Two new quilters show their stuff

Today I get to share with you two quilts made by the younger generation -- one of the best things that can happen to our favorite skill and pastime is to pass it along to the kids.  Anna Shanahan writes from Australia that she and her two girls read my Rail Fence book over the holidays and chose some fabrics to turn into quilts.

Sophia, who is 11, wanted a star effect, and her mom suggested a pinwheel layout with rail fence blocks.  She liked blue and purple, and after a discussion on color theory they decided to use yellow and orange for the edge rails for a high-contrast palette.  Sophia developed an interesting technique for sewing the blocks: first she sewed a very long strip of blues and purples.  "She sewed the yellow rails onto the ends of the long strip, then cut or unpicked the blocks off the ends, and repeated the process. She seemed to enjoy it, and stuck to it pretty well. Once she had her blocks, she fiddled around with the layout, then sewed it up."

Sophia's quilt in progress

Sophia's finished quilt top

Imogen, who is 8, liked two quilts in the book that were made from very fat rails alternating with very thin.  Anna writes: "We discussed the beautiful fabrics used, and the thin rails. Then we had a look through the fabric here to see if there was a biggish piece of something she found exciting. She seized on the planet fabric, then went about choosing fabrics to insert. She'd been involved in the earlier colour theory conversation, and went about making her choices with great confidence and assurance. I was quite surprised, and frankly delighted to see the decisions and choices she made. It's been really interesting to let other people make use of the fabrics here.

Imogen's quilt top

Imogen's quilt top (detail) 

"I wasn't confident to let her use the cutter, so she marked the fabric where she wanted it cut, both for the main fabric and the contrast rails. Then she sewed the strips into blocks, put them up onto the wall, and decided what order to put them in. She was struggling with the long, pieced seams, so I put those ones together. However, she loves pressing, so did all the ironing work."

"It's been a fantastic and achievable process for everyone. The girls are really proud, and want to show their friends how to do it. I think we'll be having another workshop next holidays. I like that the quilts are so different to each other, and to what I make. It took very little input from me, despite their lack of previous experience.  And the girls are already planning their next pieces."

What a great story!  There's nothing quite so exciting as to help a child learn a new skill, and watch her use it with confidence and fun.  Good work, Sophia and Imogen!

More thoughts on teaching

A while ago, the Quiltart list was discussing teaching.  Reading what others have to say makes me so glad that I have gone on a different path toward teaching relative beginners.

Somebody wrote in and said she had a chance to teach beginning quilting at her local shop, and asked for advice.  Here's one response:

"We spend time analyzing each block to work out how it is made -- I want them to able to identify a 4 patch, 9 patch, etc. and break it down into the smallest units they need to cut. This means they need to learn the formulas for 1/2 square triangles etc. I teach them how to calculate how much fabric they need for the block and later on for the sashing."

When I read this, I shuddered.  I know that thousands of quilters have been taught in exactly this manner, and most of them have indeed learned the formulas and how to calculate how much fabric they need, and (I'm sure) how to sew seams that are exactly 1/4 inch, and match the points.  But I wonder how many of them along the way have lost some of the joy and wonder they brought with them to that first lesson.

If I were asked to teach people how to make a 4-patch block, I would go at it another way.  I would say "A 4-patch block looks like this.  The way you sew it is to cut four squares, sew them into two 2-square panels, and sew the two panels together."

People might say "how big should I cut the squares?" and I would say "however big you want to.  If you cut big squares you'll have big, bold blocks and you won't need to many to make your quilt.  If you cut smaller squares it will look more dainty and you'll need a lot more of them, and it will take you longer."

I would tell them to figure out how many blocks they need and think about how they plan to sew it all together.  If they plan to set the 4-patch blocks with larger plain blocks, I would tell them to make all the 4-patch blocks first, then measure them, and cut the larger plain blocks to whatever measurement they need.

I would show them how to match the seams at the center of the 4-patch block if they want to, but I would also tell them that it doesn't really matter if they match or not.  I would say "if the seams match perfectly your quilt will look very precise and well-engineered, and it will take more time and trouble.  If they don't, your quilt will look more jaunty and informal."

I don't understand the concept of "formulas for half-square triangles."  If you want to make half-square triangles, then make some (I would teach a couple of different ways to do so more or less efficiently).  Trim them to be perfect squares (or not) and then cut pieces that size to sew them to.  Or even easier, cut pieces a little bigger, sew them to the half-square blocks, and then trim everything to size.

I would tell people not to bother calculating how much fabric they need, but to do a back-of-the-envelope estimate and then buy more.  It's easier to deal with leftover fabric than to run out before the quilt is finished.  But I would also tell them that if you do run out, find a similar -- or dissimilar -- fabric to finish out with, and it will probably be a more interesting quilt than if you had done everything exactly as predicted.

The reason I teach is that I want to give people the permission and the power to do what they want, to make quilts that reflect their own personality and creativity rather than simply follow the patterns and the rules set by other people.  I believe that traditional quilts are beautiful in their strict geometry and perfect execution, but I have also noticed that a whole lot of traditional quilts do not have perfect execution, and we love them just the same.

Do you think your grandmother "knew the formulas for half-square triangles"?  Or that she calculated exactly how much fabric she was going to need for a new quilt?  I bet she didn't.  I bet she used what she had on hand and made it come out right by hook or by crook.  Why should 21st century quilters have to learn all kinds of quilt-police rules when they could be shown how to do whatever they want?

That's my belief and my mantra.  If you think you'd like to learn to quilt this way, or if you think you might like to forget some of those QP rules and lighten up, maybe you'd like to sign up for my classes at Quilting By the Lake next summer.

Modern quilting -- the big internet hoohah

After I wrote a few posts recently about Modern Quilting, one of my friends tipped me off to an article in the current Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, which I had not seen, on the same subject.  And she said, "If you do read it, I hope to read a discussion about it on your blog."

Not wanting to disappoint, I will do as she asked.

The QNM article, by Mary Kate Karr-Petras, grapples with some of the same issues I've been writing about -- how to define Modern Quilting, and why it is so popular among younger people.  She points to fabric choice as the key difference between Modern Quilters and Non-Modern Quilters -- "In contrast to reproductions and country-inspired calicoes popular through the 1990s, modern quilters gravitate to large-scale, home decor-inspired prints..."

And she identifies the internet as the "most important venue" of Modern Quilting, with bloggers and photo-sharing sites allowing people to make friends and be influenced by trends.  Only after some years of such online activity did Modern Quilters start to organize physical meetings and guilds, but there are now more than 100 chapters of the Modern Quilt Guild.

Karr-Petras alerts us to a big hoohah that occurred this spring when a blogger, Sandi Walton, posted a rant about Modern Quilting.  Walton was peeved because another blog said pinwheel blocks were challenging for intermediate to advanced quilters.  Walton begged to differ, they were actually quite simple.  But she intemperately titled her post "The dumbing-down of quilting," which predictably offended many people who did not bother to read the post, and some who did read it.

I am fascinated by the whole Modern Quilting movement, which I confess I didn't even know existed until a few weeks ago, and by the hoohah that got so many people hot under the collar.  I'm happy that apparently there are thousands of new, younger quilters out there becoming as enthralled by the magic of quilts as many of us old ladies have been for years.  I'm happy that so many entrepreneurs have found niches in this market, selling books, patterns, fabric and stuff to the new folks -- because money oils the wheels that also bring things to Unmodern Quilters like me.  But I too hope that the movement isn't dumbing down the pastime I love so much.

I was struck by some of the comments that were left on Walton's blog, because they seem to reinforce what I suspected already: that a lot of Modern Quilting boils down to We Don't Want to Hang Out With Old Ladies.  And from the evidence, I can't say I blame them.

Let me quote some of them:

Melinda:  "As someone who is new to the sewing community I find the quilting community very unfriendly to newbies. I sew for fun, not for the competition of it. I don’t care to be chided into developing new skills."

Kaye:  "We get snubbed all the time both on the internet and (most especially) in the "real world" ... Many of us are forming guilds so that we can have those relationships locally too, but unfortunately it isn't easy, especially when people are looking down their noses at you."

Amy:  "Someday I'll go to a class, or a quilt retreat, and maybe someday I'll have the time to shop for fabric without a grouchy sales lady rolling her eyes at my toddler.  But now I'm busy with more important things, and I love the simple quilts and the pretty pictures."

Wendy:  "What gets aggravating is going into my local quilt shop for some advice or help and getting sneered at because I'm doing the 'simple' blocks.  Yes, I'm doing 'simple' blocks because I like them. I like the more modern look.  I don't care to take the classes at my LQS to learn 'harder techniques' because the blocks and quilts they are making are ugly to me.  I don't criticize their quilts because I respect their taste, just wish they respected mine."

By happenstance, I wrote recently about local quilt and art stores going out of business, and how that strikes many of us as unfortunate.  But if local stores really treat the young quilters this badly, they are asking for their own demise.

Zoe starts a new quilt

At the risk of sounding like an elementary school art teacher (not that there’s anything wrong with that) I’m going to write about kids again today. Seems like my blog has been full of little people lately as I’ve welcomed a new baby to the family and recalled lots of babies in my past, not to mention my project for kids at a Pittsburgh museum. But yesterday our granddaughter Zoe spent the day with us and the first thing she said was, “can we make a quilt today?”

In her last quilt, Zoe did the sewing but I cut the strips and pressed after every seam. This time I decided she could learn to do these tasks for herself. After an extended lecture on rotary cutter safety (ask me how I know) we worked out a routine. First attempts to have her both hold the ruler and cut didn’t work very well, so she positioned the ruler where she wanted it; then I held the ruler in place while she cut.

In hindsight, think my work table is a little too high for Zoe and she didn’t have enough leverage to lean on either the ruler or the blade with good force. For subsequent cutting projects we’ll either give her a stool or move to a lower table. Yesterday it was simpler to let her concentrate on wielding the blade without having to worry about the ruler slipsliding away.

Then, after a lecture on iron safety (fortunately I have no burn horror stories to relate, but didn’t let that get in the way of a good lecture) she got to iron her fabric and press her seams.

We had another milestone yesterday – we had to raise Zoe’s sewing table two inches because her knees weren’t fitting properly underneath! Not really a surprise, as she’s been using it for almost two years at its low level.

Oh, the quilt itself …. We scoured every fabric drawer in the house for hot pink, which I would always tell you is one of my favorite colors but for some reason has all but vanished from my stash. I thought I owned enough print fabric of every conceivable color and color combination to satisfy anybody’s needs, but I was mortified to find so little pink. We did eventually find enough to get us through the day, but  the next step in Zoe’s quilt education may have to be a trip to the fabric store.

She’s making blocks of random-width strips that are going to finish at 12 inches square. We’ll eventually arrange them in rail-fence fashion, with alternating blocks striping horizontally and vertically. She’s more than halfway through her initial piecing.

(We thought we had started with nine strip sets, so the finished quilt can have nine blocks, but two of them joined together in the course of chain-piecing.  We'll deal with that at the next session.)

Zoe's newest quilt

I've just put the last hand stitches into the latest quilt made by my granddaughter Zoe, who is 11. She chose the fabrics and did all the machine sewing. I cut the fabrics into strips, pressed the quilt after each seam and trimmed it to give a nice straight edge to sew the next strip onto. Zoe quilted it, and I put on the binding and sleeve.
Zoe started sewing three or maybe four years ago, we don't remember exactly when. At the beginning she sat at my sewing machine, which meant we had to build up a platform to put the pedal on so she could reach it. At the start I sat very close to her and held the left edge of the fabric, tugging as needed to help it go under the needle straight. We made one quilt that way.


But as Zoe got better at sewing I decided she could do more of it herself and we should have parallel work time. We set up a second machine on a low table that allowed her to put the pedal on the floor, and more important, allowed us both to sew at the same time.













We started the Japanese Lady quilt a year ago during summer vacation but didn't get it finished till a couple of weeks ago.

I asked Zoe what she wanted to do for her next project and she thought she might like to try hand stitching, so that's what we're working on now when she visits. But I suspect she will be wanting to make another quilt someday soon.

The second quilting lesson

Today was Molly’s second quilting lesson. She had made nine log cabin blocks, each one somewhere between 7 and 8 1/2 inches square. We decided to trim everything to 7 1/4 inches square. A couple of the blocks weren’t big enough on one dimension, so she sewed on strips that had been trimmed off larger blocks.

For me, the most exciting part of a block-to-block quilt comes when you finally put all the blocks together and see what they do as an ensemble.

I do have a design wall that we could have used, but we used the floor instead. In the back of my mind is that Molly has to go home and work without a fancy studio, and I do her no favors if I teach her to work with resources that won’t be at her disposal later. For the same reason, she’s sewing on the kitchen table, cutting on the counter (which is an excellent work height!) and pressing on the stove (which if you think of it makes a fine, firm, heatproof, well-lit ironing board equivalent).

Molly turned the blocks this way and that, and exchanged them and readjusted the layout for quite a while – and don’t we all love this part!! Then she sewed them together. In the process she learned some of the subtleties of piecing, such as how it’s easier to sew over existing seams if the seam allowances are pointing toward you, not toward the presser foot, how you avoid lumps by staggering seam allowances or pressing them in opposite directions, and how the presser foot wants to slide off the edge if there are more thicknesses of fabric on one side of the seam.

The quilt seemed small, even though it’s only meant for a three-year-old, so we made three-inch borders. Here’s the finished quilt top:

Next week we’ll sandwich and start quilting.

Meanwhile, Molly told me she has visions of sewing very complex designs with small pieces, and with triangles and other odd-shaped pieces, and asked me whether she was insane to even think about it so early in her quilting career. So I gave her homework: go home and try sewing different shapes together. There is only one rule: press every seam before you sew on the next piece. She already knows everything she needs to about the theory of piecing, and it will be interesting to see what she makes and what she learns by working on her own.

The first quilting lesson

Yesterday I started what I hope will become a really rewarding experience: I had my first day with a student who wants to learn how to make quilts. Molly has a sewing machine and has used it for small gift projects and home dec, so we don’t have to learn how to thread the needle. But she has not made quilts.

How to start! ? !

My personal prejudice is that too many teachers of beginning quilting pile it on with too much detail and too many rules. I like to get people sewing, so they can get hooked on the joy of creation before they are turned off by the frustration of "not getting it right.” I thought it might be fun to chronicle Molly’s learning and see what she makes.

We talked about what she wanted to make – a baby quilt – and what pattern/approach she would like. I gave her a choice of three traditional quilting concepts: nine-patch, rail fence, and log cabin. She decided on log cabin.

I think all of those three concepts have much to recommend them to beginners. They’re all so firmly grounded in the traditions of quilting that anybody drawn to the quilt format will feel comfortable. But they all lend themselves to a low-rules approach to construction and design. With any of those three concepts you can make a very traditional feeling quilt, or a very contemporary, edgy one.

First we chose fabrics. I have a stash of fabrics, largely traditional calico small prints, that I have outgrown as my own quilts have become contemporary and abstract. They’re all folded neatly in a “library” so it’s easy to choose a palette.

Molly was happy to find a lot of earth tones, and I was happy to divest them – those of us who lived through the 70s (and bought lots of fabric) are usually not thrilled to remember those glory days of brown.  She chose about a dozen fabrics, making sure to have a wide range of values, with a couple of light-lights to perk up the mediums and darks.  If you have chosen a good palette, you don't have to make a lot of subsequent decisions, just grab whichever strip is on top of the pile or seems to be the right length to match the piece you're sewing it to.

We decided to make nine blocks, so we cut nine three-inch squares for the log cabin centers. Then we cut a bunch of strips in varying widths. Molly sewed a strip to each of the centers, chain-piecing the whole set before cutting them apart and pressing.  Then she added a second strip to each block.  She took everything home and for our next meeting will have nine blocks ready to trim and sew together. We decided there would be no rules: you don’t have to sew strips in a particular order or in a particular color plan or keep the center square exactly in the center of the block.

Two strips sewed to each center square.

There are only two things that I tell beginning piecers to worry about: sewing a straight seam and pressing VERY CAREFULLY.

We talk about how it’s important to start with straight edges on your pieces (thank you, rotary cutters), and to align the two pieces of fabric carefully before you take them to the sewing machine. Don’t watch the needle as you stitch, but rather watch the cut edge of the fabric and concentrate on guiding it past your chosen landmark, about a quarter-inch to the right of the needle. The landmark can be a line on your stitch plate, or a place on the presser foot itself, or the edge of the feed dog plate, or a mark you have drawn in ink on your machine bed – whatever seems good for you.

Molly is using the edge of her sewing machine foot as the landmark. It’s not exactly a quarter-inch, but so what? As long as she always uses the same landmark, her seams will be straight and uniform. If she decides later in her quilting career that she needs to construct quilt blocks with great precision, she’ll be able to do so because she will know exactly how wide her seams are.

And we talk about pressing – how you start on the back of the work by gently guiding the seam to the correct direction, then flip the piece over and do serious pressing from the front. How you set the iron down behind the seam and use its flat edge as a bulldozer to push the fullness ahead of you, to make sure the seam is completely open before you add pressure.

All the other details can wait. And maybe we’ll never get to them! I am constantly surprised and thrilled that you can make beautiful quilts without templates, without a lot of measuring, without a lot of advance planning, without a lot of worrying. If you don’t have to worry about bureaucratic details, you can keep your mind clear to think about the colors, the design, the beauty, the art.