These are two shots of a quilt made for our daughter Pema, admitted to the University of Washington in Seattle, in the fall of 2004. It was a medallion style quilt, with double loft for warding off the Pacific Northwest cold spells. Pink was her preferred color.
A majority of the blocks were hand-pieced, sewn while watching TV or whenever there was downtime available. There were about 3 fabrics which came from dress material I had made for Pema as a pre-schooler. No two blocks are identical, although there are some similar patches in some. It was divided into four for machine quilting, due to its large and thick size, about 100 x 110 inches.
As I have a boxful of UFO's, sample blocks, partial blocks that refuse to be completed, and others of that ilk, I saved them for some use later on. I needed an idea for a backing so I chose a few to make into backing panels for Pema's compass quilt - I am sure she will be using it this winter, which I believe has already started: snow was reported in Seattle today.
When my daughter was at high school at the International School of Bangkok, (photo above) my husband taught fourth grade computer classes. One of the fourth grade teachers was a kindly New Zealand lady, Lorraine, who invited us for dinner at her flat, which was in a building next to our condo. She had a pink quilt draped on the rail at the top of the staircase, and I was smitten. I borrowed a thick quilting book from her and did not return it until after six months.
I found a pattern inspired by Italian tiles, and collected fabric from various shops for blacks, greys, grey-blues. In my eagerness to finish the first quilt, my templates were not accurate, the stitching was irregular, the fabric grain went every which way, and the colors were not properly sorted according to hue. Anyway, I did finish it and was somehow pleased with the results: but on close examination it would not pass any quilt contest. It is now used as a drape to keep the sun away from a room we currently use as storage.
Those were pre-rotary cutter days. Other quilts followed, learning the hard way as I went on. One of my problems was not following instructions carefully: I wanted to do more creative work (and fast!) which I thought was going outside the accepted norms. But there is such a thing as QUILTING DISCIPLINE: there are certainly basic rules to follow such as ¼ inch seams, following the grain while cutting block pieces, auditioning colors before making final decisions, pressing sewn pieces or blocks, using only colorfast fabric, iron the backing at least 3 times, with starch. So I went through the School of Quilting Hard Knocks. I still make errors but have become quite adept in camouflaging or making some remedy work for it or diverting its original purpose into something else , or kept in the Work in Progress box until further notice.
On a Christmas trip to Paris with my daughter, I brought along some cut pieces for hand piecing, a first attempt to fill in empty downtime with quilting. The flight delays accorded to poor weather conditions only gave me more time for piecing.
I was born and raised in Baguio City. It is a hill station developed by the Americans during their commonwealth period in the Philippines. It is nestled in the Cordillera mountains. The air is scented with pine, wild flowers proliferate even in the urban areas. The morning glory vine glistens in the morning with mountain dew, while the sunflowers vie to get the sun's rays: all year round. A Baguio friend who now lives in Bangkok too is the recipient of this wall hanging. We often get together and recount stories of growing up in Baguio, which, to us, is the most beautiful spot on God's earth. Paper-pieced. The photo shows the seam lines but are not so visible in the actual wall hanging. Measures about 15 by 30 inches, with the florette border.
In the Barker household, every single scrap of fabric is saved. A bag is available for filling in with tiny pieces, that will go into cushion stuffing. A kitchen bag is used to collect larger but unusable scraps, which I use to wipe Teflon pans with. And two other bags, boxes actually, which contain small pieces and arranged by dark or light hues. This charity quilt was made from these leftovers: the pinwheels for example were half-square triangles that came from piecing a border with corners snipped off. No color scheme was followed: only strips were made as I collected these from the boxes, sometimes randomly, sometimes grouping some similar hues. The photo above is a detail from the finished strip-style quilt, and measures about 80 x 90 inches.
Quilting started as an interest:we had a house fire when I was about thirteen, and my mother collected some of the usable scraps from clothes that were waterlogged. Since we were left with almost nothing, our relatives helped out by donating their surplus furniture, clothes, kitchenware, whatever - for us to start all over again.So the two quilts that my mother made came in handy: they were simply strips, wide and narrow, sewn together, with a blanket as batting, and a bedsheet as backing.While she was sewing it in her Singer treadle machine (her first purchase with her first paycheck as a school nurse, in the ‘twenties), I was fascinated how it evolved from scraps into something that was quite magical and colorful.At that time I was also interested in machine knitting with a Japanese-made knitting machine my father bought as a present.And some crochet and tatting work.But as I grew up these craft activities became lesser and lesser due to the demands of time on my school work, and subsequently immigrating from the Philippines to the USA,work, and starting a family.
