The silk quilt - the handoff

Today I am grateful for Meyer lemons.  I had heard about them from Martha Stewart and other chefs on TV.  They sounded wonderful, but I never saw them in stores where I lived.  Last week I was in WalMart and there they were in a little bag - Meyer lemons.  I bought some and went online to find some recipes.  I made Lemon Pudding Cake and Chicken Piccatta.  They were both amazing.  I love the sweetness combined with the tartness.

Let's continue the silk quilt story.  The quilt was designed and I was ready to start sewing when our family had a major change of plans.  My husband was in the Army at the time and he was offered a chance to go back to school and get his PhD.  It was an opportunity too good to pass up.  So we were moving again.  This time we were going to Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.  As I considered what I would be doing while he was going to school, I thought maybe it would be a good time for me to finish my degree. 

We were married while we were both going to college.  But I took a break after my junior year to have a baby, and he graduated and was commissioned into the Army, and we started moving around the world, and more children came and I didn't get back to my school work.  Now that I had four children, I felt that it was time to finish.

I applied to Iowa State and was accepted.  They even allowed me to pay in-state tuition because my husband was in the Army.  I changed my major, so it would take me the entire three years we were there to graduate.  I was very excited and absolutely terrified.  But I felt that I had to take advantage of this opportunity.  What else was there to do in a little town in the middle of Iowa?  (Ames is actually smack dab in the middle of Iowa.)

There was no way I was going to be able to get that quilt finished while I was in Iowa.  Going to school full time and taking care of 4 children would pretty much take up all of my time.  So I talked to my mother and we decided that she would just have to make the quilt herself.  I sent her the fabric, the design, the patterns for all the blocks, and wished her well.  I hoped she was up to the challenge.

The Silk Quilt - the design

Today I am grateful for robins.  We don't have very many who live near us year round, but in the spring big flocks of them descend on our yard and stay for a week or so.  You know that spring will be arriving shortly when you look out the window and see 30-40 robins in the front yard.  This year they came about a week ago and are still here.  I think they started their trip early because of the warm weather and then it got cold.  It is supposed to be warm again next week, so they will probably move on soon.  I like them a lot.  Their traveling companion, the starlings, I don't like as much.  They travel in big noisy flocks and pick one big tree to settle in.  The racket is very annoying, plus they like to attack our bird feeder even though they are too big for it.  Noisy greedy birds I can do without.

Now on to the story about the silk quilt.  I had the silk, but what should the quilt look like?  At that time I was very excited about designing my own quilts.  There weren't as many quilt books then as there are now, and most of them were just block books.  I didn't like making a whole bunch of the same block, so I decided to make a sampler quilt.  There would be 2 versions of each block.  I drew the quilt out on graph paper and then colored it in just in graphite pencil to get the values.  I wanted the quilt to be more intense in the middle and then fade out to the edges.  The blocks would be there, but they would be indistinct because of the coloring.  I felt like it was something new for me.  It would be exciting to build the quilt from the center out, deciding on the colors for each block as I went along.  I talked to my mom about it and she OKed the design.  I also decided to get some very thin interfacing to back the silk with so it would be easier to sew.  I was all set to start the project.

The silk quilt - Round Robin Quilt Project

Today I am grateful for washing machines.  In past ages people had few clothes because making them was labor intensive and cleaning them was a hard job.  I always think of this when there are very old houses on House Hunters and the closet only has room for a couple hooks inside.  Now we can have more clothes and wash them regularly.  It feels so good to put on clean clothes.  I also appreciate just dumping the clothes into the washer and letting the machine do the work.  I love labor saving devices.

On Sunday a group of friends and I started a Round Robin quilt project.  We each made a quilt block to go in the center of our quilt.  Then we each gave our block to someone else to add a border to the block.  Every two weeks we pass the quilt on to someone else who puts another border on it.  We pass the quilt on to the same person each time.  When all nine of us have had a chance to put a border on each quilt, we will have a big meeting and see all the quilts.  We won't know what our quilt looks like until the end.  I think it will be great fun because every quilt will be different and will need a different type of border.  I will have to be creative and dig into my stash to find the right fabrics.  Some of the quilters are experienced and some are not, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

The block I used for the center of my quilt was one I made a number of years ago.  My mother had come for a visit.  (I'm starting to see that many of my fiber and fabric adventures start this way.)  We were looking at quilting magazines and books and decided that it would be fun to do a project together.  We saw an advertisement for silk fabric remnants that intrigued us.  My mother said that she would pay for the fabric if I would make the quilt.  It sounded like a good deal to me.  Who would pass up silk?  So we sent away for the silk remnants.  Then as we looked at my newest books she found a block that she really liked.  That was the one for the silk quilt.

After my mother returned home, I decided to make a sample block to see how it went together.  It was very complicated.  I made one block for her and one for me and vowed that there would be no more.  (This is the block I used for the Round Robin.)  She would have to pick something else.

Then the silk arrived.  It was beautiful.  About half was in bright colors and the other half in taupe and muted mauve and neutrals.  None of the pieces were very big, but that was alright for piecing.  I was very excited to work with it.  What will it turn into?