One was a pieced mystery; the other an applique project. The mystery was called "spaghetti for a crowd." Looking at this quilt now, I find it hard to believe that I made it. It's huge, first of all, and it has a very nice pieced sashing that I would never have patience for now . . . two children later. But these colors are all me! I remember that my red was the envy of the class; it's the most perfect deep brick sliding ever so slightly to rusty orange. After completing these billion pieced triangles, I laid out the entire quilt once night whilst watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. To this day, I can even remember the episode (Buffy tried to kill Faith) because I paced back and forth over and over rearranging the blocks--and of course, as soon as the quilt was done, I found some I would have moved. It took me another year to find the right border (I think this is a Terry Clothier Thompson print), and then probably another year to finish it. It hung in my office for a year, and then I finished another quilt with a long story (to be blogged about later) and replaced it. It fits in perfectly in my dining room:
The applique took me even longer to finish. This is another big piece with an elaborate border. When I made it, I had a huge quilt room with all the fixin's and all the free time in the world. The scope of this project would probably turn me away now (though I'm in the midst of charting out Brannock's Flowers quilt). That I did finish it fills me with a fabu sense of accomplishment. Actually, it never stood a chance of becoming a quilt until I bought a newsed Bernina 1090 about three years after the class. As you likely know if you're reading this blog, the 1090 has a blanket stitch for embroidery (something my 1030 didn't have). As soon as I got the 1090, I went to town and whipped it out over a few weeks; I remember Ken Burns's Louis Armstrong bio was on. By the end of the actual class, all I had finished was the pieced sun and two or three letters, which I had hand-stitched. I especially love the stalk of morning glories; the background for this section is pieced as well and has one of my all-time favorite shirtings, a great chicken print. In the original pattern, some of the letters were reversed to be "folky," but since I don't actually suffer from a learning disability, I decided it was okay to place them all correctly. After I finished this, I was so happy with it that I entered it in a local show and received criticism because my plaids and stripes didn't match. No duh. The letters are crooked, too.
1 comment:
Your spaghetti quilt is gorgeous. I do that too - think, I used to spend that much time doing such intricate pieceding? Also a fellow fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Miss it terribly, along with Angel which had gotten so good that last year.
Criticized for the plaids not matching? Holy cow some people focus on such stupid things. Go look at antique quilts, they don't match either.
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