MOM! Check this out: Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts. Those are amazing. My favorite is “Vortex” (slide 32). HOW DO YOU DO THAT?!
Tag: quilting
-
Shared today on Google Reader
- GDC releases classic game postmortem videos – Bookmarking to watch all of these later.
- How-To: Photographic Quilt – I spent like 30 seconds wondering why Pac-Man had a chunk taken out of his head before I realised what the photo actually was.
- This is Why You Can’t Make Money in the Stock Market
- The Perfect Karaoke Song
-
Star Wars Fabric
Oh hey, I just found the company that makes the Star Wars fabric Mom used in our quilt. Turns out they make quite a few other designs. Ours is called (appropriately enough) “Vader’s Revenge”.
Incidentally, we had a long chat Friday night about the whole licensing issue thing. Mom was admonishing me for even mentioning selling the quilt because the fabric had apparently come with a big warning that you weren’t allowed to use it in products for resale. That sent Rodd off into a tangent about end-user license agreements and whether they’re valid if you don’t sign anything (which of course Mom hadn’t). I said that I thought you were allowed to sell derivative works, like collages that included copyrighted pictures. (Turns out I was wrong.) So it looks like selling it would be out of the question in terms of legality. It just seems really odd to think that I have a personal possession that I wouldn’t be allowed to sell in a garage sale (or on eBay). But wait – I didn’t make the quilt. It was gifted to me. So I should be able to sell it, right? I didn’t “manufacture” any products “for resale.” (Just to clarify, I wouldn’t dream of selling it. This is just an interesting thought exercise.) I wonder if anybody’s contested this one in court yet…
-
Episode III – Revenge of the Amish
Okay, so my mom’s been a quilter for a long time, and now that she’s not working full-time she’s had time to start cranking out quilts for everyone in the family. She told me a while ago that she was planning to make a wedding quilt for Rodd and me. About six months ago we had the following phone conversation.
Mom: Joe [her husband] and I were having an argument about your quilt the other day.
Me: Really? How weird. [Joe’s not a quilter.] What about?
Mom: Well, I had planned on making you a traditional-style quilt. But then we saw some Star Wars fabric in a store and he thinks you guys might like that better.
Me: [I can’t figure out what to do! I mean, DUDE, a Star Wars quilt? How cool would that be? But I don’t want to disappoint Mom. So instead I just hyperventilate into the phone.]
Mom: So I’m guessing you want the Star Wars thing then.
Me: Welllll… What if you used the Star Wars fabric but still did a traditional design? That would rock!
Mom: Yeah, that’s what I was thinkin’.So she started the quilt. I didn’t hear much about it except for the occasional disturbing “I don’t know if you guys are gonna like this…” comment. Apparently she spent the past few weeks pulling out all the stops to get it finished in time to personally deliver it on this trip. Last Friday as soon as we got them and their suitcases unloaded into the apartment, out came the quilt. Quite frankly, we were speechless.
Isn’t that the coolest, evillest patchwork quilt you’ve ever seen? The fabric was apparently printed as a tie-in for Revenge of the Sith, though what they thought people would do with it, I can’t imagine. I took more pictures.Here’s a side view. According to Mom, she hand-pieced the entire quilt top and then used her long-arm sewing machine to do the actual quilting.
This is a close-up of the central star motif. As you can see, she “fancy cut” all of the pieces to center the printed designs within them. (She also said this was a total bitch to do because the fabric wasn’t printed evenly.)
Here is a close-up of the “Vader helmet” pieces. You can clearly see the quilting lines looping all around the printed designs. (I can only imagine how time-consuming that was.) The orange sections are even more heavily-quilted, though I couldn’t get them to photograph very well. She said she used several thousand yards of thread on the thing.
And here are the pieces with the scary, glowing red eyes. It took me about ten minutes to realize that the word “REVENGE” also appears beneath the gothic “Vader.” I told Rodd that every morning when we wake up under this thing, we have to enact the “Noooooo!” scene from when Vader wakes up at the end.
Mom also likes to personalize her quilts in very subtle ways. In this corner, she’s actually worked “Love, Mom 2006” into the actual stitching. Can you see it? Another corner has our names.
All in all, I can see where you’d think the quilt was kind of, uh, disturbing. Me, I love it. Mom wasn’t a huge fan though, so she decided to make the backing fabric something completely different (so that we could turn it over if we were entertaining someone who wouldn’t find a Star Wars Darth Vader “flames of hell” revenge-themed quilt as cool as we do). So she used a really neat print of Chinese cranes against a black background. Also, for the bottom thread of the quilting she used a metallic gold thread that goes really nicely with the cranes.
I think Mom was well into the construction of the quilt before she started poking around on eBay and realized just how much Star Wars items go for. (I discovered this when she stopped complaining about the non-traditional-ness of it and started casually mentioning how many hundreds of dollars people would pay for “this stuff.”) But there’s no way we’re selling this beauty. I’m sure she’d be interested in hearing from anybody seriously interested in commissioning one though, so drop me an e-mail if you want.
-
Quilt Thieves
Apparently the hot new crime in the world of fine art is… stealing quilts. Seriously. I better start learning how to work a barcode into my stitching!
-
Storm at Sea Quilt
It’s done! Today is the wedding of my friends Kenya and Sal, and this is the quilt I made for them. It’s a traditional American pattern called “Storm at Sea”. I started it just over a year ago (but I took a bit of break in the middle of the summer). The top was machine-pieced but I quilted the whole darn thing by hand. I also used a bias binding for the edge, which was a first for me. All in all I’m really proud of how it turned out. And isn’t the basket cute? I saw it in a shop yesterday and realized it was the perfect way to package the quilt.
Here’s a shot of the quilt pattern itself. As you can see, it’s all made up of triangles and squares but somehow they kinda fool the eye into seeing curves and waves.
The Snook is actually standing on a chair and holding the quilt up here (and hiding behind it) so you can get an idea of how big it is. It’s probably about queen-sized, I’d say.
I suck at embroidery, but it’s sorta tradition that you personalize the quilt for the receiver. Here’s my, uh, “rustic” attempt at adding their initials.
Like I said, I’m proud of it. And hey, that’s one more thing I can cross off my crafty backlog!
-
Friday Five
1. What are your hobbies?
Besides all this Internet crap? I quilt. My first blanket is coming along very well, aside from the fact that my fingertips are all raw and bloody from stabbing myself too many times with a quilting needle. I’m also learning Korean in the hopes of amusing my grandparents the next time I go home.2. Do you collect anything? If so, what?
Though I collect books in general, I also have tons of Roald Dahl stuff. I’ve got an entire shelf of his books, including several rare volumes (that I paid an arm and a leg for on eBay). I’ve also got Dahl movies, Dahl CD’s, Dahl records, Dahl magazines, and even a doll (from Matilda). I tell myself that it’s all for the site, but really, it’s for me.
3. Is there a hobby you’re interested in, but just don’t have the time/money to do?
I’d love to actually get “serious” about my Dahl collection and go after some of the really nice first editions. Since I’ve seen prices with four digits, though, that’ll have to wait til I make my first million. I’ve also had a crazy desire lately to learn to knit. I’m just working my way through the domestic arts, people.4. Have you ever turned a hobby into a moneymaking opportunity?
When I was first heading to London, I sold my rarest Dahl book because I needed the cash. I immediately regretted it though and was lucky enough to be able to buy the same volume back later. Quilting could possibly be a money maker, though. I used to scoff at how much the Amish back in Indiana charged for these things, but now that I know the work involved in making one by hand, I don’t think hundreds of dollars is out of the question. Of course, this first one is for my bed. It’s getting cold at night!5. Besides web-related stuff (burbs, rings, etc.), what clubs do you belong to?
Not really anything. I don’t know enough people here to join a club yet. -
Great weekend
It started off Friday with the arrival of several mix CDs in my mailbox, courtesy of Mr. Jones. Snookums and I have been shaking our “bootays” ever since. Then on Saturday we headed to my first ever professional rugby game: the New South Wales Waratahs vs. the Otago Highlanders. Basically, it was Australia against New Zealand, so emotions were running high. New South Wales ended up winning 31-13. It was awesome. I couldn’t help making crunching noises at every tackle. (Sidenote: When I eventually return to America, I plan on introducing the concept of the “meat pie” as the ultimate sporting venue snack. They’re sooo much better than hot dogs.) Afterwards we headed to the sports bar at Fox Studios Australia for some bowling, foosball, and beer. Today I was a good girl and went to the gym, and then I worked on my quilt. The entire top is finished and I’ve got it basted together with the backing and filling. The quilting itself isn’t so easy. I was really frustrated at first, til I realized that I don’t have to be as good as my Mom at it. Once I accepted that (like all my other domestic endeavors), things got a lot easier. Now we’re watching Star Wars on telly. Ahhh, perfect.
-
Quilting
Since Snookums has been busy with his computer (recently unpacked from three months in transit), I’ve kinda been avoiding mine. It just doesn’t feel right that both of us should be hunched over computer screens for ten hours a day when we’re not being paid for it. So instead I quilt. I quilt and I watch Buffy. This is a picture of my quilt so far. That’s five rows out of about twenty-five that I have planned. (Yeah, it’s massive, I know. But I like big blankets.) All the colored squares are different shades of blue, some with patterns and stuff. It’s gonna be awesome.
Oh, and re: Buffy. When you Americans finally get your Season 3 DVD, be sure and listen to the commentary on “Bad Girls”. The guy speaking (the writer) talks quite candidly about the “lesbian subtext” of Buffy and Faith, and how Eliza Dushku was always pushing for more. Snookums and I found it both hilarious and fascinating.