A Tower of Fabric — Janet Szabo

My fat quarter bundle of Corey Yoder’s Spring Brook line arrived in the mail yesterday:

This is about three times the size of the fat quarter bundle I had for her Pepper and Flax line. I am sure that there will be enough left over after I finish the original quilt to make a second one.

I’ve signed up for the Ruler of the Month club at the quilt store where I bought the Q20. The club is a HandiQuilter program (that’s the other line of machines they carry), but the rulers can be used on both machines. The first class is next Tuesday and I’m looking forward to learning more about rulers and ideas for using them. The Amanda Murphy book and videos have been great resources, but I also like hands-on instruction. The class runs for six months. Each month we get a different ruler, which more than pays for the cost of the classes.

I’m doing something I don’t usually do when I make quilts:

I am cutting all the fabric at once. I’m not designing this one on the fly or using up scraps as I go, so it’s much easier to do a marathon cutting session for each unit, then stack the units up in blocks. I’ll make all of the star blocks, first, then cut the fabric and make the chain blocks. As the design stands right now, it’s 60” x 72” without borders.

That quilt block I designed may have to go into timeout for a bit. I love the block. I love the quilt design I came up with for it, too. The problem is that when I look at the block/quilt design, I see something very specific, and the Very Specific Thing is wreaking havoc with the fabric choices. I much prefer blocks that can be interpreted and used in many different ways. I picked up some fat quarters at the quilt store and I am going to make a few more test blocks in an attempt to come up with something coherent.

Some days I am in charge and some days the quilts are in charge.

On a related note, if I can ever figure out which shade of dark blue Kona doesn’t have a greenish cast to it, I am going to buy an entire bolt. I like navy blue as a background color, but it’s a tricky one to dye, I think.

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There is a joke in ministerial circles that pastors only have one sermon, and they preach a variation of that same sermon every Sunday. I plead guilty to the same here on the blog. Homesteading/being prepared is something I am passionate about, so I talk about it a lot. It goes without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that if you don’t like the content here, you’re welcome to go elsewhere. No one is forcing you to read what I write.

I ran across the following post yesterday morning on a quilt group I belong to. There was a picture accompanying it, but the text gets the point across very well.

During the Texas February freeze (3 days of rolling electric blackouts) and then our subsequent 10 days of going without water, I managed to finish 2 dozen baby quilts for the Binky Patrol. I could piece them on my 1952 Singer 66 treadle (no electric needed) and then when the electric rolled back on, I could quilt them on my 1970 Kenmore. Tomorrow I deliver them to the local group's distributors. It was a good way to keep busy and to keep warm. There are 4 bundles of 6 here, tied up with the trimmed salvages from the fabrics. Nothing wasted.

Here’s a woman who turned a lousy situation into something positive. And before someone misses the point—deliberately or otherwise—and tells me that “not everyone has a treadle sewing machine and can do this”—the point I am making here is that the details of the situation don’t matter. The solution doesn’t matter. This post just happened to involve quilts. What matters is flipping one’s mindset from “This is a disaster, I can’t do anything!” to “This is a disaster, I can do something!” No, not everyone will be in a position to set aside their own issues and discomforts, but this woman could and did, and what she accomplished in that period of time is impressive.