprise. It's a time of change, but not the dramatic rupture. Instead the gradual, careful, day by day unfolding of beauty and unimagined possibility. e e cummings captures this in his poem "Spring is like a perhaps hand":

Spring is like a perhaps hand 
(which comes carefully 
out of Nowhere)arranging 
a window,into which people look(while 
people stare
arranging and changing placing 
carefully there a strange 
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps 
Hand in a window 
(carefully to 
and fro moving New and 
Old things,while 
people stare carefully 
moving a perhaps 
fraction of flower here placing 
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

Cumming's poetry is known for its blending of traditional and modern. He experiments with syntax, intentional misspellings, and playful suggestion. To my mind, this is a lot like modern quilting. The careful hand of Spring also reminds me of the quilter's hand, moving a fraction of a block just so, shifting these lines an inch that way, changing the color just a shade, perhaps, and soon, before our eyes, the whole landscape has transformed.

Spring Bunnies

My Easter quilt began with a single piece of fabric:

Furoshiki Cotton fabric 20" x 20" - a Japanese wrapping cloth

This wonderful fabric was designed as gift wrap. But it just begged to be featured in a quilt. The playful bunnies wanted room to frolic. I had read that modern quilters like to use white fabric backgrounds and aren't afraid of negative space. I am personally allergic to negative space and always mess up white fabric, but I had seen some really beautiful examples of minimalist modern quilting that I greatly admired, so I thought this would be an opportunity to ease into the concept.

The rejected design

I chose a simple frame-effect for the blocks. Once they were complete, I needed to arrange them. My first, very unmodern arrangement looked like this:

This was clearly no good. I needed to play with the syntax and misspell some words. I had left over strips of solids and blue batik from making the blocks, and began to experiment with arranging them as a frame around the frames. Here was the second attempt:

Arrangement #2

The second arrangement seemed much better to me. But about halfway into the construction of the quilt top I realized that I had designed a sideways quilt. That is, if this quilt was going to fit on a twin bed, as I hoped it would, my frolicking bunnies were facing the wrong direction. This happy accident required a redesign on the fly and helped me to break out of the 3x3 grid pattern I had inherited from the original fabric.

Here is the bunny side of the completed quilt:

To be honest, it's not my favorite creation - the fact is, I still don't like negative space. I like the original fabric better! I gave it a try, and I'll keep experimenting. Quilting with pastel colors was also an experiment for me - I gravitate toward bright, pure colors. But these tints had a calming effect on my spirit. And to remedy my discomfort with all that empty space that could have been filled with color, you'll see in the next post what I concocted for the back of this Spring confection.