I've been working on a quilt for almost a year and a half that I hung on the wall of our home today. The pattern is by Jen Kingwell and is called Gypsy Wife. I was first introduced to this pattern at our first time quilt camping experience at Camp Lebanon. (Only 6 weeks til spring quilt camp!) At our first camp experience, a group of women who had done the Gypsy Wife as a quilt-along brought in and displayed their quilts. We were given cookies and chai tea to enjoy while we strolled through admiring the quilts. They were gorgeous and each one was so unique. My first thought was that I could never tackle such a project, nor would I want to. By the time we left camp, I was kind of thinking maybe that would be fun...Patty from our quilt camp group did decide to tackle it and we admired her bravery and progress. Fast forward about eight months and our local quilt shop, Grubers, announced via their newsletter that they were hosting a Gypsy Wife quilt-along for 12 months meeting one Monday night per month. The leader was a Camp Lebanon instructor. I decided to join in and knew just where I would hang my finished quilt in a year's time. I looked at Pinterest and many other online pages for ideas of colors and settled on doing shades of red and white which I thought would look great on our muted yellow wall. I looked through my fabric stash and got some help from Mom with extra pieces of reds and whites. I bought a few fat quarters and showed up for class. Over the course of the year I bought a jelly roll (bunch of 2.5" strips) and a couple of other pieces, but not many considering the size of the quilt was 59" x 68". Jen Kingwell designs beautiful quilts; Jen Kingwell does not write beautiful pattern directions. The 25 or so women in the class spent the first class period, two hours, writing additional directions and corrections into our pattern books. That was in addition to spreadsheets and labels and tip sheets given to us in a three ring binder. One of our instructions was to go home and get ten 1-gallon ziploc bags and label them 1-10 to hold our quilt blocks. Each month we would be assigned to make several blocks along with instructions on which bag to put them in. Along the way, we also cut 63 different 1 1/2" strips and put those into bags. Later in the process, we laid those out in a pleasing arrangement and proceeded to cut them into shorter strips, attach sticky labels and put those into the bags as well. I enjoyed the monthly meetings. We brought our finished blocks in to show. It is amazing how doing the same blocks with different fabrics yield such different results. Some of the meetings were mainly show and tell and more instructions; others we had guest speakers on color, design and sometimes the shop owner would show new products. It was kind of a bummer when we got to spring and the shop owners decided we had enough monthly meetings to go ahead and finish our quilts, but I knew I was in a good enough spot to be able to finish. Early in the summer, I reached the point of being able to take out one bag at a time and assemble sections 1-10 of the quilt. Wow, I don't know how I would have accomplished that without my sticky labels to make sure I didn't transpose any strips or blocks. Then it was time to figure out how to quilt my finished top. We had talked about batting and quilting a little in class and I was intrigued with the Big Stitch method of hand quilting and attended a couple of sessions at the quilt shop for a tutorial and some practice. The Big Stitch method results in a home spun style which a little more rustic feeling. One of the rules for this type of quilting is there are no rules...not really my preference, but I could appreciate the creativity that ensues when there are no rules. It took many hours to hand stitch down the center of every strip and to accentuate the blocks, but I love the finished product. Here is a closer look at the hand quilting. Oh, remember how I said that I had a spot all picked out for my quilt before I even started it? Well, that wall was 12 inches too narrow, so I had to make a Plan B on that. Now I can find a new project for that wall. My Gypsy Wife experience could be compare to training for a marathon in a number of ways.
This is my view lately...treadmill with the iPad for amusement, a water bottle where the Pringles can should be and my Aftershokx headphones to play my audio books or Amazon Prime shows through from the iPad. I tried the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on my long run of 10 miles yesterday. The first couple episodes were pretty entertaining, so I'll probably try a few more next week.
Between the snow and the cold, hopefully everyone is getting at least a little running in until the weather improves. Charlie spent an afternoon at the groomers this week and wanted to show all the readers how they should carbo-load with their sweetheart before their next race. Happy Valentine's Day and speedy running--Missee
1 Comment
Stephanie
2/10/2019 07:38:11 pm
The quilt is beautiful!😍 You picked a terrific wall to display it!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMissee and Stephanie are two Minnesota sisters and moms who love to run. We are not experts in running, parenting or anything else, but we do have years of experiences that may be helpful or entertaining to others. Archives
May 2020
Categories |