U AND U QAL - First Draft

My first interpretation of  Page Two-- not sure about the bold colors.  

These vertical inserts are cut 3/4" which seems about right. Maybe strips cut 5/8" would be better. 

I will try another with quieter vertical inserts -- maybe florals on a white background. 

Just love seeing what others are doing.  

Unconventional and Unexpected - an Octagon quilt finally finished!

I received the amazing book "Unconventional and Unexpected: American Quilts Below the Radar" by Roderick Kiracofe  for Christmas and soon thereafter came the UAUQAL challenge led by Sujata Shah. Could events have converged more perfectly?!

This book just knocked my socks off....so much quirky beauty and so many wild and unusual quilts! Inspiration to last a looong time!

Anyhow, I pulled out some of my older blue fabrics and began strip piecing. I changed the proportions of my block a bit because I wanted more of the stripped piecing to show - the center square is 4 inches and the pieced sides are 3 inches. Also, this top went through quite a few iterations until I finally just wanted to be done! And here is the FINAL version....

 

At first I was a bit lazy and didn't want to piece the quarter-square triangles for the corners....deciding to use 3-inch muslin squares instead.....so this was the first version.....

 

But after looking at this top on the wall for awhile, I decided it was

too stark and didn't really fit the idea of the octagons that was in our inspiration quilt on page 51 of  "Unconventional and Unexpected".....so I decided to go ahead and make quarter-square triangles and remove the muslin squares....hello seam ripper....

And then I started fiddling with the main center squares.....so many possibilities.....

No....no....and NO!

I finally settled on this final version and machine-quilted it fast so I couldn't change my mind!

Love the octagons that show up now!

I'm looking forward to seeing other versions of this quilt inspired by the work of an unknown quilter......what if this unknown quilter were somehow to find out that she was inspiring so many other quilters by her humble quilt.....wouldn't she be surprised! Wouldn't you all just love to meet her and compliment her on the complexity of her quilt that ended up being published in a much touted book inspiring so many other quilters!!!

~Edith

Duet #2: Nolia and Me

Here is the second quilt that I deconstructed and resewed from tops that I rescued from my sister's bonfire during her backyard shed-cleaning binge last year. My sister had received her mother-in-law Nolia's (b.1921 - d.2010) pieced tops and simply didn't know what to do with them since she doesn't sew. Still don't know why she didn't immediately think of me because she well knows I am a passionate quilter.....but anyhow, I took it as my mission to honor this veteran quilter by turning her tops into completed and loved quilts.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Nolia grew up in southern Louisiana without any benefits of education...not even grade school. She married and had two sons (one of them married to my sister) and was a devout Catholic all her life. She had a simple sewing machine but she couldn't figure out how to use it so she hand-pieced ALL her quilts. And she used anything and everything she had on hand or could purchase from her local Ben Franklin store.

Close-ups of resewn and quilted blocks.......

Nolia also used all kind of fabrics from linings to flannels to double knit and lightweight polyesters......to cafe curtains....you name it, Nolia pieced it into her quilt tops! And this was why I had to deconstruct her tops and replace many of her fabrics with my own cottons because quilting all these different weights of fabric was just too difficult for me. 

Here is the original top before any changes were made.........Nolia used a lot of very light-weight blue gingham in this top and bordered two sides with two lengths of a kitchen cafe curtain. All of her tops are variations of the "housetop" block....a block often used by the Gee's Bend Quilters as well.

Here is a look at the back of the original top - Nolia used the front of a polyester dress with buttonholes next to light-weight gingham......also uneven seams. In order to use the blue gingham, I used quilt spray and fused another light-weight white fabric onto the back to give it more weight and heft. This worked perfectly!

 

Polyester dress piece still containing darts...... 

 

Cabbage Patch centers and fabric with facings irregularly attached

 

 

Slippery polyester!

 

 

Extra fabric simply folded back to fit

 

Some of the fabrics deleted from the original top - those Cabbage Patch centers really had to go!

Fabrics Added

I tried various options for bordering the top but eventually came back to the original cafe curtain fabric. Since it was so light-weight, I fused a light-weight white cotton onto the back of the curtain panels and sliced each piece in half in order to make it reach all around the top. I think the striped binding also added an interesting finish to this reconstructed top and finishing it with simple straight-line machine quilting made this piece something I can finally live happily with!

~Edith

Here it is! My answer to the #UANDUQAL challenge. I combined this with the #AHIQRED challenge over at Adhoc. Improv.  blog and I think that worked very well. There's only so many projects I can work on at one time and as usual, the idea of using an Unconventional and Unexpected quilt as inspiration could not be ignored!

Approximately 58" x 72"

You can read more about this quilt top over here at my blog. Both challenges are ones that I want to think more on, maybe have a deeper play with. So many possibilities... Thanks Sujata for another interesting quilt project!

Duet: Nolia and Me

This past year I have had the pleasure of working intimately with a quilter from the past whom I have never met!

My sister's mother-in-law, Nolia, passed away years ago and she left many pieced tops with my sister (not a quilter) and her husband. I heard about these tops when my sister informed me they were on her 'burn pile' when she was in a frenzy of cleaning out the shed in her back yard in Texas.

You could have heard me gasp from my home in Maryland at this news....and my immediate response was "Stop in the name of the law and DO NOT BURN THEM! Send them to me if you do not want them!" Oy, the sacrilege. Right?

She then sent me four tops and decided to hang onto the others after I encouraged her NOT to burn them. She said they were bright and colorful and I was instantly interested although I had NO idea what kind of tops these would be.

These tops turned out to resemble Gee's Bend quilts in their improvisational  style. For a few months I meditated about what I might do to give these tops of  Nolia's a useful and purposeful life. This woman grew up very poor in the Cajun Louisiana bayous with no opportunity to even go to grade school and spoke mostly French. She had a sewing machine but could not figure out how to use it so she pieced all her tops by hand. And although she was not African American, I think she must have learned her style from her neighbors who were laboring in the sugarcane fields of the area.

This is the final result of the first top I worked with.....74" x 74"

And this is the pieced back.....

 

Nolia used ALL fabrics in her quilts regardless of weight or content....housecoat fleece, double knits, extremely thin polyester, slippery polyesters, satiny-feeling lining fabrics, denims, plain cottons, and more. Nothing was off-limits for this quilter! Here is the original top.....

 I quickly realized that I would have to deconstruct the blocks to get rid of extra fabric in the uneven seams and weed out the fabrics that were too heavy, too thin, or too slippery. I also did not want to use the preprinted fabric blocks. (the only other quilt where I have seen a preprinted block used was in my Gee's Bend quilt book!) And I needed the end result to lie flat for quilting. Hello, seam ripper.                  

Notice the way Nolia 'made do' with what she had on hand....... 

Extra fabric simply folded back to fit.

 Front band of clothing used 'as is'

                                           Doubled band with interfacing and slippery navy fabric.....

                                          Tape sewn into the seam.....and uneven seams

After deconstructing and repiecing enough blocks to form a quilt, I machine-quilted in into simple straight lines about 1 3/4 inch apart.

You will notice that Nolia used the Housetop block that is very popular with Gee's Bend quilters. I have grown to love this simple block! What still kind of puzzles me though, is how Nolia could get her pieced tops to look so good given the limited fabrics she had on hand....she instinctively knew how to add punch and of course, she used red as well. I actually added a bit more red of my own to this quilt in the name of Nolia!

I LOVED redoing and finishing this top and feel like I have had a hands-on lesson in improv piecing from a pro! I also relish this connection I have made with another woman in another time and place - our lives have intersected in our common interest in sewing bright scraps of fabric together into a pleasing pattern! I have named this quilt "Duet: Nolia and Me".

~Edith

A little more progress

Slow going presently on my quilt for

UANDUQAL

I have nine blocks right now and yesterday put a post

up on my Mystic Quilter blog

showing them up on the wall, randomly placed. as below. I have

eleven more to plan.

The block third from the left on the second row

was originally like this in my first post

but it was just too bright, you can see from the top photo above

I removed the bright pink squares, substituted with something not as garish

 and added a softer colour border strip

on two sides. Now I'm happy. 

I gave some thought to sashing because of the multitude of bright colours,

I have a fabric which looked pretty good, today I decided a few minutes ago

to butt them up together to see if they could all play nicely

together. I think they could.

The photo below is the truer colour, time of day makes all the difference I think.

My decision will be made when all twenty are finished.

Maureen

Lattice Quilt, My First Attempt at the UANDUQAL

I've finished with all the Lattice blocks now and am attempting to figure out the proper layout. You can read more about this quilt over at my blog. This particular quilt is a combined effort of trying to play with the #AHIQred' and also the UANDUQAL challenge of making an Unexpected and Unconventional inspired quilt. 

#UANDUQAL first attempt

It's not terribly obvious at this point, but I didn't try to center the lattice, just trimmed as I went. I'm hopeful that there will be a slight 'make-do' look and feel when all the blocks are finally sewn together. The book 'Unexpected and Unconventional' has been a favorite book of mine since it was first published. So much inspiration to be found within its covers! This isn't my first quilt made from that wonderful starting place and undoubtedly it will not be my last....