Somewhere around mid-afternoon on Saturday it struck me: I absolutely, positively had to start working on a quilt. Where this notion came from is unclear. Perhaps it was from tucking Z under her quilt every night for the past year or so? Perhaps it was seeing my first quilt draped over the back of our love seat everyday? Perhaps it was just the feeling that it is winter and, thus, time to make blankets? Clearly the ways of the crafter's brain are sometimes unknowable, even to herself.
I was working on my Blooming 9 Patch up until about April, 2007. I started this quilt as a part of a workshop at Quiltology, back when I was both pregnant and still had free time to devote to going to a Thursday morning quilting session. The quilt was ambitious from the point of view of it's final size (it's meant to cover a queen sized bed when finished), but I was completely inspired by the opportunity to dive into a color study focused on batik fabrics in reds and yellows -- colors that I still consider out of my normal range. This project stalled for a couple of reasons... a new workshop (the one that would result in Z's crib quilt), anticipation of my daughter, and the fact that it was a large project that required reasonably large blocks of time in order to do enough so that i felt I was accomplishing something. But many quilters I know told me "All quilts have their time. You'll know when it's time to get back to them."
Since Z was born, quilting, overall, seemed to go by the wayside. I missed sitting down with my sewing machine, but hot irons, sharp scissors, pins and a need to focus on making nice seams were all incompatible with Z's infancy, and this became even more true as she started to become mobile. Everything got pushed to the back of the shelf so that she wouldn't get hurt.. and that just made it too much hassle to think about. She's still rather inquisitive, but, now, she occasionally responds to being told she should leave things alone.
Saturday afternoon naptime gave me a delightful three hours of pulling things out, setting things up and just generally getting back into the swing of the 9 Patch project.
it was nice to find that I had already sewn together a significant number of the component strips, and even nicer to take them out, iron them and look at how the colors worked together. There's something distinctly satisfying about pulling out a 3 year old project and still being happy about one's color decisions.
It took me a few minutes to review the pattern and component parts, but I found that, in spite of the long hiatus, I didn't have much difficulty getting back into the swing of this project. Amazing how much muscle memory just takes over sometimes as I started seaming squares together.
I have modest goals for making continued progress on this project. Weekday time is limited, so I am hoping to dedicate weekend afternoons to it. I still have 7 long strips to piece together from component squares. Then all the strips have to be seamed together -- which will probably be the most challenging part since it will require much pinning and fiddling with edges. But one of the very nice parts about this project, is that because of the way the fabrics and squares blend together, little problems should become relatively invisible in the finished project.
Welcome back, Quilt Mojo! I missed you!
I was working on my Blooming 9 Patch up until about April, 2007. I started this quilt as a part of a workshop at Quiltology, back when I was both pregnant and still had free time to devote to going to a Thursday morning quilting session. The quilt was ambitious from the point of view of it's final size (it's meant to cover a queen sized bed when finished), but I was completely inspired by the opportunity to dive into a color study focused on batik fabrics in reds and yellows -- colors that I still consider out of my normal range. This project stalled for a couple of reasons... a new workshop (the one that would result in Z's crib quilt), anticipation of my daughter, and the fact that it was a large project that required reasonably large blocks of time in order to do enough so that i felt I was accomplishing something. But many quilters I know told me "All quilts have their time. You'll know when it's time to get back to them."
Since Z was born, quilting, overall, seemed to go by the wayside. I missed sitting down with my sewing machine, but hot irons, sharp scissors, pins and a need to focus on making nice seams were all incompatible with Z's infancy, and this became even more true as she started to become mobile. Everything got pushed to the back of the shelf so that she wouldn't get hurt.. and that just made it too much hassle to think about. She's still rather inquisitive, but, now, she occasionally responds to being told she should leave things alone.
Saturday afternoon naptime gave me a delightful three hours of pulling things out, setting things up and just generally getting back into the swing of the 9 Patch project.
it was nice to find that I had already sewn together a significant number of the component strips, and even nicer to take them out, iron them and look at how the colors worked together. There's something distinctly satisfying about pulling out a 3 year old project and still being happy about one's color decisions. It took me a few minutes to review the pattern and component parts, but I found that, in spite of the long hiatus, I didn't have much difficulty getting back into the swing of this project. Amazing how much muscle memory just takes over sometimes as I started seaming squares together. I have modest goals for making continued progress on this project. Weekday time is limited, so I am hoping to dedicate weekend afternoons to it. I still have 7 long strips to piece together from component squares. Then all the strips have to be seamed together -- which will probably be the most challenging part since it will require much pinning and fiddling with edges. But one of the very nice parts about this project, is that because of the way the fabrics and squares blend together, little problems should become relatively invisible in the finished project. Welcome back, Quilt Mojo! I missed you!
I love the idea of quilting, but it just seems like so much painstaking labor when I think about trying to make a quilt that I give up in despair and go back to sewing dishtowels (1/2 hr project) or crocheting a cowl (2 hr project).
I'm afraid to ask how many hours goes into a quilt project. :-( Maybe I'm just lazy.
Oops -- sorry that posted twice!
This is one of my favorite quilt patterns! I made a king size several years ago for my grown daughter. You can see the finished top at http://www.denebir.com/quilts/bloomin9after.jpg
Must be something in the air... or Carl Jung's collective conciousness... I took out my 2 inch suarea Sunday, and while the rain lashed at the windows and the wind howled, I started pinning them to the net....
I really, really love those colors! That is going to be such a beautiful project.
It's funny to see you write about quilting! I've been in project withdrawal, too. My Peter is 22 months old now & I haven't yet begun on the 2 quilt kits I'd bought before just he was born. I think that he's finally getting to a point where I might be able to work on something like that. Of course, now that tax season's gearing up, I won't see the light of day until the end of April.
This is lovely. I understand what you mean about needing to work on a specific something Right Now! Sunday afternoon out of the blue I went into my craft closet, pulled out the loom and warped that sucker. It's been so long since I've warped my loom that my technique obviously needed work, because it took me over 2 hours to do my few ends.
It's so nice to return to projects from a long hiatus. They're still just as gorgeous as at the start.
I never comment, I'm a professional lurker, but this is so funny - I recently paged through all your archives looking for what ever happened to this project, and here you go pulling it back out. I used to quilt in highschool, abandoned it in college (not really a portable craft) but recently had the urge to make a quilt. Remembered Keyboard Biologist quilted. LOVED the Blooming 9 patch, but could not discover its fate. Your Z is about 6m older than my D, so the fact you can quilt again gives me great hope. Of course, the best way to be sure D touches something is to tell him its dangerous, so maybe not. Thanks for reading my mind!