Two "Learning Quilts". 6.11.2020

Last winter I decided I wanted to learn to make quilts.  I'm not as able as I used to be for major outdoor projects and remodeling.  Also, I can't do so much heavy digging.  Something is needed for creative urges and to keep me out of trouble, so I got out the sewing machine.

Never having made a quilt, I did some reading.  I wanted to start small, not spend too much money, and learn by doing.  All of my sewing is self-taught and I make a lot of mistakes.

First Quilt.

I bought a roll of fall themed fabric at the fabric store (Jelly Roll).  After playing around a little and looking at quilts on line, I decided on this pattern.  This is about 3 feet by 3 feet.  It's a little bit of a joke, because one off the fabrics has deer peeking over the fence, and deer are my nemesis (when in the garden or eating the fruit trees) and friends (w hen not doing those things), and they are everywhere.

I just finished the quilting and binding, after having the top assembled for a few months.   I feel intimidated at each step, since each is my first time, but once I get into it and make a few mistakes, I start to learn.   This quilt is too small to be useful, so I hung it on the wall.  After taking this photo and looking at it, I think the darker stripes look too much like the letter "I", so I took it down, took off the loops,  turned it and resewed the loops so the blocs look more like sections of fence.

Second quilt.  Same method, also started the patchwork during the late winter.  I started by basing it on a Pride flag I saw at Cascade AIDS Project, where I was volunteering until the COVID epidemic.  However, I thought the plain colors were not lively enough but seem kind of harsh at the same time.  I used patterns taken from natural ideas instead.  Even then I thought the long stripes were kind of too much, and seemed to have a dominant theme, so I cut into the same type of squares a the other quilt, and scrambled a little while still having a pattern.  Looking now, it's kind of a Bargello-inspired idea, where each stripe can be moved either one down or one across, and they match.   This pattern required multiples of three, which meant adding one color.  I added silver (grey) to represent seniors.

Still a lot of mistakes, but I like the colorful result and it has a kind of meaning.

Now I have some Indonesian Batik fabric to play with.  I'm not sure what I will do.  I thought about a Bargello pattern, but that kind of subsumes the fabric pattern into just shades, without much of the pattern standing out.  I could do one of these again, as another learning exercise before branching out.  Not sure.  I think it might be a mistake to buy Jelly Rolls, which tend to lock a person into a certain type of pattern, whereas larger shapes, like by the yard or fat quarters, seem to give more freedom.