Thanksgiving Quilt

This quilt was not planned. I had no pattern. It was not a kit lurking in my stash prodding me with little stabs of guilt. I had no intended recipient but there was a motive for its creation. The third Saturday of each month my guild promotes hanging out quilts with a given theme. This November the theme would be Thanksgiving and I suddenly realized I had no quilts with that theme.  None. With all the quilts I have made, I had nary a one with a turkey or indian corn or the golden tones of a hayride or sheaves of wheat. This blog post describes my process when I do not have a plan. It was actually kind of fun and freeing. I did not pre-calculate if I had enough of a fabric. I just forged ahead until I ran out.  

I had just finished readying kits for my quilt guild's Block of the Month activity and I had written up directions for making QSTs, quarter square triangles. The technique of making them oversized and trimming them to a precise size inspired me to make a whole slew of them. Here is my practice block, that kicked off my frenzy. It was inspired from Block #1 of the Fat Quarter Shop's Sewcialites program.

I made a slew of QSTs and placed them around turkey squares. Since I am usually a precise, controlled quilter, this is as close to improvisational as I get.

I did not have enough of the soft-tone, solid orange so I was flexible and made some QSTs with an orange mini-check and some QSTs with an orange plaid. I ran out of gold vine so I improvised by continuing with a tan houndstooth. I threw caution to the wind - sort of. I still could not bring myself to randomize where those similar yet different fabrics went.

Unsure how to fill in those four L-shaped blank spaces around the central block, I remembered I had an indian corn fat quarter that might be fun to incorporate. I cut squares and laid them over those corner bow ties and liked the look; so I replaced the bow tie corners with indian corn squares. I saved those removed bow ties corners to use elsewhere as a potholder, trivet pad, doll blanket, block in another quilt, etc. or to add them to my plastic shoe box collection labeled "blocks to use wherever". 

 

 

As I was stepping back to assess at the creation on my design wall thus far, my husband came into my sewing room. We both stared at it a bit then simultaneously looked at each other and uttered one word ... dull. I dug through my stash and cut squares from this yellow-y gold fabric sporting perky white, green, and copper spirals. Adding them to the quilt provided a bit of the brightness it needed.

 

    

Having decided which prints looked best where, I sewed them up into nine Ohio Star blocks: four corner ones with diagonal turkeys and indian corn, four mid-side ones with spirals, and one center one, modified with the bow tie corners removed. I would later add a green autumn leaf border as well.

 

Having assembled the top, I needed to FMQ it. My chosen patterns were matchstick lines ¼" apart in the tan and beige triangles of the QSTs. In the turkey and indian corn squares I did only curved edge perimeter lines so those squares would puff up like little pillows and not obscure the seasonal novelty prints. I opted for a pebble pattern in the spiral squares. I was not skilled in making well rounded adjacent circles so this casual, impromptu, relatively small quilt was the perfect place to practice. This next photo is poor quality in color accuracy but the late afternoon lighting shows up the FMQ very well. I no longer fear pebbles, although I do now know they are very time consuming.

Next is a closeup of one of the four corner Ohio Stars. The autumn leaf border print added some needed green relief. I determined its width by how much fabric I had - only a fat quarter. I improvised by adding indian corn squares as cornerstones. Indian corn and turkey alternate along the diagonals of the quilt. I sewed a ruler guided wave stitch in the border. I inserted an unexpected peek of lilac piping to the burgundy binding. The lilac is meant to call attention to the spark of lilac in the turkey's wing feathers.

 

The following photos are closeups of the center Ohio Star and one of the four mid-side Ohio Stars.

 

Here is a more color-correct overview of the front of the quilt.

 

I extend my fun in choosing the backing fabric. These stylistic brown wavy chickens with pink waddles and blue/aqua eyes are laughable. I had a just over a yard of this fabric that I'd bought on a lark because it made me smile. After I had purchased it and shown it to my husband, he thought those brown wavy chicken silhouettes were worms! Ugh! I never would have bought that fabric had it appeared that way to me. It was the perfect amount for this 40" square quilt. The pebbles and matchstick quilting remind me of eggs in straw nests. This occurrence was purely accidental.

I named this quilt Gobble. First, because it has turkeys on it and second, because it gobbled up my random pieces of fabric. Here are the name and date labels. As proof of my absence of planning, some photos were taken at night and some in daylight, hence the color variation. I suppose I could have color corrected them digitally to be consistent but that would further hamper the improvisational sprit that I was half-heartedly pursuing.

I learned a lot from this little exercise and resulting quilt.

1. A one-day holiday – even though it is shy of a full season – is still worthy of a quilt
2. It feels good to finally use that fabric I'd been saving
3. It is helpful to practice a new technique while it is still fresh in my mind – QSTs
4. Learning a new FMQ pattern on a small quilt is smart – no more fear of pebbles
5. For uniformity, try to take photos under similar lighting conditions
6. Not having a plan is freeing and fun – thankful that I realize that
7. True improvisation will still be hard for me – does not mean I will refrain from trying