Which Way is Up?

One of my non-quilter friends asked me once, "Do quilts come with instructions that tell you which way is up?" In the end, it all comes down to the direction from which the quilt is going to be viewed.

Most quilts have two purposes.

1. They can go on a bed.
   
2. They can hang on a wall.

Bed quilts might be symmetrical, facing into the center of the bed, such as this one.* In New England, very old quilts from the 1800s often had notches cut into the corners to fit around bedposts and over the pillows. These quilts very definitely had a particular "Up!"

Usually a pattern for a quilt will tell you which way is up. It all depends on something called the "setting." The setting is the arrangement of the blocks into a larger quilt. A lot of people buy patterns for quilts, but sometimes people make their own "settings" of how to put the blocks together.

On the other hand, you might have a quilt where all the blocks are the same and they are a pattern that can be viewed from any direction. In this case, it might not matter which way you put it on a bed or hang it on your wall.

*I did not make this quilt. This is a picture of an old one that I found in a book.

Recycling: Return of the Yellow Stripey Fabric

Sometimes a fabric that may not work in one block works well in a different block. The next block that I made on my Blue & Yellow and Dargate quilts was a "Tree of Life" block. The yellow stripey block that had utterly failed in the "Jacob's Ladder" block worked pretty well as a tree trunk. Here is what it looks like:

Old and New: Reproduction Versus Modern?

One of my big interests in quilting is reproduction fabrics. Reproduction fabrics are fabrics that have patterns from a long time ago. They can either be exact replicas based on fabrics in museum collections (such as the Sturbridge Village collections) or fabrics inspired by them that have the right "look," but aren't exact replicas. The most popular time periods for reproduction fabrics are the Depression-era fabrics from the 1930s and fabrics from the time of the American Civil War.

I really like fabrics from the first half of the 1800s, and I collect a lot of them. They make up about half of my fabric collection, which currently fills 19 boxes, or about 145 gallons of fabric. Of my reproduction fabric collection, many of them are Dargate fabrics. I briefly mentioned these in my previous post. These are reproduction fabrics that are exact replicas and inspirations based on a sample book of French fabrics from the 1840s.

The premise of my block of the month club was to make a 15.5 inch-square block out of fabrics from the Dargate collection. Because the patterns can be tricky, and because the kit for each month only has "fat eighths," there is no extra fabric in case you make a mistake. (A fat eighth is a piece of fabric 9 inches wide by 22 inches long.) So, I started out by making a practice block out of scrap fabrics that I had on hand before I cut out the "official" Dargate fabric. I picked the theme blue and yellow and white because I had lots of blue scraps on hand.

I quickly came to realize that I liked my "practice" quilt better than my official Dargate collection quilt. I think that part of the problem is in the fabrics. Sometimes I didn't always like the fabrics that the store owner selected to order from the larger Dargate collection. I ended up ordering a lot of supplemental fabrics from Reproduction Fabrics and Z & S Fabrics to round out the collection. Although some of the fabric designs are strikingly modern, a lot of the blocks come out looking like they were made by somebody's Great Aunt sitting in a dimly lit Victorian parlor with long tablecloths and doilies and knickknacks everywhere. I think that I can make the official quilt a little better with the fabrics that I ordered from the other fabrics stores, though.

Here is the block that I made out of scrap fabrics that I talked about in my previous post:














This is the same quilt block pattern, but made in the Dargate fabrics:

Color Selection: Sometimes You Just Need To Start Over

I've been working on a block of the month quilt in blue and yellow colors. In fact, I've been working on the quilt for so long that the last "month" in the block of the month was (cough) two years ago. I set out to make a scrappy quilt from the beginning as a companion to the official "color-way" for the block of the month set. In quilter terms, a "color-way" is a set of fabrics that are designed to go together by a manufacturer. In this case, the official fabric collection is called "Dargate," after a book of fabric samples called the Dargate book. You may hear me refer to the Dargate quilt in this blog.

But I digress. The point of this particular post is that it is important to be willing to take things apart and start over if the block just doesn't work. Seam rippers are important tools! I picked out two colors from my scrap bag that looked good together, but when I put the block together, it looked terrible on the whole.

Here is the original block. It is a design called "Jacob's Ladder" or "Railroad Tracks."














Normally my rule is that once it is made, it's done. I'm much more of a Jackson Pollock "create and don't look back" quilter rather than one who will constantly revise it. (My only exception is that corners must line up, which I will redo.) As you can see, it just doesn't work. Now, believe me when I say that it looked even worse in real life. I knew that for once this was so bad, that I had to do something. But what? I knew that I wanted to keep the half-square triangles. They have a very subtle winter scene going on in the background that I love. So the four-patch blocks would have to be replaced.

I was left to determine which color I should swap out and what should replace it. As I mentioned before, the theme of the quilt is blue and yellow. I've mentally been titling the quilt "Champions of the West" as a tribute to the University of Michigan school colors. It is nominally a "scrap quilt" since I am using many different fabrics. (But all the fabrics that I use are new, except for two that are indeed scrap fabrics.) My strategy is to carry over one or two (but not more) fabrics from a previous block and introduce one or two new fabrics to tie everything together.

I sorted through a lot of my yellow and blue stash to find the right replacements. I think that part of my problem was that the light blue and the yellow were the same "value" of light and dark- there was not enough contrast. They also had pattern conflicts- they were both busy patterns. So, I knew that I needed a light/dark contrast, and only one busy pattern. Ultimately, I ended up swapping out for a dark blue wave pattern used in a previous block, and a strong yellow tone on tone. The yellow definitely "pops," but in a good way. Before they didn't pop, or maybe they did pop, but in a bad way. This is the result:














I think you will agree that this is much better. The pattern of the block is much more visible, as well. I am going to keep the old four-patches, but I haven't decided what to do with them. This new combination seems very nautical to me.