Good morning and Happy Thursday, coming to you from the Severe Weather Epicenter of Hurricane Helene! Okay, so I’m not exactly in the epicenter of the storm… But this is our first hurricane since moving to Florida and it’s very nerve-wracking for me! I bought a bunch of bottled water, stocked up on nonperishables, and now I’m biting my nails, listening to howling winds outside and getting nervous every time the power blips the lights off for a couple of seconds. We’re nowhere near where storm surges or flooding or houses getting swept into the ocean is expected, but I still worry about losing power (Air conditioning — it’s still really hot here! And refrigeration for our food! And being able to cook! And omigosh, why didn’t I think of asking my husband to hook my espresso machine up to an old treadle machine or something?). EEK!!! But the power and the air conditioning is on right now, my son is baking brownies and they smell amazing, my dog is snoring peacefully, and my husband is watching some football show on the television. All is well in this moment and we’ll deal with anything tomorrow brings when it gets here. So instead of watching the weather channel, I’ve decided to share a beautiful La Passacaglia Millefiori quilt with you that I quilted for my client Sharon last December, one of the last quilts before disassembling my long arm for the move to Florida.
Sharon used the pattern from Willyne Hammerstein's Millefiori Quilts book available on Amazon here (this post contains affiliate links). La Passacaglia and the other Millefiori quilts in the book have been very popular, and I found both acrylic templates for traditional hand piecing and foundation papers for English paper piecing this quilt on both Amazon and on Etsy.
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| Sharon's 70 x 81 La Passacaglia Millefiori Quilt |
What really intrigued me about Sharon's version of La Passacaglia is her restrained palette of neutrals and how that gives the quilt a completely different look from the brightly multicolored quilts many others have made with this pattern. Her fabrics remind me of sandy beaches strewn with pale peach and cream seashells and sand dollars and I thought it was spectacular. I loved the quilt top immediately, but Sharon thought her finished quilt top was a little bland for her taste, not as exciting as she'd envisioned it. That's why I always ask clients what they like best about their quilt and whether there's anything they wish they had done differently or could change. Knowing how Sharon felt about her quilt, I suggested an elaborate clamshell quilting design to inject textural drama into her quilt. I used Quilter's Dream Wool batting for several reasons: it's very lightweight so it prevents a heavily pieced and weighty quilt top like La Passacaglia from turning into a super heavy quilt, the additional loft helps ease in the fullness that can be common with hand pieced quilts, and the loft of wool creates maximal dimension and texture. I quilted it with matte, thin So Fine thread in color Pearl to ensure the quilting stitches would blend into her fabrics without upstaging the intricate piecing.
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| Detail of Faceted Clams E2E in So Fine Thread, Color Pearl |
By the way, fairly heavy quilting like this is not just for looks -- there's a functional benefit. Hand pieced seams aren't always as strong as machine pieced seams, but heavy quilting secures and reinforces the patchwork seams, protecting them from stress damage throughout the life of the quilt. Whenever someone grabs or tugs at a quilt with heavy quilting, they are pulling on all three layers of the quilt together (pieced top, batting and backing). When someone grabs or tugs at a minimally quilted or hand tied quilt, they often grab hold of just the quilt top layer, causing those fabrics to wear and tear and the patchwork seams to pop prematurely. Heavy quilting doesn't need to result in a stiff quilt as long as the batting is soft and supple and you use a thin, pliable thread for the quilting.
Here's what Sharon's La Passacaglia quilt top looked like when she brought it to me for quilting. Isn't it spectacular? So intricate, and she did a fantastic job of using highly contrasting values within her limited color palette to ensure that none of the piecing detail would get lost. I love this quilt.
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| Sharon's La Passacaglia Quilt Top Before Quilting |
The Laundry Room is Finished!
In other news... My laundry room makeover is finished! I am thrilled; I desperately needed the storage and the room is so much more functional now. We kept the LG front-loading washer and dryer that came with the house but got rid of the pedestal bases and stacked the machines for a smaller footprint. I now have a laundry sink for working on stains, handwashing, and soaking, and I have a nice, long countertop for sorting and folding clothes right next to the laundry machines. No more dumping clean laundry on my kitchen table for folding!
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| New Cabinets, Countertop and Laundry Sink |
The wine refrigerator was in the kitchen when we bought the house, and I took it out because I needed to make room for a drawer microwave that installs into a base cabinet. Wine refrigerators cycle on and off more frequently than regular refrigerators which makes them kind of noisy, so moving the wine fridge to the laundry room means we don't hear it anymore when we're watching TV. The only thing I don't love is how visible the outlets, cords and water intake hoses are for the laundry machines above the countertop, but moving those out of sight would have been way more trouble than it was worth to me. I can put some kind of decor item on the counter to cover them up if they really bother me, like an artificial house plant or some trendy laundry decor accessories, but for now I'm just enjoying having "a place for everything, and everything in its place."
We bought the upper and lower cabinets from unfinished open stock at Lowes and painted them ourselves (by "painted them ourselves," understand that means Rebecca picked the color and Bernie painted the cabinets). I used the same cabinet hardware that I picked out for the kitchen and bathrooms for a cohesive look throughout the house, and I got that nifty pull-down drying rack above the new laundry sink for $50 from Amazon here.
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| New Open Stock Cabinets, Laundry Sink and Granite Countertop |
I got quotes from three different countertop fabricators and chose the cheapest option I could find because, after all, this is a laundry room and not a palace. All in, this transformation that included all new cabinets, cabinet hardware, under mount stainless steel laundry sink, drying rack and granite countertops cost less than $2,000 plus sweat equity and a sprinkling of curse words here and there. I'm sure it would have been a small fortune if we'd hired a contractor to do it for us. Every penny saved was earned twice, right?
Here's a reminder of what the laundry room looked like originally. Just the laundry machines and a wire shelf installed so high up that you couldn't reach it without a step ladder. And those God-awful purple walls:
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| Laundry Room Before, A Dysfunctional Waste of Space |
This is a much better setup than I had for laundry in our last house, by the way. In Charlotte I had upper cabinets and a laundry sink, but no countertop for folding clothes, and I had to make multiple trips up and down the stairs with baskets of laundry because the laundry room was on the main floor and all the bedrooms (and overflowing hampers) were on the second floor. Another perk of the new home is that my laundry room is right next door to my sewing room, very convenient for prewashing fabric yardage and storing my big ironing board when I don't need it.
Maria Shell Workshop Project
Finally, the last topic for discussion in today's blog post is my project from the 2-part Zoom workshop I took with Maria Shell this month. You guys, I enjoyed the workshop and learned a lot, and I have increased understanding and respect for modern art quilters who work improvisationally. If this had been a college course and I had to turn in a completed project by a deadline as a final exam grade, I would have spent hours and hours after the workshop wrapped up, constructing additional pieced units ("bits" is what Maria calls them) and then sewn them all together in one of the layout options we learned about in class.
But this was not a college course, there are no deadlines, no grades, and the more I walked past the mishmash on my design wall the more I realized I was trying to create something that looked like someone else's work. It didn't feel authentically "mine." That's expected when you're taking a workshop to learn someone else's techniques, and most quilters would take what they learned and use it as a springboard to branch off in their own direction. I can think of lots of cool ways to use the techniques I learned in class... But I gradually came to realize that appreciating finished works of improv quilting made by others is one thing, and enjoying making those things myself is totally different. I want to get back to my fussy little applique bits and make perfect little star points again, not spend another couple of weeks deliberately cutting and sewing crooked!
So, here's my new plan. Instead of putting all of my improv "bits" together into one composition, I'm going to use them in a way that feels more like "me." I'm going to use just one or two pieced stripe inserts with large solid fabric areas, and then I'm going to chose a really cool quilting design with probably a variegated thread incorporating lots of colors from the pieced stripe. I'm going to piece together a backing completely from my stash like I learned from Kelly Young's Perfectly Pieced Quilt Backs book, finish this off, and get back to my own projects as soon as possible!
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| New Plan: Git 'Er Done! |
I can do another similar quilt using my two brow/tan/gold pieced stripe units, and I might be able to cobble something together with the orange/blue/pink unit and black and white bits, but I really don't want to spend any more time piecing more improv units. I get so much more personal satisfaction out of striving for precision, and I have Seven Sisters and Stars Upon Stars waiting for me! 😍
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| I Like Each of These Units Much Better Without the Others |
Ooh, know what would be fun with that brown/tan/yellow stripe? If I put plain off white on one side of the stripe, the medium chocolate brown on the other side, and then I used white quilting thread on the brown fabric and tan/brown thread on the light colored fabric. That would require some planning and precision when selecting and setting up the quilting design in the computer, but it would be a fun experiment. I'm definitely making the brown stripe into something because I know that there is always a shortage of "masculine" donation quilts…
Alright, y’all. That’s enough of my Hurricane Panic Blabbering for one blog post! I hope that everyone reading this blog post and all of your loved ones are safe from the storm, that you have power to your sewing machines, plenty of fabric in your stash, and brownie mix in your pantries!
I'm linking up today's post to some of my favorite linky parties:
MONDAY
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Monday Musings at Songbird Designs
TUESDAY
To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt
WEDNESDAY
Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication
Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter
THURSDAY
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation
FRIDAY
Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More
Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts
Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre
Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty
TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday
SUNDAY
Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué
Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework
23 comments:
I hope you weren't affected by the storm surge/flooding. Listening to the wind was the worst part for me. It's terrifying. In south Texas we went through Alicia (pine tree through our roof), TS Allison (flooding, tornadoes), Rita (pine tree through our roof), and Harvey (16 inches of rain), and I will never again live anywhere a hurricane can directly affect us.
Your laundry room is like one I'd see on Houzz.com - it's beautiful! You must be nice and tall, I could never reach that top machine, but I'd love to stack ours. You guys did a great job! I miss having a sink and folding space. That will be in our next house. ;)
Sharon's Millefiori quilt is stunning. I just love the color palette she used and your quilting finished it in style. Your finished laundry room looks so nice. When I moved 3 years ago, I left a nice big laundry room for a "laundry hall" that goes out to my garage. It's taken some getting used to, but I've adjusted. I'm with you on your decision on what to do with your workshop pieces. Improvisational quilting is not my thing, but it's fun to learn new things. The quilts you have planned for your pieces will be very much appreciated.
I think the words Sharon is looking for are - calm, relaxing, cozy. It say's "let me give you a hug" not "look at me!!!!".
Your laundry room is fantastic. Even if relocating the outlet & taps for the washer & dryer were in the budget, I'd still leave them out and easily accessible. If the washer ever blows a gasket and is spewing water, it's good to have the shutoff easily accessible.
Sharon's quilt is beautiful. Your clamshell quilting brought it to life! Your laundry room is beautiful. I still can't get over all the purple that covered the walls!!!! Yuck . . .and I like purple. . .just not everywhere!!! May your power remain on and may the storm pass leaving behind no damage in its wake.
Okay, clearly it's been too long since I've last visited your blog: you moved to Florida?!? Hope the hurricane stays far away from you! As always beautiful work on the "Passacaglia". I don't think any of those can ever be bland but the stitching you did on it certainly puts an end to that idea. Oh the joys of setting up a new household! I will soon be going back down to NC to visit my MIL. One of her friends from here in NY just retired there so I'm looking forward to the discussion about setting up her new creative space. Yes, working improv means operating from a whole new side of the brain when you're used to traditional piecing (ooh, Stars Upon Stars....). Which reminds me, I have an improv workshop project that I've got to get back to one of these days!
Sounds like you, thankfully, are doing okay in the aftermath of Helene! I would be nervous about that, too, and try to be prepared with all the right stuff. But who knows until you've done it once, right?! The Passacaglia quilt you're sharing is just gorgeous! I love the neutral color palette, but it does really take the right amount of contrast to bring out the shapes. And she nailed it! Your remodeled laundry room is wonderful - so nice to do it on a budget, but have it be just what you wanted.
I meet every Friday morning with friends that I used to "stitch and chat" with back when we all lived in the same town. We are all 30 years older and scattered near and far. Florida being a common spot either year round or as snow bunnies. No surprise the hurricane was a big topic this morning. Hope you continue to come through unscathed.
The millefiori quilting is amazing. The fact that is monochromatic helps bring out the quilting. Love how you matched the scallop design to the piecing pattern.
Good to see you have made peace with Maria's class and have a worked out a way to move forward with what you learned.
Sounds like you've got a good plan for the improv blocks. The laundry room is wonderful. Hope you can sleep well tonight, happy stitching!
Wow! I love Sharon's La Passacagalia and what a fabulous job she did with the colors. Those nuetrals are hard to do. I have one in process, was only doing a section, but have not touched it in years. I was glad to hear your thoughts on quilting - if I get there. Great job on the laundry room. It hardly seems right to spend a ton of money on that kind of space, but it looks like you did! Love the hints of color from the workshop - it sure looks like it was a great one. Hope you had little damage from this storm...it seems to have been a fierce one.
I hope you were not in the area that lost power or had any damage - loosing the A/C is one of the worst - we have a generator that operators about half the house so we don't loose food but can not run the A/C - but can do fans. And thank goodness the coffee pot
I just wanted to give you and your readers my take on hand piecing. I have hand pieced my quilts for about 10 years and never had a seam pop. Granted you need to use heavy thread, like hand quilting weight thread, and backstitch every inch or two. I also hand quilt and do not do the close quilting that is in vogue now. I use my quilts on beds and wash them. Again, I never had a hand pieced seam pop open. My opinion is that a quilt does not need dense quilting if you hand piece EPP. Just follow the directions on that batting (most recommend quilt lines that are 4" apart at the most) and you will be guaranteed a quilt that is as stable as a machine pieced or closely quilted one.
I am sorry but I completely disagree with Sharon. Her quilt is anything but "bland"! To me, it looks like lace dollies all appliqued to the background. It is so pretty and dainty. Then I clicked the image to get to your post, and saw how much more gorgeous this quilt is. Sharon, you have a masterpiece, nothing short of a blue ribbon. Congrats!
Rebecca Grace, the laundry room is awesome. I would like to have one separated from the bathroom but ... next house, I guess. Hope the hurricane will skip your neck of the wood. ;^)
Sharon's quilt is amazing! I like how you went with the beach theme and did seashell quilting! That laundry room is a dream space! It could be in any interior remodeling magazine. And I like your plan for those stripes, too--let the quilting accent the colors. Our daughter is in college in Black Mountain. Their buildings are on higher ground and all are safe, and they have plenty of food and water. They're working clean-up now.
Well, I'm like the others, I love Sharon's quilt! I really love these colors together and these complex patterns that become subtle and elegant. The shell quilting is perfect! I hope you're recovering from the anxiety of the storm, and are ready to enjoy your new room! Thank you for sharing!
A few things that I'd like to clarify: I'm not suggesting that your quilts or anyone else's quilts need to be quilted as densely as Sharon and I chose to quilt her Passacaglia quilt. If you like the way your quilts look and feel and you are happy with how they are holding up for you, then you should absolutely keep doing what you're doing! My remarks about the relationship between quilting density and the strength and the longevity of the finished quilt are not mere observations from the 25 years that I've personally been quilting. I learned that from studying contemporary textiles in my career as an interior designer, from research and discussions with professional quilt appraisers and conservationists who work with historic quilts in museum collections, and from my research and professional work repairing, restoring, and helping to preserve family heirloom quilts that are much, much older than the quilts you and I are making today. 50 or 100 year old quilts that are minimally quilted or tied absolutely incur more damage from wear than 50 or 100 year old quilts that are more heavily quilted, even if we're comparing two quilts that are both approximately the same age, both hand pieced and hand quilted with similar stitch length, and both subjected to similar conditions of use, laundering, climate, storage etc. That's because the function of quilting multiple textile layers together with stitches (which dates back to at least the Egyptian 1st Dynasty in the 35th century BCE) is not just decorative. It's like the ancient version of modern fabric lamination, when multiple different textiles are bonded together and the resulting fabric has qualities deriving from each layer, but the strength of that fabric is greater than the sum of its parts.
(Had to break my response in two parts because it didn't fit in the comment field!). I'm not saying that anybody else's quilt "needs" a certain amount of quilting, only sharing the textile science behind why quilting density sufficient to make the layers of the quilt perform more like one thick textile (versus three separate layers that are connected at regular intervals of 2", 4", 8" or whatever) will enable the quilt with more quilting stitches holding it together to withstand the forces of tension, torsion and shear over not just a decade, but a century or longer. If you're interested in learning more about that textile science, you can read about it here:https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zmbyb82/revision/2. (I will warn you, it's a dry read! ;-). Like I said, most hobby quilters don't need to worry about that and should quilt their quilts as much or as little as suits their personal preference. Just be aware that no batting manufacturer is "guaranteeing" that their MINIMUM quilting distance guidelines will result in the MAXIMUM strength, stability, and longevity of the finished quilt. They are telling you the bare minimum quilting you can get away with and not have their batting clump apart the very first time the quilt is washed. One more thing: I am also a sometime hand quilter and hand piecer like you and I am in no way disparaging hand stitching! But as a professional long arm quilter I have had the opportunity to work with lots of different hand pieced quilt tops, not just my own. As EPP is newly in vogue, I am seeing hand pieced quilt tops from quilters who are new to hand piecing and their stitches are not as small and even as the hand piecing of quilters who have many years of hand stitching experience. It's with those hand pieced quilt tops in mind that I recommend maybe putting more quilt stitches through all three layers to reduce the amount of stress on those beginner hand pieced seams throughout the quilt top. Regardless of which thread is used, smaller piecing stitches with periodic backstitching results in the strongest hand pieced seams, but every master quilter had to start out as a beginner and my goal when quilting for someone else is to do the best I can for their quilt (making it look as good as it can and making it last as long as it can) regardless of where that quilter is in her journey and experience level. No Quilt Police are allowed here! I'm glad you stopped by and appreciate your taking the time to comment. Happy quilting!
ooooo what a gorgeous laundry room!!! a place you'll use almost daily. Great job
did you like Maria Shell as a teacher? I've only seen her online and at Houston but don't know her. She has a definite style. That millefiori quilt is stunning. You're quilting is beautiful LeeAnna
Thank you so much for your detailed reply. Since I am a, I guess you would call, hobby quilter I did not know any of this. My comment was meant to reach someone who would like to try hand piecing but was intimidated by the skills needed to close quilt like you do. And I want to say your dog is in the running with my daughter’s French Bulldog as the silliest dog in the known universe.
Thanks, Pattie! I never want to discourage anyone from attempting new skills. :-)
That penrose tile quilt is amazing. Love the colors. So pretty.
Thinking of you Rebecca in Florida during the destructive hurricanes.
Love, love, love what you did with the laundry room. It's perfect! The quilting on Sharon's quilt is fantastic. You did a great job. I like your idea of what to do with the striped fabric. That would be fun!! Thanks for sharing with us at Monday Musings!
PS: Glad you are OK and hopefully didn't have damage from Helene.
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