Early Christmas present

My quilt group had its Christmas party last week, and we gave each other our Christmas presents. Since October 2009, we've been making each other quilt blocks in our chosen colours, every month. You may remember we did the same thing back in 2008? This time, Karen chose red and white blocks, Lorinda chose blue and yellow blocks, and Sharon asked for shabby chic Birds in the Air blocks. I chose batiks on dark blue so I received these 39 gorgeous blocks from the girls. Here's how they looked laid out on my floor:

They're sitting on the paper bags they came in, so you don't really see them at their best, but I don't see myself taking better photos this coming week, on account of there's some small religious holiday happening soon. They really do look brilliant, and I've made some more blocks along the way, to bring them up to a more useful number. I'm not sure how I'll set them yet, but I'm thinking they need more dark blue background, to make the colours really pop out. I haven't actually quilted the last one, so there's no rush!

Here are the blocks for the others:

Sharon's Shabby Chic Birds in the Air blocks

Lorinda's Blue and yellow blocks

Karen's red and white blocks

Don't they all look great? The amazing thing is that we so rarely use the same fabrics, even though we all tend to shop locally. I guess it shows how much choice we have in patchwork fabrics these days!

And, gee, I've been quilting too!

Of course, I'm nearly always quilting, in some form or other. I don't always remember to put up what I've done. Remember those swap blocks I did with my quilt group back in... can it be 2007? I've finally put them together into a quilt top. I did say you wouldn't see it until it was a top, which was a pretty rash thing to say, considering I have unfinished quilt projects dating back to... um,  1996, I think. Maybe earlier. (Hangs head)

But here they are, together at last. Of course, it may need to have a border added yet. I'm still thinking about it. Well, that's my excuse for not immediately beginning the quilting. I'm planning to hand quilt it, on the basis that hand quilted projects get finished because they aren't fighting for their time on the machine, along with the garments I make and the machine embroidery and the bags and... well, you know, all that other stuff.

It's the first quilt I'll have that's made from all reproduction fabrics. I love the look of these modern-antique quilts, but when I make a quilt myself, I blend all those wonderful repro fabrics with other fabrics in my stash - whatever works together. So I've never actually made a quilt with all reproduction fabrics. It's also a fabulous reminder of a group of friends who've been meeting together now for more than a decade. And guess what? We're making swap blocks again this year. I've chosen batik fabrics and dark blue backgrounds, which should be striking! Why did I choose batiks? Well, I have this box of batik fabrics, many of which I bought.. yep, in the nineties! So as I make blocks for the girls, I'm making myself a block too, from my own fabrics. Of course, it's not making a dent in my batik fabric stash at all.

Which brings me to something I've been thinking about for a while. I suspect I'm not the only quilter who has an obscene amount of fabric. Somehow, even when you're on a Low-Fibre Diet, as I've been for some years now, fabrics still find their way to your door. I've just bought a bunch of fat quarters for the swap blocks we're making, because somehow it seems mean to use all fabrics from my stash, some of which were definitely not bought yesterday. Only new and glossy will do. And of course, people give you fabrics, because it's your birthday or Christmas, or they are cunningly downsizing at your expense... So my stash is increasing at a greater rate than I can use it. So far, so ordinary.

But really, isn't this just another example of what we women in the developed world do? We buy Stuff. We buy more Stuff than we ever have a hope of using, and we can't pass it on to our kids because they want their own new Stuff. We buy things to replace other things that work perfectly fine, because the one we just bought is new and shiny, because it has brag factor, because it shows we have a lot of money to spend on Stuff. I've thought for a long time that the rampant consumerism of the society I live in is obscene, when there are so many in the world who have almost nothing, and I consciously choose not to buy new things unless I really need them. But fabric is somehow different. It's as if I give myself permission to exempt the fabric I buy.

But fabric isn't neutral. I buy cotton fabrics, and cotton takes water and fertiliser to grow, and often has a significant effect on the physical environment (as any mass monoculture inevitably does). The processing of cotton is not environmentally neutral either, nor is the printing process. I'm not singling out cotton as being necessarily worse than anything else we might buy; it isn't.  But it's cotton fabric that we quilters buy and store away in boxes for the "one day" that will never come.

How can we justify buying all this "product", that we freely acknowledge we will probably never use? For some people, I know this simply isn't an issue. But I've started to think about it and, frankly, I don't like what I see myself doing. I'm not going to take the high moral ground and declare I'm never buying more fabric... I don't trust extreme points of view, even in myself. I just hope I can learn to be more discriminating, more able to resist the siren call of the new.

And do you know what? While I was writing this, I remembered that some friends gave me a box of fat quarters for my Significant Birthday a few years ago. And yes, I found it includes a whole lot more batiks. So I definitely won't be shopping for that quilt anytime soon!

The sashing looks like this:

Now, unless I change my mind and do something different, you won't see it again until it's a quilt top!

Quietly quilting

I've been quietly going on with a project I mentioned here quite a while ago. The members of the very small quilt group I belong to made blocks for each other, one a month for ten months, during 2007. So each of us ended up with thirty 6in blocks. I chose reproduction fabrics because, while I love them and buy them a lot, I generally use them all mixed in with other fabrics, rather than making a quilt in reproduction style.

I decided to sew triangles to the four sides of each block, which has the effect of setting them on point (an interesting layout) and making them bigger. I am not fond of small quilts in traditional style - I really prefer the traditional quilts I make to be big enough to snuggle under. I decided I wanted the quilt to be more blue than anything else, so I found a nice medium value blue fabric in my stash and sewed triangles to half the blocks. I wanted a different fabric for the other half, so I would get that interesting pattern happening where the triangles meet. But none of the fabrics I found worked well with my blue fabric. Even ones I bought specifically looked fine in the shop but just didn't sing when I got them home. So I decided that, instead of keeping on buying fabrics that didn't work, I would go back to my stash of reproduction fabrics and work with value, something that isn't always that important in reproduction quilts. I chose fifteen different dark blue fabrics and an assortment of light medium fabrics. These fabrics needed to be medium, to provide contrast with the blocks that had a light background, but still light enough to contrast with the dark blues. Over the past couple of weeks, I've ripped the original blue triangles and sewn the new triangles in place. Here is how it looked, laid out:
Apologies for the foreshortened look, my design wall is fuill of other stuff just now.

The next task is to add sashing between the blocks. I have this delicious stripe to use for that, but I'm still havering over which fabric to use as cornerstones.

And also...

Here is one of the secret projects from last year. My quilt group decided we would make 6in blocks for each other last year, one for each person, every month from February to November. That wasn't too onerous as there are only four of us in the group! I forgot to take photos of the blocks I made (how silly!)but here are the ones made for me:
Aren't they lovely? I asked for my blocks to be in reproduction fabrics because I like those quilts but never end up making myself one. I laid them out on point on my design wall because I think I may use that layout, but with strip sashing, or a streak of lightning sashing. I haven't decided yet.