The silk quilt: the sewing

Today I am grateful for my warp board.  It is a tool used to measure out the warp for my loom.  My husband made it for me many years ago when I got my first loom.  It can measure a warp up to 10 yards, and that is as long as I ever can stand to put on.  He was working on his Masters degree and needed something to do to relax.  He was going to the Navel Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.  (You don't have to be in the Navy to go there, but you do have to be military and be selected.  You can't just decide to go there.  It is run with military precision.  You work all day every day and the competition is intense.  If you don't do well, it goes on your military record and that is used to determine promotions.)  He and a friend both had wives who were weavers and needed warp boards, so they decided to make some in the wood shop, just for fun.  They both had very happy wives.

Now back to the story of the silk quilt.  My mother received all the materials for the quilt.  She is an accomplished seamstress.  She made clothes for me and my sisters while we were growing up.  She even made jeans for my brothers so they could have special stitching on the pockets.  If she could do all those things, surely she could piece some quilt blocks, or so I thought.

I made quilts partly because all the sewing was straight lines - easy.  But there were some tricks to getting all the lines to match and the corners to be square.  My mother had made quilts before, but they were mostly applique or whole cloth quilts, not pieced.  I felt that her sewing skills were so much more advanced than mine,  if I could do it , surely she could.  I was wrong.

My mother viewed the quilt I had designed a a huge puzzle that she didn't know how to do.  I felt that I had given her plenty of directions.  She decided to invite a friend to help her, another woman with tremendous sewing skills, but little piecing experience.  Her friend happened to be my mother-in-law.  They did not understand the design.  They didn't know how to sew the blocks together.  They struggled to cut out the pieces.  They had trouble deciding what color to use where.  The design had 2 versions of each block, so they decided that they would each make one of each block.  They worked together to divide out the colors.  They helped each other figure out how the blocks went together.  They did not consult any quilting how-to books for tips and hints, even though they were sitting on their book shelves.

Finally, after several years work, the top was sewn.  My sister, who made her living making wedding dresses at the time, got a big piece of white silk for the back.  After all that work, nothing else would do.  Then the fun, for them, began.  The quilt was put into the frame and they worked together to quilt it.  All the puckers were quilted out and it became a thing of great beauty.  The binding was attached and it was finished.  Now, what would they do with it?

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?

My first spinning wheel

Today I am grateful for my mother.  Besides the usual things that every mother does for every child, my mother shared her enthusiasm with me.  She is a woman of many talents and interests and projects.  Currently she is involved in quilting - not just for herself, but for others.  She makes quilts to give to others who need warm bedding in her community and abroad.  She teaches others how to quilt and opens her home to a church quilting session at least once a week.  Then there are the good deed quilts - quilts finished for others who started them, but can no longer work on them.  She has been a leader in her church and community wherever she lived.  She assumes everyone is as excited as she is about whatever the current project is - quilt, park, blood drive, 4th of July parade, whatever.  You just can't say no to her, so you end up involved.  Enthusiasm is contagious and she spreads it everywhere she goes.

Thinking abut my mother reminded me of how I came to spinning. ( No, my mother doesn't spin.)  She and my dad came to visit me while we were living in Monterey, CA.  There was a Highland Games festival while they were there, so we went.  (My dad has Scottish ancestry.)  While we were there we saw some craft demonstrators with drop spindles spinning yarn.  I found it fascinating and commented that I would like to learn to spin someday.  "Well, you should have grandma's spinning wheel then.  I'll send it to you." said my mom.

My grandparents built a cabin in the Wind River mountains in Wyoming.  Sometime on their travels somewhere in eastern Canada they picked up a spinning wheel, purely as a decorative piece to put in the cabin.  As a child I remember treadling that thing for all it was worth to see how fast I could make it go.  All the grandchildren did.  I never saw anyone actually spin yarn on it.

When my parents inherited the cabin, they brought some of the more breakable pieces back home, including the spinning wheel.  A couple weeks later it arrived in the mail, in pieces.  My dear husband sanded the stained places, figured out how to put it together, and voila - I had a spinning wheel.

In Pacific Grove, the town next door, I found a spinning & weaving shop, and signed up for lessons.  At my first class I found out that I was very lucky.  Most antique spinning wheels don't work - most don't even have all the pieces.  I couldn't have told the difference.  But mine did have all the pieces and it would work, for the most part.  My teacher taught us where to oil the wheels (where all the stained places were.  I hated to tell my husband that I had to stain all those places back again.), how to adjust them, and what the different parts did.  Then we learned how the draft out the fiber and spin yarn while we treadled.   I was not a natural.

Most of the students had Ashford wheels.  They were the most common around and there weren't too many other kinds available then.  They had a nice medium sized orifice - good for spinning nice beginner Romney wool into irregular, overtwisted beginner yarn.  I learned that I had a flax wheel with a very small orifice good for making linen thread.  I had to draft my yarn much smaller than anyone else in order to get it to go through the orifice.  My yarn was overtwisted and irregular, but it was thin because it had to be. 

I could only practice at home for 15 minutes at a time because I got so frustrated.  Besides the small orifice, the wheel was warped just a little, so every once in a while the cord would jump off.  I would have to stop spinning and put everything back together again.  I did learn how to adjust my wheel though.  Little by little, I became more adept.  I had skeins of yarn all over the place.  I couldn't get enough.  I was a real spinner.

Trail Mix

Today I am grateful for ribbon.  It comes in an infinite variety of colors and patterns and sizes,  all useful and decorative.  I need things to be functional, otherwise they are just taking up space.  I have a few doodads that just sit there and look pretty, but not too many.  Their function is to bring back memories for me.  Ribbon can decorate just about anything - presents, clothing, balloons, quilts, you name it.  It's flexible , yet strong enough.  I have a box full of it that I save, even the little pieces.  You never know when it will come in handy.

I was assigned to make snacks to take to a meeting so I decided on Trail Mix.  I looked on the internet for recipes, but none were just what I wanted.  There are things I like in a trail mix, and things that I don't like.  I don't like filler and little stuff that falls to the bottom - like sunflower seeds, oatmeal, marshmallows, and coconut.  I like them for other uses, but not trail mix.  What I do like is fruit, nuts, and a little chocolate.  So here is what I came up.

Fawn's Trail Mix

1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup dried blueberries
1 cup dried cherries
1 cup dried apple pieces
1 cup dried apricots (cut in quarters)
1 1/2 cups peanuts
1 1/2 cups cashews
1 1/2 cups almonds
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 cup butterscotch chips
1 cup white chocolate chips

Mix it all together in a large bowl.  Store in an airtight container or a ziplock bag.

I could have just bought something at the store, but that wouldn't be as tasty and it would contain one more thing that I don't like - preservatives.  It turned out pretty good -- sweet, salty and a little chocolate.

My first garden

Today I am grateful for sunshine.  We have had several days of rain, and clouds, and fog, and generally gloomy weather.  It is winter, after all.  But today around 11:00 the clouds melted away and the sun came out and cheered everything up.  Sunshine is so uplifting.  I had to go for a walk just to take it all in.  In the middle of July, I'm not always so grateful.  But in January, sunshine is a wonderful thing.

Today I looked at my vegetable garden and starting planning what I want to grow this year.  In January all things are possible.  Plants will go in at the right moment, seeds will be planted on time, the weather will cooperate, and the garden will be filled with tasty produce.  We'll see what happens.  But I think some spring vegetables - spinach, snap peas, maybe something else - might go in next week.  Just to see what happens.

It made me think about the first real garden that I had.  We had purchased our first little starter home.  It was at the end of a cul-de-sac, so the yard was wedge shaped.  The front yard was small, but the back yard was quite large.  I loved it.  Even though there was a steep slope, it was great for a garden.  I had to terrace the rows, but that was kind of nice.   I started seeds inside, and as soon as the weather was warm, out they all went into the garden.  I had tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, squash, snap peas and sunflowers.  I would go out every evening and weed the garden while the children played in the yard.  I was in heaven.  I even canned tomatoes and beans to save for the winter.  I felt so domestic.

I wonder how things will grow this year.  Growing a garden is always a risk, but the rewards are worth it.  There's nothing like just picked vegetables.