a suffolk summer quilt

We're just back from our summer holidays; this year, a month spent in Suffolk (on the east coast of England) with my family.

With the warmest English weather I can ever remember, we spent as many days as would could at the seaside, and then returned home to lay down blankets and sit in the garden together, looking out over the most amazing iridescent yellow fields. Something I've missed terribly since moving to Texas is a summer spent outside, and so the sea air and the evening breezes that swept up over the Waveney Valley gave me the deep, clear breaths I'd been missing.






We picked up a few souvenirs from this trip -- a handful of carefully chosen beach stones, two handmade mugs from my favourite gallery in Southwold, a few bars of Cadbury's -- but perhaps most meaningfully, my Mum and I worked together on a couple of quilt tops inspired by the local summer colours.

The mustard yellow fields. The chilly grey-and-navy sea. The pale warm sand. The bright pops of beach huts along the shore.

And what a lovely reminder it is proving to be. I'm still quilting it at the moment, but I've loved wrapping it around my shoulders even now -- loose ends, safety pins and all -- while looking through photos from the trip.




More than other other quilt, this one is infused with a sense of calm and well-being; the feeling of rest, of being home and really known. Something unexplainable that comes, perhaps, from the sharing of fabrics and time and this period of life spent together.

the quilt that entertains your kids: an eye-spy tutorial

An eye-spy quilt is simply a design that features a large range of novelty prints, from animals to vehicles, people to plants -- anything that can be "spotted". For this latest quilt, though, I decided to take the game one step further and make a physical, hold-in-your-hand checklist of some of the quilt's landmark prints.



In case you'd like to use the idea for your next eye-spy quilt, too, here's how I put mine together.

Materials:
Several squares of novelty fabrics to be used in the quilt
Printer paper
A scanner
Laminating supplies (optional)

What to do:
1. Place your fabric squares in the scanner, face down. Scan each one, and save them on your computer.



2. Open Pages (or your word processing program of choice). Create a new blank document.

3. Drag in each of your scanned fabric images. I chose to lay them out in a grid, but it would also work to have them positioned vertically, like a list.

(Tip: In Pages, you can add one image, and then save your document as a template. Close and reopen your document. Duplicate the first image as many times as necessary, and then drag each subsequent image onto one of the duplicates. This makes each image the same exact size. You might know an easier way to do this already, though...!)



4. (Optional) Add a textbox under each image, with a description of the fabric.

5. Print. I chose to laminate the sheets, so that the images can be crossed off with a dry-erase marker when found, and then the sheets can be wiped clean and reused.

Perfect for rainy-day or sick-in-bed entertainment!

sunshine and clouds

Usually, I'm very controlled with my colour choices, allowing myself one or two main colours only, and a generous portion of grey and white. For this quilt, though, the request was for "randomly colourful" -- a delight to have free-reign over all of my fabrics, and yet a challenge to my controlled aesthetic. Several times, I sent off a preview of the layout, and my lovely friend responded, oh-so-kindly, with encouragement to randomise it further.

In the end, what I found it helpful to do was to create an image in my head -- a cool, cloudy day, with glimpses of the blue sky and rays of sunshine smiling through. And then, surprise! A hot air balloon appears on the horizon, and then two, and suddenly the sky is dotted with colour.

Backing this one with a giant piece of Lotta Jansdotter's new line, Glimma, felt very extravagant -- I loved the touch of grey binding with all that yellow. And, as a special little addition, I made an eye-spy sheet (or three -- one for each little boy) to accompany the quilt. With so many animals, vehicles and little people prints, there's a lot to be found!

A pleasure to work in so many colours, for a change!

life, squared

I am a square, and you are a square, sewn together by red thread. 

Sometimes we forget that we only need to fit together along one side. One square cannot complete all the sides of another. It's geometrically impossible, without enveloping the other. We don't need to be the same colour or the same pattern; we can be total opposites and that's okay, too. We're just two squares, in the end, and we alone do not make the design. 

This morning is a square and the words you said yesterday at breakfast are a square and what happens tomorrow afternoon will be a square, and all we have to do is run our fingers over them and appreciate that they are here, no matter whether we think they fit. They are sewn to us. We are sewn to them. We are sewn to each other and to the people we love and to people who don't know us and to the people next door who climb their trees and throw pinecones over the fence at us. We cannot unpick our seams. Nor should we try.

you are sew loved

"Feeding the people I love is a hands-on way of loving them. When you nourish and sustain someone, essentially, you're saying that you want them to thrive, to be happy and healthy and able to live well."

Author Shauna Niequist writes about her love of food, and how she has found that cooking for others is a tangible way of loving them. And though I don't often feel that way about food, that's exactly what sewing means to me. Sewing for the people I love is a hands-on way of loving them -- of keeping them warm and comforted, and perhaps brightening their day with a bit of colour. Emotion often stays concealed in the remote world of the heart and mind, but we can bring it out into the physical realm of the senses. Love is a warm bowl of minestone soup on a cold day. Love is a soft blanket to wrap around your shoulders when you wake before dawn. It's hands-on, it's communicated.

This quilt is a bit of tangible love for Art and Lylabeth -- a couple we met a week after we moved to Texas and were feeling very distant in that new-start, new-place sort of way. They showed us love with homemade cinnamon lemonade. Love was a physical space around the dining table, or room on the big leather sofa. Love was well-thumbed pages in borrowed books.

Next week, then, this quilt goes up for auction at the Salvation Army Banquet in honour of Art. You can find more details on the event here.

in progress: kite quilting

Trying something a little different on this quilt -- diagonal lines, alternating between single and double rows of stitches. It reminds me of kites -- as if what we thought was the sky were simply a million blue and white kites, flying so close to each other that we can't see the blank expanse of universe beyond. 

one red square

One-hundred-and-seven blues, whites and greys, and one red square -- this quilt top is done! It's made with blues pulled from the stash of ancient history, plus a few all-time-favourite Summersville squares, plus a little newly-acquired Bella, by Lotta Jansdottir, and of course the good old solid whites and greys.

This quilt is destined for the Salvation Army Banquet auction, coming up on May 9th. The banquet is in honour of our friend and mentor, Art King, one of the first people we met when we moved to Texas nearly four years ago, who sadly passed away last year. I wanted to make the quilt meaningful, somehow, without being fussy or cute, and in planning the design, I remembered something my granddad once told me, in reference to his watercolour paintings:

All great art has a spot of red in it somewhere.

All great Art.

Art, with his passion for the famously red Salvation Army, was the red -- a stand-out, never-afraid-to-be-himself sort of guy. Always visible, and yet able to get along with and fit into the community of other squares (!).

{most of a part of a bit of a quilt}

Roaming the pinboards for inspiration, I stopped short when I saw this piece of patchwork, from haven. 

I've been wanting to use some of the old quilt scraps that Justin's grandma gave me to make a new quilt -- to take some of that beautiful hand-stitching and not just recycle it, but take it back to its old life a little bit. And maybe transfer some of that seventy-year-old magic to my slightly more modern choice of fabrics. Red, white and grey -- the official sponsors of Christmas 2011.

Can you spot the antique?

(No, Justin's ten-year-old shirt doesn't count!) 

Happily, my giant pile of "nice fabric" old clothing is shrinking down to a single box. The lid doesn't quite fit on it yet, but we're getting there.

Also in the mix: a pair of baggy Thai trousers from our honeymoon that never quite looked as hip once we were back in America, mikodesign's lovely russian doll fabric, a great stash of red fabrics from my Mum, a rather more revealing top than I'd ever like to admit to wearing, and a couple of those $1.99 a yard! fabrics I see now and then at Walmart and can't resist, though I don't know what to do with them.

Of course, even after cutting and piecing six king-size rows of strips, the whole thing is looking a little short. Wrap it around yourself on a chilly morning and you'll have some frost-bitten ankles. So, back to the cutting board for now...

{beside the seaside}

You might remember getting a few close-up glimpses of patchwork a few weeks ago? The mini quilt was made as a housewarming present for my parents, who recently moved back to England after nine years in China. As I was able to deliver it to them earlier this week, I can now show you the whole thing, without spoiling the surprise!

Their new home is just a short drive from Southwold, a little seaside town with rows of brightly-coloured beach houses along the shore -- and that was the inspiration for this quilt. Three little linen beach houses sit along the striped promenade, looking out to sea.

The sea, as I might have mentioned, is a patchwork of squares cut from the vintage linen tea towels that Justin's grandma gave me, mixed with other cotton prints (including one that became Tilly's second homemade dress!) After a little mix-up with the pinning, my carefully-planned order of squares ended up totally random -- but luckily the bird still ended up above the boat, and the boat above the fish, so there was some semblance of logic. 

At present, it serves as more of a mini runner or mat, but I sewed up two loops in one of the fabrics, so that it can hang at some point -- possibly from a nice piece of driftwood found on the beach!

I was also able to give Alice the giant knitted blanket I made back in March, which will accompany her to university this autumn. Ever the fashionista, she found she could wind it around her neck as the world's chunkiest scarf. It's lovely to know that it'll be keeping her warm, at home or on the town!

{off the charts}

A few weeks ago, I showed you Emily's beautiful growth chart, and ever since, I've been cutting, sewing and quilting my fabric scraps together to come up with something similar for Matilda.

For someone who doesn't really put initials on stuff, I've sure been embroidering my fair share of 'm's onto things this week. I guess I can't get enough of the American Typewriter font.

I made a couple of changes from Emily's design. Some by accident (such as getting carried away piecing the parts together and realising too late that I had one big strip instead of six neat little strips) and some on purpose (such as adding in embroidered lines to mark Tilly's exact height). 

Actually, not so on purpose -- the addition of lines was to cover up my inexact sewing. Each little square is supposed to be an inch high, so that you can simply count the squares to measure your child. My squares ranged from 0.8 inches to 1.2 inches. Not a big deal for one square, but when you put them together, it sort of throws the whole measuring thing off. Which is, you know, the point of a growth chart. Oops. Hence, embroidered lines.

I skipped out on adding the exact date we measured her, too, simply because I can't say for sure that I could find that information. Yes, I could find your 5000 photos of her first year for you in milliseconds, but dates and weights and numbers? Um, no. We're doing ball-park ages. Approximation never hurt anyone.

I think I'd mentioned the idea of having significant fabrics match up with special ages. Well, the piecing process made the fabric order completely random, so I gave up on that.

But how excited was I to find that at 21", her length at birth, their was a little scrap of an Alexander Henry tiger? Very! (Tilly was born  in the year of the tiger, and has absolutely lived up to all of the fiery, roaring expectations)

Other fabrics of significance include: the Russian Doll lining to Tilly's Moses basket, the red gingham of her first dress, the red wagon wheel print of the pajamas I lived in for the first three months of her life, and of course, her party dress fabric.

Rather than using a wooden dowel, our growth chart is supported by this handy little ruler, inserted between the pockets on the back. It's got a perfect hole in the middle for hanging, and it'll be handy for measuring up from the last mark to see how tall Tilly is. Rulers on the brain at the moment, it seems.

Still a long way to grow. And if she continues getting taller at this rate, as Justin says, she'll be 70 feet tall by the time she's sixteen. I'm going to need more scraps...

{progress report: birthday}

Can it be? My list of things left to make for Tilly's birthday is getting rather short, even with the addition of a load of extra projects that I simply couldn't resist! And it seems all of my birthday craziness has inspired Justin -- he's great with movies, and is working on putting together all of the video clips I've shot over the year to make a compilation. I can't wait to see all those funny little moments again!

So, as a little recap, these are all completed:

• a party dress
• a book featuring Tilly and Bella
• a Tilly Tuesday photo book
• a felt envelope
• a birthday badge with a '1'
• a string of birthday bunting (I'll show you this soon, finished, I promise)

(felt badge)

These are still left to do:

• make a felt crown
• put together a zhua zhou tray
• write a birthday letter
• record a day in the life
• finish the patchwork growth chart (like Emily's)

(marking lines on Tilly's patchwork growth chart)

And these will have to be done on the big day:

• take a photo of Tilly with her favourite toy
• do something at 7.23pm
• have her colour a picture (from this idea)
• take a photo in a photobooth 

P.S. If any Bryan/College Station locals know where we can find a photo booth, I'd be very grateful! Is there one in Post Oak Mall?

{inspiration: grow grow grow}

I've often seen beautiful handmade growth charts for children, though most seem to require a good deal of skill with a hacksaw and a good deal of patience with sandpaper. Neither of which I have. Then this caught my eye -- a patchwork growth chart, quilted, and embroidered with dates, heights, and ages. Much more my cup of tea.

You can find the tutorial over at The Student Teacher -- yes, lots of rather exact cutting, and lots of homemade binding to make, but I'm so excited to pick those 72 patterned squares (each of which represents an inch of height) that I'll overlook the work side of it for now.

What might be really fun to try is matching up fabrics from Tilly's life with different ages. For example, a square of the print from her party dress could be at the height of her first birthday. Favourite newborn outfits or blankets could lend themselves to earlier heights.

Now, how tall do you think Tilly will be by the time I get this finished?!

{on the needles: patchwork cushion}

Cool sea blues, lime-in-a-Corona greens, whipped-cream whites. 

Perhaps there is such a thing as summer knitting.