Sharon's La Passacaglia Millefiori Quilt, Laundry Room Makeover + My Workshop Project Pivot

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.  

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.  

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.

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!

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.

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:

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!

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!  😍

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