Wale of a Quilt

I visited Gee's Bend in 2022 for their inaugural Airing of the Quilts Festival. There, I learned about the history of the area's sewing cooperative which contracted with Sears Roebuck to produce corduroy pillow covers -- and how the women were allowed to take scraps of the corduroy home, which naturally ended up in quilts.

I saw several of the corduroy quilts on display during my visit, and I really liked the hefty look of them.

One particular corduroy quilt, made by Mary Lee Bendolph, really caught my eye. This quilt consisted of nothing more than vertical bars of various 1970s colors. Somehow I neglected to get a photo, but I believe that's it in Kelly Spell's Instagram post from the day (see images 1 and 6 in Kelly's post). Kelly also has a great closeup of a different corduroy quilt.

I saw lots of 9-patch blocks in various quilts on that day too.

Inspired by all this, I decided to create a corduroy quilt combining vertical bars and 9-patches.  This is Wale of a Quilt:

I also decided to play with the directionality of the corduroy fabrics. Rotating pieces by 90° gives a different look, depending on the lighting, due to the wale. The fabric has a nap too, so that rotating it by 180° can give a different look as well. The "ghost" 9-patch units in the center are created using these different rotations.

In another nod to the Gee's Bend quilts, I did not attempt to make accurate cuts; in my mind it's "intentionally imperfect."

I'm not sure how machine quilting would look on a corduroy quilt, and it seemed inappropriate for a Gee's Bend-inspired quilt anyway -- so I took a class on hand quilting with Jen Kingwell at the 2024 QuiltCon, with this quilt specifically in mind. I used several colors of 8wt Wonderfil thread in an oversized Baptist fan design. (8wt was Jen's suggestion; I had initially purchased even more colors of 12wt Aurifil.) For marking, I used a strip of template plastic with holes punched every half inch up to 18 inches to act as a beam compass.

The corduroy fabrics are from Robert Kaufman; some are 8 wale and some are 14 wale. I really like the wider 8 wale, but there are more colors available at 14 wale.

I used a Cherrywood fabric in teal for the binding.

The back is a Mammoth flannel plaid. This is a heavy, warm, and cozy quilt.

Here's a look at the label:

The Airing of the Quilts Festival in Gee's Bend is now an annual event. I highly encourage a visit sometime!

Will It Go Round

Back in the fall of 2023, I took a week-long class taught by Barbara Black. The class was built around Wendy Williams's pattern called Full Circle, a design which intentionally incorporates multiple techniques. While I rarely make quilts from patterns, I felt this class would introduce me to some new techniques and at the same time allow me to experience Barbara's excellent teaching.

For my fabric selections, I started with Giucy Giuce's original Deco Glo collection and added texty low-volume fabrics, some coordinating Essex linen yarn dyes, and a couple of busy neutrals for the background. A few of the blocks are scrappy as well.

In class, we focused on only one quadrant of the quilt. Even so, I didn't get very far. This was my status at the end of the week:

(Barbara wrote about our class here.)

After the class was finished, I set aside the project for a while to work on a few other quilts. By this past fall I was ready to focus on completing this quilt.

I wasn't happy with my original fabric choices for the "spikes" (the larger triangles) -- there wasn't enough contrast between the yellow and the natural linen. A month or so after the class, the Deco Glo II collection became available, and I chose an orange from that collection to pair with the yellow instead.

My past experience with appliqué has been almost exclusively fused and raw edge.  For this quilt I used several approaches to turned-edge appliqué, including Karen Buckley's Perfect Circles and needle-turned reverse appliqué. I used both machine stitching and hand stitching, depending on the block. The blue half-circles here are stitched by machine, while the black-and-white circles are appliquéd by hand.

The purple arches in three of the four quadrants are done with hand-stitched reverse appliqué. (In class, for the first quadrant, we appliquéd the purple shapes onto the background using a freezer paper template to prepare the fabric pieces; I then stitched those down by machine.)

I'm not big on embroidery either. For the Flower Garden blocks, I tried to do a little more than the pattern called for, but I know other folks would be much more elaborate.

After taking my photos, I saw that my blanket stitches, used on a few flowers, did not hold up well in the wash.

I used some 100wt thread in matching colors to tack the stitches back in place.

I used Latifa Saafir's chunky binding tutorial to do a 3/4" binding, and used a different color binding for each quadrant.

For the back, I used another texty print. This print would have matched the linen print that I rejected from the large triangles. The custom label is from Spoonflower.

I spent practically all of January 2025 doing the quilting. I'll close with more close-up images.

Miami Meets Manhattan

When Giucy Giuce's Deco Glo II fabric line was announced, I wanted to make a quilt to highlight the color gradient in the collection. I pondered variations of New York Beauty blocks, based on the few NY Beauty blocks in my Ode to Joy quilt. Around this time, we made a visit to Miami Beach and went on a walking tour of Art Deco architecture. I spotted an arch-shaped ornament on a building there, and the idea struck me to merge the New York Beauty spikes into a tall arch shape and assemble the shapes in a clamshell type quilt.

I drafted the design using Affinity Designer, and used our library's laser cutter to make custom acrylic templates.

The spikes are paper pieced.

The neutral fabrics are mostly Essex yarn dyed metallics. The black backgrounds are a variety of metallics and non-metallic yarn dyes.

I used the laser cutter to make a few quilting guides too. I used these to quilt the echos in the white and silver arches. (I originally cut these from 1/4" acrylic, but I got the scale wrong, so I had to re-do them using scraps of 1/8" acrylic.) These were also helpful in quilting the colored centers.

 For the back I used a 108" Chalk and Charcoal print.

The binding is another Essex metallic. I had ordered this to use as another background for the spikes, but it read too light to me. It works well for the binding though.

I tried something new for my photo setup. In the past I've pinned my quilts to a muslin photo backdrop when I wanted a clean background, but that can be tedious to do.

This time I sewed a set of small pockets along the top of the muslin backdrop and purchased a set of strong neodymium magnets to fit inside.

A wide pocket curtain rod fits well in the 4-inch hanging sleeve, and works with the magnets to hold the quilt in place against the backdrop.

Here's a view from the back with the quilt held in place:

There are multiple Art Deco inspirations in this quilt, including the fabric collection itself. As mentioned above, I found a specific inspiration in Miami Beach, and the fabric colors are reminiscent of Miami too. On the other hand, the silver and black metallic fabrics remind me more of NYC skyscrapers, and the New York Beauty inspiration is there too. All this inspired the name "Miami Meets Manhattan."

Wonky Housetop Blocks

It's my turn to request and receive blocks for another Do Good Stitches group quilt. This month I'm requesting wonky housetop blocks, 12.5" unfinished, with only two rounds of fabric around the center. I thought I'd write a tutorial on how I approached this; this isn't the only way to make these, but hopefully this method will consistently produce blocks of the desired size.

For one block, make the following fabric cuts:

Fabric 1:

(1) 4" - 4.5" square

Fabric 2:

(2) 3" x 4.5" rectangles

(2) 3" x 10" rectangles

Fabric 3:

(2) 3.5" x 10" rectangles 

(2) 3.5" x 13.5" rectangles

The center piece (fabric 1) does not have to start out as a square, and it can be slightly smaller if it does not need to be trimmed.

If you are starting with a square, trim two opposite sides at slight angles:

Attach a 3" x 4.5" rectangle of Fabric 2 to the sides just trimmed; press.

Now trim the other two sides at slight angles:

Sew the remaining Fabric 2 rectangles to these sides and press.

Trim two sides again; try to keep the narrowest part at least 7.5" wide (it should be ok if it's a little less):

(Please excuse the glare on the ruler.)

Sew the 3.5" x 10" rectangles of Fabric 3 to the trimmed sides.

Trim two sides yet again, still aiming to keep the width at least 7.5" (notice how little I trimmed from the narrow part of Fabric 2):

Sew the remaining Fabric 3 rectangles to these sides, press, and trim to a 12.5" square.

I used 3" strips for Fabric 3, which worked but gave me little leeway when it came to the final trim.

3.25" strips should be fine if you are careful not to trim too much; 3.5" strips should give more margin for error and plenty of freedom for the final trim to be at a wonky angle.

Here's my finished block:

And a second block: