Quilt Repair in Photos

Somewhere between Fall 2012 and Spring 2013
When I was working only at the bakery, a regular customer learned that I sewed and asked if I could repair a quilt for him. And he'd pay me for it. "Sure thing!" I said. I was still beginning to learn how to quilt when I agreed and adopted his torn up quilt, but I was confident that I could figure it out. When I brought it home and laid it out, I was overwhelmed.

A quilt is made of three parts: a pieced front, a batting, and fabric for the backing. In his quilt, there were chunks where all three layers were missing! How was I going to fix it?

I folded it and stored it in the closet until...

July 2014
I sent out a plea to two friends to review this quilt and help me make a game plan. Molly said, "Sounds like an SOS. I can swing by today to look at it." Her assessment was that I should rip out all the quilting and "start over" with a new quilt front and scrap the backing and batting.

So I set to it. For a few weeks I would sit on the futon at my friends house during our crafting social nights with this quilt and my seam ripper. Luckily the hand-quilted stitches were easier to remove than had it been machine-sewn.

Then slowly, as I had patience for it, I would patch small holes with a similar looking fabric. And for the much larger gaping holes, I made my own mock log cabin blocks to insert onto his.

March 2015
I finally finished this gd quilt! I felt really proud. And then sometimes I would look at it up close and think, "God, this is shit in comparison to his original, original quilt." And then I'd remember, "But oh yeah... his dog tore through it and made the whole quilt impossible to use and now this is a fully functional quilt!" Mission accomplished. : )

Held up to the window to check for the smaller holes. The bottom center part is one of the log cabin blocks that I sewed on already.

Getting ready to tie knots to keep this baby together

Details of tying knots

Cramped. Machine sewing on the binding

(poor photo quality) The finished quilt!

Pajama Scrap Quilt

Good friends, Brehan and Jocela, had a baby girl in late November-- the day after Thanksgiving.  I was still working on their quilt, but didn't actually finish it until December 2nd. Here are photos of a blanket and a pillow with a pocket.  The bird fabric and (all the other square fabric) was set aside by Brehan's mom who passed away in 2013.  She had cut out all the pieces to make pajamas. Her husband was kind enough to let me browse her fabric collection, choose this pj fabric and cut it up to create the blanket and pillow.

Pillow on the bottom, Blanket rolled up on top

Pillow with a Rabbit book peeking out

Quilt, of simple design and the pillow

A glimpse inside the book

I included a book, Rabbits, to stuff inside the pocket of the pillow. The text is simple and charming. This page reads, "Rabbits like to get all dressed up if they are going to be in a storybook."

Wedding Quilt

Congratulations to our friends for getting married on this day! 

Last Christmas my Grammy found a quilt pattern that she recommended I use for an upcoming wedding quilt.  The quilt colors were bright, the fabric patterns were plentiful-- it all looked too hokey and chaotic. (See the last photo, below.) But I knew that quilting is a personal interpretation of any pattern. So I chose my own fabrics, eliminated some of the busy blocks and created this:

Welliver Comfort

roughly 60 in X 70 in.

Front (top row is folded over)

Horses

Back, a bit of city and sparkle

All packaged up!

Pattern found in a 1976 Quilting magazine

Aunt Sukey's Choice Quilt

Deer No. 3

A long while back I bought extra deer fabric from Sarah Watts' collection, Timber and Leaf. I made one deer quilt and then another and said, "Look out for Deer quilts 3 and 4 later." Well, here it is, Number 3.

Congratulations to the little baby girl born on August 5th (or 4th?) who gets to keep this beauty.

Orange Tea for Bear

 Finished! Orange Tea for Bear (named after the blocks used).  Remember that small quilt that I complained about having to remake? Here it is! It's just a tad bigger. I love it!

Back, nothing too special

Zero, dog model

The PROCESS:
This quilt pattern came as a bit of a goof. I saw the pattern in a book, Vintage Quilt Revival, but didn't buy it or even check it out from the library.  My glance at it -- even online from someone's Pinterest post-- misinterpreted what kind of blocks were used. The whole quilt is supposed to be made up of the Tea Leaf block.   But I saw it as two: all the dark blocks were Bear's Paw, and the colorful ones were Tea Leaf. No wonder the whole quilt was called Spiced Chai in the book.

Tea Leaf block

Bear's Paw block

In the end, it wasn't a huge mistake. I know that my style lends itself to "going with the flow."

Love Postcards

Used to be K's truck, now it's Zack's

Our friends, K and B, just got married yesterday. I've been working on their quilt off and on since January. Over the Christmas holiday I sat at the dining table with my mom and Grammy and spread out all of my quilter's magazines and books. "Okay, I have friends getting married in July. I need to find THE pattern!"  My mom found the winner in the first magazine she looked through-- the Jan/Feb 2013 Quilty.  It was perfect! I had a goal with seven months ahead of me, so I could choose to work on it as I got pockets of time.

I call their quilt Love Postcards.  Granted, there's nothing postcard-y about the quilt pattern, but the hearts, the small size of the blocks, the fact that one of the fabrics has words on it, all reminded me of postcards. Plus, K and B lived apart during their college years (and then some) and so I choose to force upon them the notion that maybe they sent some love letters to each other via snail mail.

I added borders that the original quilt pattern did not call for and really love the result. It ended up measuring around 62 X 70 inches.  I quilted it at home with simple straight lines. I finished the binding the day before the wedding. Phew!

Packaging

Zack cleaned up an apple crate for me and glued a small wood tag to the box so I could label it with my Alberta Marie logo. I forgot to take a picture of it at home, but we grabbed one from the gift table.  It's not the most appealing packaging but definitely the most unique.

Quilt front

The quilt back

Back closeup, two fabrics for top and bottom

One line at a time

Quilting is one of my least favorite parts of quilting. I love making the quilt blocks, making the front as one giant piece from all of these small pieces, and I love getting to free-hand the back fabrics with scraps or new material.

But sitting down at my machine and slowly feeding the sandwich of fabrics through is mind-numbing, never mind that I get extremely frustrated.  I'm never satisfied with the quality of my straight lines. I sew slanted lines. The fabric pulls and puckers. All the safety pins that I painstakingly put in are all off because it was fed wrong.

Because I've learned how to sew just through experience, I don't really feel confident in my actual knowledge of the machine. What does the tension do? What if I don't use the top feeder legs? It took me 45 minutes to sew one line down my most recent project.  Granted, part of it was keeping the dogs out of my work space, but the rest of the time was that trial and error learning curve. I needed more desk space, so I added my ironing board to the backside as an extender. But the quilt was still too heavy and pulled the work down.

Austin Kleon's books Show Your Work! and Steal Like an Artist have been so beneficial to my confidence. I feel less pessimistic.  More encouraged by the track I'm on.
In ShowYour Work! he quotes one stupefying statement by Russell Brand.

One day at a time. It sounds so simple. It actually is simple but it isn't easy: it requires incredible support and fastidious structuring.

Whatever it is, you have to start small, to start somewhere, to build up from that.  So I say to myself today, "One line at a time." And that, friends, is how I quilt.

Acting like I'm not frustrated in the least bit.