Leftovers Put to Good Use

Our church’s sewing group would like to have another comforter-tying party, perhaps this month or early in March. We hosted one two years ago and everyone had a great time. Just before Christmas, I took my bin of 5” squares to church, and Pat took it home and put together a couple of tops, this one:

And this one:

They are so colorful and cheery! She said there are still enough squares left for two or three more comforters. I also have a bag of squares here—I meant to take it with me to Spokane and work on it there, but I forgot to put it with my sewing supplies. I’ll get those sewn together. We have plenty of batting in our sewing supplies at church, I think, so I will order backings and get the tops basted together and ready to tie.

This makes me so happy. That was not a small bin of 5” squares, and it’s so gratifying to know that they have been put to good use. The comforters will be donated to Mennonite Central Committee.

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Robin, Tera, and Sunnie are all in for a retreat. I’ll start planning that soon. I think we should include a visit to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture as part of our trip. NWMAC always has such interesting exhibits. They also have a respectable textile collection. I wanted to stop in last week, but, they were closed due to staffing shortages. I am excited, though, about an exhibit that is scheduled to start this week and run through October, entitled Golden Harvest: Flour Sacks From the Permanent Collection. The website states:

These graphically striking cloth sacks date primarily from the first half of the 20th century and most are in pristine condition. Several vintage objects made from recycled flour sacks, including a rare dress c.1880s, will also be on display, as well as art and images from the MAC’s permanent collection.

The NWMAC website currently is hosting an online exhibition entitled Quiltscapes, which is also worth checking out, and the good news is that you can do it from the comfort of your computer!

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I’m still quilting away on the wallhanging. I haven’t reached the level of quilting competence that I want and that’s causing me no end of frustration. Technically, I know what I am doing. Design-wise, I am still struggling with how much and where and what kind of quilting to do. This is one of those situations where there is no one right answer—just a series of choices—and learning to distinguish between the choices takes time and experimentation unless you happen to be one of the lucky people for whom that comes instinctively. For future projects, I do need to get into the habit of making some quilt sandwiches with the leftover blocks so I can experiment with designs on them, rather than on the quilt itself.

I quilted around the octagons, then added circles inside the diamonds formed by the sashing (they are hard to see):

Those circles were difficult to do because of the size of the ruler. Were I to do it again, I would probably make diamonds, instead, but I was trying to contrast the angular nature of the piecing with some curves. I might echo those curves by doing some kind of circular quilting in the border, too. Right now, I am stitching in the ditch around the squares in the center of each octagon, because I felt like those needed to be anchored down.

Here’s the thing: When this is finally hanging on the wall, the piecing and overall design is going to be what people see, not the quilting, so I don’t want to spend hours and hours custom quilting this. This is all part of the learning process. I’m getting close to the “finished is better than perfect” stage of this project. I am going to set it aside for a few days and work on something else while I consider what I want to do in the border.

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Our Joann Fabrics is still on reduced hours, but they have hired a few new employees. I stopped in yesterday because I need about a quarter yard of a specific fabric to finish a project, but realized when I got to town that I had left my phone—and thus, all my Joanns coupons—at home. They had the fabric I needed, so I’ll pick it up later this week.