A Flower Garden for Cold Nights

I wanted to share a glimpse at one of the many WIP's I have going, this one something I have been picking up during quiet nights at home around the holidays lately. Sometimes I get so ashamed of the vast number of planned projects I have going, but I am learning to cherish the joy I get out of pondering over each one and the satisfaction of crossing each one off my list at its own appropriate time, rather than worrying about what others will think.

Alas, I was an over achiever with plans and dreams that went beyond the scope of my own hands and time, even in grade school. My granny was the person who taught me to sew then when I went to stay with them for a couple weeks each summer as a kid. After lots of crooked hand stitches on fabric scraps, she and I poured over all her quilting books and she let me pick out a block to work on. The one that had caught my eye was Grandmother's Flower Garden, which seemed appropriate besides being intricate and lovely. A story + detail + aethetically pleasing = right up my alley! This was in third or fourth grade I think and I remember her gently trying to tell me that it wasn't exactly a beginner's block, but being the good and encouraging sport she is, she showed me how to use a template to cut out lots of little hexagons and I got through a nice little stack of them by the end of that visit, lopsided as many of them turned out to be. We've laughed at them since but at the time, I remember her telling me they were beautiful no matter how long they took me or how uneven my stitches were.

Fabric from the dress my Granny made my first china doll,
fabric from my Grandpa's and husband's old shirts,
fabric from my 5th grade halloween costume (a "Laura Ingalls Wilder" dress) made my my mom,
fabric from my favorite pajama pants in college

Granny is a firm believer in the value of a quilt sewn by hand, nevermind the fact that you could make several by machine in a fraction of the time. She has made such quilts on the machine, and so have I, but when it comes to REAL QUILTING, only hand stitches will do. I never cease to be grateful for being taught that from the start. While I love working with my machine for so many projects and appreciate what modern quilters do (myself falling into that  category I suppose), I sometimes get a little sad reading blogs where people churn out a bajillion different quilts a year by machine alone. At a certain point of saturation, do they mean the same thing? Personally, I think there is a difference. One is no less valuable, but there is a difference in that value and that difference is why I'm ok with admitting that I'm working on blocks by hand for a quilt I started in grade school. It's not in fashion, and I think I love it all the more for that.

I really started adding to this pile back in 2008 when I took up sewing again after college and every year since, I add a few to the pile. Once I have enough for a queen size quilt, will put them altogether, perhaps with sashing, I'm not sure yet. Sometimes I pack them into the car on visits home to show her and we lay them all out and marvel at the stories each little scrap holds or my own stories of when and how I worked on each one. Each block combines some of her material that she gave me back in grade school, and some of my own that I have stashed away. I've finished 7 for 2013 so far and will pack it back away again in my sewing room soon as I need to get back to orders and school, and...my machine. Until next year!

Blog Carnival: on the matter of materials

my fellow blogger dirksen dabbles invited me to be a part of the blog carnival that she is hosting and i'm excited

to be a part of it! the chosen topic is: the quality of artistic materials. how it works is that each participant makes
a post on their own blog with their individual insights on the chosen topic. the host then gathers
together the best of each as an overview and introduction to everyone participating.
dirksen dabble's main post can be found here—ENJOY and
please feel free to explore and comment on as many of the different posts as you like!

i use a lot of old materials. it's true, i can't lie. i like old stuff better because it already has its own built in history, a story if you will. we also call these materials "vintage" of course and i'd like to take a moment to tell you a story about why i prefer that old stuff:

my grandmother made wedding ring quilts for each of her four children when they were married. the quilts were useful because they kept us warm when we needed to bundle up, safe when our parents were out on a date, and comforted when we needed to cry and snuggle. but they were also beautiful because of the wide variety of colors and textures she used. granny never went out and just bought material for quilts—each child's blanket included scraps of up-cycled fabric from pants, dresses, housecoats, shirts, and coats that she had made for them as they grew up. they were quite poor but she was a talented seamstress and saved all the garments as the kids grew out of them to use in these amazing blankets.
because of this, each quilt is much like a historic record of the life of the individual that they were made for. i loved having my mom's blanket on my bed because it meant a very special kind of bedtime story. i would point to a particular piece of fabric and she would tell me all about her memories of granny making it for her and all the places she remembered going to in that outfit. every quilt piece was a new story, another fragment of their lives and therefore my own too.

as i got older i came back to sewing because it relaxed me, it was better therapy than i could ever pay for! the problem was that i didn't always have the money to go out and buy pretty and new fabric so i needed to be thrifty just like my granny and all the women who came before her in our family...pioneering immigrants from denmark and germany, mid-century housewives, victorian seamstresses taking in darning work to help their families get by. they used what they had to make beautiful and useful objects because that was survival and i am able to honor them and their talent by creating items of similar practicality with materials that would otherwise go to waste in our all too fast-paced world. choosing these fabrics allows me to tell my own story in a much more personal and rich way and then share that valuable story with you, the customer. that is the heritage of handmade items and i cherish it and try to incorporate it into all my pieces. i have cut up everything from sheets and curtains to prom dresses to make the items for my shop but perhaps the gvk draft stopper best exemplifies my method:

(for example: that striped black fabric on the end is actually up-cycled from a skirt i wore in high school and is paired with quilting scraps that would otherwise go to waste.)

the fabrics i use for the draft stoppers are ever-changing since you can only cut up an old shirt so many times! this makes them unique unto themselves though and you just can't find that in stores...something special that is so practical and old-fashioned for survival, but also beautiful in a way that cannot be replicated in large numbers. and that folks, is the story of kat!

movin' on up

i owe you a post on that very bodacious of birthday gifts, my new sewing machine! for you to get the full weight of the thing, i should back up a bit and first show you the machine i've had all these years:


a Singer 401A which my grandmother Donna Mae got when it came out in 1957. This is the same year she had my mother, the eldest of four children. My grandparents were not very well off and she made what money she could as a seamstress. i always loved seeing old pictures of the clothes she made for my mother and her siblings and hearing stories of her time altering gorgeous wedding dresses in the fancy department store across town.

i learned on this machine and i love it dearly so of course i will never get rid of her, what blasphemy! truly, singer sewing machines never die, they just get ornery and decrepit, haha. my grandfather rehauled the entire thing a few years back for me and it still runs like a gem, but, alas, it just can't handle the interfacing and multiple layers of fabric i work with for my shop. this has left me sewing everything by hand. i don't mind it actually, i just can't grow the shop any more at such a dusty little pace. which brings me to the Singer HD110 Heavy Duty Professional Sewing Machine (insert choir of arch angels singing the hallelujah chorus here)!


i've already whipped out a few projects on it that otherwise would have taken me several days each and i gotta tell you, it runs like BUTTAH ;)