Recently a young girl in our church was diagnosed with leukemia. Knowing from (second-hand) experience how miserable hospital stays are, especially for chemo, I thought it would be appropriate for our church’s quilt ministry to make her a big, soft blanket to snuggle in when things got tough.

The information I was given was: green, pinks, and reds, and likes dogs, cats, horses, and her American Girl dolls. I finally settled on hearts and an adapted Scottie dog pattern, turning it into a West Highland Terrier instead (one of the American Girl accessories is a little Westie named Coconut.)

Usually when we make quilts, we ask the church members to make a “signature” block, some sort of design, verse, etc. that fits the theme of the quilt. This time however I thought it would be more meaningful if the girl’s peers made the personalized blocks. The artwork may not be tops (what do you expect of 5-12 year olds?), but the love definitely comes through.

In another change, since I wanted an extra-soft quilt, I decided to work with “Minky” (or Jo-Ann’s answer to Minky, though the adorable red paw print fabric came from Hancock’s). But while the stuff is super-duper cuddly, it’s stretchier than all get out, and the nap makes it annoyingly slippery. The stretch I got around by ironing stabilier to the back of all my fabrics before cutting them out. The slippery I just had to learn to pin the things like crazy. Thank God for my walking foot.

I really wanted to get this quilt done by the end of November, so during Thanksgiving holidays my mother and I sat and quite companionably pinned, ironed, and stitched together the whole quilt (Thanks, Mom!). Between Thursday evening and Saturday at 2:30pm we managed to finish the thing.

Instead of batting, we ended up using a big piece of white fleece. The backing too is fleece–that wasn’t my first choice, but the first choice didn’t look right, second didn’t have enough fabric, and third would have required me to iron on stabilizer to the whole 56″ x 56″ quilt backing. I don’t think so. I found another big piece of red fleece in my stash, and away we went.

My mother had the cutest idea, one I think I’ll use again. The top corner heart has a hidden pocket. If you just look at it from a distance, it looks the same as the other hearts. Up close you can see a little pocket, perfect for hiding treasures right within easy reach.

Anyhow, it’s done. Now I just have to finish six quilt patterns, eight swimming cover-ups (I’ll post on that one tomorrow…hopefully), and my convergence quilt before December 13th, and my niece’s baby quilt before Christmas. Sigh. So many projects, so little time.

And now back to my previously scheduled life…

After getting the underlying blocks pieced (the actual quilting came later), but before I put on the backing, I did some major applique.

The vase is the most important part, since it is the challenge fabric in all its glory. It has layers of batting underneath it to simulate the curve of a vase. I had to put the brown piping around the edges to make it stand out from the busy background.

I didn’t want much quilting in this section, since vases have nice smooth sides, but again, to diminish puckering fabrics, I ended up quilting the blue feathers and a bit of the branches on the right-hand side. And I gave the peacock a nice black eye too

After that came the cherry blossoms. The branches are appliqued over thin cords of piping. The flowers are made with a Clover Yo-Yo Flower Maker in two different sizes and were sewn on at the very end (after everything else had been quilted and bound and whatnot. Those little seed beads are ones I had left over from a cross-stitch project I started eons ago, and they just happened to be the right colors. Love it! I also couldn’t find fabric I liked, so I turned the fabric I had inside out and used the back side instead.

I decided the window sill needed something else, so I wrote a little poem about the scene. I wanted to do a haiku, to keep with the Asian feel of the quilt, but it was a bit too limited to get across everything I wanted to get across. So I used a tanka, which is the same idea as haiku, but instead 5-7-5 format, it is 5-7-5-7-7. That also became the name of this quilt–”Tanka.”

Outside my window
Pale blossoms dance, wild and free
On sea-scented winds.
Do my captive blossoms yearn
For such perilous freedom?

See the finished quilt in my next post!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Hoffman Challenge, here is the company’s own definition:

“Every year, a team from Hoffman Fabrics chooses an upcoming fabric design and then issues a challenge to quilt, clothing, doll and accessory makers to create an original item using the fabric…Judging emphasizes originality and creativity, creative use of the challenge fabric as it realtes to other fabrics, visual impact, and workmanship.”

My original idea involved a geisha wearing a challenge fabric kimono. Much to my chagrin, I discovered (after several dozen design tries) that one of the challenge winners from a few years ago had the same idea. Sigh. So, I pitched that and tried again. What I finally came up with was a giant urn with cherry blossoms in it, sitting on a window sill. By the time I was finished, I’d done hand-piecing, hand-quilting (tear-away stabilizer is my new best friend), 3-D applique, homemade piping, yo-yo flowers, and beadwork. Oh, and poetry writing too. Mixed media indeed!

Here’s the underlying design made using EQ6 (oh, marvelous, marvelous EQ!). I settled on using the traditional Storm at Sea block, mainly because I love the movement it creates. The cream-colored blocks are where I appliqued a huge vase.

The pieced and quilted block. Those little triangles were way too tiny for me to do on the machine (well, I could have, but hand-piecing was actually much easier). The “ribbons” created with the cream and brown fabrics are outlined with quilting. That was originally all that I was going to do, but then I did the flowers and leaves and finally the diamonds.

Each of the brown and cream diamonds is quilted with a spiral design in variegated browns. Okay, I confess–I had to quilt them because they were puckering funny. Mainly that cream with the brown veining. Serves me right for using a substandard fabric in with all the nice designer stuff.

The center square is fussy cut from the challenge fabric and quilted with a cherry blossom in variegated pinks.

I also quilted pale green leaves in the two leaf fabric squares.

Only after I finished the quilt and wrote a tanka for it did it occur to me that the spirals were like storm winds blowing the leaves and blossoms about.

Continues in next post

So I designed my own. It’s a easy block to piece. And versatile. I’ve already used it as a pansy. It is probably adaptable for a wild rose, or strawberry blossom, or buttercup, or wood violet, or forget-me-not, or…

The block name obviously dates from the Civil War, but the block itself is much older. Other names include Monkey Wrench or Double Monkey Wrench, Hole in the Barn Door, Shoo-fly, Love Knot, Lincoln’s Platform, Puss in the Corner.

According to Wikipedia (told you I liked that site), “a self-similar object is exactly or approximately similar to a part of itself, e.g., the whole has the same shape as one or more of the parts. Many objects in the real world, such as coastlines, are statistically self-similar: parts of them show the same statistical properties at many scales. Self-similarity is a typical property of fractals.”

I’ve tried to design a fractal quilt or two, without much success. At least, not with a pieced version. I might be able to design an appliqued or foundation-pieced fractal quilt, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. Until then, I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with self-similarity instead.

“Sherman Advances”–A 68″ x 68″self-similar quilt based on the Sherman’s March block.

Amazing how much color can change a design. This block is not complicated in the least. Squares, squares, and more squares. But by putting the block on point and playing around with the colors, you can get designs that don’t look like they share the same block base.

Oftentimes this design is cropped to overlap the blocks, with a contrasting fabric pieced in to form hearts in the middle of the quilt.

However, my favorite method of utilizing this block is to place it on point and keep the colors fairly close in color. This creates a very strong sense of motion. A swelling, rolling motion. Stare at it too long, and you can actually start to feel woozy. So I called this design “Mal de Mer,” which means “seasick” in French. Rather appropriate for a Storm at Sea.

Note: “Mal de Mer” will soon be available as a kit (pattern, instructions, and fabric) through my on-line store.