Quilt Projects and Musings, Early January 2012
Bonnie Hunter last summer casually suggested bowtie leader-enders might be a good thing to be doing and although I'm not one to jump on quilting bandwagons, I pretty much agreed. Bonnie was doing cheddar; I had gobs of pink and brown left from another project, and promptly began cutting. My bowties are made from 2" and 1-1/4" squares and finish nice and small. You can see that I've begun to sew the little blocks together; my quilt center will be 9 x 9 bowties.
Because crumbs didn't get out of my system with Pictures At An Exhibition, I'm making more of them; these will finish at 6" rather than 4" and each one has a person or an animal among the bits and pieces. Talk about addictive! I'm going to need a couple of off-to-college quilts in another year and a half, and I'm convinced that these crumb blocks will be just the thing.
Speaking of bandwagons, I've been thinking lately about people who participate in quilt-alongs and in mystery quilt projects. I've never done either of those things and I've sorted out the reasons why:
(a) I more than enough ideas for quilts I already want to make!
(b) I don't want to be doing the same project that a bazillion other people are doing.
(c) I can't imagine going out to buy fabric for a mystery quilt -- that I wouldn't know how it was going to turn out -- talk about a possible expensive mistake -- and I don't have a huge stash of yardage.
(d) I don't want to invest time and fabric in a project without knowing what it is going to be.
(e) So far, I haven't wanted to make an exact copy of another quilt.
All of that being said, I'm fascinated by the number of quilters who do get involved in quiltalongs and mysteries and enjoy seeing the various outcomes. I'd be interested to hear the reasons (if there are any!) that people choose to participate in these activities.
Home sick today with a head cold, I spent a couple of hours sewing, but more time reading (the current book club selection, Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler which so far I'd give about 5 stars) and sleeping. My hunch is that I'm going to be here another day but if staying home from work in any way prevents this from morphing into bronchitis, so much the better.
Comments
I get involved to be part of a bigger quilt group. I don't have a local quilt group so this is my alternative.
Your bowties are coming along! I love the brown and pink and have a pattern in a box with a bunch of such fabrics awaiting their turn.
Hope you get feeling better soon. I have had a propensity to develop bronchitis when a cold sets in, but I have been free of it for over 2 years now (knock on something or other).
my word verification is typertud funny! Typertude?? :cD
Sue
Mystery quilts terrify me. Too much pressure to keep up and then you might not even like it.
Kris
When I was still a new quilter, I participated in Bonnie's New Year's quiltalong, but we knew the pattern and the outcome before we started (mine were PIF/Kindness quilts). That was a lot of fun.
I did start Bonnie's mystery for Old Tobacco Roads with my own color controlled version ~ but my quilt (Dandelion Detour) doesn't look at all like Bonnie's sample. (I didn't cut enough of something and when I hit that point, I wanted to go off in my own direction).
I like how some of Bonnie's current myster Orca Bay quilts are turning out ~ but I have too much else on my cutting table and design wall (and in my head) to take on anything else right now. I'm adding her pattern to my "Bonnie" notebook in case I want to make one of my own someday.
That said, I love your list of reasons and, these days, feel much the same way (could we also be siblings separated at birth?).
I am working on my first mystery quilt -- almost have the blocks for part 1 completed. A number of years ago, I signed up to do one on a retreat. As it happened, I had to bow out of the weekend for non-quilt-related reasons, but only after I had spent an extraordinary amount of time agonizing over fabric choices -- totally unable to decide given the "X yards of light + Y yards of dark" etc. It has been quite a while since then, with few thoughts of mystery quilts intervening, mostly because I, too, figured I'd never be able to "keep up".
However, one of my goals is to try to be less controlling (AKA anal-retentive) and do some stretching outside my comfort zone. The MQ I started allows that since it's from a bi-monthly magazine and only 3 parts, i.e. spread over 6 months. My plan was to pull fabrics from stash, but I ended up not happy with what I had (most of my pieces are not long enough), so I found a great sale and purchased what I need -- purposely not my usual palette.
As for making the "same" quilt as others, we do it, more or less, each time we swap identical blocks made with specific types of fabrics. The resulting quilts are still unique as no two people will start with precisely the same assortment and, even if they do, the arrangement is different. While the pattern may be the same for everyone in a mystery, their unique selection of fabrics creates a quilt unlike any others.
I already have on my "to-do" list a number of quilts with no intended recipient in mind, so this just adds one more.
And, besides, I roped Pat into doing it with me so I have "company"!
My very first quilt ever was a mystery, done at a day-long class at a LQS. Wow, did I learn a lot about color values. It was also a lesson in seeing that the same quilt pattern can be rendered in a hundred different ways. I've done a number of mysteries since, some of which have turned out well, and others not so much so. None, other than that first one, were big, so there wasn't a lot of fabric investment.
Marsha and I will have fun with the mystery she roped me into doing. It's an adventure!
b. I doubt seriously that every quilt you have ever made is original design by you.... fact is every quilt most of us make we take an idea or a pattern and do it our way.... so there are a bazillion hexie quilts out there but MINE is unique...
c. Not sure if mystery quilts are for buying fabric but for USING fabric... no I would not use a fabric that I love love love, but there are many so so's on the shelf that probably will work.
d. FAITH.... your time and fabric will be a hit or a miss....as I mentioned before, the misses to you are probably great give away quilts.
e. most quilt a longs and mysteries we are told how much light how much dark how much of color one, etc. I can't see any of the quilts being exact copies on another quilt.
take a look at bonnie hunters ocra bay mystery quilt just finished ... she has a place where peeps put pictures of their work.... exact copies - hardly... and these folks have an almost finished quilt, many of them from scraps... sure know I would not choose to sew this quilt, yikes the number of pieces ! but did know with the zillion pieces and finished I would have a GREAT quilt....