The Naming of Quilts

Tags

applique, Learning Curve, naming quilts, Quilt Show, quilting, Spirographology, Suburbia

It’s not every day you get to name an actually living being so I have to settle for naming quilts.

Once upon a time I was going to rewrite T.S. Eliot’s “The Naming of Cats” to reflect the naming of quilts. I didn’t get far because it’s easier for me to work on “filk” with other people around and these days I don’t work in an office.

Anyway, since writing about my Guild’s upcoming Quilt Show, I read some of the comments and got to thinking about that topic again.

My mother (and other people) seem to really like the names I come up with for my quilts and always want to know how I think them up.

Detail of Spirographology taken by Jeff Lomicka at my Guild talk.

I can’t claim any particularly clever scheme for naming them… the names just “come” to me, usually while I’m working on them (sometimes if I’ve been working on them too much!)

For instance: Spirographology. I had bought the black and white fabric in the centers of what came to be the Jack’s Chain specifically to do a “stack n whack” kind of quilt. I had fun working on the other two I had made, so I thought this would be a quick, fun project.

But it didn’t work out that way since, with just the black & white fabric, I thought it was dull. I didn’t like it.  I sent a picture to my mom, and my dad saw it and said that they looked like something I made from a Spirograph. That stuck with me and, as I was assembling the Jack’s Chain, I eventually decided would “spice up” the monochromatic stack n whack, I came up with the name Spirographology.

The Road from Malden to Lowell is Paved With Broken Dishes… is probably the longest name I’ve ever named a quilt.

So, as you can see, I usually change the name of a quilt as I work on it. I start out most times with the name of the block and sometimes I keep fairly closely to name, as in the case of the broken dishes quilt that I was working on it when I moved from Malden to Lowell.

 

Learning Curve is one of my favorite quilts.

In the case of my Baltimore Album quilt.  I was learning to appliqué, and when I got 9 blocks done I had to make a decision about whether to include my early blocks (which I thought weren’t very good.)

I knew I shouldn’t call it “Baltimore Album” because I’ve never lived in Baltimore, and not even all the blocks are from Baltimore.

In the end, I did decide to use the early blocks, and felt that this way the quilt really shows my learning progress, so I named it Learning Curve.

 

Suburbia… partly done.

My current machine piecing project is Suburbia.

 

I started out calling it “9-Patch Houses”, but when I got them all together I thought about where I grew up and how here were 4-5 different house layouts/designs in our “housing plan.” We all started out looking similar, but, after a while, our houses were all different because of doors, shutters and landscaping.

The houses on my quilt are the same because they start off with a 9-patch, but, like my neighborhood, they ended up looking a bit different because of the fabrics used.

If you have read this blog for a while, I sometimes talk about how the names of my various quilts come to be. I will, of course, continue to share this on the quilts as I’m working on them, but I hope this post gives you a little insight on how I do it if you don’t want to go back and read my old posts.

My Favorite Quilt

Tags

applique, back basting, Baltimore Album, Best of Guilds, handquilting, Learning Curve, Lowell Quilt Festival, needle turn, New England Quilt Museum

The completed quilt with hands and feet of the appliquér and the quilter…

A couple of months ago I had a quilt chosen to represent my Guild (Chelmsford), at the “Best of Guilds” exhibit  sponsored by the New England Quilt Museum. I was really happy and excited about this because Learning Curve is my favorite quilt.

Now, I know you’re not supposed to have favorites (or is that just with children?), but I can’t help it.  Learning Curve has so many emotional ties for me that I will always love it best.

My first applique block: Fleur de Lis

It’s inextricably linked with my Mom.  She’s an extraordinary appliquér, and she kept nagging me to try appliqué, but I was intimidated. After years of gentle (and not-so-gentle) persuasion, I cracked open Elly Sienkiewicz’ Baltimore Beauties book and did my first block.

And it wasn’t awful. It does kinda look like the original pattern. The white thread I used to whip stitch it on to the background doesn’t show too much. It probably doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny (although I am told differently.)

But it was an awful lot of work, I thought, so I put it away and did smaller blocks like the blocks on Dear Jane (which are 4-1/2″ square.)

The second block, Strawberry Wreath, fought me

I resumed working out of Elly’s books from time to time, but the second block I tried fought me and I only managed to subdue it two years later. (Because of this block, I developed an antipathy towards freezer paper, but I should probably save that little rant for another post…)

Then, I learned back-basting. Suddenly appliqué was fun again. I managed to finish enough blocks to make a nine block quilt. I even designed the center block myself, since I had read that most Baltimore Album quilts had buildings on them.

I dubbed the quilt Learning Curve when I realized that it was a quilted journal of my appliqué education. After waffling, I included my first appliqué block in all it’s *ahem* glory, and my first original design: Hope for a House.

About this time, my mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer.  With the chemo, etc, she didn’t feel like doing much and she said her color sense had shifted so she wasn’t having any fun choosing fabrics herself. We usually talk every Sunday, and almost always quilting is mentioned.

My original design: Hope for a House

As I worked on it, we discussed my progress on Learning Curve. Eventually, she asked the dreaded question: what I was going to do when I was done with the blocks? I replied (as I usually did):  Oh, probably put them in a box back in the closet somewhere.

I’m sure this response appalled her so much she offered to quilt it for me. By hand.

So, I put it all together and sent it to Pittsburgh and told her that she could quilt it any way she wanted.

She outlined quilted most of the appliqué motifs, and did some interior quilting when she felt it was needed (mostly in the house block.)  She grid quilted the backgrounds.  She came up with a really cool “rope” looking motif for the sashing, and lastly, she had my Dad (our unsung hero of the quilt) draft and mark a fabulous feather border.  It took her 18 months.

I heard about the progress in my weekly phone calls.

Now, every time I look at the quilt, I see my Dad marking it and my Mom quilting it and I feel like we all worked on it together.

You can see my quilt (and lots of others, equally nice and possibly nicer, though probably not as I’m incredibly biased) August 9-11 at the Lowell Quilt Festival (at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium in Lowell, Mass.)

To see more of the story of Learning Curve, I kept a sort of journal at my old website.