Whale Story

The stuff diet is complicated.

Iris found this stuffed whale in a recent toy roundup. I thought it would make a fine starting point for another read me a quilt. Unbelievably, I didn't have any whale fabric in my stash collection and Hancock's of Paducah was offering a free shipping promotion.  Therefore, this whale batik leapt into my virtual shopping cart.

How did a stuff diet lead to purchasing more fabric?

Moreover, the READ part of read me a quilt required a whale-themed book.

How did a stuff diet lead to book shopping?

I couldn't find anything suitable.  Fortunately, a non-quilter that attended our guild's quilt show donated Down to the Sea with Mr Magee to our guild for the program.

Near the end of the book, the whales wave bye-bye with their tails.  A Google image search for whale flukes turned up this iconic image and the quilt designed itself.

I got the idea after lunch one day, found the image, designed the layout and selected fabrics by 3 PM, and finished binding it at 2:30 AM that night.  There was a 2-3 hour break to prepare, eat and clean up dinner, but otherwise the creative fever wouldn't let me quit.

The stuff diet will take forever if I put this much effort into every little stuffed animal.  On the bright side, I only used one yard of newly-purchased fabric and found a good use for yards of fabric, batting and thread cluttering up my sewing room.

• Finished size 41" by 52.5".
• Imagery courtesy The Smithsonian Institution. which acknowledged NOAA for exhibit materials.  I infer that the image originated from NOAA.  (In my prior job, I interviewed the NOAA historian and he said that the NOAA photo library is free for public use.  I should send him a link to this post.)
• 2010 read me a quilt
• 2011 read me a quilt
• the first 2012 read me a quilt
• It had been my habit to make only one read me a quilt per year, but CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) had appealed for more gifts and clothing.  During this recession, they are seeing an increase in children entering the foster care system because of parental drug addiction.  Please consider donating cash and time to help CASA.
• Is anyone interested in posts about digital object preservation such as my notes from interviews with NOAA and NASA archivists and historians?

Call of the wild: read me a quilt 2012

When cleaning out Iris' room, we found a copy of Call of the wild and this stuffed dog that barks when you squeeze it. It begged for a delectable mountains quilt for the read me a quilt program. (The book+quilt combos are given to children in the LA County foster care program with the help of Court Appointed Special Advocates, CASA.)

I started with this fabric sample donated by Robert Kaufman, when the fabric was discontinued.

I made three delectable mountains blocks by sewing two roughly 18" square pieces of fabric into half square blocks. Then I sliced them vertically in three places, reversed their order and sewed them up into liberated delectable mountains blocks. I used my ruler strictly as a straight edge and did not look at the markings.

I used two fabric samples, 5 purchased 1/2 yard fabrics (I lacked suitable sky fabric), 1.5 yards of yardage from my collection for the mountains and then improvisationally pieced the rest using fabric from my scrap bin. Inspired by Completely Cauchy's, Scraptacularity, Part I, in which she pieced straight strips into log cabins and then cut them up as fabric, I pieced my backing log cabin style. Can you see how the backing was constructed?

The pieces ranged in size from fat quarters to this tiny triangle.

While piecing the quilt, I relived memories of past projects. Many of the blue/green fabrics were leftover from a baby quilt from pre-blog days; that baby is now in 7th grade. The gray faux bois were also used in the gray tiered skirts in Hello Goth!

The blue shirting with green stripes came from one of Bad Dad's thrifted shirt. When the collar & cuffs became too frayed to be presentable, I cut the body up to make a blue tiered skirt shown in Blue. The sleeves were cut up and used for this quilt.

Piecing scraps into fabric is labor intensive. In analyzing why I am drawn to quilts that are traditionally associated with African American quilt communities, I realized that I appreciate both the visual texture derived from the worn nature of the old fabrics and the labor-intensive and miraculous act of making something from nothing.

The process is part of the quality of the quilt, the inherent thingness of the thingy that Robert Pirsig wrote about in Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.

This is my entry for the Scrap Attack Quilt Along.

Past read me a quilts:
2011: Treasure Island
2010: Cat in a hat
Artful resourcefulness from fiber artist Abigail Doan

Improvisational Quilt

Is this the "right side"?
Or is this the "right side"?
I had intended the orderly one as the right side and improvisationally-pieced side as the backing, but I think that I like the "wrong" side better.

It all started when the Santa Monica and South Bay Quilters' guilds got together last Spring to sell everyone's bits and bobs as a joint fundraiser. I walked away with three shopping bags full of fabric, yarn, patterns and oddities that I thought I might have a use for. Bad Dad thought the point was for me to unload my own surplus. Silly man.

Anyway, I saw the two skull fabrics and thought that my girly goth girl might want a quilt made out of these scraps. She didn't like them.
Plan B had me making a "Read me a quilt" to accompany the book, Treasure Island. I challenged myself to use only what I already had in my collection, which meant that I had to piece some fabrics like the reds below.
For the backing, I sewed scraps into blocks and then sewed the blocks together. (I promised in Zero Waste Goal to show an example of scraps sewn into fabric and here it is.) I added a black and white striped shirt from Goodwill. I call it the "Big Kahuna" shirt because it measured 70" in circumference. I harvested the buttons for a future shirt and cut up the body for the backing. Notice the triangular patches in the holes left by the armscythe of the shirt.
There were other triangles, too. I had barely enough fabric to pull this off.
The solid red is a Kona cotton leftover from another quilt. The red/white and yellow/white prints are pre-consumer waste from SAS. The black/white geometric is a remnant from Joann's premium cotton section.

[ I was surprised that the selvage says 2005 and they are selling it as current fabric. But, if you look closely, their premium fabrics are often old stock that the independent fabric stores cleared out years ago. I guess that's how they can mark it up to $10/yard and then mark it down to $5/yard and still turn a profit.]

The red/white pindot is a fabric second. The dye is spread unevenly where it became jammed in the machinery. I like the visual texture that the mistake provides.
I pieced this before I read Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking I and II. The seams were so crooked, I was thinking more Gees Bend than Liberated.

Anyway, Read me a quilt was started by a SBQG member 10 years ago. Working with Court Appointed Special Advocates (for children in foster care), CASA, we try to provide each child with a book and a quilt that goes with the book. If your quilt group would like to join our effort, drop me a line. You need not be a member of SBQG, or any guild, to help out.

I chose Treasure Island to go with the pirate theme. I couldn't decide between the unabridged one with beautiful illustrations, but archaic language, or the modernized and simplified version. I decided to buy both. I figure the child can read the simple one on his/her own, and an adult can read and explain the unabridged one to him/her. This quilt is about 55"x67"; there should be plenty of room for two under this quilt.

Iris was sorting out her unused toys and we thought this pirate bear should go in the care package. Aargh!
We found this puppy (squeeze it and it barks!) and Jack London's The Call of the Wild in her giveaway pile. I already know what next year's quilt will look like. I think I just might have the fabric I need already in my collection.
The South Bay Quilters' Guild takes the philanthropy aspect of our 503c nonprofit status very seriously. We provide hundreds of quilts each year (nearly a thousand) for local charities and college scholarships to students studying for the garment trades. Our community services chair takes fabric donations. She says that we use 160 yards per month from the donation stash for our charity quilts. Yet, the stash never seems to get smaller. I wonder how many sewists can relate. ;-)

See my 2010 Read me a quilt, another improvisational piece.