Charming Hexagons from Morris & Company

I had an unopened Charm pack (5" squares) of the Morris & Company prints and I was thinking about making a Charm quilt ----no two pieces alike, featuring all the prints.

 

First I sorted them into lights, darks and mediums---the packs actually come pre-sorted, which is handy.

I thought about hexagons. Big hexagons. I calculated the largest hexagon I could fit in a 5" square and still have enough for the seam allowance. People tend to measure hexagons by the length of one side and these are 2-1/4". I found a pattern in EQ with a hexagon and fooled around until I got a hexagon that size. I printed a lot of them on freezer paper (I cut 8-1/4" x 10" sheets of freezer paper and backed them with regular paper so they could go through my photocopy machine.)

Then I ironed the freezer paper to the Charm squares

I used a glue stick and folded the fabric over the paper. I didn't trim it.

I used a clamp rather than pins (a trick I learned from Ann Kimble in a recent class on paper piecing) and whip stitched them together by hand.

I started off with the lights around a dark---6 for the first ring.

And then I added a ring of medium shades---12 for the second ring.

Where's that Dottie dog for scale?

These are big.

And then a ring of dark -18.

As I surrounded each piece I trimmed the extra fabric and removed the freezer paper. I didn't have to wet it as I used the glue sparingly. With a little tug it pops right out and you can re-use it several times.

Everybody who is addicted to hexagons has their favorite method. You might want to baste. You might want to buy pre-cut paper hexagons (they come with 2" sides or 2-1/2" sides---I'd go for 2".) You might want to machine stitch these together.

It's growing.

Uh,oh. At this point I noticed I had duplicates. I forgot that a charm pack often has duplicates. It's not a true charm quilt now, but what the heck.

Now I am thinking I will do a (sorta) Charm quilt with every piece of Morris reproduction fabric we've ever done at Moda. (And then there's a big box of Morris reproductions that WE didn't do.) This could be a king-sized quilt. They go together fast. There's a lot of basketball to watch so I need a lot of hand work.

Dot's Very Nice

A few antique dot quilts to introduce the subject of dots

And the artist Yayoi Kusama who has been dotting her personal landscape for years.

 Yayoi Kusama

She has recently done an installation in Queensland. Click here:
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/01/yayoi-kusama-obiliteration-room/?src=footer
And she has a Retrospective at the Tate
http://artinfo.com/news/story/760408/get-lost-in-spots-see-the-trippy-environments-from-yayoi-kusamas-tate-retrospective

Do a web search in images for her name.

There are other artists fixated on the dot.

like Damien Hurst

See photographs by Miharu Matsunaga:

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/10/miharu-matsunaga-ten-ten/

Jozsef Ronal Rippl.

Woman Dressed in Polka Dot Robe

 1889

Quilt As You Go

Nancy Bryan sent photos of an antique quilt she bought a while ago.

A popular nine-patch (BlockBase # 1645) with a lot of names:

• Double Monkey Wrench
• Churn Dash
• Shoo Fly 

Sashed with green calico. She wanted to share the pictures because it was, as she said, "Quilt As You Go."

The sashing pattern repeats on the reverse.

She had no idea the technique went back this far.

Each block has been individually quilted and then machine bound with green calico.

The finished blocks were then whip-stitched together by hand.

My first thought: A Civil War Soldiers's Aid Society Quilt. Several surviving examples were done using this finishing method.

But no. The fabrics are too late. That minty green on white and vivid blue are so 1880s.

(Do notice the top blue print above is a variation of Lane's Net---no clue to date, but interesting.)

Many of the fabrics offer few clues. Green calicos and madder browns---19th century---too broad a range.

The quilting is done by machine too---there's some wear to fabric and quilting.

The best clue to date is those bright blue prints. It's not from the 1860s but twenty years after the Civil War.

Nancy thought she might have bought it in Pennsylvania as it was in a file labeled Hershey Trip, but when I asked her about it (I was surprised to hear Pennsylvania) she remembered she'd bought it in Connecticut.

That makes perfect sense. In her paper on these "Potholder Quilts" Pamela Weeks noted that of the 76 quilts done in the technique for which she had a source, 78 percent were attributed to New England.

Soldiers' Aid Quilt with each block

 individually quilted and bound

in the current exhibit at the Wadsworth Atheneum

Seamstresses making quilts for Union soldiers during the Civil War were encouraged to use this method. Some of the quilts went to hospitals (those quilts are probably long gone) but a few were sold at auctions to raise funds, and several have survived. Pam Weeks and Don Beld have a new book out Civil War Quilts with more information about these soldier's quilts. Click here:
http://www.schifferbooks.com/newschiffer/book_template.php?isbn=9780764339363

The Sanitary Commission stamp on the quilt.

These quilts, often called Potholder Quilts today, were shown last year in an exhibit at the New England Quilt Museum. See more about One Foot Square, Quilted and Bound, curated by Pamela Weeks by clicking here:
http://nequiltmuseum.org/past-exhibitions.html

You have an opportunity to see the quilt above in Hartford this spring.

Colts & Quilts: The Civil War Remembered curated by Lynne Z. Bassett

"The exhibition captures intimate reactions by the American public to pivotal political and military events. Costumed vignettes, paintings, sculpture, Colt firearms and decorative arts from the collection narrate stories of the anti-slavery movement, war-time volunteerism, mourning and reconciliation."

Closes May 6, 2012

http://www.thewadsworth.org/exhibitions/

See a blog post about it by a volunteer at the museum:

http://fitsandstartsvintage.blogspot.com/2011/12/colts-quilts-civil-war-remembered-at.html

See a terrific Picasa album with details of the Wadsworth Atheneum quilt here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/context441/ConText20112USSanitaryCommQuilt#

Read two papers on the topic of this method in the American Quilt Study Group's annual publication.

Pamela Weeks, "One Foot Square, Quilted and Bound: A Study of Potholder Quilts," Uncoverings 2010, Volume 31

Loretta B. Chase and Jan Coor-Pender Dodge "The Dublin Quilt: A Civil War Textile Document," Uncoverings 2011, Volume 32

Buy the volumes here from the American Quilt Study Group
http://www.americanquiltstudygroup.org/uncoveringsList.asp

Tomato Pincushions from Morris Prints

Here's how to make a tomato pincushion from William Morris reprints, a curious combination of high and low culture that will amuse you and your friends.

You will need:

William Morris reprint fabric---one 10" x 10" square or larger.

Thread and needles for hand sewing.

About a yard of a thick thread like Perle cotton or yarn with a tapestry needle that fits.

Stuffing---cotton, wool roving, rice, sand, etc.

Scraps of felt for decoration.

Buttons, beads for decoration.White glue.

I started with 10" squares, a stack of Layer Cakes from Morris & Company, my latest line from Moda. You need a rectangle of bias so I cut across the square. The rectangle needs to be the perfect rectangle with a length twice as long as the width---the most I could get from a 10" square was a rectangle 4-1/2" x 9". I don't think a perfectly true bias (true diagonal) is too important.

I saved the triangles for other projects.

I also had some yardage of other lines. I cut 6" x 12" rectangles too. The larger the rectangle the bigger the pincushion.

Fold the rectangle in half to make a square with the wrong side out. Stitch a seam 1/4" from the open end. 

Turn it right side out.

You've made a tube.

Gather one end of the tube with a running stitch about 1/8" from the edge.

Stuff it with fiber or other pincushion material. I like wool roving.

Then gather the other edge and make a ball by pulling the thread.

Flatten the ball into a tomato shape by threading a needle with a heavy thread like a Perle cotton. Put a knot in the top (leave the thread tail hanging) and draw the thread through the middle. Add a knot at the other end when you like the shape. Don't clip the thread yet. Make loops around the outside of the tomato to define the lobes. This one has 8 threads creating 8 lobes. You can do 6 or 5 too.

Tie off the thread and clip. You will have some gathering showing top and bottom. For the top I cut leaves of felt and added something decorative to cover the knots and gathers. I like the felt leaves for needle storage.

I cut some felt circles and flowers and glued or stitched them on a few.

I looked through the button box and found a covered button just the right shade of green. Beads work well too.

It's fun to personalize them. They make great gifts for your Arts & Crafts-loving friends.

I found another crafts project that Willy might approve of. It has birds. Click here:

http://simmy.typepad.com/echoesofadream/2007/05/more_owls.html 

Marianne Lettieri has made a flag out of antique tomato pincushions
http://www.mariannelettieri.com/Site/Works-1.html 

Would Willy B Pleased?

Around here we are always asking, "What Would Willy Do?" in regard to the William Morris reproductions. You know, he wasn't big on patchwork quilts. He wasn't even big on printed cottons---thought woven tapestries the way to go.

But the fabrics are so pretty that it's silly to be snobbish. It's tempting to make decorative items for the home and wardrobe: the Arts & Crafts Home and the aesthetic wardrobe.

Recently I spent a week in a room with eight fellow seamstresses and a Layer Cake package of Morris & Company prints. As the week wore on the ideas got better.

Annette Chavez Fountain brought her hot glue gun and made quite a few pins using the Kafflower pattern by Julie Creus of LaTodera.  Note the tiny tomato pincushion in the center---not of Morris fabric but a nice contrast to the medium and dark prints. See the pattern here:

http://www.latodera.com/ 

Helen Hodak surprised me with a Scottie pillow from  2-1/2" cut squares. Willy probably would have preferred dark brown rick-rack for the collar but we were miles from a notions store.

It looks good in the Arts & Crafts Home, here dropped into an Original Morris Chair in Photoshop.

And I figured out how to make tomato pincushions, which I will explain with pattern in the next post.

Morning Star

Georgann Eglinski, 2009

Made from A Morris Garden reproduction collection.

And I have created a Pinterest Board with quilts made from William Morris reproduction prints, like the quilt above. Check it out here:
http://pinterest.com/materialculture/quilt-william-morris/

One chair: Two dogs