WIP: McCormick Commemorative Quilt Blocks

Last Saturday I attended the 50th birthday celebration of my college dorm.  McCormick Hall is the only all girl dorm on the MIT campus and was dedicated to facilitate the advancement of women in science an engineering at MIT by giving them an environment to live in that made them feel safe and at home among female peers. Many lasting friendships were formed during those four college years.

To commemorate the event, participating alumnae were encouraged to submit a square to be incorporated in a quilt. I made one each for myself and four college friends. In one corner I placed our name and graduating year, in a second corner our major, i.e. course of study. The third corner reads 5th River East, which states what suite of rooms was our college home. The final fourth corner tells something quirky that I remembered for each of us. I bordered the blocks with a print that was "loud and obnoxious" as I considered it. I wanted it to be graphic enough to stand out and be a unifying sign that the five of us, went together. Then, when the quilt was assembled, the blocks would relate to each other even if scattered throughout the quilt top. I was also trying to be kind to whoever assembles the top from the varying size squares they will get by providing a border that can be trimmed.

This is my block. I had a thing for owls in college and my room was decorated with them. I'd crocheted my bedspread in afghan stitch blocks with intarsia owls.

This is my friend Sue's block. She and I used to take our study break to eat ice cream just about every night. 

My friend Margaret was a chain reader (as opposed to being a chain smoker). I still do not know how she fit that in with all our other studies!

My friend Brenda used to hula dance professionally in high school. No, she was not from Hawaii. She was from Maine. Go figure...

Norma loved food, cooking, and eating. I also picked this particular print to represent her because it also reminded me of her flaming red hair.

It sure was fun making these blocks and thinking of good times and friendships while doing so. So that too much time does not elapse from the event til this post, I am posting this from a mobile device at the airport on my way going home. I am skipping stats this week and will correct my typos and picture sizes once I am on a real computer.

WIP: New Hampshire Fabrics

During our Boston area trip August 7-15 my husband indulged me by adding a jaunt north up to Center Harbor, NH to check out  Keepsake Quilting, on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. I have gotten their catalog for many years, since I first got into the quilting hobby and I consider them an icon of the quilting community. When we were in Central California last year my husband wanted to visit the memorial for James Dean. For me, this visit to Keepsake's brick and mortar store was in sort of the same category. My life could still be complete without ever going there but I'd always been very curious.

The store was well within what I expected with no major surprises. I will say though that their sale outlet section of the store was unremarkable. To me ~10% off is no real sale.  Apparently they have a huge summer blowout each year during which it is a real mob scene, but throughout the store discounts are very minimal. Also, although they have many many bolts of fabric, there are very few fat quarters. Their policy is to only cut fat quarters when they are near the end of the bolt. In a way, this is to be commended as not wasting fabric; but somehow, a quilt store without bins or cubbies or baskets or drawers of fat quarters seems a bit weird to me.

I did pick up just a few pieces of fabric. I liked the quasi stripe on the left and found it very unusual.  I bought a half yard, maybe for binding. The central plaid was a brushed cotton and had a very, very soft hand to it. I liked the whimsy of the barbecue bugs on the right.

I also found this adorable animal print, perfect for a certain biology major friend of mine. I just love the variety of critters on the fabric, from many kingdoms, phyla and classes. I have now exhausted  my high school biology terminology.

And just look at all the colors involved! It is impressive that 18 different dyes went into this fabric as you can see by the numbered circles on the selvage. Having just visited the town of Lowell and touring the American Textile History Museum there, I am more appreciative of the effort involved to print this fabric and keep the colors registered correctly.

There were only fat quarters of Animal Alphabet Flash Cards available though. Due to Keepsake's sales methods, if you find a fat quarter, there is no bolt yardage left to purchase. I bought all remaining four fat quarters and have just made them into napkins. I guess by giving this away in my blog my friend may be surprised now instead of when she receives them in the mail in a few days.

It took me a while and a couple dozen tries before I figured out how to fold the napkins into this triangular packaging method for gifting. (All you vendors out there who do this routinely are laughing at me now.) I knew the equilateral triangle had to be folded at 60° but how to do so repeatedly and with only folded edges exposed was a challenge to figure out. I did not grasp the method readily. I had to figure it out each time for every one of the four napkins! I used the markings on my rectangular rule. I could not find the triangular ruler I knew I had. When I was tossing out the trimmings from the ribbon I tied the stack with, I found the triangular ruler. Wouldn't ya know it?

I am looking forward to checking out other folk's projects later this evening at

 http://www.freshlypieced.com/    

Here are my stats:

Completed projects since 7/31/13 WIP post:

1. Critter napkins
2. Lots of travel and fabric purchases (August 19, 2013 post)

Ongoing projects:  

1. Firetruck pillowcase (July 24, 2013 post) - need fabric orientation post
2. Christmas pillowcases - cut out awaiting stitching
3. Classic Cars strip quilt (August 3, 2013 post)- need to back, quilt, and bind
4. Grinch quilt (May 22,2013 post) - all borders added, need to back, quilt, and bind
5. Jack O'Lantern Trio (February 2, 2013 post) - awaiting FMQ
6. Chicken quilt - awaiting FMQ
7. Overlapping square wall hanging - awaiting FMQ
8. Mask quilt (October 19, 2011 post) - hidden away awaiting inspiration for arranging hexagons

New projects since 7/31/13 WIP post:  

1. Critter napkins

Stats since last WIP:

     Completed  projects - 1

     Currently in progress - too many, ridiculous, but listing them keeps me honest

     New projects - 1 

Boston Trip and Fabric Finds

My husband and I just got back from nine day trip back east to the Boston area and a bit of New Hampshire. We went to visit college friends and share memories of the good old days. Of course I managed to weasel quilting into the trip.

Lowell, Massachusetts was a major textile manufacturing town that grew up and peaked during the Industrial Revolution. On Friday we went to the Lowell Quilt Festival with college friends John and Sue.  They are both novices to the world of quilting and this was their first quilt show. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing how impressed they were with the quilts shown and how surprised they were viewing the changes from the quilts they remember on the beds of their grandmothers. Many displays did not allow photography but this one did and I captured this beauty that caught my eye for color, workmanship, and detail.

I know that with the advent of the internet most fabrics are available online and so geographic location is not a real constraint.  However, going to shows in another part of the country tends to feature the tastes of that area and so you do see more fabric variety when you are out and about. Of course there were vendors at the show and I want to showcase my purchases from the Boston area.

These are Kaffe Fasset prints that I bought from Waterwheel House.  They packaged their fat quarters in a very enticing manner and had the many bright colors and the polka dots that I gravitate to.

And with a ten-month old granddaughter, whooo could pass up these three color ways of mini-print OWL FAT quarters; or should I say mini-print FAT OWL quarters? Either fits, they are so chubby and adorable, especially with those big, round, pin-dot pupil eyes!

Waterwheel House also had these adorable fox prints but only in a prepackaged bundle of fat quarters.  They agreed to ship a yard of each to my home in California directly from their shop and did not charge me shipping.  Not only did I save money but I saved weight.  After this trip I brought back 15 pounds of fabric combined from this quilt Festival and a visit to Keepsake Quilting in New Hampshire a fews day later!

Also at the Lowell Quilt Festival I bought a yard each of these quirky stripes at $5 / yard at clearance because the store was changing its image and re-prioritizing the product lines it carried. I think they were changing their store to feature more sedate heritage and somber civil war era tones. These wavy bands definitely would not have fit in. The store owners probably think they were lucky to find a crazy Californian to buy them. I, on the other hand, think they will make hecka-cute cute bindings or filler blocks in a baby quilt. Definitely a win-win situation...

I thought these prints were just plain cute and intend them possibly for little girls dresses or pinafores.

I also bought this three yard combo for $15 and just love the whimsy of the dotted/striped birds/pumpkins and the jaunty curli-qued hats on the cute spooks.

After the quilt show we went on to the American Textile History Museum located in Lowell, Massachusetts. I was fascinated with the way flax, cotton, wool, and silk are processed into the thread that is woven or knitted into the cloth we buy today. Considering all that goes into getting the fibers from the plant or animal, and not even counting the weaving and dying and printing, I began to appreciate that maybe the price we pay for fabric these days is not so bad after all.

And for you knitters out there, there is a very well dressed scarecrow in the American Textile History Museum.  The children from school tours there had named him Oz.

Later in the week we toured other museums in Lowell, Massachusetts where they weave and print the cloth. We did this with college friends Joe and Margaret. We also drove up north to visit Keepsake Quilting on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and met up with other college friends Linda and Richard. To me Keepsake Quilting represents an icon in the quilting world. I wanted to visit it just like one wants to read a classic novel. Our Lowell and Lake Winnipesaukee visits are a tale for another post.