Books & Quilts
Some annual leave over the next fortnight and a good time to apply myself to a few craft projects.
A glimmer of inspiration hovers and needs to be addressed but having gazed around the fabric stash, and with great restraint kept my hands off the pattern books and the rotary cutter, I decided it was time instead to get this little wallhanging quilted. It was pieced last year (or was it the year before) and all the blocks were inspired by books I'd read. Strange and incomprehensible to many perhaps, how reading a book can make you want to make a quilt, but the two are inextricably linked in my mind and the fabric for this one was from a range called Wuthering Heights so what else was I to do with it?
Sitting and quilting on a weekday afternoon feels mildly decadent but
quilting time is never wasted. I can't find the quote but I'm sure it
was Claudine's House by Colette and her mother's reluctance
for her daughter to learn to sew because then she will have time to
think, and who knows where thinking will lead? Well I've just finished reading Daphne and there's a great deal in there to think about. I'll post about it in full very soon but it's been an inspiring read and I'm about to reread Rebecca. It's a pretty safe guess as to my two choices for naming this little quilt.
The old tradition says that you stitch your life events and thoughts
into a quilt as you make it and I think this is especially true as you
hand-quilt. I can look back on all the quilts I've stitched and know exactly when in my life I've made them.
When I haven't threaded a needle for a little while I find it takes a time to get my quilting eye in, (no, lets be honest it takes me an age to thread a needle first, I use tiny Clover Gold Eye No.9 and will move to smaller 10s when I'm back in the groove) the needle feels miniscule, the stitches feel too big, too far apart, crooked and uneven, my fingers feel like sausages and my thimble feels awkward.
This one is pear wood and I've been using it for over twenty years. It must have come from a magic pear tree because no other thimble will do and no other fits so well. After a while it warms up, the magic seeps into my finger and those soft grooves, worn in over the years, start to connect with the needle and I feel the stitches.
Slowly but surely the rhythm returns and then I'm away and I thought if I share the progress of this on here over the next couple of weeks I will finally be forced to finish it or be shamed into confessing I haven't.
Quilts in progress look messy, tacking and raw edges everywhere, but I was pleased with an afternoon's work on the hoop to get the centre quilted. It was so long since I'd marked this one with quilting patterns the disappearing marker pen had all but disappeared and I've had to rethink it.
Once I'd done some Daphne thinking I decided I could do audio book, so I listened to The Woman in Black by Susan Hill. I haven't read it for years and the listening has been as spine-chilling as that first read. As the mist from Eel Marsh started to gather the stitches started to flow and I was as engrossed and remote from the world as if I was reading. This one is narrated with acres of atmosphere and suspense by Paul Ansdell. One CD left to listen to and I'm onto blocks and borders now and on a hand-quilting roll.
Just what I needed.
I'm impressed – deeply impressed! Those stitches look beautifully even.
You’ve inspired me to dig out a quillow that I pieced years ago… now, where did I put those little needles…
Posted by: Dee Weaver | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 07:01 AM
I'm hopeless with needle and thread but my mother made patchwork quilts (although I don't think they were actually quilts as she just sewed pieces of patchwork together and then backed the whole lot with material, ie no actual 'quilting' took place.) I mention this because I have her old quilts. One in particular was made after she'd had a minor operation on an delicate part of her anatomy and she couldn't sit down, so a good 90% of the quilt was made standing up! It is single quilt which she produced for our son (who is now 34) when he was six. I can certainly empathize, DGR, that you can recall when and where you made certain quilts! When I see this quilt (it is mainly in shades of pale blue, lilac and green and is used in the summer months) I always think of her, standing, propped against an old sofa, sewing away ...
Posted by: Margaret Powling | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 08:38 AM
Those stitches look lovely to me. And I agree about audiobooks and crafting having a transporting magic to them. I crochet while listening - at the moment it's 'A Tale of Two Cities' so I feel a little like one of those french women knitting by the guillotine...
Posted by: Joanne | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 10:11 AM
Lynne, that's another reason to come to Abingdon! We discovered shortly after opening that there is a big local section of the Quilters Guild in the town (The Abbey Quilters) and we now do a nice line in Kaffe Fassett books in the shop!
Posted by: Mark Thornton | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 10:12 AM
Dee, now a quillow,that definitely needs finishing. For the uninitiated a quillow is a very clever idea where the quilt folds up into itself and thence into a special cushion-sized casing stitched onto the reverse of the quilt so that it can double as a cushion.
Margaret, the memories can be really vivid, I only have to look at the quilt I made for our tenth anniversary to recall the hours I spent trying to keep three small children and their sticky fingers away from it. It became a thing of beauty in the midst of utter chaos!
Joanne apparently it's now proven, sitting and occupying your hands whilst watching disturbing events lessens the trauma. I'm sure this counts for listening to guillotine by proxy as well. I have never mastered crochet...one day.
Mark I'm on my way!
Posted by: dovegreyreader | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 01:44 PM
I am also using up some annual leave - it's that time of year. I have just come in from the garden (rain stopped play.) I have been itching to get out there for ages and have had a good morning weeding, cutting back and tidying. Your handiwork is beautiful, is there no end to your talents?
Posted by: Wendy Smith | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 03:00 PM
The quilt looks so beautiful -- I'm filled with awe and admiration. And I'm going to ask Cristina at BronteBlog to come up with a Brontean quote about sewing...
Posted by: justine picardie | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 05:05 PM
The quilt is beautiful. I'm in awe of anyone who can do work such as this. I knit a little, but I'm certainly no expert. Thanks for sharing this other side of your life with the rest of us.
Posted by: Lisa | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 05:54 PM
Wendy, I can't play the piano and think that's unlikely to happen now!
Justine a Bronte sewing quote would be excellent, I could inscribe it on there somewhere. One of the fabrics appears to be a facsimile of Emily Bronte's handwritten manuscript of Wuthering Heights, note I've said 'appears to be':-)
Posted by: dovegreyreader | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 06:03 PM
My first comment here, although I'm a long-time reader of this blog. My huge to-read list owes much to dovegreyreader's posts.
There are probably a lot more, but the first Brontë-related sewing quote is from Shirley, and not very positive.
"While the summer thus passed with Moore, how did it lapse with Shirley and Caroline? Let us first visit the heiress. How does she look? Like a love-lorn maiden, pale and pining for a neglectful swain? Does she sit the day long bent over some sedentary task? Has she for ever a book in her hand, or sewing on her knee, and eyes only for that, and words for nothing, and thoughts unspoken? [...]
She takes her sewing occasionally: but, by some fatality, she is doomed never to sit steadily at it