On Dec 14 I finalized with Yvonne the design for the quilt of Mean Jean’s clothing. Since then, I’ve been working quite steadily on the quilt. The fabrics are woven and knit, cotton and polyester, very thin to fairly bulky. They come from shirts, pajamas, a curtain, a hospital gown, and even a pair of Jean’s underwear. They are solids, stripes, plaids, and florals. Taken together, they’re quite a challenge. But I use a cool iron, sharp needles, and a walking foot for construction, to get them all to play nicely together.
The pattern is a simple 4-patch in a square in a square, to showcase the fabrics. The “shirt” fabrics are in the 4-patches and the outer round of triangles. The middle round of triangles is mostly a white-on-white, but the underwear fabric and the white shirts made it into this position in a few of the blocks. Some of the shirts had embroidered or stenciled detail, so a larger square of this decoration replaced the 4-patch in five of the blocks. Here’s a close-up, showing detail of the blocks after assembly into rows:
The 8” blocks are separated by yellow sashing, and there are 2” posts of the shirt fabrics. There will be a 4” border of blue and yellow floral, which ties in four of the colors in the shirt fabrics. Hannah helped me to cut 9 yards of the floral into border, back and binding strips. She held the larger pieces of yardage on the floor while I ironed.
Here are some photos: The first batch of blocks,
the first draft of the layout,
and the finished center of the top, without borders, but with Paul for scale.
Sydney helped me to layer the quilt. She hunkered down under the back as I spread it out on the floor. I think she was waiting to play “chase her tail”, but I didn’t do my part; I just waited for her to get bored and come out from underneath. Paul then came down to help. He actually helped to stretch out the layers, but was most useful when he encouraged Sydney to nap on his lap with him. Fortunately Hannah was already asleep elsewhere, so I got no muddy footprints on any of the layers so far!
I’ve had to add two extra tables to my studio mess, to support the quilt as I do the machine-quilting. I’m using a soft variegated buttercream thread on top, in a wiggly line, which is less work and prettier than “in-the-ditch”. The quilting will take some time: I take breaks often so my back doesn’t bother me. Here’s Hannah during one of my breaks:
