Benefit

A very dear co-worker has been undergoing breast cancer treatment over the last 7 months. It's been a real education for me. Brenda's taught me a lot about dealing courageously with such a diagnosis, and also about the many ways a serious illness like cancer lays you bare to the world--physically, emotionally, financially.

Brenda is uninsured and this weekend was a big community benefit in her honor. So many people and such enthusiasm! The benefit was a rousing success and a lot of fun too.

I was asked to contribute something for the big raffle and this is what I made.


This table runner is the piece using the Hoffman Christmas prints that were so tricky to color-match.



Brenda is thoroughly contemporary in her tastes--she even has a lavender kitchen--and I worked to that idea, knowing full well that this piece would end up with another owner. But somehow it seemed that making it look like Brenda was a good way to imbue it with healing and positive thoughts for many more healthy years, for her and for all of us.


And in a wonderfully serendipitous touch, it was won by a former co-worker, who's been through lots of quilting with me and who, although she doesn't really sew at all, knows the value of a quilt, even a small one like this.

Loving Bias

Here I am, working at my usual snail's pace, doing the hand-stitching on the binding of a table runner.
There's been a lot of chatter around the blogosphere lately about binding--tutorials and lots of opinions. I'm opinionated about quilt binding too.

I will admit it. I'm a fool for bias. I love bias-cut fabric in all its sewing applications, but especially in quilt binding.

I almost always use bias strips to bind my quilts. The only time straight-grain strips enter the picture is to take advantage of the design of the binding fabric. Hmm. That would be a grand total of ONE quilt in my career. Otherwise, it's bias for me, hands-down, all the way.

There are fancy ways to cut bias strips but I don't use them. Re-inventing the wheel doesn't interest me. I start with a bit less than half a yard of fabric, maybe 15 or 16 inches (any longer and I have to butt one ruler up against another to cut the strips, which requires a third hand. Note to the quilt notion people: I would buy a 3 inch wide yardstick).

I cut the bias strips and seam the strips together.


The seams are pressed open, then the bias strip is folded in half the long way, and pressed. (I always make my binding so that it's doubled when sewn onto the quilt.) Then the folded bias is stitched to the quilt top, keeping all the raw edges even.


What's left is to wrap the binding around to the back side of the quilt and hand-stitch the folded edge along the machine stitching line. With a project like this, I'm good to go for a couple evening's TV movie viewing. I stitch as I go--there's no need to pin or clip down the binding in advance of the stitching.

I like narrow quilt binding. I almost always cut my strips 2 inches wide.

If I hadn't outed myself as a total needlework dork before, here is proof positive: what I love most about bias binding is the subtle rounded-ness of the finished binding as it lays on the quilt.


And binding cut on the bias is supple and yielding. It's simple to ease around curves or other shapes.


The look of quilt binding is a small detail for sure, but sewing is full of tiny details that give great pleasure. And this is one of my favorite tiny details. I especially love to use striped fabric to bind my quilts and I'm always on the lookout for interesting stripes.


Bias cut binding should wear better on a quilt too, as the straight fabric weave isn't receiving constant direct abrasion. That's something to think about, for sure, on a quilt that will get heavy wear.

Bias strips take no more work to make than straight-grain strips and the finished product is a small thing of beauty.

Off to finish this little table runner...

Hard Wired

It's funny how terriers are hard wired for rodent detection. Lucy likes to stand and watch out this window. A bird can be hopping around on the ground, close enough that she could swat it. No reaction. But let one chipmunk or gopher appear in the grass outside and Lucy gets the shakes and paces and barks and squeals. NO evasive maneuvers on our part are enough to distract her.

The rest of the world may be crashing in upon us but we feel we're safe from any chipmunk invasion.


And me--hard wired for quilting? That may be, but I've been avoiding it. This is my first quilting this year. Can't believe it's been that long. Life is short--must get more quilted.


This is a weird little table runner--Christmas table runner actually--that will be part of a benefit for my friend/co-worker who has been undergoing cancer treatment since last fall. Labor of love.


And if positive quilting thoughts have any power, the word cancer is hereby banished from her life forever.


This runner is based on a couple gorgeous Hoffman holiday prints. But let me tell you, you don't realize how fleeting seasonal quilt fabrics are until you try to find go-togethers for Christmas fabrics from several years back. The palette of these fabrics is mauve-y and seafoam green. Good luck finding holiday fabrics in those colors this year!



I had to fall back on old reliable batiks--the best bet for matching odd shades of any kind. With luck, this piece will be bound and completed this week, just in time for the benefit next weekend.

Rural Spargoing

Four of us in the Spargo group grabbed this past weekend for our project and spent it in Spring Green, Wisconsin, finally lush and green as its name would imply. We stayed at Aldebaran Farm.


I guess it can be said that Frank Lloyd Wright slept here--though fortunately not while we were there. (ENTIRELY too freaky.) When it was a working farm, it belonged to his uncle and the young Frank spent summers here helping out.

The home was "remodeled" in the 60s into a strange pseudo-Wright style. I would much rather have seen it restored as the 19th century farmhouse which it actually is but that's just me and my wacky ideas. It was a relaxing place in a beautiful setting for kicking back and sewing.

Spring Green is Wright country. The view from the front door of Aldebaran Farm looks across the valley to the original Wright studio.


Just out of view from the front porch is Wright's sprawling, Prairie-style home at Taliesin.





A short walk away is the Unity Chapel, built by his family in 1886.


Frank Lloyd Wright served as a draftsman on this project. A small graveyard at Unity Chapel contains Wright's grave, as well as those of his parents, his sister, illustrator Maginel Wright, and her daughter, author Elizabeth Enright.


And who's read "Loving Frank"? Also here--the grave of Mamah Borthwick, Wright's lover who, along with her children, was murdered by a servant at Taliesin in 1914.


Pretty interesting stuff for a morning walk.

But we DID get down to work with the stitching. Yeah, note the wine and guacamole. That helped.


I now have eight Sue Spargo blocks stitched. Two are ALL finished--embellishments and all.




The rest need some flourishes--beading, buttons, embroidery. These are the blocks worked on this weekend:



So this quilt is going nowhere fast and isn't likely to be completed any time soon. But this one is all about process--working together with friends, sharing materials and embellishments, building some memories and sharing good times.

Hmmm

So I've been working on these quilt blocks since JANUARY. Blocks are made. Then I spent most of a weekend retreat making sashing pieces. I finally got the chance to set some of this assemblage up on my design wall and I'm not sure what I think.



The sashing seems kind of.........assertive.

I had this quilt in my mind as mostly blacks and tans. Originally the idea for sashing was that it would be tan and darker tan. But somehow when I cut the pieces, it was the oranges I reached for. (The blank squares will hold more yet-to-be-made ninepatches.)

I've seen some really successful quilts where the sashing was a bit dominant. Is this going to be one of those quilts, or should this sashing be saved for Another Quilt?

Found-Time Socks

Lucy and I have a finished project to share.


This is another in my ongoing series of found-time socks. These took nearly 9 months to knit, which would be embarrassing to admit, except that they were pretty much made out of scraps of time here and there--doctors' offices, plane trips, car rides.



As the socks were cobbled together out of bits of time, so is the pattern a mish-mash. (And it's nice to get to the point in knitting where I can do that.) This is pretty much the Deirdre Wallace Basic Adult Sock--Ann Norling #12. But the patterning is from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks. It's what she calls the waffle rib--three rows of K2P2 and then a row of all purl. It has nice crunchy texture while still retaining the right degree of mindlessness for pulling out of a tote and knitting a few rows here and there.

The yarn is Zitron Trekking Hand Art--a handpainted Trekking yarn I bought last fall when these autumnal colors really looked appealing. I think they still look appealing but I photographed the sock with my newly planted impatiens, so you can see that it's finally spring in Wisconsin.


It's good to pull some accomplishment from odd moments here and there, but my feet would be getting awfully cold if they were really desperate for warm socks. As it is, I'm amassing a fair-sized drawer of hand knit socks. Just very S-L-O-W-L-Y.