Halloween is almost here, which means celebration preparations are going on at my house. I absolutely love Halloween, and is my favorite part of the year. It is also one of my favorite things about quilting since Halloween fabrics come out so early. Every year, I try to do at least one Halloween themed quilt, and Bat the therapy cat likes to help out.
Bat likes to help with quilting
It seems like all of my friends are currently having babies. Which means I’m making baby quilts. I love making baby quilts, because it gives me a chance to play with new patterns on a small scale and a chance to practice my free motion quilting on my home machine.
Sometimes a new quilt pattern can be daunting when done for a large bed-sized quilt. But when you look at the blocks needed for a baby sized quilt, it tends to be easier to digest. Irish Chain quilts are something I always wanted to do, but the size of them was too overwhelming for me. I decided to start small and did an Irish Chain for my first baby quilt. I really love the look of Irish Chains, and have plans for many more in my future, but I have yet to make another one. The blocks are easy to create, but for me, the time to make a scrappy Irish Chain look good is a large investment. Color coordination is not my forte. Continue reading
Last month, the world watched in horror as Houston was devastated by flooding waters caused by Hurricane Harvey. We watched daring rescues of families leaving everything behind as the waters rose in their houses. We watched evacuees flood into the convention center that quilters associate with the International Quilt Festival in Houston. Calls for aid were raised, and as while financial aid is needed most, there were also calls for quilts to help those who had lost everything. APQS and Missouri Star Quilt Co became collection centers for quilts when relief agencies needed them. Being a born and raised Floridian, hurricanes are a natural part of life for me, and still I had to turn off the news because of how horrible the devastation from Harvey was.
My first commissioned quilt was for a friend of mine who was going through a rough time with breast cancer treatment. She had been my sister’s nurse for over a decade, so of course I said yes. I knew exactly what I was going to do, seeing as I only knew one pattern at the time (Cubby Hole) and I had seen the perfect fabric for it. Then everything went wrong. I couldn’t find the fabric to save my life, and then when I did it took forever to ship and the print wasn’t straight on the grain. Two days after the fabric arrived, she passed away.
Some of the various breast cancer awareness fabric I collected
The quilt turned into a memorial quilt, and helped me process my grief. I was determined to have the quilt done in time for the memorial service. With the help of my mother, who is awesome and often offers to press while I sew, we managed to finish the quilt and it came out of the dryer minutes before we got in the car for the memorial.
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This weekend I unexpectedly was able to attend the 35th Annual Capital City Quilt Show at the Museum of Florida History. I have only gone to one other quilt show, and was blown away by the quilts that I saw there that I went into this one with high expectations. This show exceeded my expectations and has set the bar rather high for future shows that I attend.
Sentimental Journey, the 35th Annual Capital City Quilt Show
The Capital City Quilt Show is put on by the Quilters Unlimited guild of Tallahassee. This year the quilts were all part of the theme Sentimental Journey. Since different things can be sentimental to different people, the types of quilts were extremely varied, yet all of them were impressive in their own way. My favorite aspect of this show was that every quilt had a small blurb explaining the story behind the quilt.
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One thing that I have learned over decades of dealing with severe anxiety is that I will experience anxiety in every aspect of my life, including the things I use to combat my anxiety. So while working on quilts does overall help my mental health, it is accompanied by the flooding of “what ifs” and thoughts of every possible thing that can go wrong. Over the past couple of years, I’ve come up with a variety of things I tell myself or remind myself of to help deal. This list is way too long for one post, but the major ones that tend to haunt me throughout the entire process of making a quilt are listed below in case any of you have been tormented with similar thoughts.
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Several years ago, my therapist approached me with the idea of using needle crafts as a way to deal with my anxiety and depression. My sister had recently died, I had just been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, on top of mild depression and severe general anxiety that seemed to be getting worse no matter what we did. I normally spent my Saturday mornings laying on the sofa watching the various crafts shows on PBS anyways so I decided why not. I had done (and still do to a lesser degree) needlepoint in the past and wanted to try something new. Since I was currently living in central Illinois at the time, I figured I’d take a shot at crochet and maybe save some money on scarves and hats and such. I taught myself how to crochet, badly, and created some scarves, a few shawls, and one really horrible hat. The more I watched my Saturday morning shows, bookended by Fons and Porter, Eleanor Burns, and Sewing with Nancy, I realized that what I was really drawn to was quilting.
After convincing my mother to let me borrow her sewing machine, I started quilting my first small table runner. It was rather funny. My mother told me to not expect too much, reminding me it was only my first quilt. She had quilted before, including my favorite t-shirt quilt ever, so she knew what she was talking about. I started simple. A simple cubby hole pattern, shrunk down to fit a table runner, and not even a full table runner at that. It actually didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it would. My mom was shocked it had turned out as well as it did. On top of everything, I really enjoyed the process. I managed to finish the whole thing in a day, had a nice finished piece at the end of it, and felt accomplished. Not only that, but I had lost myself in the process, something I never managed to do with any other needle craft I’ve tried. I did not have to deal with any anxiety throughout the whole process, though it probably helped I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it at the time. I was hooked and went off to design my first quilt, a simple pixel art design for Nightmare Before Christmas. It took longer than a day to put together, but not by much and it also calmed the hell out of my anxiety which was going crazy at the time.
Shortly after finishing my first real quilt, my life changed completely again. I developed a nervous system disorder, which wouldn’t be diagnosed for almost a year, that left me shaking uncontrollably and unable to sleep for days on end. I was bounced from doctor to doctor, who threw me on various medications which ended up making things worse instead of better. I was going crazy. Throughout all of that though, I still had my quilting. I was working on two new quilts, albeit much more slowly since I barely had control over my movements. These quilts kept me going through the rough times, especially the thought of someone touching one of my quilts before it was finished. When the diagnosis finally came, multiple life changes came along with it, but I knew that quilting was here to stay.
If you are looking to start quilting (or any crafting for that matter) to help here are some suggestions:
Quilts are like a warm hug whenever you need one. When you get into quilting, you will always have quilts in your house and eventually branch out to giving them away. There is nothing like the feeling of giving someone a quilt. No matter how bad things are, they get better, even if it is just for a few minutes, when you see the face of someone receiving a homemade quilt.
